LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




DDDDS3SD43fl 
























■ <.* 


/ 


°^ 




I' 




' 


^o 


■^c ■ 




"l ' 






V* 


• 


t 
Jo 


xO 


r^ 








'.,.• ^» «^ '..0- <V. <j>^ 









•^V y-V ^J^S 



.V 


.V- '>. 






. • 'y^ 


c ♦ 




'i' -f^ 






1 

^ 


^x. Vt 






^^Z 




••- \ ..^ 




•<'^ 


^V 




.^•^: 





" <^ 






v^-/^ 



'^^ 






XX' • '^^ 



o * * 






»* 



^^■'>. 









<0 V* 






'^oj 









»> » • • , *> 



• . . L 



^0^ 



t\/'\ '^y^hW ^'^^''\ \^^.' S' \ ~^y^wr '■ 



■> .4' 



« * « < ># 



6 •■ .4'- 

w" y^-^<./'v.^, /\ ■-.-.-^"v ,/\ "•^«^- /■^-- ° 



K\/'X'-^^*\'^^'"^<^ --^p/ /\ v^^N^. 



"•n^ 





















'^.'f 



-> 






^ o « o , ■'J* 






" " " ■» <* 











C63^^C(c^ 




Y^uyt^<^^^ 



Tilling ^ LAi;> VIF.W: 



OK 



^ l„. Nl\., oi I UK \MFUir\N 

(;<)VVR\\fTNr FOH 



FKoM 



TO I 



It • 



« I I •• •■»'• 



At Jicrr 



^Evr 



IT A St.^A;Ol or TUIETT TEAIS. 

131 TWO vo i ^;s. 
VOLL 



NKW YOUK : 
D A !• r L K T O N A X l> COMPANY, 

Ml AXD *• »^ 



' r 



Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1854, by 

D. APPLETON & CO., 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern 

District of New York. 



■' / & s 



AUTo-i;i()r;n\niii \|. ski |, f, 

f - . p«««^ «M« pr»|«r»4 by tlw MilMr umI • ( il^m - w*i mdhring ci 

r"" ^' '*- ' *•• •'*^ *•'•'• ' '•^ TUy •*« not i„..,..i.;.1 

Miicol poinu of chATkctcr and 
"• govtro rohMqiMnl lliogr«pbir«. ] 

TnoM*. Ha.t IUm. ... known m • •^n.lor for ihirtj jcni in Tor^irrt^,. ,nd u 
'.c tuihor of •ttrral work,, wm bonj in OrmnKo Couolj, nmr li North 

< M.rrh Uih. I7H-J. and wm tke »o of Col. J«« ncnton. .n »blo Uwjcr 

{ tl.ai Suir, Md of Ann Gooch, of n»noTer eoontj. ^ ,.f tho familj of tho 

of c«IonUl r. in ih.i Hutc Uy ihi, .l«,^.nt, n» ,h.. moihrr'- .i.Jr, be 

I -a^ in. name from lie '' ih« Ilwt f.m.Ij (CoL Thom« HtI, of Lexington 

K. ntacky). hi. mother'. ...1 ^, J^^^ ,,,.,^ ,^ „,^ numerous Hart' 

f.ii.ily. Ho wu coa.in to Mr., l uv, u.ru Lucntia H.rt, the wife of Henrj CUj; and, 
by an ra-j miirtake, wa^ often quoted .1 ' :, public life ai. the rclatire of Mr. Clay 

him«lf. Ho Ut hi. father l*for« he wi^, ... n. of age, and fell under tbo care of 

a mother »tiU young, and charged with a nun., f..,. family, all of tender ag. -and devot- 
ing herwlf to them. She wa^i a woman of reading and oh«*rration— ^>lid reading, and 
oh-erration of thp men of the R. . ',.;..„, brought together by cour^ of hospitality of 
tbnt t.me. m whirh the houiw* of : and not tavern., were the universal Ht..p,,|,., 

place... Thoma. wa. the oldest i«n, and at the age of ton and twelve wa« reading ^.Ud 
b..nk. w.th hi. motber. and studying the great example, of history, and receiving encour- 
agement to emulate th.^^ example.. Hi. father', library, among other., contained tho 
famou. Mate Tnal^ in the large folio, of that time, and here ho got a foundation of 
Bntu,h hi.Htory, in reading the trea.v>n, and other triab, with which these volume« abound 
She wa. al.Ho a piou. and reliei-m. woman, cultivating the moral and rcligiou.s education 
of her children, and conneeUxl all her life with the Chri..tian church; Jirsi, a. a member 
of the Lngl..Hh Kp...copalian, and when removal to the (Jrcat We.t, then in the wildcr- 
ne^.. had broken that connection, then in the Methodist Epi.scopalian-in which she died 
All the m.nor virtue.., a. well aa the greater, were cherished by her; and her hoane, the 
report of the eminent men of the time, wa. the abode of temperance, modesty, decorum 
A pack of card. wa. never ..een in her house. From such a mother all the children 



AUTO -BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 



received the impress of future character; and she lived to see the fruits of her pious and 
liberal cares— living a widow above fifty years, and to see her eldest son half through his 
senatorial career, and taking his place among the historic men of the country for which 
she had begun so early to train him. These details deserve to be noted, though small in 
themselves, as showing how much the after life of the man may depend upon the early 
cares and guidance of a mother. 

His scholastic education was imperfect : first, at a grammar school taught by Richard 
Stanford, Esq., then a young New England emigrant, soon after, and for many years, and 
until death, a representative in Congress, noted as the life-long friendof Macon and Ran- 
dolph. Afterwards he was at Chapel Hill, the University of North Carolina, but finished 
no course of study there, his mother removing to Tennessee, where his father had ac- 
quired great landed property (40,000 acres), and intended to make Nashville his home ; 
and now, as the eldest of the family, though not grown, the care and management of a 
new settlement, in a new country, fell upon him. The family went upon a choice tract 
of 3000 acres, on West Harpeth, twenty-five miles south of Nashville, where for several 
years the main care was the opening a farm in the wilderness. Wilderness ! for such 
was the state of the country at that time within half a day's ride of the city of Nashville. 
'' The widow Benton's settlement " was the outside settlement Tjetween civilization and 
the powerful southern tribes which spread to the Gulf of Mexico. The Indian wars had 
just been terminated, and the boundary which these great tribes were enabled to exact 
brought their frontier almost to the gates of Nashville — within 25 miles ! for the line 
actually touched the outside line of the estate. The Indians swarmed about it. Their 
great war trace (the trace on which they came for blood and plunder in time of war, for 
trade in time of peace) led through it. Such a position was not to be maintained by a 
small family alone — a widow, and every child under age, only some twenty odd slaves. 
It required strength ! and found it in the idea of a little colony — leases to settlers with- 
out price, for seven years ; moderate rents afterwards. The tract was well formed for 
the purpose, being four miles square, with every attraction for settlement — rich land, 
fine wood, living streams. Settlers came ; the ground was covered over : it was called 
•' Benton Town," and retains the name to this day. A rude log school-house, a meetino- 
house of the same primitive structure, with roads and mills, completed the rapid conver- 
sion of this wilderness into an abode of civilization. The scholastic education of her son 
had ceased, but reading continued ; and books of solid instruction became his incessant 
companions. He has been heard to say that, in no period of his life, has he ever read so 
mucli, nor with as much system and regularity, nor with the same profit and delight. 
History and geography was (what he considered) his light reading; national law, the 
civil law, the common law— and, finally, the law itself, as usually read by law students- 
constituted his studies. And all this reading, and study, was carried on during the active 
personal exertions which he gave to the opening of the farm and to the ameliorations 
upon it which comfort e-xacted. 

Then came the law license, indulgently granted by the three Superior Court Judges 
-White, Overton, and Campbell— the former afterwards senator in Congress, Overton 
an eminent lawyer before he was a Superior Court judge, and Campbell, one of the 



ArroBioGRAniirAL sketcu. Ui 



mrly Mitlan and Uw jen of th« Sut«. The Uw licen»« (tignc<], practic* 
followed, and »>a««Bftil — tJcn. J»ck«on, (icn. Jamoti ll«>l>crtj»on, Ju«lp«5 MoNairy, 
Mkjor Tbuoua ilardeman, aod the old bead* of t)i. t -t ulation !':r:r. • Wim tlirir nuppurt 
mhI omntfloaoe* m a jooog man that might I il to li and wi de«crrod 

to be cucourai^ad. Soareelj at the bar, and a to career wa« npoDod to him. lie 

WM elected to the General Aivemblj of the State; and. thou^^h Marring bal fur a niiiglo 
tcinn. left the inpraw of hi* miod and principlea oa the atatnto book, and on the 
public p»lirj. IIo «a« the author of the Judicial Hrftrm Act, bj whirh the old nj.stom 
of .^up<>ri'>r Courlj wa* •ul«titutc<l bj the cireuit njnlem. in which (he a>iinini«tration 
of ju*(iro waa rrlievrd of great pert of ita delaj, of ite ei: wid of much of ita incon>lf 

Tcnteoce In parties and witnesM. And be «aa the author of a humane law, giving to | 
alavee the Mmc full benefit of jurj trial which waa the right of the white man under the 
Mae •ooaMlioo— a law whirh atill remain* on the atatute b<»k, but haa lost it« effect \ 
under the fatal outaide intrrfrrence which haa checked the progrcM of Houthern alaro 
policj amelioration, and turned back the currmt which waa setting so atmnglj in favor ( 
of mit the condition of the aUvi- 

U> .■ to the practior of the law, lUe war of Isl'J l>r>l« ouL \ olutitccra wore 

(Milled * • I 1 the r»Tcr« to New Or' . ,i v T!->cted there in the 

wint4-r ux i^iii- 13, ) ' until I rs i-ii i.>. i i>ri>«t thouaand Tolun- 

leer* were raised ! rai<»>i >)' ... i . ..<... f Jackson's name — hi.4 patriotic 

proclamation -• ' •' -• ^ • •'"•m muj»ter ground to muster 

gr wnd , and >: ...^... ■ ••( the joung men. Thcj 

were formed >' i" t' -f «? - .. 1 of one. He had been 

appointed 1 , ^ ^ ^1 in the TenncsHce militia), on 

the fir«t "f war with (ireat Britain, and ■ iod to fM.>rform many of the 

iBoet intimate duLuw of that stattou, though, as colonel of a regiment, he could not hold 
the place. The force deweaded to the Lower Miaaiaaippi : the British did not cumo; 
the volunteers returned to Tenn— er, were temporarily diiibandctl, but called again into 
nrvice bv (ten, Jaekeon at the breaking out of the Creek war. ThoKo roluntcers 
were the foundation uf all Jackaoo'a fiibeoqaent splendid career; and the way in which, 
through tli> ir means, he was enabled to get into the regular army, is a moAt curiotM 
piece of hintory, not told anywhere but by CoL Benton, as a member of the IIoumc of 
Reprcaentatirce, oo the presentation of Jackson's sword (Feb. 2Cth, 1** ) That piece 
of unknown history, which could only come from one who wae part and parcel of the 
transaction, deaerrea to be known, and to be studied by every one who is char^^ol with 
the administration of goremment, and by every one who would see with what difficulties 
genius and patriotism may hare to contend — with what rhancos they may have to wrestle 
— before they get an opportunity to fulfil a destiny for which they were \j<>rn. 

The Toluuteers di-tbanded, Col. Benton proceeded to Washington, and wa.-* appointed 
by Mr. Madison a licutcnant-colontl of infantry in the anny (1H1.3); and aft<r wards 
(l!i 14-15) proceeding to Canada, where he had obtained service, he met the ncw.H of 
peaee; and desiring no serricc in time of peace, he wxt within a few months on the west 
back of the MiMi^<«ippi, St. Louis his home, and the profession of the law ardently 



iy AUTO-BIOGRAPniCAL SKETCH. 



recommenced. In four years the State of Missouri was admitted into the Union, and 
Col. Benton was elected one of her first senators ; and, continuously by successive elec- 
tions, until 1851. From that time his life was in the public eye, and the bare enumera- 
tion of the measures of which he was the author, and the prime promoter, would be 
almost a history of Congress legislation. The enumeration is unnecessary here: the 
long list is known throughout the length and breadth of the land — repeated with the 
familiarity of household words from the great cities on the seaboard to the lonely cabins 
on the frontier — and studied by the little boys who feel an honorable ambition beginning 
to stir within their bosoms, and a laudable desire to learn something of the history of 
their country. 

Omitting this detail of well-known measures, we proceed to something else charac- 
teristic of Senator Benton's legislative life, less known, but necessary to be known to 
know the man. He never had a clerk, nor even a copyist ; but did his own writing, and 
made his own copies. He never had ofi&ce, or contract, for himself, or any one of his 
blood. He detested office seeking, and office hunting, and all changes in politics followed 
by demand for office. He was never in any Congress caucus, or convention to nominate 
a President or Vice-President, nor even sufi'ered his name to go before such a body for 
any such nominations. He refused many offices which were pressed upon him — the mis- 
sion to Russia, by President Jackson ; war minister, by Mr. Van Buren ; minister to 
France, by Mr. Polk. Three appointments were intended for him, which he would have 
accepted if the occasions had occurred — command of the army by General Jackson, if 
war took place with Mexico during his administration ; the same command by the same 
President, if war had taken place with France, in 1836 ; the command of the army in 
Mexico, by President Polk, with the rank of lieutenant-general, if the bill for the rank 
had not been defeated in the Senate after having passed the House by a general vote. 
And none of these military appointments could have wounded professional honor, as Col. 
Benton, at the time of his retiring from the army, ranked all those who have since 
reached its head. 

Politically, Col. Benton always classed democratically, but with very little regard 
for modern democracy, founded on the platforms which the little political carpenters re- 
construct about every four years, generally out of office-timber, sometimes green and 
sometimes rotten, and in either case equally good, as the platform was only wanted to last 
until after the election. He admitted no platform of political principles but the consti- 
tution, and viewed as impertinent and mischievous the attempt to expound the constitu- 
tion, periodically, in a set of hurrah resolutions, juggled through the fixg-end of a packed 
convention, and held to be the only test of political salvation during its brief day of 
supremacy. 

His going to Missouri, then a Territory under the pupillage of Congress, was at a 
period of great interest both for the Territory and the Union. Violent parties were 
there, as usual in Territories, and great questions coming on upon which the future fate 
of the State, and perhaps of the Union, depended. The Missouri controversy soon raged 
in Congress, throughout the States, and into the Territory. An active restriction party 
was in the Territory, largely reinforced by outside aid, and a decided paper was wanting 



AUTO-BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 



to give the proper tone to the public mind. Col. Benton had one set up, and wrote for it 
with such point and vigor that the Territory soon presented a united front, and when 
the convention election came round there was but one single delegate elected on the 
side of restriction. This united front had an immense effect in saving the question in 
Congress. 

Besides his legislative reports, bills and speeches, sufficient to fill many volumes, Col. 
Benton is known as the author of some literary works — the Thirty Years' View of the 
inside working of the Federal Government ; the Abridgment of Debates of Congress 
from 1789 to (intended) 1856 ; and an examination of the political part (as he deemed 
it) of the Supreme Court's decision in the Dred Scott case, that part of it which pro- 
nounced the abrogation of the Missouri Compromise line and the self-extension of the 
Constitution to Territories carrying African slavery along with it, and keeping it there 
in defiance of Congress or the people of the Territory. There was also a class of speeches, 
of which he delivered many, which were out of the line of political or legislative discus- 
sion ; and may be viewed as literary. They were the funeral eulogiums which the cus- 
tom of Congress began to admit, though not to the degree at present practised, over 
deceased members. These eulogiums were universally admired, and were read over 
Europe, and found their charm in the perception of character which they exhibited ; in 
the perception of the qualities which constituted the man, and gave him identity and 
individuality. These qualities, thus perceived (and it requires intimate acquaintance 
with the man, and some natural gift, to make the perception), and presented with truth 
and simplicity, imparted the interest to these eulogiums which survives many readings, 
and will claim lasting places in biographies. 

"While in the early part of life, at Nashville and at St. Louis, duels and affrays were 
common ; and the young Benton had his share of them : a very violent affray between 
himself and brother on one side, and Genl. Jackson and some friends on the other, in 
which severe pistol and dagger wounds were given, but fortunately without loss of life ; 
and the only' use for which that violent collision now finds a reference is in its total ob- 
livion by the parties, and the cordiality with which they acted together for the public 
good in their subsequent long and intimate public career. A duel at St. Louis ended 
fatally, of which Col. Benton has not been heard to speak except among intimate friends, 
and to tell of the pang which went through his heart when he saw the young man fall, 
and would have given the world to see him restored to life. As the proof of the manner 
in which he looks upon all these scenes, and his desii-e to bury all remembrance of them 
forever, he has had all the papers burnt which relate to them, that no future curiosity or 
industry should bring to light what he wishes had never happened. 

Col. Benton was married, after becoming Senator, to Elizabeth, daughter of Col 
James McDowell, of Rockbridge county, Virginia, and of Sarah his wife, born Sarah 
Preston ; and has surviving issue four daughters : Mrs. William Carey Jones, Mrs. Jessie 
Ann Benton Fremont, Mrs. Sarah Benton Jacob, and Madame Susan Benton Boilleau,now 
at Calcutta, wife of the French consul general — all respectable iu life and worthy of their 
mother, who was a woman of singular merit, judgment, elevation of character, and regard 



vi AUTO-BIOGRArniCAL SKETCH. 

for every social duty, crowned by a life-long connection with the church in which she 
was bred, the Presbyterian old scliool. Following the example of their mother, all the 
daughters are members of some church. Mrs. Benton died in 1854, having been struck 
with paralysis in 1844, and from the time of that calamity her husband was never known 
to go to any place of festivity or amusement. 



PREFACE. 



1— MOTIVES FOR WRITING THIS WORK. 

Justice to the men with whom I acted, and to the cause in which we were en- 
gaged, is my chief motive for engaging in this work. A secondary motive is 
the hope of being useful to our republican form of government in after ages by 
showing its working through a long and eventful period ; working well all the 
time, and thereby justifying the hope of its permanent good operation in all time 
to come, if maintained in its purity and integrity. Justice to the wise and 
patriotic men who established our independence, and founded this government, 
is another motive with me. I do not know how young I was when I first read 
in the speeches of Lord Chatham, the encomium which he pronounced in the 
House of Lords on these founders of our republic ; but it sunk deep into my 
memory at the time, and, what is more, went deep into the heart : and has 
remained there ever since. " When your lordships look at the papers trans- 
mitted us from America ; when you consider their decency, firmness, and wis- 
dom, you cannot but respect their cause, and wish to make it your own. For 
myself, I must declare and avow, that in all my reading and observation — and 
it has been my favorite study — I have read Thucydides, and have studied and 
admired the master states of the world — that for solidity of reasoning, force of 
sagacity, and wisdom of conclusion, under such a complication of difiicult cir- 
cumstances, no nation, or body of men, can stand in preference to the general 



IV PREFACK 



congress at Philadelphia." Tliis encomium, so just and so grand, so grave and 
so measured, and the more impressive on account of its gravity and measure, was 
pronounced in the early part of our revolutionary struggle — in its first stage — 
and before a long succession of crowning events had come to convert it into his- 
tory, and to show of how much more those men were capable than they had 
then done. If the great William Pitt — greater under that name than under 
the title he so long refused — had lived in this day, had lived to see these 
men making themselves exceptions to the maxim of the world, and finishino- 
the revolution which they began — seen them found a new government and 
administer it in their day and generation, and until " gathered to their fathers," 
and all with the same wisdom, justice, moderation, and decorum, with which 
they began it : if he had lived to have seen all this, even his lofty genius might 
have recoiled from the task of doing them justice ; — and, I may add, from the 
task of doing justice to the People who sustained such men. Eulogy is not my 
task ; but gratitude and veneration is the debt of my birth and inheritance, and 
of the benefits which I have enjoyed from their labors ; and I have proposed 
to acknowledge this debt — to discharge it is impossible — in laboring to preserve 
their work during my day, and in now commending it, by the fruits it has 
borne, to the love and care of posterity. Another motive, hardly entitled to 
the dignity of being named, has its weight with me, and belongs to the rights 
of " self-defence." I have made a gi-eat many speeches, and have an apprehen- 
sion that they may be pubhshed after I am gone — pubKshed in the gross, 
without due discrimination — and so preserve, or perpetuate, things said, both 
of men and of measures, which I no longer approve, and would wish to leave to 
oblivion. By making selections of suitable parts of these speeches, and weaving 
them into this work, I may hope to prevent a general publication — or to render 
it harmless if made. But I do not condemn all that I leave out. 



2.— QUALIFICATIONS FOR THE WORK. 

Of these I have one, admitted by all to be considerable, but by no means 
enough of itself. Mr. Macaulay says of Fox and Mackintosh, speaking of their 
histories of the last of the Stuarts, and of the Eevolution of 1688 : "They 
had one eminent qualification for wiriting history ; they had spoken history^ 
acted histor}', lived history. The turns of political fortune, the ebb and flow of 
popular feeling, the hidden mechanism by which parties are moved, all theso 
things were the subject of their constant thought, and of their most familiar 
conversation. Gibbon has remarked, that his history is much the better for hLs 



PREFACE. 



having been an officer in the miUtia, and a member of the House of Commons. 
The remark is most just. We have not the smallest doubt that his campaigns, 
though he never saw an enemy, and his parHamentary attendance, though he 
never made a speech, were of far more use to him than years of retirement and 
study would have been. If the time that he spent on parade and at mess in 
Hampshire, or on the Treasury bench and at Brooke's, during the storms which 
overthrew Lord North and Lord Shelbume, had been passed in the Bodleian 
Library, he might have avoided some inaccuracies ; he might have enriched his 
notes with a greater number of references ; but he never could have produced so 
lively a picture of the court, the camp, and the senate-house. In this respect 
Mr. Fox and Sir James Mackintosh had great advantages over almost every 
English historian since the time of Burnet."— I can say I have these advantages. 
I was in the Senate the whole time of which I write— an active business mem- 
ber, attending and attentive— in the confidence of half the administrations, 
and a close observer of the others— had an inside view of transactions of which 
the public only saw the outside, and of many of which the two sides were very 
diiferent- saw the secret springs and hidden machinery by which men and 
parties were to be moved, and measures promoted or thwarted— saw patriotism 
and ambition at theh- respective labors, and was generally able to discriminate 
between them. So far, I have one qualification ; but Mr. Macaulay says that 
Lord Lyttleton had the same, and made but a poor history, because unable to 
use his material. So it may be with me ; but in addition to my senatorial 
means of knowledge, I have access to the unpublished papers of General Jack- 
son, and find among them some that he intended for pubHcation, and which will 
be used according to his intention. 



3.— THE SCOPE OF THE WORK. 

I do not propose a regular history, but a pohtical work, to show the practical 
working of the government, and speak of men and events in subordination to 
that design, and to illustrate the character of Institutions which are new and 
complex— the first of their kind, and upon the fate of which the eyes of the 
world are now fixed. Our duphcate form of government, State and Federal, 
IS a novelty which has no precedent, and has found no practical imitation, and 
IS still believed by some to be an experiment. I believe in its excellence, and 
wish to contribute to its permanence, and believe I can do so by giving a faith- 
Ail account of what I have seen of its working, and of the trials to which I 
have seen it subjected. 



VI PREFACE 



4.— THE SPIRIT OF THE WORK. 

I write in the spirit of Truth, but not of unnecessary or irrelevant truth, 
only giving that which is essential to the object of the work, and the omission of 
which would be an imperfection, and a subtraction from what ought to be known. 
I have no animosities, and shall find far greater pleasure in bringing out the good 
and the great acts of those with whom I have differed, than in noting the points 
on w^hich I deemed them wrong. My ambition is to make a veracious work, 
reliable in its statements, candid in its conclusions, just in its views, and which 
cotemporarics and posterity may read without fear of being misled. 



CONTENTS OF VOLUME I. 



I <i^i » I- 



PBin.iMiNAKy View from 1S15 to 1820 



CHAP. 
I. 

II. 

III. 

IV. 

V. 

YL 

VII. 

VIII. 

IX. 

XL 

XII. 

XIIL 

XIV. 

XV. 



XVL 
XVII. 

XVIII. 
XIX. 

XX. 

XXI. 

XXII. 

XXIII. 

XXIV. 

XXV. 

" XXVI. 

XXVIL 

XXVIIL 



Personal Aspect of the Government , 

Admission of the State of Missouri 

Finances — Eeductlon of the Army 

Relief of Puhlic Land Debtors . 

Oregon Territory 

Florida Treaty and Cession of Texas 

Death of Mr. Lowndes .... 

Death of William Plnkney 

Abolition of the Indian Factory System 

Internal Improvement 

General Eemoval of Indians . 

Visit of Lafayette to the United States 

The Tariff and American System 

The A. B. Plot 

Amendment of the Constitution, in relation 
to the Election of President and Vice-Pre- 
sident 

Internal Trade with New Mexico 

Presidential and Vice-Presidential Elections 
in the Electoral Colleges .... 

Death of John Taylor, of Caroline . 
Presidential Election in the House of Repre- 
sentatives 

The Occupation of the Columbia 

Commencement of Mr. Adams's Administra- 
tion 

Case of Mr. Lanman — Temporary Senatorial 
Appointment from Connecticut . 

Retiring of Mr. Eufus King .... 

Removal of the Creek Indians from Georgia 

The Panama Mission .... 

Duel Between Mr. Clay and Mr. Randolph . 

Death of Mr. Gaillard .... 

Amendment of the Constitution, in relation 
to the Election of President and Vice-Pre- 
sident ...:.... 



PAGE. 


CHAP. 


. 1 


XXIX. 




XXX. 


. 7 
8 


XXXL 


. 11 


XXXIL 


11 

13 


XXXIIL 


14 


XXXIV. 


18 


XXXV. 


19 




20 




21 


XXXVI. 


27 
29 


XXXVIL 


32 


xxxvin. 


34 






XXXIX. 


87 


XL. 


41 


XLI. 


44 


XLIL 


45 






XLIIL 


46 


XLIV. 


50 


•- ' 



54 

56 
5T 

58 
65 
70 
77 

78 



Reduction of Executive Patronage 
Exclusion of Members of Congress from 
Civil Office Appointments 

Death of the ex-Presidents, John Adams 
and Thomas Jefferson .... 

British Indemnity for Deported Slaves 

Meeting of the first Congress Elected under 
the Administration of Mr. Adams 

Revision of the Tariff 

The Public Lands— Their Proper Dispo- 
sition — Graduated Prices — Pre-emption 
Eights — Donations to Settlers 

Cession of a Part of the Territory of Ar- 
kansas to the Cherokee Indians 



PAOB. 

69 



87 



XLV. 
XLVI. 

XLVIL 
XLVIIL 



91 
96 



102 



107 



Renewal of the Oregon Joint Occupation 
Convention 109 

Presidential Election of 1828, and Further 
Errors of Mons. de Tocquovillo . . Ill 

Retiring and Death of Mr. Macon . . 114 

Commencement of General Jackson's Ad- 
ministration 119 

First Message of General Jackson to the 
two Houses of Congress . . . .121 

The recovery of the Direct Trade with the 
British West India Islands ... 124 

Establishment of the Globe Newspaper . 128 
Limitation of Public Land Sales— Suspen- 
sion of Surveys — Abolition of the OflBce 
of Surveyor General — Origin of the 
United States Land System — Author- 
ship of the Anti-slavery Ordinance of 
1778— Slavery Controversy— Protective 
Tariff— Inception of the Doctrine of Nul- 
lification 130 

Repeal of the Sat Tax .... 143 
Birthday of Mr. Jefferson, and the Doc- 
trine of iJulliflcation .... 148 
Regulation of Commerce .... 149 

Alum Salt — The Abolition of the Duty 
upon it, and Repeal of the Fishing Boun- 
ty and Allowances Founded on it . 154 



TlU 



CONTENTS OF VOL I. 



CHAP. 

XLIX 

L 

LI. 

LII. 

LIII. 

LIV. 

LV. 
LVI. 

LVII. 

LVIir. 
LIX. 

LX. 

liXI. 

LXII. 
LXIIL 

LXIV. 

LXV. 

LXVI. 
LXVII. 



LXVIII. 

LXIX. 

L vX. 

LXXI. 

LXXII. 
LXXIII. 
LXXIV. 

LXXV. 



LXXVI. 
LXXVII. 

Lxxvni. 

LXXIX. 
LXXX. 

LXXXI. 

LXXXIL 



Bank of the United States 

Removals from Office .... 

Indian Sovereignties witbin tlie States 

Vei<J on the Maysville Road Bill. 

Rupture between President Jackson and 
Vice-President Calhoun 

Breaking up of the Cabinet, and Appoint- 
ment of another 



214 
220 

224 
229 

232 

285 

242 



Military Academy .... 

Bank of the United States — Non-renewal 
of Charter 

Krror of De Tocqueville, in relation to the 
Ilonso of Eeprcscntatives . 

The Twenty-second Congress . 

Rejection of Mr. Vim Buren, Minister to 

England 

Bank of the United States— Illegal, and 

Vicious Currency 

Error of Mons. do Tocqueville, in relation 
to the Bank of the United States, the 
President, and the People 

Expenses of the Government . 

Bank of the United StMes-Rcchartor— 
Commencement of the Proceedings 

Bank of the United States — Committee 
of Investigation Ordered 

The Three per Cent. Debt, and Loss in 
not Paying it when the Rate was Low, 
and the Money in the Bank of the 
United States without Interest 

Bank of the United States— Bill for the 
Recharter Reported in the Senate, and 
Passed that Body 248 

Bank of the United States— Bill for the 
Renewed Charter Passed in the House 
of Representatives . . . , 250 

The Veto 251 

The Protective System ... 265 

Public Lands — Distribution to the States 275 

Settlement of French and Spanish Land 
Claims 

"Efifectsof the Veto" .... 

Presidential Election of 1S32 

First Annual Message of President Jack- 
son, after his Second Election 

Bank of The United States— Delay In 
Paying the Throe per Cents. — Com- 
mittee of Investigation . 

Abolition of Imprisonment for Debt 

Sale of United States Stock In the Na- 
tion.al Bank 

Nullification Ordinance in South Caro- 
lina 

Procl.nmation against Nullification 

Jlessago on the South Corollna Proceed- 
ings 

Reduction of Duties— Mr. Verplanck's 
Bill 

Reduction of Dutiea— Mr. Clay's BUI . 



PAGE. 


CHAP 


15S 


LXXXIII. 


159 


LXXX IV. 


163 


LXXXV. 


1C7 


LXXXVL 


IGT 


LXXXVII. 


ISO 




182 




1S7 


LXXXVIII. 


205 

203 


LXXXIX. 



xci. 



xcn. 

XCIII. 

xciv. 

xcv. 
xcvi. 

XCVIL 
XCVIIL 

XCIX. 



2T9 
2S0 


C. 


282 


CL 


288 


CII. 




cm. 


287 




291 


CIV. 


294 


cv. 


29T 


CVL 


299 


CVIL 


803 






ovin. 


803 


cix 


813 





PAGE. 

Revenue Collection, or Force Bill . 330 
Mr. Calhoun's Nullification Rosolutions . 334 

Secret History of the " Compromise " of ,' 

1833 842 V 

Compromise Legislation ; and the Act, 
so called, of 1833 844 

Virginia Resolutions of "98-'99 — Disa- 
bused of their South Carolina Interpre- 
tation — 1. Upon tlieir Own Words — 2. 
Upon Contemporaneous Interpreta- 
tion 847 

Virginia Resolutions of 179S — Disabused 
of Nullification by their Author . . 854 

The Author's own View of tlio Nature 
of Our Government, as being a Union 
in Contradistinction to a League : Pre- 
sented in a Subsequent Speech on Mis- 
souri Resolutions .... 360 

Public Lands— Distribution of Proceeds 362 

Commencement of the Twenty-third 
Congress— The Members', and Presi- 
dent's Message 369 

Removal of the Deposits f^om the Bank 
of the United States .... 373 

Bank Proceedings, on Seeing the Deci- 
sion of the President, in relation to the 
Removal of the Deposits ... 879 

Report of tlie Secretary of the Treasury 
to Congress on the Removal of the De- 
posits 881 

Nomination of Government Directors, 

and their Rejection .... 3S5 

Secretary's Report on the Removal of the 
Deposits 893 

Call on the President for a Copy of tbe 
" Paper Read to the Cabinet " . . 899 

Mistakes of Public Men— Great Conroi- 
nation against General Jackson — Com- 
mencement of the Panic ... 400 

Mr. Clay's Speech against President Jack- 
son on the Removal of the Deposits — 
Extracts 402 

Mr. Benton's Speech in Reply to Mr. Clay 
— E.xtracts 406 

Condemnation of President Jackson- 
Mr. Calhoun's Speech— Extracts . 411 

Public Distress 415 

Senatorial Condemnation of President^ 
Jackson— his Protest— Notice of the 
Expunging Resolution . . . 428 

Mr. Webster's Plan of Relief . . 483 
Revival of the Gold Currency— Mr. Ben- 
ton's Speech . . . . • 436 
Atteiupted Investigation of the Bank of 

tlie United States .... 458 
Mr. Taney's Report on the Finances- 
Exposure of the Distress Alarms- 
End of the Panic 463 

Revival of tlie Gold Currency . . 469 

Rejection of Mr. Taney- Nominated for 
Secretary of the Treasury . • • 470 



CONTENTS OF VOL I. 



IX 



v/ 



OBAP. 

cx 

CXI. 
CXII. 
CXIII. 
CXIV. 

cxv. 

CXVI. 

CXVIL 

CXVIII. 




CXXII. 
CXXIII. 
CXXIV. 

cxxv. 



CXXVI. 
CXXVII. 

CXXVIII. 
CXXIX. 



PAGE. 

Senatorial Investigation of the Bank of 

the United States .... 470 

Downfall of the Bank of the United States 471 

Death of John Randolph, of Koanoaka 473 

Death of Mr. Wirt 475 

Death of the last of the Signers of the 
Declaration of Independence . . 476 

Commencement of the Session, 1834-'35 : 
President's Message .... 477 

Keport of the Bank Committee . . 481 

French Spoliations before 1800 . . 487 

French Spoliations — Speech of Mr. 
Wright, of New-York ... 489 

French Spoliations-Mr. Webster's Speech 505 

French Spoliations—Mr. Benton's Speech 514 

Attempted Assassination of President 
Jackson . .... "21 

Alabama Expunging Resolutions . 524 

The Expunging Resolution . . . 523 

Expunging Resolution: Rejected, and 
Renewed 549 

Branch Mints at New Orleans, and in the 
Gold Regions of Georgia and North 
Carolina 550 

Regulation Deposit Bill . : . 553 

Defeat of the Defence Appropriation, and 

loss of the Fortification Bill . . 554 
Distribution of Revenue . . . 556 

Commencement of Twenty-Fourth Con- 
gress — President's Message 

Abolition of Slavery in the District of 
Columbia 



V CXXX. 
CXXXI. 

CXXXII. French AflFairs — Approach of a French 
CXXXIIL 



Mail Circulation of Incendiary Publica- 
tions . . .... 



Squadron — Apology Required 

French Indemnities — British Mediation 
— Indemnities Paid .... 

CXXXIV. President Jackson's Foreign Diplomacy 

CXXXV. Slavery Agitation . . , . . 

CXXXVI. Removal of the Cherokees from Georgia 

CXXXVII. Extension of the Missouri Boundary . 

CXXXVIII. Admission of the States of Arkansas and 
Michigan into the Union , 



568 
576 

6S0 

588 

600 
601 
609 
624 
626 

627 



CHAP. 

CXXXIX. 

CXL. 
CXLL 

CXLII. 
CXLIII. 



CXLIV. 
CXLV. 

CXLVI. 
CXLVII. 

CXLVIII. 

CXLIX. 
CL. 

CLI. 

CLIL 

CLIII. 

CLIV. 

CLV. 

CLVI. 

OLVII. 

CLVIII. 

CLIX 

CLX 

CLXL 

CLXII. 
CLXIII. 

CLXIV. 

-, CLXV. 



Attempted Inquiry into the Military 

Academy . . ... 

MilitaryAcademy — Speech of Mr. Pierce 
Expunging Resolution — Peroration of 
Senator Benton's Second Speech 

Distribution of the Land Revenue 
Recharter of the District Banks— Speech 
of Mr. Benton— The Parts of Local and 
Temporary Interest Omitted 
Independence of Texas 

Texas Independence — Mr. Benton's 
Speech 

The Specie Circular .... 

Death of Mr. Madison, Fourth President 
of the United States 

Death of Mr. Monroe, Fifth President of 
the United States , . . . 

Death of Chief Justice Marshall . 

Death of Col. Burr, Third Vice-President 
of the United States .... 

Peath of William B. Giles, of Virginia . 

Presidential Election of 1836 

Last Annual Message of President Jack- 



son 



638 
641 

645 

649 

65S 
665 

670 
676 

678 

679 

681 

681 
682 
683 

684 
690 
694 

707 
712 
714 

717 



Final Removal of the Indians 

Recision of the Treasury Circular . 

Distribution of Lands and Money — Vari- 
ous Propositions .... 

Military Academy— Its Riding House 

Salt Tax— Mr. Benton's Fourth Speech 

Expunging Resolution— Preparation for 
Decision 

Expunging Resolution —Mr. Benton's 
Third Speech 719 

Expunging Resolution— Mr. Clay, Mr. 
Calhoun, Mr. Webster— Last Scene — 
Resolution Passed and Executed . 727 

The Supreme Court— Judges and Officers 731 
Farewell Address of President Jackson 
—Extract 732 

Conclusion of General Jackson's Adminis- 
tration 733 

Eetiring and Death of GeneralJackson— 
Administration of Martin Van Buren 735 



PRELIMINARY VIEW 



FROM 1815 TO 1820 



The war with Great Britain commenced in 
1812, and ended in 1815. It was a short war, 
but a necessary and important one, and intro- 
duced several changes, and made some now 
points of departure in American policy, which 
are necessary to be understood in order to un- 
derstand the subsequent working of the govern- 
ment, and the VIEW of that working which is 
proposed to be given. 

1. It struggled and labored under the state 
of the finances and the currency, and terminated 
without any professed settlement of the cause 
for which it began. There was no national cur- 
rency — no money, or its equivalent, which re- 
presented the same value in all places. The 
first Bank of the United States had ceased to ex- 
ist in 1811. Gold, from being undervalued, had 
ceased to be a currency — had become an article 
of merchandise, and of export — and was carried 
to foreign countries. Silver had been banished 
by the general use of bank notes, had been re- 
duced to a small quantity, insufiicient for a pub- 
lic demand ; and, besides, would have been too 
cumbrous for a national currency. Local banks 
overspread the land ; and upon these the federal 
government, having lost the currency of the con- 
stitution, was thrown for a currency and for 
loans. They, unequal to the task, and having 
removed their own foundations by banishing 
specie with profuse paper issues, sunk under the 
double load of national and local wants, and 
stopped specie payments — all except those of 
New England, which section of the Union was 
unfavorable to the war. Treasury notes were 
then the resort of the federal government. 
They were issued in great quantities ; and not 
being convertible into coin at the will of the 

Vol. I.— 1 



holder, soon began to depreciate. In the second 
year of the war the depreciation had already be- 
come enormous, especially towards the Canada 
frontier, where the war raged, and where money 
was most wanted. An officer setting out from 
Washington with a supply of these notes found 
them sunk one-third by the time he arrived at 
the northern frontier — his every three dollars 
counting but two. After all, the treasury notes 
could not be used as a currency, neither legally, 
nor in fact : they could only be used to obtain 
local bank paper — itself greatly depreciated. 
AU government securities were under par, even 
for depreciated bank notes. Loans were obtain- 
ed with great difficulty — at large discount — al- 
most on the lender's own terms ; and still at 
tainable only in depreciated local bank notes. 
In less than three years the government, para- 
lyzed by the state of the finances, was forced to 
seek peace, and to make it, without securing, by 
any treaty stipulation, the object for which war 
had been declared. Impressment was the object 
— the main one, with the insults and the outra- 
ges connected with it — and without which there 
would have been no declaration of war. The 
treaty of peace did not mention or allude to the 
subject — the first time, perhaps, in modern his- 
tory, in which a war was terminated by treaty 
without any stipulation derived from its cause. 
Mr. Jefferson, in 1807, rejected upon his own 
responsibility, without eren its communication 
to the Senate, the treaty of that year negotiated 
by Messrs. Monroe and Pinkney, because it did 
not contain an express renunciation of the prac- 
tice of impressment — because it was silent on 
that point. It was a treaty of great moment, 
settled many troublesome questions, was verj 



PRELIMINARY VIEW, 



desirable for what it contained ; but as it was 
silent on the main point, it was rejected, without 
even a reference to the Senate. Now wc were 
in a like condition after a war. The war was 
strufrirlinG; for its own existence under the state 
of the finances, and had to be stopped without 
securing by treaty the object for which it was 
declared. The object was obtained, however, 
by the war itself. It showed the British govern- 
ment that the people of the United States would 
fight upon that point — that she would have war 
again if she impressed again : and there has been 
no impressment since. Near forty years with- 
out a case ! when we Averc not as many days, 
oftentimes, without cases before, and of the 
most insulting and outrageous nature. The 
spirit and patriotism of the people in furnishing 
the supplies, volunteering for the service, and 
standing to the contest in the general wreck of 
the finances and the currency, without regard to 
their own losses — and the heroic courage of the 
army and navy, and of the militia and volunteers, 
made the war successful and glorious in spite of 
empty treasuries ; and extorted from a proud 
empire that security in point of fact which diplo- 
mac}' could not obtain as a treaty stipulation. 
And it was well. Since, and now, and hence- 
forth, we hold exemption from impressment as 
we hold our independence — by right, and by 
might — and now want the treaty acknowledg- 
ment of no nation on either point. But the glo- 
rious termination of the war did not cure the 
evil of a ruined currency and defective finances, 
nor render less impressive the financial lesson 
which it taught. A return to the currency of 
the constitution — to the hard-money government 
which our fathers gave us — no connection with 
bank.s — no bank paper for federal uses — the es- 
tablishment of an independent treasury for the 
federal government ; this was the financial les- 
son which the war taught. The new generation 
into whose hands the working of the govtrnment 
fell during the Thirty Years, eventually availed 
themselves of that lesson : — with what effect, the 
state of the country since, unprecedentedly pros- 
perous ; the state of the currency, never de- 
ranged ; of the federal treasury, never polluted 
with " unavailable funds," and constantly cram- 
med to repletion with solid gold ; the issue of 
the Mexican war, carried on triumphantly with- 
out a national bank, and with the public securi- 
ties constantly above par — sufficiently proclaim. 



No other tongue but these results is necessary 
to show the value of that financial lesson, taught 
us by the war of 1812. 

2. The establishment of the second national 
bank grew out of this war. The failure of tho 
local banks was enough to prove the necessity 
of a national currency, and the re-establishment 
of a national bank was the accepted remedy. 
No one seemed to think of the currency of the 
constitution — especially of that gold currency 
upon which the business of the world had been 
carried on from the beginning of the world, and 
by empires whose expenses for a week were 
equal to those of the United States for a year, 
and which the framers of the constitution had so 
carefully secured and guarded for their country. 
A national bank was the only remedy thought 
of. Its constitutionality was believed by some 
to have been vindicated by the events of tho war. 
Its expediency was generally admitted. The 
whole argument turned upon the word " neces- 
sary," as used in the grant of implied powers at 
the end of the enumeration of powers expressly 
granted to Congress ; and this necessity was af- 
firmed and denied on each side at the time of the 
establishment of the first national bank, with a 
firmness and steadiness which showed that these 
fathers of the constitution knew that the whole 
field of argument lay there. Washington's que- 
ries to his cabinet went to that point ; the close 
reasoning of Ilamilton and Jefferson turned up- 
on it. And it is worthy of note, in order to show 
how much war has to do with the working of 
government, and the trying of its powers, that 
the strongest illustration used by General Ham- 
ilton, and the one, perhaps, which turned the 
question in Washington's mind, was the state 
of the Indian war in the Northwest, then just 
become a charge upon the new federal govern- 
ment, and beginning to assume the serious char- 
acter which it afterward attained. To carry on 
war at that time, with such Indians as were 
then, supported by the British traders, them- 
selves countenanced by their government, at 
such a distance in the wilderness, and by the 
young federal government, was a severe trial 
upon the finances of the federal treasury, as well 
as upon the courage and discipline of the troops ; 
and General Hamilton, the head of the treasury, 
argued that with the aid of a national bank, the 
war would be better and more successfully con- 
ducted : and, therefore, that it was " necessary y^* 



FROM 1815 TO 1820. 



and might be established as a means of executing 
a granted power, to wit, the power of making 
war. That war terminated well ; and the bank 
having been established in the mean time, got 
the credit of having furnished its "sinews." 
The war of 1812 languished under the state of 
the finances and the currency, no national bank 
existing ; and this want seemed to all to be the 
cause of its difficulties, and to show the necessi- 
ty for a bank. The second national bank was 
then established — many of its old, most able, 
and conscientious opponents giving in to it, Mr. 
Madison at their head. Thus the question of a 
national bank again grew up — grew up out of 
the events of the war — and was decided against 
the strict construction of the constitution — to 
the weakening of a principle which was funda- 
mental in the working of the government, and to 
the damage of the party which stood upon the 
doctrine of a strict construction of the constitu- 
tion. But in the course of the " Thirty Years " 
of which it is proposed to take a " View," some of 
the younger generation became impressed with 
the belief that the constitutional currency had 
not had a fair trial in that war of 1812 ! that, in 
fact, it had had no trial at all ! that it was not 
even in the field ! not even present at the time 
when it was supposed to have failed ! and that 
it was entitled to a trial before it was condemned. 
That trial has been obtained The second nation- 
al bank was left to expire upon its own limita- 
tion. The gold currency and the independent 
treasury were established. The Mexican war 
tried them. They triumphed. And thus a na- 
tional bank was shown to be " unnecessary " 
and therefore unconstitutional. And thus a 
great question of constitutional construction, and 
of party division, three times decided by the 
events of war, and twice against the constitution 
and the strict constructionists, was decided the 
last time in their favor ; and is entitled to stand, 
being the last, and the only one in which the 
constitutional currency had a trial. 

3. The protection of American industry, as a 
substantive object, independent of the object of 
revenue, was a third question growing out of the 
war. Its incidental protection, under the reve- 
nue clause in the constitution, had been always 
acknowledged, and granted ; but protection as a 
substantive object was a new question growing 
out of the state of things produced by the war. 
Domestic manufactures had taken root and 



grown up during the non-importation periods of 
the embargo, and of hostilities with Great Bri- 
tain, and under the temporary double duties 
which ensued the war, and which were laid for 
revenue. They had grown up to be a large 
interest, and a new one, classing in importance 
after agriculture and commerce. The want of 
articles necessary to national defence, and of 
others essential to individual comfort — then 
neither imported nor made at home — had been 
felt during the interruption of commerce occa- 
sioned by the war ; and the advantage of a 
domestic supply was brought home to the con- 
viction of the public mind. The question of 
protection for the sake of protection was brought 
forward, and carried (in the year 1816); and 
very unequivocally in the minimum provision in 
relation to duties on cotton goods. This reversed 
the old course of legislation — made protection 
the object instead of the incident, and revenue 
the incident instead of the object; and was 
another instance of constitutional construction 
being made dependent, not upon its own words 
but upon extrinsic, accidental and transient cir 
cumstances. It introduced a new and a large 
question of constitutional law, and of national 
expediency, fraught with many and great conse- 
quences, which fell upon the period of the 
Thirty Years' View to settle, or to grapple 
with. 

4. The question of internal improvement 
within the States, by the federal government, 
took a new and large development after the war. 
The want of facilities of transportation had been 
felt in our military operations. Roads were bad. 
and canals few ; and the question of their con- 
struction became a prominent topic in Congress 
common turnpike roads — for railways had not 
then been invented, nor had MacAdam yet given 
his name to the class of roads which has since 
borne it. The power was claimed as an incident 
to the granted powers — as a means of doing 
what was authorized — as a means of accomplish- 
ing an end : and the word " necessary " at the 
end of the enumerated powers, was the phrase 
in which this incidental power was claimed to 
have been found. It was the same derivation 
which was found for the creation of a national 
bank, and involved very nearly the same division 
of parties. It greatly complicated the national 
legislation from 1820 to 1850, bringing the two 
parts of our double system of government — State 



PRELIMINARY VIEW, 



and Federal — into serious disagreement, and 
threatening to compromise their hannonious 
action. Grappled with by a strong hand, it 
seemed at one time to have been settled, and 
consistently with the rights of the States ; but 
sometimes returns to vex the deliberations of 
Congress. To territories the question did not 
extend. They have no political rights under the 
constitution, and are governed by Congress 
according to its discretion, under that clause 
which authorizes it to " dispose of and make all 
needful rules and regulations respecting the ter- 
ritory or other property belonging to the United 
States." The improvement of rivers and har- 
bors, was a branch of the internal improvement 
question, but resting on a different clause in 
the constitution — the commercial and revenue 
clause — and became complex and difficult from 
its extension to small and local objects. The 
party of strict construction contend for its 
restriction to national objects — rivers of national 
character, and harbors yielding revenue. 

5. The boundaries between the treaty-mak- 
ing and the legislative departments of the 
government, became a subject of examination 
after the war, and gave rise to questions deeply 
affecting the working of these two departments. 
A treaty is the supreme law of the land, and as 
such it becomes obligatory on the House of 
Representatives to vote the money which it stipu- 
lates, and to co-operate in forming the laws 
necessary to carry it into effect. That is the 
broad proposition. The qualification is in the 
question whether the treaty is confined to the 
business of tlic treaty-making power? to the 
subjects wliich fall under its jurisdiction ? and 
does not encroach upon the legislative power of 
Congress ? This is the qualification, and a vital 
one : for if the President and Senate, by a treaty 
with a foreign power, or a tribe of Indians, could 
exercise ordinary legislation, and make it su- 
preme, a double injury would have been done, 
and to the prejudice of that branch of the 
government which lies closest to the people, and 
emanates most directly from them. Confine- 
ment to their separate jurisdictions is the duty 
of each ; but if encroachments take place, which 
is to judge ? If the President and Senate invade 
the legislative field of Congress, which is to 
judge? or who is to judge between tliem? or is 
each to judge for itself? The House of Piepre- 
sentatives, and the Senate in its legislative capa- 



city, but especially the House, as the great 
constitutional depository of the legislative power, 
becomes its natural guardian and defender, and 
is entitled to deference, in the event of a differ- 
ence of opinion between the two branches of the 
government. The discussions in Congress be- 
tween 1815 and 1820 greatly elucidated this 
question ; and while leaving unimpugncd the 
obligation of the House to carry into effect a 
treaty duly made by the President and Senate 
within the limits of the treaty making power — 
upon matters subject to treaty regulation — yet 
it belongs to the House to judge when these 
limits have been transcended, and to preserve 
inviolate the field of legislation which the consti- 
tution has intrusted to the immediate represen- 
tatives of the people. 

6. The doctrine of secession — the right of a 
State, or a combination of States, to withdraw 
from the Union, was born of that war. It was 
repugnant to the New England States, and 
opposed by them, not with arms, but with argu- 
ment and remonstrance, and refusal to vote 
supplies. They had a convention, famous under 
the name of Hartford, to which the design of 
secession was imputed. That design was never 
avowed by the convention, or authentically 
admitted by any leading member ; nor is it the 
intent of this reference to decide upon the fact 
of that design. The only intent is to show that 
the existence of that convention raised the ques- 
tion of secession, and presented the first instance 
of the greatest danger in the working of the 
double form of our government — that of a col- 
lision between a part of the States and the 
federal government. This question, and this 
danger, fu-st arose tlien — grew out of the war of 
1812 — and were hushed by its sudden tcimina- 
tion; but they have reappeared in a different 
quarter, and will come in to swell the objects of 
the TiiiiiTV Years' View. At the time of its 
first appearance the light of secession was re 
pulsed and repudiated by the democracy gene- 
rally, and in a large degree by the federal 
party — the difference between a Union and a 
League being better understood at that time 
when so many of the fathers of the new govern- 
ment were still alive. The leading language in 
respect to it south of the Potomac was, that no 
State had a right to withdraw from the Union — 
that it required the same power to dissolve as 
to form the Union — and that any attempt to 



FROM 1815 TO 1820. 



dissolve it, or to obstruct the action of constitu- 



time. 



have 



tional laws, was treason. If, since that 
political parties and sectional localities, 
exchanged attitudes on tliis question, it cannot 
alter the question of right, and may receive some 
interest from the development of causes which 
produce such changes. Secession, a question of 
speculation during the war of 1812, has become 
a practical question (almost) during the Thirty 
Years; and thus far has been "compromised," 
not settled. 

7. Slavery agitation took its rise during this 
time (1819-20), in the form of attempted 
restriction on the State of ]\Iissouri — a prohibi- 
tion to hold slaves, to be placed upon her as a 
condition of her admission into the Union, and 
to be binding upon her afterwards. This agita- 
tion came from the North, and under a federal 
lead, and soon swept both parties into its vortex. 
It was quieted, so far as that form of the ques- 
tion was concerned, by admitting the State 
without restriction, and imposing it on the 
remainder of the Louisiana territory north and 
west of that State, and above the parallel of 36 
degrees, 30 minutes ; which is the prolongation 
of the southern boundary line of Virginia and 
Kentucky. This was called a "compromise," 
and was all clear gain to the antislavery side 
of the question, and was done under the lead of 
the united slave state vote in the Senate, the 
majority of that vote in the House of Represen- 
tatives, and the undivided sanction of a Southern 
administi-ation. It was a Southern measure, and 
divided free and slave soU far more favorably to 
the North than the ordinance of 1787. That 
divided about equally : this of 1820 gave about 
all to the North. It abolished slavery over an 
immense extent of territory where it might then 
legally exist, over nearly the whole of Louisiana, 
left it only in Florida and Arkansas territory, and 
opened no new territory to its existence. It 
was an immense concession to the non-slave- 
holding States ; but the genius of slavery agita- 
tion was not laid. It reappeared, and under 
different forms, first from the North, in the shape 
of petitions to Congress to influence legislation 
on the subject ; then from the South, as a means 
of exciting one half the Union against the other, 
and laying the foundation for a Southern confede- 
racy. With this new question, in all its forms, 
the men of the new generation have had to grap- 
ple for the whole period of the " Thirty Years." 



8. The war had created a debt, which, added 
to a balance of that of the Revolution, the pur- 
chase of Louisiana, and some other items, still 
amounted to ninety-two millions of dollars at 
the period of the commencement of this " View ; " 
and the problem was to be solved, whether a 
national debt could be paid and extinguished in a 
season of peace, leaving a nation wholly free 
from that encumbrance ; or whether it was to go 
on increasing, a burthen in itself, and absorbing 
with its interest and changes an annual portion 
of the public revenues. That problem was 
solved, contrary to the experience of the world, 
and the debt paid; and the practical benefit 
added to the moral, of a corresponding reduction 
in the public taxes. 

9. Public distress was a prominent feature 
of the times to be embraced in this Preliminary 
View. The Bank of the United States was 
chartered in 1816, and before 1820 had perform- 
ed one of its cycles of delusive and bubble pros- 
perity, followed by actual and wide-spread 
calamity. The whole paper system, of which it 
was the head and the citadel, after a vast expan- 
sion, had suddenly collapsed, spreading desola- 
tion over the land, and carrying ruin to debtors. 
The years 1819 and '20 were a period of gloom 
and agony. No money, either gold or silver : no 
paper convertible into specie: no measure, or 
standard of value, left remaining. The local 
banks (all but those of New England), after a 
brief resumption of specie payments, again sank 
into a state of suspension. The Bank of the 
United States, created as a remedy for all those 
evils, now at the head of the evil, prostrate and 
helpless, with no power left but that of suing its 
debtors, and selling their property, and purchas- 
ing for itself at its own nominal price. No price 
for property, or produce. No sales but those of 
the sheriff and the marshal. No purchasers at 
execution sales but the creditor, or some hoarder 
of money. No employment for industry — no 
demand for labor — no sale for the product of the 
farm — no sound of the hammer, but that of the 
auctioneer, knocking down property. Stop 
laws — property laws — replevin laws — stay laws 
— loan office laws — the intervention of the legis- 
lator between the creditor and the debtor : this 
was the business of legislation in three-fourths 
of the States of the Union — of all south and 
west of New England. No medium of exchange 
but depreciated paper: no change even, but 



PRELIMINARY VIEW. 



little bits of foul paper, marked so many cents, 
and signed by some tradesman, barber, or inn- 
keeper : exchanges deranged to the extent of 
fifty or one hundred per cent. Distress, the 
universal cry of the people : Relief, the univer- 
sal demand thundered at the doors of all legisla- 
tures, State and federal. It was at the moment 
when this distress had reached its maximum — 
1820-'21 — and had come with its accumulated 
force upon the machine of the federal govern- 
ment, that this " View " of its working begins. 
It is a doleful starting point, and may furnish 
great matter for contrast, or comparison, at its 
concluding period in 1850. 

Such were some of the questions growing out 
of the war of I8I2, or immediately ensuing its 
termination. That war brought some difficul- 
ties to the new generation, but also great advan- 
taeres. at the head of them the elevation of the 
national character throughout the world. It 
immensely elevated the national character, and, 
as a consequence, put an end to insults and out- 



rages to which we had been subject. No more 
impressments : no more searching our ships : no 
more killing : no more carrying off to be forced 
to serve on British ships against their own coun- 
try. The national flag became respected. It 
became the ^gis of those who were under it. The 
national character appeared in a new light 
abroad. We were no longer considered as a 
people so addicted to commerce as to be insensi- 
ble to insult: and we reaped all the advantages, 
social, political, commercial, of this auspicious 
change. It was a war necessary to the honor and 
interest of the United States, and was bravely 
fought, and honorably concluded, and makes a 
proud era in our history. I was not in public life 
at the time it was declared, but have understood 
from those who were, that, except for the exer- 
tions of two men (Mr. Monroe in the Cabinet, 
and Mr. Clay in Congress), the declaration of 
war could not have been obtained. Honor to 
their memories ! 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



CHAPTER T. 

PERSONAL ASPECT OF THE GOVERNMENT. 

All the departments of the government appear- 
ed to great advantage in the personal character 
of their administrators at the time of my arrival 
as Senator at Washington. Mr. Monroe was 
President ; Governor Tompkins, Vice-President ; 
Mr. John Quincy Adams, Secretary of State; 
Mr. William H. Crawford, Secretary of the 
Treasury; Mr. John C. Calhoun, Secretary at 
War ; Mr. Smith Thompson, of New- York, Sec- 
retary of the Navy ; Mr. John McLean, Post- 
master General ; William Wirt, Esq., Attorney 
General. These constituted the Executive De- 
partment, and it would be difficult to find in 
any government, in any country, at any time, 
more talent and experience, more dignity and 
decorum, more purity of private life, a larger 
mass of information, and more addiction to busi- 
ness, than was comprised in this list of celebrated 
names. The legislative department was equally 
impressive. The Senate presented a long list of 
eminent men who had become known by their 
services in the federal or State governments, 
and some of them connected with its earliest 
history. From New- York there were Mr. Rufus 
King and Nathan Sanford ; from Massachusetts, 
Mr. Harrison Gray Otis ; from North Carolina, 
Mr. Macon and Governor Stokes ; from Virginia, 
the two Governors, James Barbour and James 
Pleasants ; from South Carolina, Mr. John 
Gaillard, so often and so long President, pro 
tempore, of the Senate, and Judge William 
Smith ; from Rhode Island, Mr. William Hun- 
ter ; from Kentucky, Colonel Richard M. John- 
son; from Louisiana, Mr. James Brown and 
Governor Henry Johnson ; from Maryland, Mr. 



William Pinkney and Governor Edward Lloyd j 
from New Jersey, Mr. Samuel L. Southard ; 
Colonel John Williams, of Tennessee ; William 
R. King and Judge Walker, from Alabama; 
and many others of later date, afterwards be- 
coming eminent, and who will be noted in their 
places. In the House of Representatives there 
was a great array of distinguished and of busi- 
ness talent. Mr. Clay, Mr. Randolph, Mr. 
Lowndes were there. Mr. Henry Baldwin and 
Mr. John Sergeant, from Pennsylvania ; Mr. 
John W. Taylor, Speaker, and Henry Storrs, 
from New- York ; Dr. Eustis, of revolutionary 
memory, and Nathaniel Silsbee, of Massachu- 
setts ; Mr. Louis McLane, from Delaware ; Gen- 
eral Samuel Smith, from Maryland ; Mr. William 
S. Archer, Mr. Philip P. Barbour, General John 
Floyd, General Alexander Smythe, Mr. John 
Tyler, Charles Fenton Mercer, George Tucker, 
from Virginia; Mr. Lewis Williams, who 
entered the House young, and remained long 
enough to be called its "Father," Thomas H. 
Hall, Weldon N. Edwards, Governor Hutchins 
G. Burton, from North Carolina; Governor 
Earle and Mr. Charles Pinckney, from South 
Carolina ; Mr. Thomas W. Cobb and Governor 
George Gilmer, from Georgia ; Messrs. Richard 
C. Anderson, Jr., David Trimble, George Robert- 
son, Benjamin Hardin, and Governor ^fetcalfe, 
from Kentucky ; Mr, John Rhea, of revolution- 
ary service. Governor Newton Cannon, Francis 
Jones, General John Cocke, from Tennessee ; 
Messrs. John W. Campbell, John Sloan and 
Henry Bush, from Ohio; Mr. William Hen- 
dricks, from Indiana; Thomas Butler, from 
Louisiana ; Daniel P. Cook, from Illinois ; John 
Crowell, from Alabama ; Mr. Christopher Ran- 
kin, from Mississippi ; and a great many other 
business men of worth and character from the 



8 



THIRTy YEARS' VIEW, 



different States, constituting a national repre- 
sentation of great weight, efficiency and decorum. 
The Supreme Court was still presided over by 
Chief Justice JIarshall, almost septuagenarian, 
and still in the vigor of his intellect, associated 
with ^fr. Justice Story, Mr. Justice Johnson, of 
South Carolina, ]\Ir. Justice Duval, and Mr. 
Justice Washington, of Virginia. Thus all the 
departments, and all the branches of the govern- 
ment, were ably and decorously filled, and the 
friends of popular representative institutions 
might contemplate their administration with 
pride and pleasure, and challenge their com- 
parison with any government in the world. 



CHAPTER II. 

ADMISSION OF THE STATE OP MISSOUKI. 

This was the exciting and agitating question of 
the session of 1820-21. The question of re- 
striction, that is, of prescribing the abolition of 
slavery within her limits, had been "compro- 
mised " the session before, by agreeing to admit 
the State without restriction, and abolishing it in 
all the remainder of the province of Louisiana, 
north and west of the State of Missouri, and 
north of the parallel of 3G degrees, 30 minutes. 
This " compromise " was the work of the South, 
sustained by the united voice of Mr. Monroe's 
cabinet, the united voices of the Southern sena- 
tors, and a majority of the Southern representa- 
tives. The unanimity of the cabinet has been 
shown, impliedly, by a letter of Mr. JMonroe, 
and positively by the Diary of ^Mr. John Quincy 
Adams. The unanimity of the slave States in the 
Senate, where the measure originated, is shown by 
its journal, not on the motion to insert the section 
constituting the compremise (for on that motion 
the yeas and nays were not taken), but on the 
motion to strike it out, when they were taken, 
and showed 30 votes for the compromise, and 15 
against it — every one of the latter from non- 
slaveholding States — the former comprehending 
everj- slave State vote present, and a few from 
the North. As the constitutionality of this 
compromise, and its binding force, have, in these 
latter times, begun to be disputed, it is well to 
give the list of the senators names voting for it. 



that it may be seen that they were men of judg- 
ment and weight, able to know what the consti 
tution was, and not apt to violate it. They were 
Governor Barbour and Governor Pleasants, of 
Virginia; Mr. James Brown and Governor 
Ilenry Johnson, of Louisiana; Governor Ed- 
wards and Judge Jesse B. Thomas, of Illinois ; 
Mr. Elliott and Mr. VTalker, of Georgia; Mr. 
Gaillard, President, pro tempore, of the Senate, 
and Judge William Smith, from South Carolina ; 
Messrs. Horsey and Van Dyke, of Delaware ; 
Colonel Richard M. Johnson and Judge Logan, 
from Kentucky; Mr. "William R. King, since 
Vice-President of the United States, and Judge 
John W. Walker, from Alabama ; Messrs. Leake 
and Thomas H. Williams, of Mississippi ; Gov- 
ernor Edward Lloyd, and the great jurist and 
orator, William Pinkney, from JIaryland ; Mr. 
Macon and Governor Stokes, from North Caro- 
lina ; Messrs. Walter Lowrie and Jonathan 
Roberts, from Pennsylvania ; Mr. Noble and 
Judge Taylor, from Indiana ; Mr. Palmer, from 
Vermont; Mr. Parrott, from New Hampshire. 
This was the vote of the Senate for the compro- 
mise. In the House, there was some division 
among Southern members ; but the whole vote 
in favor of it was 134, to 42 in the negative — the 
latter comprising some Northern members, as 
the former did a majority of the Southern — 
among them one whose opinion had a weight 
never exceeded by that of any other American 
statesman, AVilliam Lowndes, of South Carolina. 
This array of names shows the Missouri com- 
promise to have been a Southern measure, and 
the event put the seal upon that character by 
showing it to be acceptable to the South. But 
it had not allayed the Northern feeling against 
an increase of slave States, then openly avowed 
to be a question of political power between the 
two sections of the Union. The State of Mis- 
souri made her constitution, sanctioning slavery, 
and forbidding the legislature to interfere with it. 
This prohibition, not usual in State constitutions, 
was the effect of the Missouri controver.sy and 
of foreign interference, and was adopted for the 
sake of peace — for the sake of internal tranquil- 
lity — and to prevent the agitation of the slave 
question, which could only be accomplished by 
excluding it wholly from the forum of elections 
and legislation. I was myself the instigator of 
that prohibition, and the cause of its being put 
into the constitution — though not a member of 



ANNO 1820. JAMES MONROE, PRESIDENT. 



the convention — being equally opposed to slavery 
agitation and to slavery extension. There was 
also a clause in it, authorizing the legislature to 
prohibit the emigration of free people of color 
into the State ; and this clause was laid hold of 
in Congress to resist the admission of the State. 
It was treated as a breach of that clause in the 
federal constitution, which guarantees equal 
privileges in all the States to the citizens of 
every State, of which privileges the right of 
emigration was one; and free people of color 
being admitted to citizenship in some of the 
States, this prohibition of emigration was held 
to be a violation of that privilege in their per- 
sons. But the real point of objection was the 
slavery clause, and the existence of slavery in 
the State, which it sanctioned, and seemed to 
perpetuate. The constitution of the State, and 
her application for admission, was presented by 
her late delegate and representative elect, Mr. 
John Scott ; and on his motion, was referred to 
a select committee. Mr. Lowndes, of South 
Carolina, Mr. John Sergeant, of Pennsylvania, 
and General Samuel Smith, of Maryland, were 
appointed the committee; and the majority 
being from slave States, a resolution was quick- 
ly reported in favor of the admission of the State. 
But the majority of the House being the other 
way, the resolution was rejected, 79 to 83— and 
by a clear slavery and anti-slavery vote, the 
exceptions being but three, and they on the side 
of admission, and contrary to the sentiment of 
their own State. They were Mr. Henry Shaw. 
of Massachusetts, and General Bloomfield and 
Mr. Bernard Smith, of New-Jersey. In the 
Senate, the application of the State shared a 
similar fate. The constitution was referred to a 
committee of three, Messrs. Judge William 
Smith, of South Carolina, Mr. James Burrill, of 
Rhode Island, and Mr. Macon, of North Caro- 
lina, a majority of whom being from slave States, 
a resolution of admission was reported, and 
passed the Senate— Messrs. Chandler and Holmes 
of Maine, voting with the friends of admission ; 
but was rejected in the House of Representa- 
tives, A second resolution to the same effect 
passed the Senate, and was again rejected in the 
House. A motion was then made in the House 
by Mr. Clay to raise a committee to act jointly 
with any committee which might be appointed 
by the Senate, •' to consider and report to the 
Senate and the House respectively, whether it 



be expedient or not, to make provision for the 
admission of Missouri into the Union on the 
same footing as the original States, and for the 
due execution of the laws of the United States 
within Missouri ? and if not, whether any other, 
and what provision adapted to her actual condi- 
tion ought to be made by law." This motion 
was adopted by a majority of nearly two to 
one — 101 to 55 — which shows a large vote in its 
favor from the non-slaveholding States. Twenty- 
three, being a number equal to the number of 
the States, were then appointed on the part of 
the House, and were : Messrs. Clay, Thomas W. 
Cobb, of Georgia ; jNIark Langdon Hill, of jNIas- 
sachusetts ; Philip P. Barbour, of Virginia ; 
Henry R. Storrs, of New-York; John Cocke, 
of Tennessee, Christopher Rankin, of JMississippi; 
William S. Archer, of Virginia ; William Brown, 
of Kentucky ; Samuel Eddy, from Rhode Island ; 
William D. Ford, of New- York ; William Cul- 
breth, Aaron Hackley, of New- York ; Samuel 
Moore, of Pennsylvania, James Stevens, of Con- 
necticut ; Thomas J. Rogers, from Pennsylvania ; 
Henry Southard, of New-Jersey; John Ran- 
dolph; James S. Smith, of North Carolina; 
William Darlington, of Pennsylvania ; Nathaniel 
Pitcher, of New- York ; John Sloan, of Ohio, and 
Henry Baldwin, of Pennsylvania. The Senate 
by a vote almost unanimous — 29 to 7 — agreed 
to the joint committee proposed by the House 
of Representatives ; and Messrs. John Holmes, 
of Maine ; James Barbour, of Virginia ; Jona- 
than Roberts, of Pennsylvania ; David L. Mor- 
ril, of New-Hampshire ; Samuel L. Southard, of 
New-Jersey ; Colonel Richard M. Johnson, of 
Kentucky ; and Rufus King, of New- York, to 
be a committee on its part. The joint commit- 
tee acted, and soon reported a resolution in favor 
of the achnission of the State, upon the condition 
that her legislature should first declare that the 
clause in her constitution relative to the free 
colored emigration into the State, should never 
be construed to authorize the passage of any act 
by which any citizen of either of the States of 
the Union should be excluded from the enjoy- 
ment of any privilege to which he may be enti- 
tled under the constitution of the United States ; 
and the President of the United States being 
furnished with a copy of said act, should, hy 
proclamation, declare the State to be admitted. 
This resolution was passed in the House by a 
close vote— 86 to 82— several members from 



10 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW, 



non-slavcholding States voting for it. In the 
Senate it was passed by two to one — 28 to 14; 
and the required declaration having been soon 
made by the General Assembly of Missouri, and 
communicated to the President, his proclamation 
was issued accordingly, and the State admitted. 
And thus ended the "' Missouri controversy," or 
that form of the slavery question which under- 
took to restrict a State from the privilege of 
having slaves if she chose. The question itself, 
under other forms, has survived, and still sur- 
vives, but not under the formidable aspect which 
it wore during that controversy, when it divided 
Congress geographically, and upon the slave line. 
The real struggle was political, and for the 
balance of power, as frankly declared by jNfr. 
Rufus King, who disdained dissimulation ; and 
in that struggle the non-slaveholding States, 
though defeated in the State of Missouri, were 
successful in producing the "compromise," con- 
ceived and passed as a Southern measure. The 
resistance made to the admission of the State on 
account of the clause in relation to free people 
of color, was only a mask to the real cause of 
opposition, and has since shown to be so by the 
facility with which many States, then voting in 
a body against the admission of Missouri on that 
account, now exclude the whole class of the free 
colored emigrant population from their borders, 
and without question, by statute, or by consti- 
tutional amendment. For a while this formida- 
ble Missouri question threatened the total over- 
throw of all political parties upon principle, and 
the substitution of geographical parties discrimi- 
nated by the slave line, and of course destroying 
the just and proper action of the federal govern- 
ment, and leading eventually to a separation of 
the States. It was a federal movement, accru- 
ing to the benefit of that i)arty, and at first was 
overwhelming, sweeping all the Northern de- 
mocracy into its current, and giving the supre- 
macy to their adversaries. When this effect 
was perceived the Northern democracy became 
alarmed, and only wanted a turn or abatement 
in the popular feeling at home, to take the first 
opportunity to get rid of the question by ad- 
mitting the State, and re-establishing i)arty lines 
upon the basis of political principle. This was 
the decided feeling when I arrived at Washing- 
ton, and many of the old Northern democracy 
took early opportunities to declare themselves 
to me to that eft'ect, and showed that they were 



ready to vote the admission of the State in any 
form which would answer the purpose, and save 
themselves from going so far as to lose their 
own States, and give the ascendant to their po 
litical adversaries. In the Senate, IMessrs. Low 
rie and Roberts, from Pennsylvania ; Messrs. 
Morril and Parrott, from New- Hampshire ; 
Messrs. Chandler and Holmes, from Elaine; 
Mr. William Hunter, from Rhode Island; ana 
Mr. Southard, from New-Jersey, were of that 
class ; and I cannot refrain from classing with 
them Messrs. Horsey and Vandyke, from Dela- 
ware, which, though counted as a slave State, yet 
from its isolated and salient position, and small 
number of slaves, seems more justly to belong 
to the other side. In the House the vote of 
nearly two to one in favor of Mr. Clay's resolu- 
tion for a joint committee, and his being allowed 
to make out his ovra list of the House commit- 
tee (for it was well known that he drew up the 
list of names himself, and distributed it through 
the House to be voted), sufficiently attest the 
temper of that body, and showed the determina- 
tion of the great majority to have the question 
settled. Mr. Clay has been often complimented 
as the author of the " compromise " of 1820, in 
spite of his repeated declaration to the contrary, 
that measure coming from the Senate ; but he is 
the imdisputed author of the final settlement of 
the Missouri controversy in the actual admission 
of the State. He had many valuable coadjutors 
from the North — Baldwin, of Penn.sylvania ; 
Storrs and Meigs, of New- York ; Shaw, of Mas- 
sachusetts: and he had also some opponents 
from the South — members refusing to vote for 
the " conditional " admission of the State, hold- 
ing her to be entitled to absolute admission — 
among them Mr. Randolph. I have been minute 
in stating this controversy, and its settlement, 
deeming it advantageous to the public interest 
that history and posterity should see it in the 
proper point of view ; and that it was a political 
movement for the balance of power, balked by 
the Northern democracy, who saw their own 
overthrow, and the eventual separation of the 
States, in the establishment of geographical par- 
ties divided by a slavery and anti-slavery line. 



ANNO 1820. JAMES MONROE, PRESIDENT 



n 



CHAPTER III. 

FINANCES. -REDUCTION OF THE ARMY. 

The distress of the country became that of the 
government. Small as the government expen- 
diture then vras, only about twenty-one millions 
of dollars (including eleven millions for perma- 
nent or incidental objects), it was still too great 
for the revenues of the government at this disas- 
trous period. Reductions of expense, and loans, 
became the resort, and economy — that virtuous 
policy in all times — became the obligatory and 
the forced policy of this time. The small regu- 
lar army was the first, and the largest object on 
which the reduction fell. Small as it was, it 
was reduced nearly one-half — from 10.000 to 
6,000 men. The navy felt it next — the annual 
appropriation of one million for its increase 
being reduced to half a million. The construc- 
tion and armament of fortifications underwent 
the like process. Reductions of expense took 
place at many other points, and even the aboli- 
tion of a clerkship of ^800 in the ofiBce of the 
Attorney General, was not deemed an object 
below the economical attention of Congress. 
After all a loan became indispensable, and the 
President was authorized to borrow five millions 
of dollars. The sum of twenty-one millions 
then to be raised for the service of the govern- 
ment, small as it now appears, was more than 
double the amount requu-ed for the actual ex- 
penses of the government — for the actual ex- 
pense of its administration, or the working its 
machinery. More than half went to permanent 
or incidental objects, to wit : principal and in- 
terest of the public debt, five and a half millions ; 
gradual increase of the navy, one million ; pen- 
sions, one and a half millions ; fortifications, 
$800,000 ; arms, munitions, ordnance, and other 
small items, about two millions ; making in the 
whole about eleven millions, and leaving for the 
expense of keeping the machinery of govern- 
ment in operation, about ten millions of dollars ; 
and which was reduced to less than nine mil- 
lions after the reductions of this year were 
effected. A sum of one million of dollars, over 
and above the estimated expenditure of the 
government, was always deemed necessary to be 



provided and left in the treasury to meet con- 
tingencies — a sum which, though small in itself 
was absolutely unnecessary for that purpose, 
and the necessity for which was founded in the 
mistaken idea that the government expends 
every year, within the year, the amount of its 
income. This is entirely fallacious, and never did 
and never can take place ; for a large portion of 
the government payments accruing within the lat- 
ter quarters of any year are not paid until the next 
year. And so on in every quarter of every year. 
The sums becoming payable in each quarter 
being in many instances, and from the nature of 
the service, only paid in the next quarter, while 
new revenue is coming in. This process regu- 
larly going on always leaves a balance in the 
treasury at the end of the year, not called for 
until the beginning of the next year, and when 
there is a receipt of money to meet the demand, 
even if there had been no balance in hand. 
Thus, at the end of the year 1820, one of the 
greatest depression, and when demands pressed 
most rapidly upon the treasury, there was a 
balance of above two millions of dollars in the 
treasury— to be precise, ^2,076,607 14, being 
one-tenth of the annual revenue. In prosperous 
years the balance is still larger, sometimes 
amounting to the fourth, or the fifth of the an- 
nual revenue ; as may be seen in the successive 
annual reports of the finances. There is, there- 
fore, no necessity to provide for keeping any 
balance as a reserve in the treasury, though in 
later times this provision has been carried up to 
six millions — a mistake which economy, the 
science of administration, and the purity of the 
government, requires to be corrected. 



CHAPTER IV 

RELIEF OF PUBLIC LAND DEBTORS. 

Distress was the cry of the day ; relief the 
general demand. State legislatures were occu- 
pied in devising measures of local relief; Con- 
gress in granting it to national debtors. Among 
these was the great and prominent class of the 
public land purchasers. The credit system then 
prevailed, and the debt to the government had 



12 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



accumulated to twenty-three millions of dollars 
— a large sum in itself, but enormous when con- 
sidered in reference to the payors, only a small 
proponion of the population, and they chiefly 
the inhabitants of the new States and territories, 
whose resources were few. Their situation was 
deplorable. A heavy debt to pay, and lands 
already partly paid for to be forfeited if full 
pajTncnt was not made. The system was this: 
the land was sold at a minimum price of two 
dollars per acre, one payment in hand and the 
remainder in four annual instalments, with for- 
feiture of all that had been paid if each succes- 
sive instalment was not delivered to the day. 
In the eagerness to procure fresh lands, and 
stimulated by the delusive prosperity which 
multitudes of banks created after the war, there 
was no limit to purchasers except in the ability 
to make the first payment. That being accom- 
plished, it was left to the future to provide for 
the remainder. The banks failed ; money van- 
ished; instalments were becoming due which 
could not be met ; and the opening of Congress 
in November, 1820, was saluted by the arrival 
of memorials from all the new States, showing: 
the distress, and praying relief to the purchasers 
of the public lands. The President, in his an- 
nual message to Congress, deemed it his duty to 
bring the subject before that body, and in doing 
so recommended indulgence in consideration of 
the unfavorable change which had occurred 
since the sales. Both Houses of Congress took 
up the subject, and a measure of relief was 
devised by the Secretary of the Treasury, jMr. 
Crawford, which was equally desirable both to 
the purchaser and the government. The prin- 
ciple of the relief was to change all future .sales 
from the credit to the cash system, and to reduce 
the minimum price of the lands to one dollar, 
twenty-five cents per acre, and to give all pre- 
sent debtors the benefit of that system, by al- 
lowing them to consolidate payments already 
made on different tracts on any particular one, 
relinquishing the rest ; and allowing a discount 
for ready pay on all that had been entered, 
equal to the difference between the former and 
present minimum price. This released the pur- 
chasers from debt, and the government from the 
inconvenient relation of creditor to its own citi- 
zens. A debt of twenty-three millions of dol- 
lars was quietly got rid of, and purchasers were 
enabled to save lands, at the reduced price, to 



the amount of their payments already made ; 
and thus saved in all cases their homes and 
fields, and as much more of their purchases as 
they were able to pay for at the reduced rate. 
It was an equitable arrangement of a difficult 
subject, and lacked but two features to make it 
perfect ; ^rs^, a pre-emptive right to all first 
settlers ; and, secondly, a periodical reduction of 
price according to the length of time the land 
should have been in market, so as to allow of 
different prices for different qualities, and to 
accomplish in a reasonable time the sale of the 
whole. Applications were made at that time 
for the establishment of the pre-emptive system ; 
but without effect, and, apparently without the 
prospect of eventual success. Not even a report 
of a committee could be got in its favor — nothing 
more than temporary provisions, as special fa- 
vors, in particular circumstances. But perseve- 
rance was successful. The new States continued 
to press the question, and finally prevailed ; and 
now the pre-emptive principle has become a 
fixed part of our land system, permanently in- 
corporated with it, and to the equal advantage 
of the settler and the government. The settler 
gets a choice home in a new country, due to his 
enterprise, courage, hardsliips and privations in 
subduing the wilderness : the government gets a 
body of cultivators whose labor gives value to 
the surrounding public lands, and whose courage 
and patriotism volunteers for the public defence 
whenever it is necessary. The second, or gradu- 
ation principle, though much pressed, has not 
yet been established, but its justice and policy 
are self-evident, and the exertions to procure it 
should not be intermitted until successful. The 
passage of this land relief bill was attended by 
incidents which showed the delicacy of members 
at that time, in voting on questions in which 
they might be interested. Many members of 
Congress were among the public land debtors, 
and entitled to the relief to be granted. One 
of their number. Senator William Smith, from 
South Carolina, brought the point before the 
Senate on a motion to be excused from voting 
on account of his interest. The motion to excuse 
was rejected, on the ground that his interest was 
general, in common with the country, and not 
particular, in relation to himself: and that his 
constituents were entitled to the benefit of his 
vote. 



ANKO 1820. JAMES MONROE, PRESroENT. 



13 



CHAPTER V. 



OEEGON TERRITORY. 



The session of 1820-21 is remarkable as being 
the first at which any proposition was made in 
Congress for the occupation and settlement of 
our territory on the Columbia River — the only 
part then owned by the United States on the 
Pacific coast. It was made by Dr. Floyd, a re- 
presentative from Virginia, an ardent man, of 
great ability, and decision of character, and, 
from an early residence in Kentucky, strongly 
imbued with western feelings. He took up this 
subject with the energy which belonged to him, 
and it required not only energy, but courage, to 
embrace a subject which, at that time, seemed 
more likely to bring ridicule than credit to its 
advocate. I had written and published some 
essays on the subject the year before, which he 
had read. Two gentlemen (Mr. Ramsay Crooks, 
of New- York, and Mr. Russell Farnham, of 
Massachusetts), who had been in the employ- 
ment of Mr. John Jacob Astor in founding his 
colony of Astoria, and carrying on the fur trade 
on the northwest coast of America, were at 
Washington that winter, and had their quarters 
at the same hotel (Brown's), where Dr. Floyd 
and I had ours. Their acquaintance was natu- 
rally made by Western men like us — in fact. I 
knew them before ; and their conversation, rich 
in information upon a new and interesting coun- 
try, was eagerly devoured by the ardent spirit 
of Floyd. He resolved to bring forward the 
question of occupation, and did so. He moved 
for a select committee to consider and report 
upon the subject. The committee was granted 
by the House, more through courtesy to a re- 
spected member, than with any view to business 
results. It was a committee of three, himself 
chairman, according to parliamentary rule, and 
Thomas IMetcalfe, of Kentucky (since Governor 
of the State), and Thomas V. Swearingen, from 
Western Virginia, for his associates— both like 
himself ardent men, and strong in western feel- 
ing. They reported a bill within six days after 
the committee was raised, " to authorize the oc- 
cupation of the Columbia River, and to regulate 
trade and intercourse with the Indian tribes 
thereon," accompanied by an elaborate report, 
replete with valuable statistics, in support of the 



measure. The fur trade, the Asiatic trade, and 
the preservation of our own territory, were the 
advantages proposed. The bill was treated with 
the parliamentary courtesy which respect for 
the committee required : it was read twice, and 
committed to a committee of the whole House 
for the next day — most of the members not 
considering it a serious proceeding. Nothing 
further was done in the House that session, but 
tha first blow was struck : public attention was 
awakened, and the geographical, historical, and 
statistical facts set forth in the report, made a 
lodgment in the public mind which promised 
eventual favorable consideration. I had not been 
admitted to my seat in the Senate at the time, 
but was soon after, and quickly came to the 
support of Dr. Floyd's measure (who continued 
to pursue it with zeal and ability) ; and at a 
subsequent session presented some views on the 
subject which will bear reproduction at this 
time. The danger of a contest with Great Bri- 
tain, to whom we had admitted a joint posses- 
sion, and who had already taken possession, was 
strongly suggested, if we delayed longer our own 
occupation ; " and a vigorous effort of policy, and 
perhaps of arms, might be necessary to break 
her hold." Unauthorized, or individual occupa- 
tion was intimated as a consequence of govern- 
ment neglect, and what has since taken place 
was foreshadowed in this sentence : " mere ad- 
venturers may enter upon it, as jEneas entered 
upon the Tiber, and as our forefathers came 
upon the Potomac, the Delaware and the Hud- 
son, and renew the phenomenon of individuals 
laying the foundation of a future empire." The 
effect upon Asia of the arrival of an American 
population on the coast of the Pacific Ocean was 
thus exhibited : " Upon the people of Eastern 
Asia the establishment of a civilized power on 
the opposite coast of America, could not fail to 
produce great and wonderful benefits. Science, 
liberal principles in government, and the true 
religion, might cast their lights across the inter- 
vening sea. The valley of the Columbia might 
become the granary of China and Japan, and an 
outlet to their imprisoned and exuberant popula- 
tion. The inhabitants of the oldest and the 
newest, the most despotic and the freest govern- 
ments, would become the neighbors, and the 
friends of each other. To my mind the proposition 
is clear, that Eastern Asia and the two Americas, 
as they become neighbors should become friends ; 



14 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



and I for one had as lief see American ministers 
going to the emperors of China and Japan, to 
the king of Persia, and even to the Grand Turk, 
IS to see them dancing attendance upon those 
European legitimates who hold every thing 
American in contempt and detestation." Thus 
[ spoke ; and this I believe was the first time 
that a suggestion for sending ministers to the 
Oriental nations was publicly made in the 
United States. It was then a " wild " sugges- 
tion: it is now history. Besides the preserva- 
tion of our own territory on the Pacific, the 
establishment of a port there for the shelter of 
our commercial and military marine, the protec- 
tion of the fur trade and aid to the whaling 
vessels, the accomplishment of Mr. Jefferson's 
idea of a commercial communication with Asia 
through the heart of our own continent, was 
constantlj^ insisted upon as a consequence of 
planting an American colony at the mouth of 
the Columbia. That man of large and useful 
ideas — that statesman who could conceive mea- 
sures useful to all mankind, and in all time to 
come — was the first to propose that commercial 
communication, and may also be considered the 
first discoverer of the Columbia River. Ilis philo- 
sophic mind told him that where a snow-clad 
mountain, like that of the Rocky !Mountams, 
shed the waters on one side which collected into 
such a river as the Missouri, there must be a 
corresponding shedding and collection of waters 
on the other ; and thus he was perfectly assured 
of the existence of a river where the Columbia 
has since been found to be, although no naviga- 
tor had seen its mouth, and no explorer trod its 
banks. His conviction was complete ; but the 
idea was too grand and useful to be permitted 
to rest in speculation. He was then minister to 
France, and the famous traveller Ledyard, hav- 
ing arrived at Paris on his expedition of discov- 
ery to the Nile, was prevailed upon by Mr. 
Jefferson to enter upon a fresher and more use- 
ful field of discovery. He proposed to him to 
change his theatre from the Old to the New 
"World, and. proceeding to St. Petersburg upon 
a passport he would obtain for him, he should 
there obtain permission from the Empress Cath- 
arine to traverse her dominions in a high north- 
ern latitude to their eastern extremity — cross 
the sea from Kamschatka, or at Behring's Straits, 
and descending the northwest coast of America, 
rome down upon the river which must head op- 



posite the head of the Missouri, ascend it to its 
source in the Rocky ^Mountains, and then follow 
the Missouri to the French settlements on the 
Upper Mississippi ; and thence home. It was a 
magnificent and a daring project of discovery, 
and on that account the more captivating to the 
ardent spirit of Ledyard. He undertook it — 
went to St. Petersburg — received the permission 
of the Empress— and had arrived in Siberia 
when he was overtaken by a revocation of the 
permission, and conducted as a spy out of the 
country. He then returned to Paris, and re- 
sumed his original design of that exploration of 
the Nile to its sources which terminated in his 
premature death, and deprived the world of a 
young and adventurous explorer, from whose 
ardour, courage, perseverance and genius, great 
and useful results were to have been expected. 
Mr. Jefierson was balked in that, his first at- 
tempt, to establish the existence of the Columbia 
River. But a time was coming for him to under- 
take it under better auspices. He became Pre- 
sident of the United States, and in that character 
projected the expedition of Lewis and Clark, 
obtained the sanction of Congress, and sent them 
forth to discover the head and course of the 
river (whose mouth was then known), for the 
double purpose of opening an inland commercial 
communication with Asia, and enlarging the 
boundaries of geographical science. The com- 
mercial object was placed first in liis message, 
and as the object to legitimate the expedition. 
And thus Mr. Jefferson was the first to propose 
the North American road to India, and the in- 
troduction of Asiatic trade on that road ; and all 
that I myself have cither said or written on that 
subject from the year 1819, when I first took it 
up, down to the present day when I still contend 
for it, is nothing but the fruit of the seed plant- 
ed in my mind by the philosophic hand of Mr. 
Jefferson. Honor to all those who shall assist 
in accomplishing his great idea. 



CHAPTER VI. 



FLORIDA TREATY AND CESSION OF TEXAS. 

I WAS a member of the bar at St. Louis, m the 
then territory of Missouri, in the year 1818, 



ANNO 1820. JAMES MONROE, PRESIDENT. 



15 



when the "Washington City newspapers made 
known the progress of that treaty with Spain, 
which was signed on the 22d day of February 
following, and which, in acquiring Florida, gave 
away Texas. I was shocked at it — at the ces- 
sion of Texas, and the new boundaries proposed 
for the United States on the southwest. The 
acquisition of Florida was a desirable object, 
long sought, and sure to be obtained in the pro- 
gress of events ; but the new boundaries, besides 
cutting off Texas, dismembered the valley of the 
Mississippi, mutilated two of its noblest rivers, 
brought a foreign dominion (and it non-slave- 
holding), to the neighborhood of New Orleans, 
and established a wilderness barrier between 
Missouri and New Mexico — to interrupt their 
trade, separate their inhabitants, and shelter the 
wild Indian depredators upon the lives and pro- 
perty of all who undertook to pass from one to 
the other. I was not then in politics, and had 
nothing to do with political affairs ; but I saw at 
once the whole evil of this great sacrifice, and 
instantly raised my voice against it in articles 
published in the St. Louis newspapers, and in 
which were given, in advance, all the national 
reasons against giving away the country, which 
were afterwards, and by so many tongues, and 
at the expense of war and a hundred millions, 
given to get it back. I denounced the treaty, 
and attacked its authors and their motives, and 
imprecated a woe on the heads of those who 
should continue to favor it. " The magnificent 
valley of the Mississippi is ours, with all its 
fountains, springs and floods; and woe to the 
statesman who shall undertake to surrender one 
drop of its water, one inch of its soil, to any 
foreign power." In these terms I spoke, and in 
this spirit I wrote, before the treaty was even 
ratified. Ur. John Quincy Adams, the Secre- 
tary of State, negotiator and ostensible author 
of the treaty, was the statesman against whom 
my censure was directed, and I was certaiiily 
sincere in my belief of his great culpability. 
But the declaration which he afterwards made 
on the floor of the House, absolved him from 
censure on account of that treaty, and placed 
the blame on the majority in Mr. Monroe's cabi- 
net, southern men, by whose vote he had been 
governed in ceding Texas and fixing the bound- 
ary which I so much condemned. After this 
authoritative declaration, I made, in my place in 
the Senate, the honorable amends to Mr. Adams, 



which was equally due to liim and to myself. 
The treaty was signed on the anniversary of 
the birth-day of Washington, and sent to the 
Senate the same day, and unanimously ratified 
on the next day, Avith the general approbation 
of the country, and the warm applause of the 
newspaper press. This unanimity of the Senate, 
and applause of the press, made no impression 
upon me. I continued to assail the treaty and 
its authors, and the more bitterly, because the 
official correspondence, when published, showed 
that this great sacrifice of territory, rivers, and 
proper boundaries, was all gratuitous and volun- 
tary on our part — " that the Spanish govern- 
ment had offered us more than we accepted; " 
and that it was our policy, and not hers, which 
had deprived us of Texas and the large country, 
in addition to Texas, which lay between the Red 
Eiver and Upper Arkansas. Tliis was aji enigma, 
the solution of which, in my mind, strongly 
connected itself with the Missouri controversj'' 
then raging (1819) with its greatest violence, 
threatening existing political parties with sub- 
version, and the Union with dissolution. My 
mind went there — to that controversy — for the 
solution, but with a misdirection of its applica- 
tion. I blamed the northern men in Mr. Mon- 
roe's cabinet: the private papers of General 
Jackson, which have come to my hand^, enable 
me to correct that error, and give me an inside 
view of that which I could only see on the out- 
side before. In a private letter from Mr. ]\Ion- 
roe to General Jackson, dated at Washington, 
May 22d, 1820— more than one year after the 
negotiation of the treaty, written to justify it, 
and evidently called out by Mr. Clay's attack 
upon it — are these passages: "Having long 
known the repugnance with which the eastern 
portion of our Union, or rather some of those 
who have enjoyed its confidence (for I do not 
think that the people themselves have any inter- 
est or wish of that kind), have seen its aggran- 
dizement to the West and South, I have been 
decidedly of opinion that we ought to be content 
with Florida for the present, and until the pub- 
lic opinion in that quarter shall be reconciled to 
any further change. I mention these circum- 
stances to show you that our difiiculties are not 
with Spain alone, but are likewise internal, pro- 
ceeding from various causes, which certain men 
are prompt to seize and turn to the account of 
their own ambitious views." This paragraph 



16 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



from Mr. Monroe's letter lifts the curtain which 
concealed the secret reason for ceding Texas — 
that secret which explains what was incompre- 
hensible — our having refused to accept as much 
as Spain had offered. Internal difficulties, it 
was thus sliown, had induced that refusal ; and 
these difficulties grew out of the repugnance of 
leading men in the northeast to see the further 
aggrandizement of the Union upon the South 
and West. This repugnance was then taking 
an operative form in the shape of the Missouri 
controversy ; and, as an immediate consequence, 
threatened the subversion of political party lines, 
and the introduction of the slavery question into 
the federal elections and legislation, and bring- 
ing into the highest of those elections — those of 
President and Vice-President — a test which no 
southern candidate could stand. The repug- 
nance in the northeast was not merely to terri- 
torial aggrandizement in the southwest, but to 
the consequent extension of slavery in that quar- 
ter ; and to allay that repugnance, and to pre- 
vent the slavery extension question from becom- 
ing a test in the presidential election, was the 
true reason for giving away Texas, and the true 
solution of the enigma involved in the strange 
refusal to accept as much as Spain ofiered. The 
treaty was disapproved by Mr. Jefferson, to 
wliom a similar letter was written to that sent 
to General Jackson, and for the same purpose — 
to obtain his approbation ; but he who had ac- 
quired Louisiana, and justly gloried in the act, 
could not bear to see that noble province muti- 
lated, and returned his dissent to the act, and 
his condemnation of the policy on which it was 
done. General Jackson had yielded to the 
arguments of Mr. !Monroe, and consented to the 
cession of Texas as a temporary measure. The 
words of his answer to Mr. Monroe's letter 
were : " I am clearly of your opinion, that, for 
the present, we ought to be contented with the 
Floridas." But ^Ir. Jefferson would yield to no 
temporary views of policy, and remained inflexi- 
bly opposed to the treaty ; and in this he was 
consistent with his own conduct in similar cir- 
cumstances. Sixteen years before, he had been 
in the same circumstances — at the time of the 
acquisition of Louisiana — when he had the same 
repugnance to southwestern aggrandizement to 
contend with, and the same bait (P'lorida) to 
tempt him. Tlicn eastern men raised the same 
objections ; and as early as August 1803 — only 



four months after the purchase of Louisiana — 
he wrote to Dr. Breckenridge : " Objections are 
raising to the eastward to the vast extent of oui 
boundaries, and propositions are made to ex- 
change Louisiana, or a part of it, for the Flori- 
das ; but as I have said, we shall get the Flori- 
das without ; and I would not give one inch of 
the waters of the Mississippi to any foreign 
nation." So that Mr. Jefferson, neither in 1803 
nor in 1819, would have mutilated Louisiana to 
obtain the cession of Florida, which he knew 
would be obtained without that mutilation ; nor 
would he have yielded to the threatening discon- 
tent in the east. I have a gratification that, 
without knowing it, and at a thousand miles 
from him, I took the same ground that Mr. Jef- 
ferson stood on, and even used his own words : 
" Not an inch of the waters of the Mississippi to 
any nation." But I was mortified at the time, 
that not a paper in the United States backed my 
essays. It was my first experience in standing 
" solitary and alone ; " but I stood it without 
flinching, and even incurred the imputatioL of 
being opposed to the administration — had to 
encounter that objection in my first election to 
the Senate, and was even viewed as an opponent 
by Mr. ]\Ionroe himself, when I first came to 
Washington. He had reason to know before 
his office expired, and still more after it expired, 
that no one (of the young generation) had a 
more exalted opinion of his honesty, patriotism, 
firmness and general soundness of judgment ; or 
would be more ready, whenever the occasion 
permitted, to do justice to his long and illus- 
trious career of public service. The treaty, as I 
have said, was promptly and unanimously rati- 
fied by the American Senate ; not so on the 
part of Spain. She hesitated, delayed, procras- 
tinated ; and finally suffered the time limited 
for the exchange of ratifications to expire, with- 
out having gone through that indispensable 
formality. Of course this put an end to the 
treaty, unless it could be revived j and, there- 
upon, new negotiations and vehement expostula- 
tions against the conduct wliich refused to ratify 
a treaty negotiated upon full powers and in con- 
formity to instructions. It was in the course 
of this renewed negotiation, and of these warm 
expostulations, that Mr. Adams used the strong 
expressions to the Spanish ministry, so enigma- 
tical at the time, " That Spain had oflered more 
than we accepted, and that she dare not deny 



ANNO IS'^o. JAMES MONROE, PRESIDENT. 



17 



it." Finally, after the lapse of a year or so, the 
treaty was ratified by Spain. In the mean time 
Mr. Clay had made a movement against it in the 
House of Representatives, unsuccessful, of course, 
but exciting some sensation, both for the reasons 
he gave and the vote of some thirty-odd mem- 
bers who concurred with him. This movement 
very certainly induced the letters of Mr. Monroe 
to General Jackson and Mr. Jefferson, as they 
were contemporaneous (May, 1820), and also 
some expressions in the letter to General Jack- 
son, which evidently referred to Mr. Clay's 
movemenf;. The ratification of Spain was given 
October, 1820, and being after the time limited, 
it becarn.e necessary to submit it again to the 
American Senate, which was done at the session 
of 1820-21. It was ratified again, and almost 
unanimously, but not quite, four votes being 
given against it, and all by western senators, 
namely : Colonel Richard M. Johnson, of Ken- 
tucky ; Colonel John Williams, of Tennessee ; 
Mr. James Brown, of Louisiana, and Colonel 
Trimble, of Ohio. I was then in Washington, 
and a senator elect, though not yet entitled to a 
seat, in consequence of the delayed admission of 
the new State of Missouri into the Union, and so 
had no opportunity to record my vote against 
the treaty. But the progress of events soon 
gave me an opportunity to manifest my opposi- 
tion, and to appear in the parliamentary history 
as an enemy to it. The case was this : While 
the treaty was still encountering Spanish pro- 
crastination in the delay of exchanging ratifica- 
tions, Mexico (to which the amputated part of 
Louisiana and the whole of Texas was to be at- 
tached), itself ceased to belong to Spain. She 
established her independence, repulsed all Spa- 
nish authority, and remained at war with the 
mother country. The law for giving effect to 
the treaty by providing for commissioners to 
run and mark the new boundary, had not been 
passed at the time of the ratification of the 
treaty ; it came up after I took my seat, and 
was opposed by me. I opposed it, not only 
upon the grounds of original objections to the 
treaty, but on the further and obvious ground, 
that the revolution in Mexico— her actual inde- 
pendence—had superseded the Spanish treaty in 
the whole article of the boundaries, and that it 
W9S with Mexico herself that we should now 
settle them. The act was passed, however, by a 
sweeping majority, the administration being for 

2 



it, and senators holding themselves committed 
by premus votes ; but the progress of events 
soon justified my opposition to it. The country 
being in possession of Mexico, and she at war 
with Spain, no Spanish commissioners could go 
there to join ours in executing it ; and so the 
act remained a dead letter upon the statute- 
book. Its futility was afterwards acknowledged 
by our government, and the misstep corrected 
by establishing the boundary with Mexico her- 
self. This was done by treaty in the year 1828, 
adopting the boundaries previously agreed upon 
with Spain, and consequently amputating our 
rivers (the Red and the Arkansas), and dis- 
membering the valley of the Mississippi, to the 
same extent as was done by the Spanish treaty 
of 1819. I opposed the ratification of the treaty 
with Mexico for the same reason that I opposed 
its original with Spain, but without success. 
Only two senators voted with me, namely. 
Judge William Smith, of South Carolina, and 
Mr. Powhatan Ellis, of Mississippi. Thus I saw 
this treaty, which repulsed Texas, and dismem- 
bered the valley of the Mississippi— which 
placed a foreign dominion on the upper halves 
of the Red River and the Arkansas— placed a 
foreign power and a wilderness between Mis- 
souri and New Mexico, and which broucht a 
non-slaveholding empire to the boundary line 
of the State of Louisiana, and almost to tlie 
southwest corner of Missouri — saw this treaty 
three times ratified by the American Senate, as 
good as unanimously every time, and with the 
hearty concurrence of the American press. Yet 
I remained in the Senate to see, within a few 
years, a political tempest sweeping the land and 
overturning all that stood before it, to get back 
this very country which this treaty had given 
away ; and menacing the Union itself with dis- 
solution, if it was not immediately done, and 
without regard to consequences. But of this 
hereafter. The point to be now noted of this 
treaty of 1819, is, that it completed, very nearly, 
the extinction of slave territory within the limits 
of the United States, and that it was the work 
of southern men, with the sanction of the South. 
It extinguished or cut off the slave territory 
beyond the Mississippi, below 36 degrees, 30 
minutes, all except the diagram in Arkansas, 
which was soon to become a State. The iMis- 
souri compromise line had interdicted slavery in 
all the vast expanse of Louisiana north of 36 



18 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



degrees, 30 minutes ; tliis treaty gave away, first 
to Spain, and then to Jlexico, nearly all the 
slave territory south of that line ; and what lit- 
tle was left by the Spanish treaty was assigned 
in perpetuitj- by laws and by treaties to different 
Indian tribes. These treaties (Indian and Span- 
ish), together with the Missouri compromise 
line — a measure contemporaneous with the 
treaty — extinguished slave soil in all the United 
States territory west of the IMississippi, except 
in the diagram which was to constitute the 
State of Arkansas ; and, including the extinction 
in Texas consequent upon its cession to a non- 
slaveholding power, constituted the largest ter- 
ritorial abolition of slavery that was ever effect- 
ed by the political power of any nation. The 
ordinance of 1787 had previously extinguished 
slavery in all the northwest territory — aU the 
country east of the Mississippi, above the Ohio, 
and out to the great lakes ; so that, at this 
moment — era of the second election of Mr. Mon- 
roe — slave soil, except in Arkansas and Florida, 
,vas extinct in the territor}^ of the United States. 
The growth of slave States (except of Arkansas 
and Florida) was stopped ; the increase of free 
States was permitted in all the vast expanse 
from Lake Michigan and the Mississippi River to 
the Rocky Mountains, and to Oregon ; and there 
was not a ripple of discontent visible on the sur- 
face of the public mind at this mighty transfor- 
mation of slave into free territory. No talk then 
about dissolving the Union, if every citizen was 
not allowed to go with all his " property," that 
is, all his slaves, to all the territory acquired by 
the "common blood and treasure" of all the 
Union. But this belongs to the chapter of 1844, 
whereof I have the material to write the true and 
secret history, and hope to use it with fairness, 
with justice, and with moderation. The outside 
view of the slave question in the United States 
at this time, which any chronicler can write, is, 
that the extension of slavery was then arrested, 
circumscribed, and confined within narrow terri- 
torial limits, while free States were permitted an 
almost unlimited expansion. That is the out- 
side view; the inside is, that all this was the 
work of southern men, candidates for the presi- 
dency, some in abeyance, some in jircbsenti^ and 
all yielding to that repugnance to territorial ag- 
grandizement, and slavery extension in the south- 
west, which Mr. Monroe mentioned in his letter 
to General Jackson as the "internal difficulty" 



which occasioned the cession of Texas to Spain. 
This chapter is a point in the history of the times 
which will require to be understood by all who 
wish to understand and appreciate the events 
and actors of twenty years later. 



CHAPTEK VII. 

DEATH OF MR. LOWNDES. 

I HAD but a slight acquaintance with Mr. 
Lowndes. He resigned liis place on account of 
declining health soon after I came into Congress ; 
but all that I saw of him confirmed the impres- 
sion of the exalted character which the public 
voice had ascribed to him. Virtue, modesty, 
benevolence, patriotism were the qualities of his 
heart ; a sound judgment, a mild persuasive elo- 
cution were the attributes of his mind ; his man- 
ners gentle, natural, cordial, and inexpressibly 
engaging. He was one of the galaxy, as it wa.s 
well called, of the brilliant young men which 
South Carolina sent to the House of Represent- 
atives at the beginning of the war of 1812 — Cal- 
houn, Cheves, Lowndes ; — and was soon the 
brightest star in that constellation. He was one 
of those members, rare in all assemblies, who, 
when he spoke, had a cluster around liim, not 
of friends, but of the House — members quitting 
their distant seats, and gathering up close about 
him, and showing by their attention, that each 
one would feel it a personal loss to have missed 
a word that he said. It was the attention of 
affectionate confidence. He imparted to others 
the harmony of his own feelings, and was the 
moderator as well as the leader of the House, 
and was followed by its sentiment in all cases 
in which inexorable party feeling, or some pow- 
erful interest, did not rule the action of the mem- 
bers ; and even then he was courteously and 
deferentially treated. It was so the only time 
I ever heard him speak — session of 1820-21 — 
and on the inflammable subject of tlie admission 
of the State of Missouri — a question on wliich the 
inflamed passions left no room for the influence 
of reason and judgment, and in which the mem- 
bers voted by a geographical line. Mr. Lowndes 
wiLS of the democratic school, and strongly indv 



ANNO 1822. JAJMES MONROE, PRESIDENT. 



19 



cated for an early elevation to the presidency — 
indicated by the public will and judgment, and 
not by any machinery of individual or party 
management — from the approach of which he 
shrunk, as from the touch of contamination. 
He was nominated by the legislature of his na- 
tive State for the election of 1824 ; but died be- 
fore the event came round. It was he who ex- 
pressed that sentiment, so just and beautiful in 
itself, and so becoming in him because in him it 
was true, " That the presidency was an office 
neither to be sought, nor declined." He died at 
the age of forty-two ; and his death at that early 
age, and in the impending circumstances of the 
country, was felt by those who knew him as a 
public and national calamity. I do not write 
biographies, but note the death and character of 
some eminent deceased contemporaries, whose 
fame belongs to the country, and goes to make 
up its own title to the respect of the world. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

DEATH OF WILLIAM PINKNET. 

He died at "Washington during the session of 
the Congress of which he was a member, and of 
the Supreme Court of which he was a practi- 
tioner. He fell like the warrior, in the plenitude 
of his strength, and on the field of his fame- 
under the double labors of the Supreme Court 
and of the Senate, and under the immense con- 
centration of thought which he gave to the 
preparation of his speeches. He was considered 
in his day the first of American orators, but 
will hardly keep that place with posterity, be- 
cause he spdke more to the hearer than to the 
reader— to the present than to the absent— and 
avoided the careful publication of his own 
speeches. He labored them hard, but it was 
for the efiect of their delivery, and the triumph 
of present victory. He loved the admiration of 
the crowded gallerj-— the trumpet-tongued fame 
which went forth from the forum— the victory 
which crowned the effort ; but avoided the pub- 
lication of what ^vas received with so much 
applause, giving as a reason that the published 
speech would not sustain the renown of the 
delivered one. Ris forte as a speaker lay in his 



judgment, his logic, his power of argument; 
but, like many other men of acknowledged pre- 
eminence in some great gift of nature, and who 
are still ambitious of some inferior gift, he 
courted his imagination too much, and laid too 
much stress upon action and delivery — so potent 
upon the small circle of actual hearers, but so 
lost upon the national audience which the press 
now gives to a great speaker. In other respects 
Mr. Pinkney was truly a great orator, rich in 
his material, strong in his argument — clear, 
natural and regular in the exposition of his 
'subject, comprehensive in his views, and chaste 
in his diction. His speeches, both senatorial 
and forensic, were fully studied and laboriously 
prepared — all the argumentative parts carefully 
digested under appropriate heads, and the showy 
passages often fully written out and committed 
to memory. He would not speak at all except 
upon preparation; and at sexagenarian age — 
that at which I knew him — was a model of 
study and of labor to all young men. His last 
speech in the Senate was in reply to Mr. Rufus 
King, on the Missouri question, and was the 
master effort of his life. The subject, the place, 
the audience, the antagonist, were all such as to 
excite him to the utmost exertion. The subject 
was a national controversy convulsing the Union 
and menacing it with dissolution ; the place was 
the American Senate ; the audience was Europe 
and America; the antagonist was Princeps 
Senatus, illustrious for thirty years of diplo- 
matic and senatorial service, and for great dig- 
nity of life and character. He had ample time 
for preparation, and availed himself of it. Mr. 
King had spoken the session before, and pub- 
lished the "Substance" of his speeches (for 
there were two of them), after the adjournment 
of Congress. They were the signal guns for the 
Missouri controversy. It was to these published 
speeches that Mr. Pnkney replied, and with 
the interval between two sessions o prepare. 
It was a dazzling and overpowering repl}^, with 
the prestige of having the union and the harmony 
of the States for its object, and crowded with 
rich material. The most brilliant part of it was 
a highly-wrought and splendid amplification 
(with illustrations from Greek and Roman his- 
tory), of that passage in JMr. Burke's speech 
upon •' Conciliation with the Colonies," in which, 
and in looking to the elements of American re- 
sistance to British power, he looks to the spirit 



20 



THIRTY YEARS' VIETV. 



of the slaveholding colonies as a main ingredi- 
ent, and attributes to the masters of slaves, who 
are not themselves slaves, the highest love of 
libert}' and the most difficult task of subjection. 
It was the most gorgeous speech ever delivered 
in the Senate, and the most applauded ; but it 
was onlj' a magnificent exhibition, as Mr. Pink- 
ney knew, and could not sustain in the reading 
the plaudits it received in delivery ; and there- 
fore he avoided its publication. He gave but 
little attention to the current business of the 
Senate, only appearing in his place when the 
'■ Salaminian galley was to be launched," or 
some special occasion called him — giving his 
time and labor to the bar, where his pride and 
glor}- was. He had previously served in the 
House of Representatives, and his first speech 
there was attended by an incident illustrative of 
Mr. Randolph's talent for delicate intimation, 
and his punctilious sense of parliamentary eti- 
quette. Mr. Pinkney came into the House with 
a national reputation, in the fulness of his fame, 
and exciting a great expectation — which he was 
obliged to fulfil. He spoke on the treaty- 
making power — a question of diplomatic and 
constitutional law ; and he having been minister 
to half the courts of Europe, attorney general 
of the United States, and a jurist b}^ profession, 
could only speak upon it in one way — as a great 
master of the subject ; and. consequently, ap- 
peared as if instructing the House. Mr. Ran- 
dolph — a veteran of twenty 3-cars' parliamentary 
service — thought a new member should serve 
a little apprenticeship before he became an in- 
structor, and wished to signify that to Mr. 
Pinkney. He had a gift, such as man never 
had, at a delicate intimation where he desired 
to give a hint, without ollence; and he displayed 
it on this occasion. He replied to Mr. Pinkney, 
referring to him by the parliamentary designa- 
tion . of '• the member from Maryland ; " and 
then pausing, as if not certain, added, "I believe 
he is from Maryland." This implied doubt as 
to where he came from, and consequently as to 
who he was, amused Mr. Pinkney, who under- 
stood it perfectly, and taking it right, went over 
to Mr. Randolph's seat, introduced himself, and 
assured him that he was '"from Maryland." 
They became close friends for ever after ; and it 
was Mr. Randolph who first made known his 
death in the House of Representatives, inlerrupt- 
ug for that purpose au angry debate, then 



raging, with a beautiful and apt quotation from 
the quarrel of Adam and Eve at their expulsion 
from paradise. The published debates give this 
account of it : '• Mr. Randolph rose to announce 
to the House an event which he hoped would 
put an end, at least for this day, to all further 
jar or collision, here or elsewhere, among the 
members of this body. Yes, for this one day, 
at least, let us say, as our first mother said to 
our first father — 

' "While yet we live, scarce one short hour perhaps, 
Between U3 two let there be peace.' 

" I rise to announce to the House the not un- 
lookcd for death of a man who filled the first 
place in the public estimation, in the first profes- 
sion in that estimation, in tliis or in any other 
country. We have been talldng of General 
Jackson, and a greater than him is, not here, 
but gone for ever. I allude, sir, to the boast 
of Maryland, and the pride of the United States 
— the pride of all of us, but more particularly 
the pride and ornament of the profession of 
which you, Mr. Speaker (Mr. Philip P. Bar- 
bour), are a member, and an eminent one." 

Mr. Pinkney was kind and affable in his 
temper, free from every taint of envy or jealousy, 
conscious of his powers, and relying upon them 
alone for success. He was a model, as I have 
already said, and it will bear repetition, to all 
young men in his habits of study and applica- 
tion, and at more than sixty years of age was 
still a severe student. In politics he classed 
democratically, and was one of the few of our 
eminent public men who never seemed to think 
of the presidency. Oratory was his glory, the 
law liis profession, the bar his theatre ; and his 
service in Congress was only a brief episode, 
dazzling each House, for he was a momentary 
member of each, with a single and splendid 
speech. 



CHAPTER IX. 

ABOLITION OF THE INDIAN FACTOHY SYSTEM. 

The experience of the Indian factory system, 
is an illustration of the unfitness of the federal 
government to carry on any system of trade, 
the liability of the benevolent designs of tho gov- 



ANNO 1822. JAMES MONROE, PRESIDENT. 



21 



eminent to be abused, and the diflBculty of de- 
tecting and redressing abuses in the management 
of our Indian aifairs. This system originated in 
the year 179G, under the recommendation of 
President "Washington, and was intended to 
counteract the influence of the British traders, 
then allowed to trade with the Indians of the 
United States within our limits ; also to protect 
the Indians from impositions from our own trad- 
ers, and for that purpose to sell them goods at 
cost and carriage, and receive their furs and pel- 
tries at fair and liberal prices ; and which being 
sold on account of the United States, would de- 
fray the expenses of the establishment, and pre- 
serve the capital undiminished — to be returned 
to the treasury at the end of the experiment. The 
goods were purchased at the expense of the Unit- 
ed States — the superintendent and factors were 
paid out of the treasury, and the whole system, 
was to be one of favor and benevolence to the 
Indians, guarded by the usual amount of bonds 
and oaths prescribed by custom in such cases. 
Being an experiment, it was first established by 
a temporary act, limited to two years — the usual 
way in which equivocal measures get a foothold 
in legislation. It was soon suspected that this 
system did not work a.s disinterestedly as had 
been expected — that it was of no benefit to the 
Indians — no counteraction to British traders — 
an injury to our own fur trade — and a loss to 
the United States ; and many attempts were 
made to get rid of it. but in vain. It was kept 
up by continued temporarj" renewals for a quar- 
ter of a century — from 1796 to 1822 — the name 
of Washington being always invoked to continue 
abuses which he would have been the first to re- 
press and punish. As a citizen of a frontier 
State, I had seen the working of the system — 
seen its inside working, and knew its operation 
to be entirely contrary to the benevolent de- 
signs of its projectors. I communicated all 
this, soon after my admission to a seat in the 
Senate, to Mr. Calhoun, the Secretary at 
War, to whose department the supervision of 
this branch of service belonged, and proposed to 
him the abolition of the system ; but he had too 
good an opinion of the superintendent (then 
Mr. Thomas L. McKinney), to believe that any 
thing was wrong in the business, and refused 
his countenance to my proposition. Confident 
that I was right, I determined to bring the ques- 
tion before the Senate — did so — brought in a bill 



to abolish the factories, and throw open the fur 
trade to individual enterprise, and supported 
the bill with all the facts and reasons of which 
I was master. The bill was carried through 
both Houses, and became a law ; but not with- 
out the strenuous opposition which the attack of 
every abuse for ever encounters — not that any 
member favored the abuse, but that those inter- 
ested in it were vigilant and active, visiting the 
members who would permit such visits, furnish- 
ing them with adverse statements, lauding the 
operation of the system, and constantly lugging 
in the name of Washington as its author. When 
the system was closed up, and the inside of it 
seen, and the balance struck, it was found how 
true all the representations were which had been 
made against it. The Indians had been imposed 
upon in the quality and prices of the goods sold 
them ; a general trade had been carried on with 
the whites as well as with the Indians; large 
per centums had been charged upon every thing 
sold ; and the total capital of three hundred 
thousand dollars was lost and gone. It was a 
loss which, at that time (1822), was considered 
large, but now (1850) would be considered 
small ; but its history still has its uses, in show- 
ing how difierently from its theory a well in- 
tended act may operate — how long the Indians 
and the government may be cheated without 
knowing it — and how difficult it is to get a bad 
law discontinued (where there is an interest in 
keeping it up), even though first adopted as a 
temporary measure, and as a mere experiment. 
It cost me a strenuous exertion — much labor in 
collecting facts, and much speaking in laying 
them before the Senate — to get this two years' 
law discontinued, after twenty-five years of in- 
jurious operation and costly experience. Of all 
the branches of our service, that of the Indian 
affairs is most liable to abuse, and its abuses the 
most diflBcult of detection. 



CHAPTER X. 

INTERNAL IMPKOVEMENT. 

The Presidential election of 1824 was ap- 
proaching, the candidates in the field, their re- 
spective friends active and busy, and popular 
topics for the canvass in earnest requisition. The 



22 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



New-York canal had just been completed, and 
had brought great popularity to its principal ad- 
vocate (De Witt Clinton), and excited a great 
appetite in public men for that kind of fame. 
Roads and canals — meaning common turnpike, 
for the steam car had not then been invented, 
nor McAdam imi)ressed lus name on the new 
class of roads which afterwards wore it — were 
all the vogue ; and the candidates for the Presi- 
dency spread their sails upon the ocean of inter- 
nal improvements. Congress was full of pro- 
jects for different objects of improvement, and 
the friends of each candidate exerted themselves 
in rivalry of each other, under the supposition 
that their opinions would stand for those of their 
principals. Mr. Adams, Mr. Clay, and ]\Ir. 
Calhoun, were the avowed advocates of the mea- 
sure, going thoroughly for a general national 
system of internal improvement : Mr. Crawford 
and General Jackson, under limitations and qua- 
lifications. The Cumberland road, and the Chesa- 
peake and Ohio canal, were the two prominent 
objects discussed j but the design extended to a 
general system, and an act was finally passed, in- 
tended to be annual and permanent, to appropri- 
ate $30,000 to make surveys of national routes. 
Mr. Monroe signed this bill as being merely for 
the collection of information, but the subject 
drew from him the most elaborate and thorough- 
ly considered opinion upon the general question 
which has ever been delivered by any of our 
statesmen. It was drawn out by the passage of 
an act to provide for the preservation and rejjair 
of the Cumberland road, and was returned by 
him to the House in which it originated, with his 
olyections, accompanied by a state paper, in ex- 
position of his opinions upon the whole subject ; 
for the whole subject was properly before him. 
The act which he had to consider, though mod- 
estly entitled for the " preservation " and " re- 
pair " of the Cumberland road, yet, in its mode 
of accomplishing that purpose, assumed the whole 
of the powers which were necessary to tlie exe- 
cution of a general system. It passed with sin- 
gular unanimity through both Houses, in the 
Senate, only seven votes ag'ainst it, of which I af- 
terwards felt proud to have been one. He de- 
nied the power ; but before examining the argu- 
ments for and against it, very properly laid 
down the amount and variety of jurisdiction and 
authority whicli it would require the federal gov- 
ernment to exercise within the States, in order 



to execute a system, and that in each and every 
part — in every mile of each and ever}' canal 
road — it should undertake to construct. He be- 
gan with acquiring the right of way, and pur- 
sued it to its results in the construction and jire- 
servation of the work, involving jurisdiction, 
ownership, penal laws, and administration. 
Commissioners, he said, must first be appointed 
to trace a route, and to acquire a right to the 
ground over which the road or canal was to pass, 
with a sufficient breadth for each. The ground 
could only be acquired by voluntary grants from 
individuals, or by purchases, or by condemna- 
tion of the property, and fixing its value through 
a jury of the ■vicinage, if they refused to give or 
sell, or demanded an exorbitant price. After 
all this was done, then came the repairs, the care 
of which was to be of perpetual duration, and 
<)f a kind to provide against criminal and wilful 
injuries, as well as against the damages of acci- 
dent, and deterioration from time and use. 
There are persons in every community capable 
of committing voluntary injuries, of pulling 
down walls that are made to sustain the road ; 
of breaking the bridges ovej* water-courses, and 
breaking the road itself. Some living near it 
might be disappointed that it did not pass through 
theii" lands, and commit these acts of violence 
and waste from revenge. To prevent these 
crimes Congress must have a power to pass laws 
to punish the offenders, wherever they may be 
found. Jurisdiction over the road would not 
be sufficient, though it were exclusive. There 
must be power to follow the offenders wherever 
they might go. It would seldom happen that the 
parties would be detected in the act. They would 
generally commit it in the night, and fly far off" be- 
fore the sun appeared. Right of pursuit must at- 
tach, or the power of punishing become nugatory. 
Tribunals, State or federal, must be invested 
with power to execute the law. Wilful injuries 
would require all this assumption of power, :md 
machinery of administration, to punish and pre- 
vent them. Repair of natural deteriorations 
would require the application of a different re- 
medy. Toll gates, and persons to collect the 
tolls, were the usual resort for repairing this 
cla.ss of injuries, and keeping the road in order 
Congress must have power to make such an esta- 
blishment, and to enact a code of regulations 
for it, with fines and penalties, and agents to 
execute it. To all these exercises of authority 



ANNO 1823. JAMES MONROE, PRESIDENT 



23 



the question of the constitutionality of the law 
may be raised by the prosecuted party. But op- 
position might not stop with individuals. States 
might contest the right of the federal govern- 
ment thus to possess and to manage all the great 
roads and canals within their limits ; and then a 
collision would be brought on between two gov- 
ernments, each claiming to be sovereign and in- 
dependent in its actions over the subject in dis- 
pute. 

Thus did Mr. Monroe state the question in its 
practical bearings, traced to their legitimate re- 
sults, and the various assumptions of power, and 
difficulties with States or individuals which they 
involved; and the bare statement which he 
made — the bare presenilation of the practical 
working of the system, constituted a complete 
argument against it, as an invasion of State 
rights, and therefore unconsittutional, and, he 
might have added, as complex and unmanage- 
able by the federal government, and therefore 
inexpedient. But, after stating the question, he 
examined it under every head of constitutional 
derivation under which its advocates claimed the 
power, and found it to be granted by no one of 
them, and virtually prohibited by some of them. 
These were, Jirst^ the right to establish post- 
offices and post-roads ; second, to declare war ; 
third, to regulate commerce among the States ; 
fourth, the power to pay the debts and provide 
for the common defence and general welfare of 
the United States ; ffth, to make all laws ne- 
cessary and proper to carry into effect the grant- 
ed (enumerated) powers ; sixth, from the power 
to dispose of, and make all needful rules and re- 
gulations respecting the territory or other pro- 
perty of the United States. Upon this long 
enimieration of these claimed sources of power, 
Mr. Monroe well remarked that their very mul- 
tiplicity was an argument against them, and that 
each one was repudiated by some of the advo- 
cates for each of the others : that these advocates 
could not agree among themselves upon any one 
single source of the power; and that it was 
sought for from place to place, with an assiduity 
which proclaimed its non-existence any where. 
Still he examined each head of derivation in its 
order, and eflectually disposed of each in its turn. 
1. The post-office and post-road grant. The 
word " establish " was the ruling term : roads 
and offices were the subjects on which it was to 
act. And how ? Ask any number of enlight- 



ened citizens, who had no connection with pub- 
lic affairs, and whose minds were unprejudiced, 
what was the meaning of the word " establish," 
and the extent of the grant it controls, and there 
would not be a difference of opinion among 
them. They would answer that it was a power 
given to Congress to legalize existing roads as 
post routes, and existing places as post-offices — 
to fix on the towns, court-houses, and other 
places throughout the Union, at which there 
should be post-offices ; the routes by which the 
mails should be carried ; to fix the postages to 
be paid ; and to protect the post-offices and mails 
from robbery, by punishing those who commit 
the offence. The idea of a right to lay off roads 
to take the soil from the proprietor against 
his will ; to establish turnpikes and tolls ; to 
establish a criminal code for the punishment 
of injuries to the road ; to do what the protection 
and repair of a road requires : these are things 
which would never enter into his head. The use 
of the existing road would be all that would be 
thought of; the juiisdiction and soil remaining 
in the State, or in those authorized by its legis- 
lature to change the road at pleasure. 

2. The war power. Mr. Monroe shows the 
object of this grant of power to. the federal gov- 
ernment — the terms of the grant itself — its in- 
cidents as enumerated in the constitution — the 
exclusion of constructive incidents — and the per- 
vading interference with the soil and jurisdiction 
of the States which the assumption of the internal 
improvement power by Congress would carry 
along with it. He recites the grant of the power 
to make war, as given to Congress, and prohi- 
bited to the States, and enumerates the incidents 
granted along with it, and necessary to carrying 
on war : which are, to raise money by taxes, 
duties, excises, and by loans ; to raise and sup- 
port armies and a navy ; to provide for calling 
out, arming, disciplining, and governing the mili- 
tia, when in the service of the United States ; es- 
tabUshing fortifications, and to exercise exclusive 
jurisdiction over the places granted by the State 
legislatures for the sites of forts, magazines, ar- 
senals, dock-yards, and other needful buildings. 
And having shown this enumeration of incidents, 
he very naturally concludes that it is an exclu- 
sion of constructive incidents, and especially of 
one so great in itself, and so much interfering 
with the soil and jurisdiction of the States, as the 
federal exercise of the road-making power would 



24 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



be. He exhibits the cnormitj' of this interfer- 
ence by a view of the extensive field over which 
it would operate. The United States are ex- 
posed to invasion through the whole extent of 
their Atlantic coast (to which may now be add- 
ed seventeen degrees of the Pacific coast) by 
any European power with whom we might be 
engaged in war : on the northern and north- 
western frontier, on the side of Canada, by Great 
Brita,in, and on the southern by Spain, or any 
power in alliance with her. If internal im- 
provements are to be carried on to the full 
extent to which they may be useful for military 
purposes, the power, as it exists, must apply to 
all the roads of the Union, there being no limita- 
tion to it. Wherever such improvements may 
Hicilitate the march of troops, the transportation 
of cannon, or otherwise aid the operations, or 
mitigate the calamities of war along the coast, 
or in the interior, they would be useful for mili- 
tary purposes, and might therefore be made. 
They must be coextensive with the Union. The 
power following as an incident to another power 
can be measured, as to its extent, by reference 
only to the obvious extent of the power to which 
it is incidental. It has been shown, after the 
most liberal construction of all the enumerated 
powers of the general government, that the ter- 
ritory within the limits of the respective States 
belonged to them ; that the United States had 
no right, under the powers granted to them 
(with the exceptions specified), to any the 
smallest portion of territory within a State, all 
those powers operating on a different principle, 
and having their full effect without impairing, in 
the slightest degree, this territorial right in the 
States. By specifically granting the right, as to 
such small portions of territory as might be ne- 
cessary for these purposes (forts, arsenals, mag- 
aziDies, dock-yards and other needful buildings)^ 
and, on certain conditions, minutely and well 
defined, it is manifest that it was not intended to 
grant it, as to any other portion, for any purpose, 
or in any manner whatever. The right of the 
general government must be complete, if a right 
at all. It must extend to every thing necessary 
to the enjoyment and protection of the right. 
It must extend to the seizure and condemnation 
of the property, if necessary ; to the punishment 
of the offenders for injuries to the' roads and 
canals; to the establishment and enforcement of 
tolls ; to the unobstructed construction, protec- 



tion, and preservation of the roads. It must be 
a complete right, to the extent above stated, or 
it will be of no avail. That right does not exist. 

3. The commercial power. Mr. Monroe ar- 
gues that the sense in which the power to regu- 
late commerce was imderstood and exercised by 
the Statos^ was doubtless that in which it was 
transferred to the United States ; and then shows 
that their regulation of commerce was by the 
imposition of duties and imposts ; and that it was 
so regulated by them (before the adoption of the 
constitution), equally in respect to each other, 
and to foreign powers. The goods, and the ves- 
sels employed in the trade, are the only subject 
of regulation. It can act on none other. He 
then shows the evil out of which that grant of 
power grew, and which evil was, in fact, the pre- 
dominating cause in the call for the convention 
which framed the federal constitution. Each 
State had the right to lay duties and imposts, 
and exercised the right on narrow, jealous, and 
selfish princijjles. Instead of acting as a nation 
in regard to foreign powers, the States, individ- 
ually, had commenced a system of restraint upon 
each other, whereby the interests of foreign 
powers were promoted at their expense. This 
contracted policy in some of the States was 
counteracted by others. Restraints weie imme- 
diately laid on such commerce by the suffering 
States ; and hence grew up a system of restric- 
tions and retaliations, which destroyed the har- 
mony of the States, and threatened the confederacy 
with dissolution. From this evil the new con- 
stitution relieved us; and the federal government, 
as successors to the States in the power to regu- 
late commerce, immediately exercised it as they 
had done, by laying duties and impo;?ts, to act 
upon goods and vessels : and that was the end 
of the power. 

4. To pay the debts and provide for the com- 
mon defence and general welfiire of the Union. 
Mr. Monroe considers this " common defence " 
and " general welfare " clause as being no grant 
of power, but, in themselves, only an object and 
end to be attained by the exercise of the enume- 
rated powers. They are found in that sense in 
the preamble to the constitution, in company 
with others, as inducing causes to the formation 
of the instrument, and as benefits to be obtained 
by the powers granted in it. They stand thus in 
the preamble : '' In order to form a more perfect 

1 union, establish justice, iiLSure domestic tran- 



ANNO 1823. JAMES MONROE, PRl<:SIDENT. 



25 



quillity, provide for the common defence, promote 
the general welfare, and secure the blessings of 
liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain 
and establish this constitution." These are the 
objects to be accomplished, but not by allowing 
Congress to do what it pleased to accomplish 
them (in which case there would have been no 
need for investing it with specific powers), but to 
be accomplished by the exercise of the powers 
granted in the body of the instrument. Con- 
sidered as a distinct and separate grant, the 
power to provide for the ' common defence " 
and the " general welfare," or either of them, 
would give to Congress the command of the 
whole force, and of all the resources of the 
Union — absorbing in their transcendental power 
all other powers, and rendering all the grants 
and restrictions nugatory and vain. The idea of 
these words forming an original grant, with un- 
limited power, superseding every other grant, is 
(must be) abandoned. The government of the 
United States is a limited government, instituted 
for great national purposes, and for those only. 
Other interests are left to the States individually, 
whose duty it is to provide for them. Roads 
and canals fall into this class, the powers of the 
General Government being utterly incomj^etent 
to the exercise of the rights which their con- 
struction, and protection, and preservation re- 
quire. Mr. Monroe examines the instances of 
roads made in territories, and through the In- 
dian countries, and the one upon Spanish terri- 
tory below the 31st degree of north latitude 
(with the consent of Spain), on the route from 
Athens in Georgia to New Orleans, before we 
acquired the Floridas ; and shows that there was 
no objection to these territorial roads, being all 
of them, to the States, ex-territorial. He exam- 
ines the case of the Cumberland road, made 
within the States, and upon compact, but in 
which the United States exercised no power, 
founded on any principle of "jurisdiction or 
right." He says of it : This road was founded 
on an article of compact between the United 
States and the State of Ohio, under which that 
State came into the Union, and by which the ex- 
pense attending it was to be defrayed by the ap- 
plication of a certain portion of the money aris- 
ing from the sales of the public lands within the 
State. And, in this instance, the United States 
have exercised no act of jurisdiction or sovereign- 
ty witliin either of the States through which the 



road runs, by taking the land from the proprie- 
tors by force — by passing acts for the protection 
of the road — or to raise a revenue from it by the 
establishment of turnpikes and tolls — or any 
other act founded on the principles of jurisdic- 
tion or right. And I can add, that the bill 
passed by Congress, and which received his veto, 
died under his veto message, and has never been 
revised, or attempted to be revised, since ; and 
the road itself has been abandoned to the States. 
5. The power to make all laws which shall be 
necessary and proper to carry into effect the 
powers specifically granted to Congress. This 
power, as being the one which chiefly gave rise 
to the latitudinarian constructions which dis- 
criminated parties, when parties were founded 
upon principle, is closely and clcarlj' examined 
by ]Mr. IMonroe, and shown to be no grant of 
power at all, nor authorizing Congress to do 
any thing which might not have been done with- 
out it, and only added to the enumerated powers, 
through caution, to secure their complete exe- 
cution. He says : I have always considered this 
power as having been granted on a principle of 
greater caution, to secure the complete execu- 
tion of all the powers which had been vested in 
the General Government. It contains no distinct 
and specific power, as every other grant does, 
such as to lay and collect taxes, to declare war, 
to regulate commerce, and the like. Looking to 
the whole scheme of the General Government, it 
gives to Congress authority to make all laws 
which should be deemed necessary and proper 
for carrying all its powers into effect. My im- 
pression has invariably been, that tliis power 
would have existed, substantially, if this grant 
had not been made. It results, bj' necessary 
imjilication (such is the tenor of the argument)^ 
from the granted powers, and was only added 
from caution, and to leave nothing to implica- 
tion. To act under it, it must first be shown 
that the thing to be done is already specified iu 
one of the enumerated powers. This is the point 
and substance of Mr. Monroe's opinion on this 
incidental grant, and which has been the source 
of division between parties from the foundation 
of the government — the fountain of latitudi- 
nous construction — and which, taking the judg- 
ment of Congress as the rule and measure of 
what was " neccssar}- and proper " in legislation, 
takes a rule which puts an end to the limitations 
of the constitution, refers' all the powers of tho 



26 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



body to its own discretion, and becomes as absorb- 
ing and transcendental in its scope as the " gen- 
eral welfare " and " common defence clauses " 
would be themselves. 

6. The power to dispose of, and make all need- 
ful rules and regulations respecting the territory 
or other property of the United States. This 
clause, as a source of power for making roads 
and canals within a State, Mr. IVIonroe disposes 
of summarily, as ha\ing no relation whatever to 
the subject. It grew out of the cessions of ter- 
ritory which different States had made to the 
United States, and relates solely to that terri- 
tory (and to such as has been acquired since the 
adoption of the constitution), and which lay 
without the limits of a State. Special provision 
was deemed necessary for such territory, the 
main powers of the constitution operating inter- 
nally, not being applicable or adequate thereto ; 
and it follows that this power gives no authority, 
and has even no bearing on the subject. 

Such was this great state paper, delivered at 
a time when internal improvement by the fede- 
ral government, having become an issue in the 
canvass for the Presidency, and ardently advo- 
cated by three of the candidates, and qualifiedly 
by two others, had an immense current in its 
favor, carrj-ing many of the old strict constitu- 
tionists along with it. ]\Ir. Monroe stood firm, 
vetoed the bill which assumed jurisdiction over 
the Cumberland road, and drew up his senti- 
ments in full, for the consideration of Congress 
and the country. Ilis argument is abridged 
and condensed in this view of it ; but his posi- 
tions and conclusions preserved in full, and with 
scrupulous correctness. And the whole paper, 
as an exposition of the differently understood 
parts of the constitution, by one among those 
most intimately acquainted with it, and as ap- 
plicable to the whole question of constructive 
powers, deserves to be read and studied by every 
student of our constitutional law. The only 
point at which Mr. Monroe gave way, or yielded 
in the least, to the temper of the times, was in 
admitting the power of appropriation — the right 
of Congress to appropriate, but not to apply 
money — to internal improvements ; and in that 
he yielded against his earlier, and. as I believe, 
better judgment. He had previously condemned 
the ajjpropriation as well as the application, but 
finally yielded on this point to the counsels that 
beset him J but nugatorially, as appropriation 



without application was inoperative, and a balk 
to the whole system. But an act was passed 
soon after for surveys — for making surveys of 
routes for roads and canals of general and nation- 
al importance, and the sum of .f}!30,000 was ap- 
propriated for that purpose. The act was as 
carefully guarded as words could do so, in its 
limitation to objects of national importance, but 
only presented another to the innumerable in- 
stances of the impotency of words in securing 
the execution of a law. The selection of routes 
under the act, rapidly degenerated from national 
to sectional, from sectional to local, and from lo- 
cal to mere neighborhood improvements. Early 
in the succeeding administration, a list of some 
ninety routes were reported to Congress, from 
the Engineer Department, in which occurred 
names of places hardly heard of before outside 
of the State or section in which they were 
found. Saugatuck, Amounisuck, Pasumic, Win- 
nispiseogee, Piscataqua, Titonic Falls, Lake Mem- 
phramagog, Conneaut Creek, Holmes' Hole, 
Lovejoy's Narrows, Steele's Ledge, Cowhegan, 
Androscoggin, Cobbicsconte, Ponceaupechaux, 
abas Soapy Joe, were among the objects which 
figured in the list for national improvement. 
The bare reading of the list was a condemnation 
of the act under which they were selected, and 
put an end to the annual appro])riations which 
were in the course of being made for these sur- 
veys. No appropriation was made after the year 
1827. Afterwards the veto message of Presi- 
dent Jackson put an end to legislation upon 
local routes, and the progress of events has with- 
drawn the whole subject — the subject of a sys- 
tem of national internal improvement, once so 
formidable and engrossing in the public mind — 
from the halls of Congress, and the discussions 
of the people. Steamboats and steam-cars have 
superseded turnpikes and canals ; individual en- 
terprise has dispensed with national legislation. 
Hardly a great route exists in any State which 
is not occupied under State authority. Even 
great works accomplished by Congress, at vast 
cost and long and bitter debates in Congress, 
and deemed eminently national at the time, have 
lost that character, and sunk into the class of 
common routes. The Cumberland road, which 
cost $0,070,000 in money, and was a prominent 
subject in Congress for thirt3'-four years — from 
1802, when it was conceived to 1830, when it was 
abandoned to the States : this road, once so ab- 



ANNO 1824. JAMES MONROE, PRESIDENT. 



27 



Borbing both of public money and public atten- 
tion, has degenerated into a common highway, 
and is entirely superseded by the parallel rail- 
road route. The same may be said, in a less de- 
gree, of the Chesapeake and Ohio canal, once a 
national object of federal legislation intended, as 
its name imports, to connect the tide water of 
the Atlantic with the great rivers of the West ; 
now a local canal, chiefly used by some com- 
panies, very beneficial in its place, but sunk from 
the national character which commanded for it 
the votes of Congress and large appropriations 
from the federal treasury. Mr. IMonroe was one 
of the most cautious and deliberate of our pub- 
lic men, thoroughly acquainted with the theory 
and the working of the constitution, his opinions 
upon it entitled to great weight ; and on this 
point (of internal improvement within the States 
by the federal government) his opinion has be- 
come law. But it does not touch the question 
of improving national rivers or harbors yielding 
revenue — appropriations for the Ohio and Missis- 
sippi and other large streams, being easily had 
when unincumbered with local objects, as shown 
by the appropriation, in a separate bill, in 1824, 
of ^75,000 for the improvement of these two 
rivers, and which was approved and signed by 
Mr. Monroe. 



CHAP TEE XI. 

GENERAL PwEMOVAL OF INDIANS. 

Thk Indian tribes in the different sections of the 
Union, had experienced very different flites — in 
the northern and middle States nearly extinct — 
in the south and west they remained numerous 
and formidable. Before the war of 1812, with 
Great Britain, these southern and western tribes 
held vast, compact bodies of land in these 
States, preventing the expansion of the white 
settlements within their limits, and retaining a 
dangerous neighbor within their borders. The 
victories of General Jackson over the Creeks, 
and the territorial cessions which ensued made 
the first great breach in this vast Indian domain ; 
but much remained to be done to free the south- 
ern and western States from a useless and dan- 
gerous population — to give them the use and 
jurisdiction of all the territory within their 
limits, and to place them, in that respect, on an 



equality with the northern and middle States. 
From the earliest periods of the colonial settle- 
ments, it had been the policy of the government, 
by successive purchases of their territory, to 
remove these tribes further and further to the 
west ; and that policy, vigorously pursued aflei 
the war with Great Britain, had made much 
progress in freeing several of these States (Ken- 
tucky entirely, and Tennessee almost) from this 
population, which so greatly hindered the expan- 
sion of their settlements and so much checked 
the increase of their growth and strength. Still 
there remained up to the year 1824 — the last 
year of Mr. Monroe's administration — large por- 
tions of many of these States, and of the terri- 
tories, in the hands of the Indian tribes; in 
Georgia, nine and a half millions of acres ; in 
Alabama, seven and a half millions ; in Missis- 
sippi, fifteen and three quarter millions ; in the 
territory of Florida, four millions ; in the terri- 
tory of Arkansas, fifteen and a half millions ; 
in the State of Missouri, two millions and three 
quarters; in Indiana and Illinois, fifteen mil- 
lions ; and in Michigan, east of the lake, sevea 
millions. All these States and territories were 
desiTOus, and most justly and naturally so, to 
get possession of these vast bodies of land, 
generally the best within their limits. Georgia 
held the United States bound by a compact to 
relieve her. Justice to the other States and ter- 
ritories required the same relief; and the appli- 
cations to the federal government, to which the 
right of purchasing Indian lands, even within the 
States, exclusively belonged, were incessant and 
urgent. Piecemeal acquisitions, to end in get- 
ting the whole, were the constant effort ; and it 
was evident that the encumbered States and ter- 
ritories would not, and certainly ought not to be 
satisfied, until all their soil was open to settle- 
ment, and subject to their jurisdiction. To the 
Indians themselves it was equally essential to be 
removed. The contact and pressure of the white 
race was fatal to them. They had dwindled un- 
der it, degenerated, become depraved, and whole 
tribes extinct, or reduced to a few individuals, 
wherever they attempted to remain in the old 
States ; and could look for no other fate in the 
new ones. 

"What," exclaimed Mr Elliott, senator from 
Georgia, in advocating a system of general re- 
moval — " what has become of the immense hordes 
of these people who once occupied the soil of tho 



28 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



older States ? In New England, where numer- 
ous and warlike tribes once so fiercely contended 
for supremacy with our forefathers, but two 
thousand five hundred of their descendants re- 
main, and t\wy are dispirited and degraded. Of 
the powerful league of the Six Nations, so long the 
scourge and terror of New- York, only about five 
thousand souls remain. In New Jersey. Pennsyl- 
vania, and Maryland, the numeious and powerful 
tribes once seen there, are either extinct, or so re- 
duced as to escape observation in any enumeration 
of the States' inhabitants. In Virginia, Mr. Jef- 
ferson informs us that there were at the com- 
mencement of its colonization (1607), in the com- 
paratively small portion of her extent which lies 
between the sea-coast and the mountains, and 
from the Potomac to the most southern waters 
of James River, upwards of forty tribes of 
Indians : now there are but forty-seven individ- 
uals in the whole State ! In North Carohna 
none are counted: in South Carolina only four 
hundred and fifty. While in Georgia, where 
tliirty years since there were not less than thirty 
thousand souls, there now remain some fifteen 
thousand — the one half having disappeared in a 
single generation. That many of these people 
have removed, and others perished by the sword 
in the frequent wars which have occurred in the 
progress of our settlements, I am free to admit. 
But where are the hundreds of thousands, with 
their descendants, who neither removed, nor 
were thus destroyed ? Sir, like a promontory 
of sand, exposed to the ceaseless encroachments 
of the ocean, they have been gradually wasting 
away before the current of the advancing white 
population which set in upon them from every 
quarter; «nd unless speedily removed beyond 
the influence of this cause, of the many tens of 
thousands now within the limits of the southern 
and western States, a remnant will not long be 
found to point you to the graves of their ances- 
tors, or to relate the sad story of their disap- 
pearance from earth." 

Mr. Jefierson, that statesman in fact as well 
as in name, that man of enlarged and compre- 
hensive views, whose prerogative it was to fore- 
see evils and provide against them, had long fore- 
seen the evils both to the Indians and to the 
whites, in retaining any part of these tribes within 
our organized limits ; and upon the first acquisi- 
tion of Louisiana — within three months after the 
acquisition — proposed it for the future residence 



of all the tribes on the cast of the Mississippi ; 
and Ids plan had been acted upon in some de- 
gree, both by himself and his immediate succes- 
sor. But it was reserved for Mr. Monroe's ad- 
ministration to take up the subject in its full 
sense, to move upon it as a system, and to ac- 
complish at a single operation the removal of 
all the tribes from the east to the west side of 
the Mississippi — from the settled States and ter- 
ritories, to the wide and wild expanse of Louisi- 
ana. Their preservation and civilization, and 
permanency in their new possessions, were to be 
their advantages in this removal — delusive, it 
might be, but still a respite from impending de- 
struction if they remained where they were. This 
comprehensive plan was advocated by Mr. Cal- 
houn, then Secretary of War, and charged with 
the administration of Indian affairs. It was a plan 
of incalculable value to the southern and west- 
ern States, but impracticable without the hearty 
concurrence of the northern and non-slaveholding 
States. It might awaken the slavery question, 
hardly got to sleep after the alarming agitations 
of the Missouri controvers}-. The States and 
territories to be relieved were slaveholding. To 
remove the Indians would make room for the 
spread of slaves. No removal could be effected 
without the double process of a treaty and an 
appropriation act — the treaty to be ratified by 
two thirds of the Senate, where the slave and 
free States were equal, and the appropriation to 
be obtained from Congress, where free States 
held the majority of members. It was evident 
that the execution of the whole plan was in the 
hands of the free States ; and nobly did they do 
their duty by the South. Some societies, and 
some individuals, no doubt, with very humane 
motives, but with the foil}-, and blindness, and 
injury to the objccis of their care which generally 
attend a gratuitous interference with the afi'airs 
of others, attempted to raise an outer j', and made 
themselves busy to frustrate the plan ; but the 
free States themselves, in their federal action, 
and through the proper exponents of their will 
— their delegations in Congress — cordially con- 
curred in it, and faithfully lent it a helping and 
efticient hand. The President, Mr. ^lonroe, in 
the session 1824-'25, recommended its adoption 
to Congress, and asked the necessary appropria- 
tion to begin from the Congress. A bill was re- 
ported in the Senate for that purpose, and unani- 
mously passed that body. "What is more, 



ANNO 1824. JAMES MONROE, PRESIDENT. 



29 



the treaties made with the Kansas and Osage 
tribes in 1825, for the cession to the United 
States of all their vast territory west of Missouri 
and Arkansas, except small reserves to them- 
selves, and which treaties had been made with- 
out previous authority from the government, and 
for the purpose of acquiring new homes for all 
the Indians east of the Mississippi, were duly 
and readily ratified. Those treaties were made 
at St. Louis by General Clarke, without any au- 
thority, so far as this large acquisition was con- 
cerned, at my instance, and upon my assurance 
that the Senate would ratify them. It was done. 
They were ratified : a great act of justice was 
rendered to the South. The foundation was 
laid for the future removal of the Indians, which 
was followed up by subsequent treaties and acts 
of Congress, until the southern and western 
States were as free as the northern from the in- 
cumbrance of an Indian population ; and I, who 
was an actor in these transactions, who reported 
the bills and advocated the treaties which brought 
this great benefit to the south and west, and 
witnessed the cordial support of the mem- 
bers from the free States, without whose con- 
currence they could not have been passed— I, 
who wish for harmony and concord am«ng all 
the States, and all the sections of this Union, 
owe it to the cause of truth and justice, and to 
the cultivation of fraternal feelings, to bear 
this faithful testimony to the just and liberal 
conduct of the non-slaveholding States, in re- 
lieving the southern and western States from 
so large an incumbrance, and aiding the exten- 
sion of their settlement and cultivation. The 
recommendation of Mr. Monroe, and the treaties 
of 1825, were the beginning of the system of 
total removal; but it was a beginning which 
assured the success of the whole plan, and 
was followed up, as will be seen, in the history 
of each case, until the entire system was accom- 
plished. 



CHAPTEK XII. 

VISIT OF LAFAYETTE TO THE UNITED STATES. 

In the summer of this year General Lafayette, 
accompanied by his son, Mr. George Washmg- 
ton Lafayette, and under an invitation from the 
President, revisited the United States after a 



lapse of forty years. He was received with un- 
bounded honor, affection, and gratitude by the 
American people. To the survivors of the Revo- 
lution, it was the return of a brother ; to the 
new generation, born since that time, it was the 
apparition of an historical charactei-, familiar 
from the cradle ; and combining all the titles to 
love, admiration, gratitude, enthusiasm, which 
could act upon the heart and the imagination of 
the young and the ardent. He visited every 
State in the Union, doubled in number since, as 
the friend and pupil of Washington, he had spilt 
his blood, and lavished his fortune, for their in- 
dependence. His progress through the States 
was a triumphal procession, such as no Roman 
ever led up — a procession not through a city, 
but over a continent — followed, not by captives 
in chains of iron, but by a nation in the bonds 
of affection. To him it was an unexpected and 
overpowering reception. His modest estimate of 
himself had not allowed him to suppose that he 
was to electrify a continent. He expected kind- 
ness, but not enthusiasm. He expected to meet 
with surviving friends — not to rouse a young gen- 
eration. As he approached the harbor of New- 
York, he made inquiry of some acquaintance to 
know whether he could find a hack to convey 
him to a hotel ? Illustrious man, and modest as 
illustrious ! Little did he know that all Ame- 
rica was on foot to receive him — to take posses- 
sion of him the moment he touched her soil — to 
fetch and to carry him — to feast and applaud 
him— to make him the guest of cities. States, 
and the nation, as long as he could be detained. 
Many were the happy meetings which he had 
with old comrades, survivors for near half a 
century of their early hardships and dangers ; 
and most grateful to his heart it was to see 
them, so many of them, exceptions to the maxim 
which denies to the begmners of revolutions the 
good fortune to conclude them (and of which 
maxim his own country had just been so sad an 
exemplification), and to see his old comrades not 
only conclude the one they began, but live to enjoy 
its fruits and honors. Three of his old associates 
he found ex-presidents (Adams, Jefferson, and 
Madison), enjoying the respect and affection of 
their country, after having reached its highest 
honors. Another, and the last one that Time 
would admit to the Presidency (Mr. Monroe) 
now in the Presidential chair, and inviting him 
to revisit the land of his adoption. Many of his 



30 



THIRTY TEARS' VIEW. 



early associates seen in the two Houses of Con- 
gress — many in the State governments, and 
many more in all the walks of private life, pa- 
triarchal sires, respected for their characters, 
and venerated for their patriotic services. It 
was a grateful spectacle, and the more impres- 
sive from the calamitous fate which he had seen 
attend so many of the revolutionary patriots of 
the Old "World. But the enthusiasm of the 
young generation astonished and excited him, 
and gave him a new view of himself — a future 
glimpse of hitnself — and such as he would be 
seen in after ages. Before them, he was in the 
presence of posterity ; and in their applause and 
admiration he saw his own future place in his- 
torj^, passing down to the latest time as one of 
the most perfect and beautiful characters which 
one of the most eventful periods of the world 
had produced. Mr. Claj-, as Speaker of the 
House of Representatives, and the organ of their 
congratulations to Lafayette (when he was re- 
ceived in the hall of the House), very felicitously 
seized the idea of his present confrontation with 
posterity, and adorned and amplified it with the 
graces of oratory. He said : " The vain wish 
has been sometimes indulged, that Providence 
would allow the patriot, after death, to return 
to his country, and to contemplate the inter- 
mediate changes which had taken place — to view 
the forests felled, the cities built, the mountains 
levelled, the canals cut, the highways opened, 
the progress of the arts, the advancement of 
learning, and the increase of population. Gen- 
eral ! jour present visit to the United States is 
the realization of the consoling object of that 
wish, hitherto vain. You are in the midst of 
posterity ! Every where you must have been 
struck with tlie great changes, physical and 
moral, which have occurred since you left us. 
Even this very city, bearing a venerated name, 
alike endearing to you and to us, has since 
emerged from the fores' which then covered its 
site. In one respect you behold us unaltered, 
and that is, in tho sentiment of continued devo- 
tion to liberty, and of ardent affection and pro- 
found gratitude to your departed friend, the fa- 
ther of his country, and to your illustrious asso- 
ciates in the field and in the cabinet, for the mul- 
tiplied blessings which surround us, and for the 
verj- privilege of addressing you, which I now 
have." He was received m both Houses of Con- 
gress with equal honor j but the Houses did 



not limit themselves to honors : they added sub- 
stantial rewards for long past services and sacri- 
fices — two hundred thousand dollars in money, 
and twenty-four thousand acres of fertile land in 
Florida. These noble grants did not pass with- 
out objection — objection to tho principle, not to 
the amount. The ingratitude of republics is the 
theme of any declaimer : it required a Tacitus 
to say, that gratitude was the death of republics, 
and the birth of monarchies ; and it belongs to 
the people of the United States to exliibit an 
exception to that profound remark (as they do 
to so many other lessons of history), and show a 
young republic that knows how to be grateful 
without being unwise, and is able to pay the debt 
of gratitude without giving its liberties in the dis- 
charge of the obligation. The venerable Mr. Ma- 
con, yielding to no one in love ind admiration of 
Lafayette, and appreciation of his services and sa- 
crifices in the American cause, opposed the grants 
in the Senate, and did it with the honesty of pur- 
pose and the simplicity of language which distin- 
guished all the acts of his life. He said : " It 
was with painful reluctance that he felt liimself 
obliged to oppose his voice to the passage of tliis 
bill. He admitted, to the full extent claimed for 
them, the great and meritorious services of 
General Lafayette, and he did not object to the 
precise sum which this bill proposed to award 
him ; but he objected to the bill on this ground : 
he considered General Lafayette, to all intents 
and purposes, as having been, during our revolu- 
tion, a son adopted into the family, taken into 
the household, and placed, in every respect, on 
the same footing with the other sons of the same 
family. To treat him as others were treated, 
was all, in this view of his relation to us, that 
could be required, and this had been done. That 
General Lafayette made great sacrifices, and 
spent much of his money in the service of this 
country (said Mr. M.), I as firmly believe as I 
do any other tiling under the sun. I have no 
doubt that every faculty of his mind and body 
were exerted in the Revolutionary war, in de- 
fence of this country ; but this was equally the 
case with all the sons of the family. Many na- 
tive Americans spent their all, made great sacri- 
fices, and devoted their lives in the same cause. 
This was the ground of his objection to this bill, 
which, he repeated, it was as disagreeable to 
him to state as it could be to the Senate to hear. 
I He did not mean to take up the time of the S©- 



ANNO 1823. JAMES MONROE, PRESIDENT. 



31 



Date in debate upon the principle of the bill, or 
to move any amendment to it. He admitted 
that, when such things were done, they should 
be done with a free hand. It was to the prin- 
ciple of the bill, therefore, and not to the sum 
proposed to be given by it, that he objected." 

The ardent Mr. Hayne, of South Carolina, re- 
porter of the bill in the Senate, replied to the 
abjections, and first showed from history (not 
from Lafayette, who would have nothing to do 
<vith the proposed grant), liis advances, losses, and 
sacrifices in our cause. He had expended for 
the American service, in six years, from 
1777 to 1783, the sum of 700,000 francs 
( $140,000 ), and under what circumstances? 
— a foreigner, owing us nothing, and throwing 
his fortune into the scale with his life, to be la- 
vished in our cause. He left the enjoyments of 
rank and fortune, and the endearments of his 
family, to come and serve in our almost destitute 
armies, and without pay. He equipped and 
armed a regiment for our service, and freighted 
a vessel to us, loaded with arms and munitions. 
It was not until the year 1794, when almost 
ruined by the French revolution, and by his ef- 
forts in the cause of liberty, that he would re- 
ceive the naked pay, without interest, of a gene- 
ral officer for the time he had served with us. 
He was entitled to land as one of the officers of 
the Revolution, and 11,500 acres was granted to 
him, to be located on any of the public lands of 
the United States. His agent located 1000 
acres adjoining the city of New Orleans ; and 
Congress afterwards, not being informed of the 
location, granted the same ground to the city of 
New Orleans. His location was valid, and he 
was so informed ; but he refused to adhere to it, 
saying that he would have no contest with any 
portion of the American people, and ordered the 
location to be removed ; which was done, and car- 
ried upon ground of little value — thus giving 
up what was then worth $50,000, and now 
$500,000. These were his moneyed advances, 
losses, and sacrifices, great in themselves, and of 
great value to our cause, but perhaps exceeded 
by tlie moral effect of his example in joining us, 
and his influence with the king and mmistry, 
which procured us the alliance of France. 

The grants were voted with great unanimity, 
and with the general concurrence of the Ameri- 
can people. Mr. Jefferson was warmly for them, 
giving as a reason, in a conversation with me 



wliile the grants were depending (for the bill 
was passed in the Christmas holidays, when I 
had gone to Virginia, and took the opportunity 
to call upon that great man), which showed 
his regard for liberty abroad as well as at home, 
and his far-seeing sagacity into future events. 
He said there would be a change in France, 
and Lafayette would be at the head of it, and 
ought to be easy and independent in his circum- 
stances, to be able to act efficiently in conducting 
the movement. This he said to me on Christmas 
day, 1824. Six years afterwards this view into 
futurity was verified. The old Bourbons had to 
retire : the Duke of Orleans, a brave general in 
the republican armies, at the commencement of 
the Revolution, was handed to the throne by La- 
fiiyette, and became the " citizen king, surround- 
ed by republican institutions." And in this 
Lafayette was consistent and sincere. He was 
a republican himself, but deemed a constitutional 
monarchy the proper government for France, and 
labored for that form in the person of Louis 
XVI. as well as in that of Louis Philippe. 

Loaded with honors, and with every feeling of 
his heart gratified in the noble reception he had 
met in the country of his adoption, Lafayette re- 
turned to the country of his birth the following 
summer, still as the guest of the United States, 
and under its flag. He was carried back in a 
national ship of war, the new frigate Brandy- 
wine — a delicate comijliment (in the name and 
selection of the ship) from the new President, 
Mr. Adams, Lafayette having wet with his blood 
the sanguinary battle-field which takes its name 
from the little stream which gave it first to the 
field, and then to the frigate. Mr. Monroe, then 
a subaltern in the service of the United States, 
was wounded at the same time. How honorable 
to themselves and to the American peoi^le, that 
nearly fifty years afterwards, they should again 
appear together, and in exalted station ; one as 
President, inviting the other to the great repub- 
lic, and signing the acts which testified a na- 
tion's gratitude ; the other as a patriot hero, 
tried in the revolutions of two countries, and re- 
splendent in the glory of virtuous and consistent 
fame. 



32 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

THE TAEIFF, AND AMERICAN SYSTEM. 

The revision of the Tariff, with a view to the 
protection of home industry, and to the estab- 
lishment of what was then called, " The Ameri- 
can System," was one of the large subjects 
before Congress at the session 1823-24, and was 
the regular commencement of the heated debates 
on that question wliich afterwards ripened into 
a serious difficulty between the federal govern- 
ment and some of the southern States. The 
presidential election being then depending, the 
subject became tinctured with party politics, in 
which, so far as that ingredient was concerned, 
and was not controlled by other considerations, 
members divided pretty much on the line which 
always divided them on a question of construct- 
ive powers. The protection of domestic indus- 
try not being among the granted powers, was 
looked for in the incidental ; and denied by the 
strict constructionists to be a substantive power, 
to be exercised for the direct purpose of protec- 
tion ; but admitted by all at that time, and ever 
since the first tarifi" act of 1789, to be an inci- 
dent to the revenue raising power, and an inci- 
dent to be regarded in the exercise of that 
power. Revenue the object, protection the inci- 
dent, had been the rule in the earlier tariffs : 
now that rule was sought to be reversed, and to 
make protection the object of the law, and reve- 
nue the incident. The revision, and the aug- 
mentation of duties which it contemplated, 
turned, not so much on the emptiness of the 
treasury and the necessity for rai.sing money to 
fill it, as upon the distress of the country, and 
the necessity of creating a home demand for la- 
bor, provisions and materials, by turning a larger 
proportion of our national industry into the 
channel of domestic manufactures. Mr. Clay, 
the leader in the proposed revision, and the 
champion of the American System, expressly 
placed the proposed augmentation of duties on 
this ground ; and in his main speech ujjon the 
question, dwelt upon the state of the country, 
and gave a picture of the public distress, which 
deserves to be reproduced in this View of the 
working of our government, both as the leading 
argument for the new tarifi" and as an exliibi- 



tion of a national distress, which those who were 
not cotemporary with the state of thmgs which 
he described, would find it difficult to conceive 
or to realize. He said : 

•' In casting our eyes around us, the most 
prominent circumstance which fixes our atten- 
tion and challenges our deepest regret, is the 
general distress which pervades the whole coan- 
try. It is forced upon us by numerous facts 
of the most incontestable character. It is indi- 
cated by the diminished exports of native pro- 
duce ; by the depressed and reduced state of our 
foreign navigation ; by our diminished com- 
merce ; by successive unthreshed crops of grain 
perishing in our barns for want of a market ; 
by the alarming diminution of the cii'culating 
medium ; by the numerous bankruptcies ; by a 
universal complaint of the want of cm{)loyment. 
and a consequent reduction of the wages of la- 
bor ; by the ravenous pursuit after public situa- 
tions, not for the sake of their honors, and the 
performance of their public duties, but as a 
means of private subsistence ; by the reluctant 
resort to the perilous use of paper money ; by 
the intervention of legislation in the delicate 
relation between debtor and creditor ; and, 
above all, by the low and depressed state of the 
value of almost every description of the whole 
mass of the property of the nation, which has, 
on an average, sunk not less than about fifty 
per centum within a few years. This distress 
pervades every part of the Union, every class of 
society ; all feel it, though it may be felt, at dif- 
ferent places, in different degrees. It is like the 
atmosphere which surrounds us : all must in- 
hale it, and none can escape from it. A few 
years ago, the planting interest consoled itself 
with its happy exemptions from the general ca- 
lamity ; but it has now reached this interest also, 
which experiences, though with less severity, 
the general sufiering. It is most painful to me 
to attempt to sketch, or to dwell on the gloom 
of this picture. But I have exaggerated nothing. 
Perfect fidelity to the original would have au- 
thorized me to have thrown on deeper and 
darker hues." 

Mr. Clay was the leading speaker on the part 
of the bill in the House of Representatives, 
but he was well supported by many able and 
effective speakers — by Messrs. Storrs, Tracy, 
John W. Taylor, from New-York ; by Messrs. 
Buchanan, Todd, Ingham, Hemphill, Andrew 
Stewart, from Pennsylvania ; by Mr. Louis 
McLane, from Delaware ; by Messrs. Buckner 
F. Johnson, Letcher, Metcalfe, Trimble, "White, 
Wicklifie, from Kentucky ; by Messrs. Camp- 
bell, Vance, John W. Wright, Vinton, Whittle- 
sey, from Ohio ; Mr. Daniel P. Cook, from 
Illinois. 



ANNO 1824. JAMES MONROE, PRESIDENT. 



33 



Mr. Webster was the leading speaker on the 
other side, and disputed the universaUty of the 
distress which had been described ; claiming ex- 
emption from it in New England ; denied the 
assumed cause for it where it did exist, and at- 
tributed it to over expansion and collapse of the 
paper system, as in Great Britain, after the long 
suspension of the Bank of England ; denied the 
necessity for increased protection to manufac- 
tures, and its inadequacy, if granted, to the relief 
of the country where distress prevailed; and 
contested the propriety of high or prohibitory 
duties, in the present active and intelligent state 
of the world, to stimulate industry and manu- 
facturing enterprise. He said : 

"Within my own observation, there is no 
cause for such gloomy and terrifying a repre- 
sentation. In respect to the New England 
States, with the condition of which I am best 
acquainted, they present to me a period of very 
general prosperity. Supposing the evil then to 
be a depression of prices, and a partial pecuniary 
pressure ; the next inquiry is into the causes of 
that evil. A depreciated currency existed in a 
great part of the country — depreciated to such a 
degree as that, at one time, exchange between 
the centre and the north was as high as twenty 
per cent. The Bank of the United States was 
instituted to correct this evil ; but, for causes 
which it is not now necessary to enumerate, it 
did not for some years bring back the currency 
of the country to a sound state. In May, 1819, 
the British House of Commons, by an unanimous 
vote, decided that the resumption of cash pay- 
ments by the Bank of England should not be 
deferred beyond the ensuing February (it had 
then been in a state of suspension near twenty- 
five years). The paper system of England had 
certainly communicated an artificial value to 
property. It had encouraged speculation, and 
excited overtrading. When the shock therefore 
came, and this violent pressure for money acted 
at the same moment on the Continent and in 
England, inflated and unnatural prices could be 
kept up no longer. A reduction took place, 
which has been estimated to have been at least 
equal to a fall of thirty, if not forty, per cent. 
The depression was universal ; and the change 
was felt in the United States severely, though 
not equally so in every part of them. About 
the time of these foreign events, our own bank 
system underwent a change ; and all these 
causes, in my view of the subject, concurred to 
produce the great shock which took place in our 
commercial cities, and through many parts of 
the country. The year 1819 was a year of nu- 
merous failures, and very considerable distress, 
and would have furnished for better grounds 
than exist at present for that gloomy represen- 
tation which has been presented. Mr. Speaker 

Vol. 1—3 



(Clay) has alluded to the strong inclination 
which exists, or has existed, in various parts of 
the country, to issue paper money, as a proof of 
great existing difficulties. I regard it rather as 
a very productive cause of those dilTicultics ; and 
we cannot fail to observe, that there is at this 
moment much the loudest complaint of distress 
precisely where there has been the greatest at- 
tempt to relieve it by a system of j^aper credit. 
Let us not suppose that we are 'beginning tlie 
protection of manufactures by duties on imports. 
Look to the history of our laws; look to the 
present state of our laws. Consider that our 
whole revenue, with a trifling exception, is col- 
lected from the custom-house, and always has 
been ; and then say what propriety there is in 
calling on the government for protection, as if 
no protection had heretofore been afforded. On 
the general question, allow me to ask if the 
doctrine of prohibition, as a general doctrine, be 
not preposterous? Suppose all nations to act 
upon it : they would be prosperous, then, accoi-d- 
ing to the argument, precisely in the proportion 
in which they abolished intercourse with one 
another. The best apology for laws of prohibi- 
tion and laws of monopoly, will be found in that 
state of society, not only unenhghtcned, but 
sluggish, m which they are most generally es- 
tablished. Private industry in those days, re- 
quired strong provocatives, which government 
was seeking to administer by these means. 
Something was wanted to actuate and stimulate 
men, and the prospects of such profits as would, 
in our times, excite unbounded competition, 
would hardly move the sloth of foinier ages. 
In some instances, no doubt, these laws produced 
an effect which, in that period, would not have 
taken place without them. (Instancing the pro- 
tection to the English woollen manufactures in 
the time of the Henrys and the Edwards). But 
our age is wholly of a different character, and 
its legislation takes another turn. Society is 
full of excitement : competition comes in place 
of monopoly ; and intelligence and industry ask 
only for fair play and an open field." 

With Mr. Webster were numerous and able 
speakers on the side of free trade : From his 
own State, Mr. Baylies; from New- York, Mr. 
Cambreling ; from Virginia, Messrs. Randolph, 
Philip P. Barbour, John S. Barbour, Garnet, 
Alexander Smythe, Floyd, Mercer, Archer, Ste- 
venson, Rives, Tucker, Mark Alexander ; from 
North Carolina, Messrs. Mangum, Saunders, 
Spaight, Lewis Williams, Burton, Weldon N. 
Edwards ; from South Carolina, Messrs. Mc- 
Duffie, James Hamilton, Poinsett ; from Geor- 
gia, Messrs. Forsyth, Tatnall, Cuthbert, Cobb; 
from Tennessee, Messrs. Blair, Isaaks, Reynolds ; 
from Louisiana, Mr. Edward Livingston ; from 
Alabama, Mr. Owen ; from Maryland, Mr. 



34 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



Warfiekl ; from Mississippi, Mi\ Christopher 
Kankin. 

The bill was carried in the House, after a pro- 
tracted contest of ten weeks, by the loan majority 
of five — 107 to 102 — only two members absent, 
and the voting so zealous that several members 
were brought in upon their sick couches. In the 
Senate the bill encountered a strenuous resist- 
ance. Mr. Edward Lloyd, of Maryland, moved 
to refer it to the committee on finance — a motion 
considered hostile to the bill ; and which was 
lost by one vote — 22 to 23. It was then, on the 
motion of Mr. Dickerson, of New Jersey, referred 
to the committee on manufactures ; a reference 
deemed favorable to the bill, and by which com- 
mittee it was soon returned to the Senate with- 
out any proposed amendment. It gave rise to a 
most earnest debate, and many pi-opositions of 
amendment, some of which, of slight import, 
were carried. The bill itself was carried by the 
small majority of four votes — 25 to 21. The 
principal speakers in favor of the bill were: 
Messrs. Dickerson, of New Jersey ; D'Wolf, of 
Rhode Island ; Holmes, of ]\Iaine ; R. M. John- 
son, of Kentucky ; Lowrie, of Pennsylvania ; Tal- 
bot, of Kentucky; Van Buren. Against it the 
principal speakers were : Messrs. James Barbour 
and John Taylor, of Virginia (usually called 
John Taylor of Caroline) ; Messrs. Branch, of 
Xorth Carolina ; Hayne, of South Carolina ; 
Henry Johnson and Josiah Johnston, of Louisi- 
ana ; Kelly and King, of Alabama ; Rufus King, 
of New- York ; James Lloyd, of ^lassachusetts ; 
Edward Lloyd and Samuel Smith, of Maryland ; 
Macon, of North Carolina 5 Van Dyke, of Dela- 
ware. The bill, though brought forward avow- 
edly for the protection of domestic manufactures, 
was not entirely supported on that ground. An 
increase of revenue was the motive with some, 
the public debt being still near ninety millions, 
and a loan of five millions being authorized at 
that session. An increased protection to the pro- 
ducts of several States, as lead in Missouri and 
Illinois, hemp in Kentucky, iron in Pennsylvania, 
wool in Ohio and New-York, commanded manj'^ 
votes for the bill ,' and the impending presidential 
election had its influence in its favor. Two of 
the candidates, Messrs. Adams and Clay, were 
avowedly for it; General Jacksou, who voted 
fur the bill, was for it, as tending to give a home 
supply of tlie articles necessary in time of war, 
and as raising revenue to pay the public debt. 



Mr. Crawford was opposed to it ; and Mr. Cal- 
houn had been withdrawn from the list of presi- 
dential candidates, and become a candidate for 
the Vice-Presidency. The Southern planting 
States were extremely dissatisfied with the pass- 
age of the bill, believing that the new burdens 
upon imports which it imposed fell upon the 
producers of the exports, and tended to enrich 
one section of the Union at the expense of 
another. The attack and support of the bill 
took much of a sectional aspect ; Virginia, the 
two Carolinas, Georgia, and some others being 
nearly unanimous against it. Pennsylvania, 
New- York, Ohio, Kentucky being nearly unani- 
mous for it. Massachusetts, which up to this 
time had a predominating interest in commerce, 
voted all, except one member, against it. With 
this sectional aspect, a tarifi" for protection also 
began to assume a political aspect, being taken 
under the care of the party since discriminated 
as Whig, which drew from Mr. Van Buren a 
sagacious remark, addressed to the manufactur- 
ers themselves; that if they suffered their inter- 
ests to become identified with a political party 
(any one), they would share the fate of that 
party, and go down with it whenever it sunk. 
Without the increased advantages to some States, 
the pendency of the presidential election, and 
the political tincture which the question began 
to receive, the bill would not have passed — so 
difficult is it to prevent national legislation from 
falling under the influence of extrinsic and acci- 
dental causes. The bill was approved by Mr. 
Monroe — a proof that that careful and strict 
constructionist of the Constitution did not con- 
sider it as deprived of its revenue character by 
the degree of protection which it extended. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

THE A. B. PLOT. 

On Monday, the 19th of April, the Speaker of 
the House (Mr. Clay) laid before that body a 
note just received from Ninian Edwards, Esq., 
late Senator in Congress, from Illinois, and then 
Minister to jNIcxico, and then on his way to his 
post, requesting him to present to the House a 
communication which accompanied the note, and 



ANNO 1824. JAMES MONROE, PRESIDENT. 



85 



which charged illegalities and misconduct on the 
Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. William H. Craw- 
ford. The charges and specifications, spread 
through a voluminous communication, were con- 
densed at its close into six regular heads of 
accusation, containing matter of impeachment ; 
and declaring them all to be susceptible of proof, 
if the House would order an investigation. The 
communication was accompanied by ten num- 
bers of certain newspaper publications, signed 
A. B., of which Mr. Edwards avowed himself to 
be the author, and asked that they might be 
received as a part of his communication, and 
printed along with it, and taken as the specifica- 
tions under the six charges. Mr. Crawford was 
then a prominent candidate for the Presidency, 
and the A. B. papers, thus communicated to the 
House, were a series of publications made in a 
Washington City paper, during the canvass, to 
defeat his election, and would doubtless have 
shared the usual fate of such publications, and 
sunk into oblivion after the election was over 
had it not been for this formal appeal to the 
House (the grand inquest of the nation) and this 
o^all for investigation. The communication, how- 
ever, did not seem to contemplate an early in- 
vestigation, and certainly not at the then session 
of Congress. Congress was near its adjourn- 
ment ; the accuser was on his way to Mexico ; 
the charges were grave ; the specifications under 
them numerous and complex ; and many of them 
relating to transactions with the remote western 
banks. The evident expectation of the accuser 
was, that the matter would lie over to the next 
session, before which time the presidential elec- 
tion would take place, and all the mischief be 
done to Mr. Crawford's character, resulting from 
unanswered accusations of so much gravity, and 
so imposingly laid before the impeaching branch 
of Congress. The friends of Mr. Crawford saw 
the necessity of immediate action ; and Mr. Floyd 
of Virginia, instantly, upon the reading of the 
communication, moved that a committee be ap- 
pointed to take it into consideration, and that it 
be empowered to send for persons and papers— 
to administer oaths — take testimony— and report 
it to the House : with leave to sit after the ad- 
journment, if the investigation was not finished 
before ; and publish their report. The committee 
was -granted, with all the powers asked for, and 
was most unexceptionably composed by the 
speaker (Mr. Clay) ; a task of delicacy and re- 



sponsibilitjr, the Speaker being himself a candi- 
date for the Presidency, and every member of the 
House a friend to some one of the candidates, in- 
cluding the accused. It consisted of Mr. Floj^d, the 
mover; Mr. Livingston, of Louisiana; Mr. Web- 
ster, of Massachusetts ; ]\Ir. Randolph, of Virgi- 
nia ; Mr. J. W. Taylor, of New-York ; Mr. Duncan 
McArthur, of Ohio ; and Mr. Owen, of Alabama. 
The sergeant-at-arms of the House was imme- 
diately dispatched by the committee in pursuit 
of Mr. Edwards : overtook him at fifteen hun- 
dred miles ; brought him back to Washington ; 
but did not arrive until Congress had adjourned. 
In the mean time, the committee sat, and received 
from Mr. Crawford his answer to the six char- 
ges: an answer pronounced by Mr. Randolph 
to be " a triumphant and irresistible vindication ; 
the most temperate, passionless, mild, dignified, 
and irrefragable exposure of falsehood that ever 
met a base accusation ; and without one harsh 
word towards their author." This was the true 
character of the answer ; but Mr. Crawford did 
not write it. He was unable at that time to 
write any thing. It was written and* read to 
liim as it went on, by a treasury clerk, familiar 
with all the transactions to which the accusa- 
tions related— Mr. Asbury Dickens, since secre- 
tary of the Senate. This Mr. Crawford told 
himself at the time, with his accustomed frank- 
ness. His answer being mentioned by a friend, 
as a proof that his paralytic stroke had not af- 
fected his strength, he replied, that was no proof- 
that Dickens wrote it. The committee went on 
with the case (Mr. Edwards represented by his 
son-in-law, Mr. Cook), examined all the evidence 
in their reach, made a report unanimously con- 
curred in, and exonerating Mr. Crawford from 
every dishonorable or illegal imputation. The 
report was accepted by the House; but Mr. 
Edwards, having far to travel on his return 
journey, had not yet been examined ; and to hear 
liim the committee continued to sit after Con- 
gress had adjourned. He was examined fully, 
but could prove nothing; and the committee 
made a second report, corroboratmg the former, 
and declaring it as their unanimous opinion — 
the opinion of every one present — " that nothing 
had been proved to impeach the integrity of the 
Secretary, or to bring into doubt the general 
correctness and ability of his administration of 
the public finances." 

The committee also reported all the testimony 



36 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



taken, from which it appeared that Mr. Edwards 
himself had contradicted all the accusations in 
the A. B. papers ; had denied the authorship of 
them ; had applauded the conduct of Mr. Craw- 
ford in the use of the western banks, and their 
currency in payment of the public lands, as hav- 
ing saved farmers from the loss of their homes ; 
and declared his belief, that no man in the gov- 
ernment could have conducted the fiscal and 
financial concerns of the government with more 
integrity and propriety than he had done. Tliis 
was while his nomination as minister to Mexico 
was depending in the Senate, and to Mr. Noble, 
a Senator from Indiana, and a friend to Mr. 
Crawford. He testified : 

" That he had had a conversation with Mr. 
Edwards, introduced by Mr. E. himself, concern- 
ing Mr. Crawford's management of the western 
banks, and the authorship of the A. B. letters. 
That it was pending his nomination made by 
the President to the Senate, as minister to Mex- 
ico, He (Mr. E.) stated that he was about to 
be attacked in the Senate, for the purpose of de- 
feating his nomination : that party and political 
spirit was now high ; that he understood that 
charges would be exhibited against him, and 
that it had been so declared in the Senate. He 
further remarked, that he knew me to be the 
decided friend of William H. Crawford, and said, 
I am considered as being his bitter enemy ; and 
I am charged with being the author of the num- 
bers signed A. B. ; but (raising his hand) I pledge 
you my honor, I am not the author, nor do I 
know who the author is. Crawford and I, said 
Mr. Edwards, have had a little difference ; but I 
have always considered him a high-minded, hon- 
orable, and vigilant officer of the government. 
He has been abused about the western banks 
and the unavailable funds. Leaning forward, 
and extending his hand, he added, now damn it, 
you know we both live in States where there 
are many poor debtors to the government for 
lands, together with a deranged currency. The 
notes on various banks being depreciated, after 
the effect and operation of the war m tliat por- 
tion of the Union, and the banks, l)y attempting 
to call in their paper, having exhausted their 
specie, the notes that were in circulation became 
of little or no value. Many men of influence in 
that country, said he, have united to induce the 
Sccretar}'- of the Treasury to select certain banks 
as banks of deposit, and to take tlie notes of 
certain banks in payment for public land. Had 
he (Mr. Crawford) not done so, many of our in- 
habitants would have been turned out of doors, 
and lost their land ; and the people of the coun- 
try would have had a universal disgust against 
Mr. Crawford. And I will venture to say, said 
Mr. Edwards, notwithstanding I am considered 
his enemy, that no man in this government could 
have managed the fiscal and financial concerns 



of the government with more integrity and pro- 
priety than Mr. Crawford did. He (Mr. Noble) 
had never repeated this conversation to any body 
until the evening of the day that I (lie) was inform- 
ed that Gov. Edwards' ' address ' was presented to 
the House of Representatives. On that evening, 
in conversation with several members of the 
House, amongst whem were Mr. Reid and Mr. 
Nelson, some of whom said that Governor Ed- 
wards had avowed himself to be the author of 
A. B., and others said that he had not done so, I 
remarked, that they nmst have misunderstood the 
'address,' for Gov. Edwards had pledged his 
honor to me that he was not the author of A. B." 
Other witnesses testified to his denials, while 
the nomination was depending, of all authorship 
of these publications : among them, the editors 
of the National Intelligencer, — friends to Mr, 
Crawford. Mr. Edwards called at their office 
at that time (the first time he had been there 
within a year), to exculpate himself from the 
imputed authorship ; and did it so earnestly that 
the editors believed him, and published a contra- 
diction of the report against him in their paper, 
stating that they had a " good reason " to know 
that he was not the author of these publications. 
That " good reason," they testified, was his own 
voluntary denial in this unexpected visit to their 
office, and his declarations in what he called a 
"frank and free" conversation with them on the 
subject. Such testimony, and the absence of all 
proof on the other side, was fatal to the accusa- 
tions, and to the accuser. The committee re- 
ported honorably and unanimously in favor of 
Mr. Crawford ; the Congress and the country 
accepted it ; INIr. Edwards resigned his commis* 
sion, and disappeared from the federal jiolitical 
theatre : and that was the end of the A. B, plot, 
which had filled some newspapers for a year with 
publications against Mr. Crawford, and which 
might have passed into oblivion, as the current 
productions and usual concomitants of a Presi- 
dential canvass, had it not been for their formal 
communication to Congress as ground of im- 
peachment against a high officer. That com- 
munication carried the " six charges," and their 
ten chapters of specifications, into our parlia- 
mentary history, where their fate becomes one 
of the instructive lessons which it is the province 
of history to teach. The newspaper in which the 
A, B. papers were published, was edited by a 
war-office clerk, in the interest of the war Secre- 
tary (Mr. Calhoun), to the serious injury of that 
gentleman, who received no vote in any State 
voting for Mr. Crawford. 



ANNO 1824. JAMES MONROE, PRESmENT. 



37 



CHAPTER XV. 

AMENDMENT OP THE CONSTITUTION IN RELA- 
TION TO THE ELECTION OF PRESIDENT AND 
VICE-PRESIDENT. 

European writers on American affairs are full 
of mistakes on the working of our government ; 
and these mistakes are generally to the prejudice 
of the democratic element. Of these mistakes, 
and in their ignorance of the difference between 
the theory and the working of our system in the 
election of the two first officers, two eminent 
French writers are striking instances : Messrs. 
de TocquevUle and Thiers. Taking the working 
and the theory of our government in this par- 
ticular to he the same, they laud the institution 
of electors, to whom they believe the whole 
power of election belongs (as it was intended) ; — 
and hence attribute to the superior sagacity 
of these electors the merit of choosing all the 
eminent Presidents who have adorned the presi- 
dential chair. This mistake between theory and 
practice is known to every body in America, and 
should be known to enlightened men in Europe, 
who wish to do justice to popular government. 
The electors have no practical power over the 
election, and have had none since their institu- 
tion. From the beginning they have stood 
pledged to vote for the candidates indicated (in 
the early elections) by the public will; after- 
wards, by Congress caucuses, as long as those 
caucuses followed the public will ; and since, by 
assemblages called conventions,] whether they 
follow the public will or not. In every case the 
elector has been an instrument, bound to obey a 
particular impulsion ; and disobedience to which 
would be attended with infamy, and with every 
penalty which public indignation could inflict. 
From the beginning these electors have been 
useless, and an inconvenient intervention be- 
tween the people and the object of their choice ; 
and, in time, may become dangerous : and being 
useless inconvenient, and subject to abuse and 
danger ; having wholly failed to answer the pur- 
pose for which they were instituted (and for 
which purpose no one would now contend) ; it 
becomes a just conclusion that the institution 
should be abolished, and the election committed 
to the direct vote of the people. And, to obvi- 



ate all excuse for previous nominations by inter- 
mediate bodies, a second election to be held 
forthwith between the two highest or leading 
candidates, if no one had had a majority of the 
whole number on the first trial. These are not 
new ideas, born of a spirit of change and innova- 
tion ; but old doctrine, advocated in the conven- 
tion which framed the Constitution, by wise and 
good men ; by Dr. Franklin and others, of Penn- 
sylvania; by John Dickinson and others, of 
Delaware. But the opinion prevailed in the 
convention, that the mass of the people would ; 
not be sufficiently informed, discreet, and tem- ' 
perate to exercise with advantage so great a 
privilege as that of choosing the chief magistrate : 
of a great republic ; and hence the institution of 
an intermediate body, called the electoral col- 
lege — its members to be chosen by the people — 
and when assembled in conclave (I use the word 
in the Latin sense of con and clavis, under key), 
to select whomsoever they should think proper 
for President and Vice-President. All this 
scheme having failed, and the people having 
taken hold of the election, it became just and 
regular to attempt to legalize their acquisition 
by securing to them constitutionally the full 
enjoyment of the rights which they imperfectly 
exercised. The feeling to this effect became 
strong as the election of 1824 approached, when 
there were many candidates in the field, and 
Congress caucuses fallen into disrepute ; and 
several attempts were made to obtain a consti- 
tutional amendment to accomplish the purpose. 
Mr. McDufBe, in the House of Representatives, 
and myself in the Senate, both proposed such 
amendments ; the mode of taking the direct 
votes to be in districts, and the persons receiving 
the greatest number of votes for President or 
Vice-President in any district, to count one vote 
for such office respectively ; which is nothing but 
substituting the candidates themselves for their 
electoral representatives, while simphfying the 
election, insuring its integrity, and securing 
the rights of the people. In support of my 
proposition in the Senate, I delivered some ar- 
guments in the form of a speech, from which I 
here add some extracts, in the hope of keeping 
the question ahve, and obtaining for it a better 
success at some future day. 

" The evil of a want of uniformity in the 
choice of presidential electors, is not limited to 
its disfiguring effect upon the face of our gov- 



38 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



ernment, but goes to endanger the rights of the 
people, by permitting sudden alterations on the 
eve of an election, and to anniliilatc tlie right of 
the small States, by enabling the large ones to 
combine, and to throw all their votes into the 
scale of a particular candidate. These obvious 
evils make it certain that any uniform rule 
would be preferable to the present state of 
things. But, in fixing on one, it is the duty of 
statesmen to select that which is calculated to 
give to every portion of the Union its due share 
in the choice of the Chief Magistrate, and to 
every individual citizen, a fiiir opportunity of 
voting according to his will. Tliis would be 
effected b}^ adopting the District Sijstem. It 
would divide every State into districts, equal to 
the whole number of votes to be given, and the 
people of each district Avould be governed by 
4 its own majority, and not by a majority existing 
in some remote part of the State. This would 
be agreeable to the ynghts of individuals : for, in 
entering into society, and submitting to be bound 
by the decision of the majority, each incUvidual 
retained the right of voting for himself wherever 
it was practicable, and of being governed by a 
majority of the vicinage, and not by majorities 
brought from remote sections to overwhelm him 
with their accumulated numbers. It would be 
agreeable to the interests of all parts of the 
States ; for each State may have different inter- 
ests in different parts ; one part may be agricul- 
tural, another manufacturing, another commer- 
cial ; and it would be unjust that the strongest 
should govern, or that two should combine and 
sacrifice the third. The district system would 
be agreeable to the intention of our present con- 
stitution, which, in giving to each elector a sepa- 
rate vote, instead of giving to each State a con- 
solidated vote, composed of all its electoral 
suffrages, clearly intended that each mass of 
jjersons entitled to one elector, should have the 
right of giving one vote, according to their own 
sense of their own interest. 

" The general ticket system now existing in ten 
States, was the oflspring of policy, and not of 
any disposition to give fair play to the will of 
the people. It was adopted by the leading men 
of those States, to enable them to consolidate 
the vote of the State. It would be easy to prove 
this by referring to facts of historical notoriety. 
It contributes to give power and consequence to 
the leaders who manage the elections, but it is a 
departure from the intention of the constitution ; 
violates the rights of the minorities, and is at- 
tended with many other evils. The intention of 
the constitution is violated, because it was the 
intention of that instrument to give to each mass 
of persons, entitled to one elector, the power of 
giving an electoral vote to any candidate they 
preferred. The rights of minorities are violated, 
because a majority of one will carry the vote of 
the whole State. This principle is the same, 
whether the elector is chosen by general ticket 
or by legislative ballot ; a majority of one, in 



either case, carries the vote of the whole State. 
In New- York, thirty-six electors are chosen 
nineteen is a majoiity, and the candidate receiving 
this majority is fairly entitled to count nineteen 
votes ; but he counts in reality, thirt)--six : be- 
cause the minority of seventeen are added to the 
majority. These seventeen votes belong to seven- 
teen masses of people, of 40,000 souls each, in all 
080,000 people, whose votes are seized upon, 
taken away, and presented to whom the majority 
pleases. Extend the calculation to the seventeen 
States now choosing electors by general ticket 
or legislative ballot, and it will show that three 
millions of souls, a population equal to that 
which carried us through the Revolution, may 
have their votes taken from them in the same 
way. To lose their votes, is the fate of all mi- 
norities, and it is their duty to submit ; but this 
is not a case of votes lost^ but of votes taken 
away^ added to those of the majority, and 
given to a person to whom the minority was 
opposed. 

" He said, this objection (to the direct vote of 
the people) had a weight in the year 1787, to which 
it is not entitled in the year 1824. Our govern- 
ment was then young, schools and colleges were 
scarce, jjolitical science was then confined to few, 
and the means of difiusing intelligence wei-e both 
inadequate and uncertain. The experiment of a 
popular government was just beginning ; the 
people had been just released from subjection to 
an hereditary king, and were not yet practised 
in the ai-t of choosing a temporary chief for 
themselves. But thirty -six years have reversed 
this picture. Thii-ty-six years, whicli have pro- 
duced so many wonderful changes ir» America, 
have accomplished the work of many^nturies 
upon the intelligence of its inhabitants. « "VVithin 
that period, schools, colleges, and universities 
have multiplied to an amazing extent. The 
means of diff'using intelligence have been won- 
derfully augmented by the establishment of six 
hundred newspapers, and upwards of five thou- 
sand post-oftices. The whole course of an Amer- 
ican's life, ci\'il, social, and religious, has become 
one continued scene of intellectual and of moral 
improvement. Once in every A^eek, more than 
eleven thousand men, eminent for learning and 
for piety, perform the double duty of amending 
the hearts, and enlightening the understandings, 
of more tlian eleven thousand congregations of 
people. Under the benign influence of a free 
government, both our pubhc institutions and pri- 
vate pursuits, our juries, elections, courts of jus- 
tice, the liberal professions, and the mechanic 
arts, have each become a school of political sci- 
ence and of mental improvement. The federal 
legislature, in the annual message of the Presi- 
dent, in reports from heads of departments, and 
committees of Congress, and speeches of mem- 
bers, pours forth a flood of intelligence which 
carries its waves to the remotest confines of the 
republic. In the different States, twenty-four 
State executives and State legislatures are annu- 



ANNO Ibzi. JAMES MONROE, TRESIDENT. 



39 



ally repeating the same process within a more 
limited sphere. The habit of universal travel- 
ling, and the practice of universal interchange of 
thought, are continually circulating the intelli- 
gence of the country, and augmenting its mass. 
The face of our country itself, its vast extent,jits 
grand and varied features, contribute to expand 
the human intellect, and to magnify its power. 
Less than half a century of the enjoyment of 
liberty has given practical evidence of the great 
moral truth, that, under a free government, the 
power of the intellect is the only power which 
rules the affairs of men ; and virtue and intelli- 
gence the only durable passports to honor and 
preferment. The conviction of this great truth 
has created an universal taste for learning and 
for reading, and has convinced every parent that 
the endowments of the mind, and the virtues of 
the heart, are the only imperishable, the only 
inestimable riches which he can leave to his 
posterity. 

" This objection (the danger of tumults and 
violence at the elections) is taken from the his- 
tory of the ancient republics ; from the tumultu- 
ary elections of Rome and Greece. But the 
justness of the example is denied. There is no- 
thing in the laws of physiology wliich admits a 
parallel between the sanguinary Roman, the 
volatile Greek, and the phlegmatic American. 
There is nothing in the state of the respective 
countries, or in their manner of voting, which 
makes one an example for the other. The Ro- 



mans voted in a mass, at a 



smgle 



votmg 



place. 



even when the qualified voters amounted to mil 
lions of persons. They came to the polls armed, 
and divided into classes, and voted, not by heads, 
but by centuries. In the Grecian Republics all 
the voters were brought together in one great 
city, and decided the contest in one great strug-i 
gle. In such assemblages, both the inducement| 
to violence, and the means of committing it, were 
prepared by the government itself. In the Uni- 
ted States all this is different. The voters are 
assembled in small bodies, at innumerable voting 
places, distributed over a vast extent of country. 
They come to the polls without arms, without 
odious distinctions, without any temptation to 
violence, and with every inducement to harmony. 
If heated during the day of election, they cool off" 
upon returning to their homes, and resuming 
their ordinary occupations. 

" But let us admit the truth of the objection. 
Let us admit that the American people would 
be as tumultuary at their presidential elections, 
as wei-e the citizens of the ancient republics at 
the election of their chief magistrates. What 
then ? Are we thence to infer the inferiority 
of the officers thus elected, and the consequent 
degradation of the countries over which they 
presided ? I answer no. So far from it, that I 
assert the superiority of these officers over all 
others ever obtained for the same countries, 
either by hereditary succession, or the most se- 
lect mode of election. I affirm those periods of 



history to be the most glorious in arms, the 
most renowned in arts, the most celebrated in 
letters, the most useful in practice, and the most 
happ}^ in the condition of the people, in which 
the whole body of the citizens voted direct for 
the chief officer of their country. Take the 
history of that commonwealth which yet shines 
as the leading star in the firmament of nations. 
Of the twenty-five centuries that the Roman 
state has existed, to whatiperiod do we look for 
the generals and statesman, the poets and ora 
tors, the philosophers and historians, the sculp- 
tors, painters, and architects, whose immortal 
works have fixed upon their country the admir- 
ing eyes of all succeeding ages ? Is it to the 
reigns of the seven first kings ? — to the reigns 
of the emperors, proclaim.ed by the prastorian 
bands ? — to the reigns of the Sovereign Pontiffs, 
chosen by a select body of electors in a conclave 
of most holy cardinals ? No — We look to none 
of these, but to that short interval of four cen- 
turies and a half which lies between the expul- 
sion of the Tarquins, and the re-establishment 
of monarchy in the person of Octavius Cajsar. 
It is to this short period, during which the con- 
suls, tribunes, and prfetors, Avere annually elected 
by a direct vote of the people, to which we look 
ourselves, and to which we direct the infant 
minds of our children, for all the works and 
monuments of Roman greatness ; for roads, 
bridges, and aqueducts, constructed ; for victo- 
ries gained, nations vanquished, commerce ex- 
tended, treasure imported, libraries founded, 
learning encouraged, the arts flourishing, the 
city embellished, and the kings of the earth 
humbly suing to be admitted into the friendship, 
and taken under the pi'otection, of the Roman 
people. It was of this magnificent period that 
Cicero spoke, when he proclaimed the people of 
Rome to be the masters of kings, and the con- 
querors and commanders of all the nations of 
the earth. And, what is wonderful, during this 
whole period, in a succession of four hundred 
and fifty annual elections, theipeople never once 
preferred a citizen to the consulship who did not 
carry the prosperity and the glory of the Re- 
public to a point beyond that at which he had 
found it. 

"It is the same with the Grecian Republics. 
Thirty centuries have elapsed since they were 
founded ; yet it is to an ephemeral period of one 
hundred and fifty years only, the period of pop\i- 
lar elections which intervened between the dis- 
persion of a cloud of petty tyrants, and the 
coming of a great one in the person of Philip, 
king of Macedon, that we are to look for that 
galaxy of names which shed so much lustre upon 
their country, and in which we arc to iind the 
first cause of that intense sympathy which now 
burns in our bosoms at the name of Greece. 

'■ These short and brilliant periods exhibit the 
great triumph of j)opuIar elections ; often tu- 
multuary, often stained with blood, but always 
ending gloriously for the country. Then the 



40 



THIRTY TEARS' VIEW. 



right of suffrage was enjoyed ; the sovereignty 
of the people was no fiction. Then a sublime 
spectacle was seen, when the Roman citizen 
advanced to the polls and proclaimed : ' / vote 
for Ciito to be Consul;'' the Athenian. ^ I vote 
for Aristi(/es to be Archonj^ the Theban, '/ 
vote for Pelopidas to be Bceotrach;^ the Lace- 
demonian, • / vote for Leonidas to be first of 
the Ephori.'' And why may not an American 
citizen do the same ? Why may not he go up 
to the poll and proclaim, ' / vote for Thomas 
Jefferson to be President of the United States?' 
Why is he compelled to put his vote in the hands 
of another, and to incur all the hazards of an 
irresponsible agency, when he himself could im- 
mediately|give his own vote for his own chosen 
candidate^ without the slightest assistance from 
agents or managers 7 

•' But, said Mr. Benton, I have other objec- 
tions to these intermediate electors. They are 
the peculiar and favorite institution of aristocratic 
republics, and elective monarchies. I refer the 
Senate to the late republics of Venice and Genoa ; 
of France, and her litter; to the kingdom of 
Poland ; the empire of Germany, and the Pon- 
tilicate of Rome. On the contrary, a direct 
vote by the people is the peculiar and favorite 
institution of democratic republics ; as we have 
just seen in the governments of Rome, Athens, 
Thebes, and Sparta ; to which may be added the 
principal cities of the Amphyctionic and Achaian 
leagu.es, and the renowned republic of Carthage 
when the rival of Rome. 

"I have now answered the objections which 
were brought forward in the year '87. I ask 
for no judgment upon their validity at that day, 
but I affirm them to be without force or reason 
I'n the year 1824. Time and experience have 
TO decided. Yes, time and experience^ the only 
infallible tests of good or bad institutions, have 
now shown that the continuance of the electoral 
system will be both useless and dangerous to 
the liberties of the people, and that 'the only 
effectual mode of preserving our government 
from, the corruptions which have undermined 
the liberty of so many nations^ is^ to confide 
the election of our chief magistrate to those 
who are farthest removed from the influeiice 
if his patronage;'* that is to say), to the 



WHOLE BODY OF AMERICAN CITIZENS! 



\ 



" The electors are not independent ; they 
have no superior intelligence ; they are not left 
to their own judgment in the choice of President ; 
they are not above the control of the people ; on 
the contrary, every elector is pledged, before he 
is chosen, to give his vote according to the will 
of those who choose him. He is nothing but an 
agent, tied down to the execution of a precise 
trust. Every reason which induced the conven- 
tion to institute electors has failed. They are 
no longer of any use, and may be dangerous to 

* Report of a Committee of the House of Reprcseutatives 
OP Mr. McDnllie's proposition. 



the liberties of the people. They are not useful, 
because they have no power over their own vote, 
and because the people can vote for a President 
as easily as they can vote for an elector. They 
are dangerous to the liberties of the people, be- 
cause, in the first place, they introduce extrane- 
ous considerations into the election of President ; 
and, in the second place, they may sell the vote 
which is intrusted to their keeping. They in- 
troduce extraneous considerations, by bringing 
their own character and their own exertions 
into the presidential canvass. Every one sees 
this. Candidates lor electors are now selected, 
not for the reasons mentioned in the Federalist, 
but for their devotion to a particular party, for 
their manners, and their talent at electioneering. 
The elector may betray the liberties of the peo- 
ple, by selling his vote. The operation is easy, 
because he votes by ballot ; detection is impos- 
sible, because he does not sign his vote; the 
restraint is nothing but his own conscience, for 
there is no legal punishment for his breach of 
trust. If a swindler defrauds you out of a few 
dollars in property or money, he is whipped and 
pilloried, and rendered infamous in the eye of 
the law ; but, if an elector should defraud 40,000 
people of their vote, there is no remedy mit to 
abuse him in the newspapers, where the best 
men in the country may be abused, as nuich as 
Benedict Arnold, or Judas Iscariot. Every 
reason for instituting electors has failed, and 
every consideration of prudence requires them 
to be discontinued. They are nothing but 
agents, in a case which requires no agent ; and 
no prudent man would, or ought, to employ an 
agent to take care of his money, his propert}'. 
or his liberty, when he is equally capable to 
take care of them himself. 

" But, if the plan of the constitution had not 
f^iiled — if we were now derivmg from electors 
all the advantages expected from their institu- 
tion — I, for one, said Mr. B., would still be in 
favor of getting rid of them. I should esteem 
the incorruptibility of the people, their disinte- 
rested desire to get the best man for President, 
to be more than a counterpoise to all the advan- 
tages which might be derived from the superior 
intelligence of a more enlightened, but smaller, 
and therefore, more corruptible body. I should 
be opposed to the intervention of electors, be- 
cause the double process of electing a man to 
elect a man, would paralyze the .spirit of the 
people, and destroy the life of the election itself. 
Doubtless this machinery was introduced into 
our constitution for the purpose of softening the 
action of the democratic element ; but it also 
softens the interest of the people in the result 
of the election itself It places them at too 
great a distance from their first servant. It in- 
terposes a bod}' of men between the people and 
the object of their choice, and gives a false di- 
rection to the gratitude of the President elected. 
He feels himself indebted to the electors who 
collected the votes of the people, and not to the 



ANNO 1824. JAMES MONROE, PRESIDENT. 



41 



people, who gave their votes to the electors. It 
enables a few men to govern many, and, in time, 
it will transfer the whole power of the election 
into the hands of a few, leaving to the people 
the humble occupation of confirming what has 
been done by superior authority. 

" Mr Benton referred to historical examples to 
prove the correctness of his opinion. 

" He mentioned the constitution of the French 
Republic, of the year III. of French liberty. 
The people to choose electors ; these to choose 
the Councils of Five Hundred, and of Ancients ; 
and these, by a farther process of filtration, to 
choose the Five Directors. The effect was, that 
the people had no concern in the election of 
their Chief Magistrates, and felt no interest in 
their fate. They saw them enter and expel 
each other from the political theatre, with the 
' same indifference with which they would see 
the entrance and the exit of so many players on 
the stage. It was the same thing in all the subal- 
tern Republics of which the French armies were 
delivered, while overturning the thrones of Eu- 
rope. The constitutions of the Ligurian, Cisal- 
pine, and Parthenopian Republics, were all 
duplicates of the mother institution, at Paris ; 
and all shared the same fate. The French con- 
sular constitution of the year VIII. (the last 
year of French liberty) preserved all the vices 
of the electoral system ; and from this fact, 
alone, that profound observer, Neckar, from 
the bosom of his retreat, in the midst of the 
Alps, predicted and proclaimed the death of 
Liberty in France. He wrote a book to prove 
that ' Liberty would be ruined by providing 

ANY KIND OF SUBSTITUTE FOR POPULAR ELEC- 

// / TioNS : ' and the result verified his prediction in 
four years." 



A 



CHAPTER XVI. 

INTERNAL TRADE WITH NEW MEXICO. 

The name of Mexico, the synonyme of gold and 
silver mines, possessed always an invincible 
charm for the people of the western States. 
Guarded from intrusion by Spanish jealousy 
and despotic power, and imprisonment for life, 
or labor in the mines, the inexorable penalty for 
every attempt to penetrate the forbidden coun- 
try, still the dazzled imaginations and daring 
spirits of the Great West adventured upon the 
enterprise ; and failure and misfortune, chains 
and labor, were not sufficient to intimidate 
ftthers. The journal of (the then lieutenant, 



afterwards) General Pike inflamed this spirit, 
and induced new adventurers to hazard the en- 
terprise, only to meet the fate of their predeces- 
sors. It was not until the Independence of 
Mexico, in the year 1821, that the frontiers of 
this vast and hitherto sealed up country, were 
thrown open to foreign ingress, and trade and 
intercourse allowed to take their course. The 
State of Missouri, from her geographical posi- 
tion, and the adventurous spirit of her inhabit- 
ants, was among the first to engage in it ; and 
the " Western Internal Pi-ovinces " — the vast 
region comprehending New Mexico, El Paso del 
Norte, New Biscay, Chihuahua, Sonora, Sinaloa, 
and all the wide slope spreading down towards 
the Gulf of California, the ancient " Sea of Cor- 
tez" — was the remote theatre of their cour- 
ageous enterprise — the further off and the less 
known, so much the more attractive to their 
daring spirits. It was the work of individual 
enterprise, without the protection or counte- 
ance of the government — without even its know- 
ledge — and exposed to constant danger of life 
and property from the untamed and predatory 
savages, Arabs of the New World, which roam- 
ed over the intermediate country of a thousand 
miles, and considered the merchant and his 
goods their lawful prey. In three years it had 
grown up to be a new and regular branch of in- 
terior commerce, profitable to those engaged in 
it, valuable to the country from the articles it 
carried out, and for the silver, the furs, and the 
mules which it brought back ; and well entitled 
to the protection and care of the government. 
That protection was sought, and in the form 
which the character of the trade required — a 
right of way through the countries of the tribes 
between Missouri and New Mexico, a road 
marked out and security in travelling it, stipula- 
tions for good behavior from the Indians, and a 
consular establishment in the provinces to be 
traded with. The consuls could be appointed 
by the order of the government ; but the road, 
the treaty stipulations, and the substantial pro- 
tection against savages, required the aid of the 
federal legislative power, and for that purpose a 
Bill was brought into the Senate by me in the 
session of 1824-25; and being a novel and 
strange subject, and asking for extraordinary 
legislation, it became necessar}^ to lay a foun- 
dation of facts, and to fuinish a reason and an 
argument for every thing that was asked. I 



42 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



produced a statement from those engaged in the 
trade, among others from Mr. Augustus Storrs, 
late of New Hampshire, then of Missouri — a 
gentleman of character and intelligence, very- 
capable of relating things as they Avere, and in- 
capable of relating them otherwise ; and who 
had been personally engaged in the trade. In 
presenting his statement, and moving to have it 
printed for the use of the Senate, I said : 

'• This gentleman had been one of a caravan of 
eighty persons, one hundred and fifty-six horses, 
and twentj'-three wagons and carriages, which [ 
had made the expedition from Missouri to Santa 
Fe (of Xew Mexico), in the months of May | 
and June last. His account was full of interest 
and novelty. It sounded like romance to hear 
of caravans of men. horses, and wagons, travers- 
ing with their merchandise the vast plain which 
lies between the Mississippi and the Rio del 
Norte. The storj- seemed better adapted to Asia 
than to North America. But, romantic as it 
might seem, the reality had already exceeded the 
visions of the wildest imagination. The journey 
to New Mexico, but lately deemed a chimerical 
project, had become an affair of ordinary occur- 
rence. Santa Fe, but lately the Ultima Thiile 
of American enterprise, was now considered as 
a stage only in the progress, or rather, a new 
point of departure to our invincible citizens. 
Instead of turning back from that point, the 
caravans broke up there, and the subdivisions 
branched off in ditferent directions in search of 
new theatres for their enterprise. Some pro- 
ceeded down the river to the Paso del Norte ; 
some to the mines of Chihuahua and Durango, 
in the province of New Biscay ; some to Sonora 
and Sinaloa, on the Gulf of California; and 
some, seeking new lines of communication with 
the Pacific, had undertaken to descend the west- 
ern slope of our continent, through the imex- 
plored regions of the Colorado. The fruit of 
these enterprises, for the present year, amounted 
to ^1 90.000 in gold and silver bullion, and coin, 
and precious furs ; a sum considerable, in itself, 
in the commerce of an infant State, but chiefly 
deserving a statesman's notice, as an earnest of 
what might be expected from a regulated and 
protected trade. The principal article given in 
exchange, is that of which we have the greatest 
abundance, and which has the peculiar advantage 
of making the circuit of the Union before it 
depaits from the territories of the republic — 
cotton — which grows in the South, is manu- 
factured in the North, and exported from the 
West 

"That the trade will be beneficial to the 
inhabitants of the Internal Provinces, is a pro- 
position too plain to be argued. They are a 
people among whom all the arts are lost — the 
ample catalogue of whose wants may be inferred 
from the lamentable details of Mr. Storrs. No 



books ! no newspapers ! iron a dollar a pound '. 
cultivating the earth with wooden tools ! and 
spinning upon a stick ! Such is the i)icture of a 
people who.se fathers wore the proud title of 
•' Conquerors ; " whose ancestors, in the time of 
Charles the Fifth, were the pride, the terror, and 
the model of Europe ; and such has been the 
power of civil and religious despotism in accom- 
plishing the degradation of the human species ! 
To a people thus abased, and so lately arrived 
at the possession of their liberties, a supply of 
merchandise, upon the cheapest terms, is the 
least of the benefits to be derived from a com- 
merce with the people of the United States. The 
consolidation of their republican institutions, 
the improvement of their moral and social con- 
dition, the restoration of their lost arts, and the 
development of their national resources, are 
among the grand results which pliilanthropy 
anticipates from such a commerce. 

•' To the Indians themselves, the opening of a 
road through their country is an object of vital 
importance. It is connected with the preserva- 
tion and improvement of their race. For two 
hundred j-ears the problem of Indian civilization 
has been successively presented to each genera- 
tion of the Americans, and solved by each in the 
same way. Schools have been set up, colleges 
founded, and missions established ; a wonderful 
success has attended the commencement of everj' 
undertaking ; and, after some time, the schools, 
the colleges, the missions, and the Indians, have 
all chsappeared together. In the south alone 
have we seen an exception. There the nations 
have preserved themselves, and have made a 
cheering progress in the arts of civilization. 
Their advance is the work of twenty years. It 
dates its commencement from the opening of 
roads through their country. Roads induced 
separate Aunilies to settle at the crossing of 
rivers, to establish themselves at the best .springs 
and tracts of land, and to begin to sell grain 
and provisions to the travellers, whom, a few 
years before, they would kill and plunder. This 
imparted the idea of exclusive property in the 
soil, and created an attachment for a fixed resi- 
dence. Gradually, fields were opened, houses 
built, orchards planted, flocks and herds acquired, 
I and slaves bought. The acquisition of these 
I comforts, relieving the body from the torturing 
j wants of cold and hunger, placed the mind in a 
condition to pursue its improvement. — This, Mr. 
; President, is the true secret of the happy ad- 
j vance which the southern tribes have made in 
I acquiring the arts of civilization ; this has fitted 
them for the reception of ,schooLs and nii.s.sions ; 
and doubtless, the same cause will produce the 
same etlects among the tribes beyond, which it 
has jiroduced among the tribes on this side of 
I the Mississippi. 

'• The right of way is indispensable, and the 

, committee have begun with directing a bill to be 

reported for that purpose. Happily, there are 

I no constitutional objections to it. State rights 



ANNO 1824. JAMES MONROE, PRESIDENT. 



43 



are in no danger ! The road which is contem- 
plated will trespass upon the soil, or infringe upon 
the jurisdiction of no State whatsoever. It runs 
a course and a distance to avoid all that ; for it 
begins upon the outside line of the outside State, 
and runs directly off towards the setting sun — 
far away from all the States. The Congress and 
the Indians are alone to be consulted, and the 
statute book is full of precedents. Protesting 
against the necessity of producing precedents for 
an act in itself pregnant with propriety, I will 
yet name a few in order to illustrate the policy 
of the government, and show its readiness to 
make roads through Indian countries to facilitate 
the intercourse of its citizens, and even upon 
foreign territory to promote commerce and na- 
tional communications." 

Precedents were then shown. 1. A road from 
Nashville, Tennessee, through the Chicasaw and 
Choctaw tribes, to Natchez, 180G; 2, a road 
through the Creek nations, from Athens, in 
Georgia, to the 31st degree of north latitude, in 
the direction to New Orleans, 1806, and con- 
tinued by act of 1807, with the consent of the 
Spanish government, through the then Spanish 
territory of West Florida to New Orleans ; 
3, three roads through the Cherokee nation, to 
open an intercourse between Georgia. Tennessee, 
and the lower Mississippi ; and more than twenty 
others upon the territory of the United States. 
But the precedent chiefly rx^lied upon was that 
from Athens through the Creek Indian territory 
and the Spanish dominions to New Orleans. It 
was up to the exigency of the occasion in every 
particular — being both upon Indian territory 
within our dominions, and upon foreign territory 
beyond them. The road I wanted fell within 
the terms of both these qualifications. It was 
to pass through tribes within our own territory, 
until it reached the Arkansas River: there it 
met the foreign boundary established by the 
treaty of 1819, which gave away, not only 
Texas, but half the Arkansas besides ; and the 
bill which I brought in provided for continuing 
the road, with the assent of Mexico, from this 
boundary to Santa Fe, on the Upper del Norte. 
I deemed it fair to give additional emphasis to 
this precedent, by showing that I had it from 
Mr. Jefferson, and said : 

" For a knowledge of this precedent, I am in- 
debted to a conversation with Mr. Jeflerson 
himself. In a late excursion to Virginia I 
availed myself of a broken day to call and pay 
my respects to that patriarchal statesman. The 
individual must manage badly, Mr. President, 



who can find himself in the presence of that 
great man, and retire from it without bringing 
off some fact, or some maxim, of eminent utility 
to the human race. I trust that I did not so 
manage. I trust that, in bringing off a fact 
which led to the discovery of the precedent, 
which is to remove the only serious objection to 
the road in question, I have done a service, if not 
to the human family, at least to the citizens of 
the two greatest Eepublics in the world. It 
was on the evening of Christmas day that 1 
called upon Mr. Jefferson. The conversation, 
among other things, turned upon roads. Ho 
spoke of one from Georgia to New Orleans, 
made during the last term of his o^vn adminis- 
tration. He said there was a manuscript map 
of it in the library of Congress (formerly his 
own), bound up in a certain volume of maps, 
which he described to me. On my return to 
Washington, I searched the statute book, and I 
found the acts which authorized the road to be 
made : they are the same which I have just read 
to the Senate. I searched the Congress Library, 
and I found the volume of maps which he had 
described; and here it is (presenting a huge 
folio), and there is the map of the road from 
Georgia to New Orleans, more than two hun- 
dred miles of which, marked in blue ink, is 
traced through the then dominions of the King 
of Spain!" 

The foreign part of the road was the difficulty, 
and was not entirely covered by the precedent. 
That was a road to our ovni city, and no other 
direct territorial way from the Southern 'States 
than through the Spanish province of West 
Florida : this was a road to be, not only on 
foreign territory, but to go to a foreign country. 
Some Senators, favorable to the bill, were 
startled at it, and Mr. Lloyd, of Massachusetts, 
moved to strike out the part of the section 
which provided for tliis ex-territorial national 
highway ; but not in a spirit of hostility to the 
bill itself providing for protection to a branch 
of commerce. Mr. Lowrie, of Pennsylvania, 
could not admit the force of the objection, and 
held it to be only a modification of what was 
now done for the protection of commerce — the 
substitution of land for water ; and instanced the 
sums annually spent in maintaining a fleet in 
the Mediterranean Sea, and in the most remote 
oceans for the same purpose. Mr. Van Buren, 
thought the government was bound to extend 
the same protection to this branch of trade as 
to any other; and the road upon the foreign 
territory was only to be marked out, not made. 
Mr. Macon thought the question no great mat- 
ter. Formerly Indian traders followed ' ' traces : " 



44 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW 



now they must have roads. ITe did not care 
for precedents : they are generally good or bad 
as they suit or cross our purposes. The case 
of the road made by Mr. Jefferson was difl'erent. 
That road was made among Indians compara- 
tively civilized, and who had some notions of 
property. But the proposed road now to be 
marked out would pass through wild tribes who 
think of nothing but killing and robbing a white 
man the moment they see him, and would not 
be restrained by treaty obligations even if they 
entered into them. Col. Johnson, of Kentucky, 
had never hesitated to vote the money which 
was necessary to protect the lives or property 
of our sea-fiiring men, or for Atlantic fortifica- 
tions, or to suppress piracies. We had, at this 
session voted $500,000 to suppress piracy in the 
West Indies. We build ships of war, erect light- 
houses, spend annual millions for the protection 
of ocean commerce ; and he could not suppose 
that the sum proposed in tliis bill for the protec- 
tion of an inland branch of trade so valuable to 
the West could be denied. Mr. Kelly, of Ala- 
bama, said the great object of the bill was to 
cherish and foster a branch of commerce already 
in existence. It is carried on by land through 
several Indian tribes. To be safe, a road must be 
had — a right of way — " a trace^'' if you please. 
To answer its purpose, this road, or '■'■trace^'' 
must pass the boundary of the United States, 
and extend several hundred miles through the 
wilderness country, in the Mexican Republic to 
the settlements with which the traffic must be 
carried on. It may be well to remember that the 
Mexican government is in the germ of its exist- 
ence, struggling with difficulties that we have 
long since surmounted, and may not feel it con- 
venient to make the road, and that it is enough to 
permit us to mark it out upon her soil ; which is 
all that this bill proposes to do within her limits. 
Mr. Smith, of Maryland, would vote for the 
bill. The only question with him was, whether 
commerce could be carried on to advantage on 
the proposed route ; and, being satisfied that 
it could be, he should vote for the bill. Mr. 
Brown, of Ohio (Ethan A.), was very glad to 
hear such sentiments from the Senator from 
Maryland, and hoped that a reciprocal good 
feeling would always prevail between different 
sections of the Union. He thought there could 
be no objection to the bill, and approved the 
policy of getting the road upon Mexican territory 



with the consent of the Mexican government. 
The bill passed the Senate by a large vote — 30 
to 12; and these are the names of the Senators 
voting for and against it : 

Yeas. — ]\Icssrs. Barton, Benton, Bouligny, 
Brown, D'Wolf, Eaton, Edwards, Elliott, Holmes 
of Miss., Jackson (the General), Johnson of 
Kentucky, Johnston of Lou., Kelly, Knight. 
Lanman, Lloyd of Mass., Lowrie, Mcllvaine, 
McLean, Noble, Palmer, Parrott, Ruggles, Sey- 
mour, Smith, Talbot, Taylor, Thomas, Van 
Buren, Van Dyke — 30. 

Nays. — Messrs. Branch, Chandler, Clayton, 
Cobb, Gaillard, Ilayne, Holmes of Maine, King 
of Ala., King of N. Y., Macon, Tazewell, Wil- 
liams — 12. 

It passed the House of Representatives by a 
majority of thirty — received the approving sig- 
nature of Mr. ^Monroe, among the last acts of 
his public life — was carried into effect by his 
successor, ]\Ir. John Quincy Adams — and this 
road has remained a thoroughfare of commerce 
between Missouri and New Mexico, and all the 
western internal provinces ever since. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

PRESIDENTIAL AND VICE-PRESIDENTIAL ELEC- 
TION IN THE ELECTORAL COLLEGES. 

Four candidates were before the people for the 
office of President — General Jackson, Mr. John 
Quincy Adams, Mr. William II. Crawford, and 
Mr. Henry Clay. Mr. Crawford had been nom- 
inated in a caucus of democratic members of 
Congress ; but being a minority of the members, 
and the nominatiou not in accordance with pub- 
lic opinion, it carried no authority along with it, 
and was of no service to the object of its choice. 
General Jackson was the candidate of the peo- 
ple, brought forward by the masses. Mr. 
Adams and Mr. Clay were brought forward by 
bodies of their friends in different States. The 
whole number of electoral votes was 261 ; of 
which it required 131 to make an election. No 
one had that number. General Jackson was 
the highest on the list, and had 99 votes; Mr, 
Adams 84 ; Mr. Crawford 41 ; Mr. Clay 37, 
No one having a majority of the whole of elect- 
ors, the election devolved upon the House of 



ANNO 1824. JAMES MONROE, PRESIDENT. 



45 



Kepresentatives ; of which an account will be 
given in a separate chapter. 

In the vice-presidential election it was dif- 
ferent. Mr. John C. Calhoun (who in the be- 
ginning of the canvass had been a candidate 
for the Presidency, but had been withdrawn by 
his friends in Pennsylvania, and put forward 
for Vice-President), received 182 votes in the 
electoral college, and was elected. Mr. Nathan 
Sandford, Senator in Congress from New- York, 
had been placed on the ticket with Mr. Clay, 
and received 30 votes. The 24 votes of Vir- 
ginia were given to Mr. Macon, as a compli- 
ment, he not being a candidate, and having 
refused to become one. The nine votes of 
Georgia were given to Mr. Van Buren. also as a 
compliment, he not being on the list of candi- 
dates. Mr. Albert Gallatin had been nominated 
in the Congress caucus with Mr. Crawford, 
but finding the proceedings of that caucus un- 
acceptable to the people he had withdrawn from 
the canvass. Mr. Calhoun was the only sub- 
stantive vice-presidential candidate before the 
people, and his election was an evidence of good 
feeling in the North towards southern men — he 
receiving the main part of his votes from that 
quarter — 114 votes from the non-slaveholding 
States, and only 68 from the slaveholding. A 
southern man, and a slaveholder, Mr. Calhoun 
was indebted to northern men and non-slave- 
holders, for the honorable distinction of an elec- 
tion in the electoral colleges — the only one in 
the electoral colleges — the only one on all the 
lists of presidential and vice-presidential candi- 
dates who had that honor. Surely there was 
I no disposition in the free States at that time to 
be unjust, or unkind to the South. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

DEATH OF JOHN TAYLOR, OF CAROLINE. 

For by that designation was discriminated, in 
his own State, the eminent republican statesman 
of Virginia, who was a Senator in Congress in 
the first term of General Washington's adminis- 
tration, and in the last tenn of ]\Ir. Monroe — 
and who, having voluntarily withdrawn himself 



from that high station during the intermediate 
thirty years, devoted himself to the noble pur- 
suits of agriculture, literature, the study of po- 
litical economy, and the service of his State oi 
county when called by his fellow-citizens. Per- 
sonally I knew him but slightly, our meeting in 
the Senate being our first acquaintance, and our 
senatorial association limited to the single ses- 
sion of which he was a member — 1823-24 ; — at 
the end of which he died. But all my observa- 
tion of him, and his whole appearance and de- 
portment, went to confirm the reputation of his 
individuality of character, and high qualities 
of the head and the heart. I can hardly figure 
to myself the ideal of a republican statesman 
more perfect and complete than he was in re- 
ality: — plain and solid, a wise counsellor, a ready 
and vigorous debater, acute and comprehensive, 
ripe in all historical and political knowledge, in- 
nately republican — modest, courteous, benevolent, 
hospitable — a skilful, practical farmer, giving his 
time to his form and liis books, when not called 
by an emergency to the public service — and re- 
turning to his books and his farm when the 
emergency was over. His whole character was 
announced in his looks and deportment, and in 
his uniform (senatorial) dress — the coat, waist- 
coat, and pantaloons of the same "London 
brown," and in the cut of a former fashion — 
beaver hat with ample brim — fine white linen 
— and a gold-headed cane, carried not for show, 
but for use and support when walking and 
bending under the heaviness of years. He 
seemed to have been cast in the same mould 
with Mr. Macon, and it was pleasant to see 
them together, looking like two Grecian sages, 
and showing that regard for each other which 
every one felt for them both. He belonged to 
that constellation of great men which shone so 
brightly in Virginia in his day, and the light of 
which was not limited to Virginia, or our Ame- 
rica, but spread through the bounds of the civi- 
lized world. He was the author of several 
works, political and agricultural, of which his 
Ai-ator in one class, and his Construction Con- 
strued in another, were the principal — one 
adorning and exalting the plough with the attri- 
butes of science ; the other exploring the confines 
of the federal and the State governments, and 
presenting a mine of constitutional law very pro- 
fitably to be examined by the political student 
who will not be repulsed from a banquet of rich 



46 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



ideas, by the quaint Sir Edward Coke style — 
(the only point of resemblance between the 
republican statesman, and the crown officer of 
Elizabeth and James) — in which it is dressed. 
Devotion to State rights was the ruling feature 
of his policy; and to keep both governments, 
State and federal, within their respective consti- 
tutional orbits, was the labor of his political life. 
In the years 1798 and '99, Mr. Taylor was a 
member of the General Assembly of his State, 
called into service by the circumstances of the 
times ; and was selected on account of the dignity 
and gravity of his character, his power and rea- 
diness in debate, and his signal devotion to the 
rights of the States, to bring forward those cele- 
brated resolutions which Mr. Jefferson conceived, 
which his friends sanctioned, which Mr. Madison 
drew up, and which " John Taylor, of Caroline," 
presented ; — which ai-e a perfect exposition of 
the principles of our duplicate form of govern- 
ment, and of the limitations upon the power 
of the federal government ; — and which, in their 
declaration of the unconstitutionality of the 
alien and sedition laws, and appeal to other 
States for their co-operation, had nothing in view 
but to initiate a State movement by two-thirds of 
the States (the number required by the fifth 
article of the federal constitution), to amend, or 
authoritatively expound the constitution ; — the 
idea of forcible resistance to the execution of 
any act of Congress being expressly disclaimed 
at the time. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION IN THE HOUSE OF 
REPRESENTATIVES. 

It has already been shown that the theory of 
the constitution, and its practical working, was 
entirely different in the election of President and 
Vice-President — that by the theory, the people 
were only to choose electors, to whose superior 
intelligence the choice of fit persons for these 
high stations was entirely committed — and that, 
in practice, this theory had entirely failed from 
the beginning. From the very first election the 
electors were made subordinate to the people, 
having no choice of their own, and pledged to 
deliver their votes for a particular person, ac- 
cor Jing to the will of those who elected them. 



Thus the theory had failed in its application to 
the electoral college ; but there might be a 
second or contingent election, and has been ; and 
here the theory of the constitution has failed 
again. In the event of no choice being made by 
the electors, either for want of a majority of 
electoral votes being given to any one, or on ac- 
count of an equal majority for two, the House 
of Representatives became an electoral college 
for the occasion, limited to a choice out of the 
five highest (before the constitution was amend- 
ed), or the two highest having an equal majority. 
The President and Vice-President were not 
then voted for separately, or with any designa- 
tion of their office. All appeared upon the 
record as presidential nominees — the highest on 
the list having a majority, to be President ; the 
next highest, also having a majority, to be Vice- 
President ; but the people, from the beginning, 
had discriminated between the persons for these 
respective places, always meaning one on their 
ticket for President, the other for Vice-President. 
But, by the theory of the constitution and its 
words, those intended Vice-Presidents might be 
elected President in the House of Representa- 
tives, either by being among the five highest 
when there was no majority, or being one of two 
in an equal majority. This theory failed in the 
House of Representatives from the first election, 
the demos krateo principle — the people to gov- 
ern — prevailing there as in the electoral colleges, 
and overruling the constitutional design in each. 

The first election in the House of Representa- 
tives was that of Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Burr, 
in the session of 1800-1801. These gentlemen 
had each a majority of the whole number of 
electoral votes, and an equal majority — 73 each 
— ]\Ir. Burr being intended for Vice-President. 
One of the contingencies had then occurred in 
which the election went to the House of Repre- 
sentatives. The federalists had acted more 
wisely, one of their State electoral colleges (that 
of Rhode Island), having withheld a vote from 
the intended Vice-President on their side, Mr. 
Charles Colesworth Pinckney, of South Caro- 
lina ; and so prevented an equality of votes be- 
tween him and ]\Ir. John Adams. It would 
have been entirely constitutional in the House 
of Representatives to have elected Mr. Burr 
President, but at the same time, a gross viola- 
tion of the democratic principle, which requires 
the will of the majority to be complied with. 



ANNO 1825. JAMES MONROE, PRESIDENT. 



47 



The federal States undertook to elect Mr, Burr, 
and kept up the struggle for seven days and 
uights, and until the thirty-sixth ballot. There 
were sixteen States, and it required the concur- 
rence of nine to effect an election. Until the 
thirty-sixth Mr. Jefferson had eight, Mr. Burr 
six, and two were divided. On the thirty-sixth 
ballot Mr. Jefferson had ten States and was 
elected. General Hamilton, though not then in 
public life, took a decided part in this election, 
vising above all personal and all party considera- 
tions, and urging the federalists from the begin- 
ning to vote for Mr. Jefferson. Thus the demo- 
cratic principle prevailed. The choice of the 
people was elected by the House of Representa- 
tives ; and the struggle was fatal to those who 
had opposed that principle. The federal i^arty 
was broken down, and at the ensuing Congress 
elections, was left in a small minority. Its can- 
didate at the ensuing presidential election receiv- 
ed but fourteen votes out of one hundred and 
seventy-six. Burr, in whose favor, and with 
whose connivance the struggle had been made, 
was ruined — fell under the ban of the republican 
party, disappeared from public life, and was only 
seen afterwards in criminal enterprises, and end- 
ing his life in want and misery. The constitu- 
tion itself, in that particular (the mode of elec- 
tion), was broken down, and had to be amended so 
as to separate the presidential from the vice-presi- 
dential ticket, giving each a separate vote ; and 
in the event of no election by the electoral col- 
leges, sending each to separate houses — the three 
highest on the presidential lists to the House of 
Representatives, — the two highest on the vice- 
presidential, to the Senate. And thus ended 
the first struggle in the House of Representa- 
tives (in relation to the election of President), 
between the theory of the constitution and the 
democratic principle— triumph to the principle, 
ruin to its opposcrs, and destruction to the clause 
in the constitution, which permitted such a 
struggle. 

The second presidential election in the House 
of Representatives was after the lapse of a quarter 
of a century, and under the amended consti- 
tution, which carried the three highest on the 
list to the House when no one had a majority 
of the electoral votes. General Jackson Mr. 
John Quincy Adams, and Mr. William H. Craw- 
ford, were the three, their respective votes being 
99, 84, 41 ; and in this case a second struggle 



took place between the theory of the constitu- 
tion and the democratic principle ; and with 
eventual defeat to the opposers of that principle, 
though temporarily successful. Mr. Adams was 
elected, though General Jackson was the choice 
of the people, having received the greatest num- 
ber of votes, and being undoubtedly the second 
choice of several States whose votes had been 
given to Mr. Crawford and Mr. Clay (at the 
general ele^llon). The representatives from 
some of these States gave the vote of the State to 
Mr. Adams, upon the argument that he was best 
qualified for the station, and that it was dan- 
gerous to our institutions to elect a military 
chieftain — an argument which assumed a guard- 
ianship over the people, and implied the necessity 
of a superior intelligence to guide them for their 
own good. The election of Mr. Adams was 
perfectly constitutional, and as such fully sub- 
mitted to by the people ; but it was also a viola- 
tion of the demos krateo principle ; and that 
violation was signally rebuked. All the repre- 
sentatives who voted against the will of their 
constituents, lost their favor, and disappeared 
from public life. The representation in the 
House of Representatives was largely changed 
at the first general election, and presented a full 
opposition to the new President. Mr. Adams 
himself was injured by it, and at the ensuing 
presidential election was beaten by General 
Jackson more than two to one — 178 to 83. Mr. 
Claj^, who took the lead in the House for Mr, 
Adams, and afterwards took upon himself the 
mission of reconciling the people to his election 
in a scries of public speeches, was himself crip- 
pled in the effort, lost his place in the democratic 
party, joined the whigs (then called national 
republicans), and has since presented the dis- 
heartening spectacle of a former great leader 
figuring at the head of his ancient foes in all 
their defeats, and lingering on their rear in their 
victories. Tlie democratic principle was again 
victor over the theory of the constitution, and 
great and good were the results that ensued. It 
vindicated the demos in their right and their 
power, and showed that the prefix to the con- 
stitution, "We, the people, do ordain and es- 
tablish," &c., may also be added to its adminis- 
tration, showing them to be as able to administer 
as to make that instrument. It re-established 
parties upon the basis of principle, and drew 
anew party lines, then almost obliterated under 



48 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



the fusion of parties during the " era of good 
feeling," and the eflbrts of leading men to make 
personal parties for themselves. It showed the 
conservative power of our government to lie in 
the people, more than in its constituted authori- 
ties. It showed that they were capable of ex- 
ercising the function of self-government. It 
assured the supremacy of the democracy for a 
long time, and until temporarily lost by causes 
to be shown in their proper place. Finally, it 
was a caution to all public men against future 
attempts to govern presidential elections in the 
House of Representatives. 

It is no part of the object of this " Thirty 
Years' View " to dwell upon the conduct of indi- 
viduals, except as showing the causes and the 
consequences of events ; and, under this aspect, 
it becomes the gravity of history to tell that, in 
these two struggles for the election of President, 
those who struggled against the democratic 
principle lost their places on the political theatre, 
— the mere voting members being put down in 
their States and districts, and the eminent actors 
for ever ostracised from the high object of their 
ambition. A subordinate cause may have had 
its effect, and unjustly, in prejudicing the public 
mind against Mr. Adams and Mr. Clay. They 
had been political adversaries, had co-operated in 
the election, and went into the administration to- 
gether. Mr. Clay received the office of Secretary 
of State from Mr. Adams, and this gave rise to 
the imputation of a bargain between them. 

It came within my knowledge (for I was then 
intimate Avith Mr. Clay), long before the elec- 
tion, and probably before jMr. Adams knew it 
himself, that Mr. Clay intended to support him 
against General Jackson ; and for the reasons 
afterward averred in his public speeches. I made 
this known when occasions required me to speak 
of it, and in the presence of the friends of the 
impugned parties. It went into the newspapers 
upon the infomiation of these friends, and Mr. 
Clay made me acknowledgments for it in a let- 
ter, of which this is the exact copy : 

'• / have received a paper published on the 
20th ultimo, at Lemington, in Virginia, in 
which is contained an article stating that you 
had, to a gentleman of that place, expressed 
your disbelief of a charge injurious to me, 
touching the late presidential election, and 
that I had communicated toyouuneqnirocalhj, 
before the Ibth of December, 1824, my determi- 



nation to vote for Mr. Adams and not for 
General Jackson. Presuming that the publi- 
cation was with your authority, J cannot deny . 
the expression of proper acknowledgments for 
the sense of justice which has prompted you to 
render this voluntary and faithful testimony.'''' 
This letter, of which I now have the original, 
was dated at Washington City, December Gth. 
1827 — that is to say, in the very heat and mid- 
dle of the canvass in which i\Ir. Adams was 
beaten by General Jackson, and when the testi- 
mony could be of most service to him. It went 
the rounds of the papers, and was quoted and 
relied upon in debates in Congress, greatly to 
the dissatisfaction of many of my own party. 
There was no mistake in the date, or the fact, 
I left Washington the 15th of December, on a 
visit to my father-in-law, Colonel James Mc- 
Dowell, of Rockbridge county, Virginia, where 
Mrs. Benton then was ; and it was before I left 
Washington that I learned from Mr. Clay him- 
self that his intention was to support Mr. 
Adams. I told this at that time to Colonel Mc- 
Dowell, and any friends that chanced to be pre- 
sent, and gave it to the public in a letter which was 
copied into many newspapers, and is preserved 
in Niles' Register. I told it as my belief to INIr 
Jefferson on Christmas evening of the same year, 
when returning to Washington and making a call 
on that illustrious man at his seat, Monticello ; and 
believing then that Mr. Adams would be elected, 
and, from the necessity of the case, would have 
to make up a mixed cabinet, I expressed thai, 
belief to Mr. Jefferson, using the term, familiaj 
in English history, of " broad bottomed ; " and 
asked him how it would do? He answered. 
" Not at all — would never succeed — would ruin 
all engaged in it." Mr. Clay told his intentions 
to others of his friends from an early period, 
but as they remained his friends, their testimony 
was but little heeded. Even my own, in the 
violence of party, and from my relationship to 
Mrs. Clay, seemed to have but little effect. The ( 
imputation of "bargain" stuck, and doubtless 
had an influence in the election. In fact, the 
circumstances of the whole affair— previous an- 
tagonism between the parties, actual support in 
the election, and acceptance of high office, made 
up a case against Messrs. Adams and Clay which 
it was hardly safe for public men to create and 
to brave, however strong in their own conscious- 
ness of mtegrity. Still, the great objection to 



ANNO 1825. JAilES MONROE, PRESIDENT. 



49 



the election of Mr. Adams was in the violation 
of the principle demos krateo j and in the ques- 
tion which it raised of the capacity of the demos 
to choose a safe President for themselves. A 
letter which I wrote to the representative from 
Missouri, before he gave the vote of the State to 
Mr. Adams, and which was published immedi- 
ately afterwards, placed the objection upon 
this high ground ; and upon it the battle was 
mainly fought, and won. It was a victory of 
principle, and should not be disparaged by the 
admission of an unfounded and subordinate 
cause. 

This presidential election of 1824 is remarkable 
under another aspect — as having put an end to 
the practice of caucus nominations for the Presi- 
dency by members of Congress. This mode of 
concentrating public opinion began to be prac- 
tised as the eminent men of the Revolution, to 
whom public opinion awarded a preference, were 
passing away, and when new men, of more equal 
pretensions, were coming upon the stage. It 
was tried several times with success and general 
approbation, public sentiment having been fol- 
lowed, and not led, by the caucus. It was at- 
tempted in 1824, and failed, the friends of Mr. 
Crawford only attending — others not attending, 
not from any repugnance to the practice, as their 
previous conduct had shown, but because it was 
known that Mr. Crawford had the largest num- 
ber of friends in Congress, and would assuredly 
receive the nomination. All the rest, therefore, 
refused to go into it : all joined in opposing the 
"caucus candidate," as Mr. Crawford was called ; 
all united in painting the intrigue and corrup- 
tion of these caucus nominations, and the ano- 
maly of members of Congress joining in them. 
By their joint efforts they succeeded, and justly 
in the fact though not in the motive, in rendering 
these Congress caucus nominations odious to 
the people, and broke them down. They were 
dropped, and a different mode of concentrating 
public opinion was adopted— that of party nomi- 
nations by conventions of delegates from the 
States. This worked well at first, the will of 
the people being strictly obeyed by the delegates, 
and the majority making the nomination. But 
it quickly degenerated, and became obnoxious to 
all the objections to Congress caucus nomina- 
tions, and many others besides. Members of 
Congress still attended them, either as delegates 
5r as lobby managers. Persons attended as 

Vol. I.— 4 



delegates who had no constituency. Delegates 
attended upon equivocal appointments. Double 
sets of delegates sometimes came from the State. 
and either were admitted or repulsed, as suited 
the views of the majority. Proxies were in- 
vented. Many delegates attended with the sole 
view of establisliing a claim for office, and voted 
accordingly. The two-thirds rule was invent- 
ed, to enable the minoi"ity to control the ma- > 
jority ; and the whole proceeding became anom- 
alous and irresponsible, and subversive of the 
will of the people, leaving them no more con- 
trol over the nomination than the subjects of 
kings have over the birth of the child which 
is born to rule over them. King Caucus is as 
potent as any other king in this respect; for 
whoever gets the nomination — no matter how 
effected — becomes the candidate of the party. 
from the necessity of union against the opposite 
party, and from the indisposition of the great 
States to go into the House of Representatives to 
be balanced by the small ones. This is the mode 
of making Presidents, practised by both parties 
now. It is the virtual election ! and thus the 
election of the President and Vice-President of 
the United States has passed — not only from the 
college of electors to wliich the constitution con- 
fided it, and from the people to whom the prac- 
tice under the constitution gave it, and from the 
House of Representatives which the constitution 
provided as ultimate arbiter — but has gone to 
an anomalous, irresponsible body, unknown to 'V 
law or constitution, unknown to the early ages 
of our government, and of which a large propor- 
tion of the members composing it, and a much 
larger proportion of interlopers attending it, 
have no other view either in attending or in pro- 
moting the nomination of any particular man, 
than to get one elected who wUl enable them to 
eat out of the public crib — who will give them a 
key to the public crib. 

The evil is destructive to the rights and sov- 
ereignty of the people, and to the purity of elec- 
tions. The remedy is in the application of the 
democratic principle — the people to vote direct 
for President and Vice-President ; and a second 
election to be held immediately between the two 
highest, if no one has a majority of the whole 
number on the first trial. But this would re- 
quire an amendment of the constitution, not to 
be effected but by a concurrence of two thirds 
of each house of Congress, and the sanction uf 



50 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW 



three fourths of the States — a consummation to 
which the strength of the people has not yet 
been equal, but of which there is no reason to 
despair. The great parliamentary reform in 
Great Britain was only carried after forty years 
of continued, annual, persevering exertion. Our 
constitutional reform, in this point of the presi- 
dential election, may require but a few years ; in 
the meanwhile I am for the people to select, as 
well as elect, their candidates, and for a reference 
to the House to choose one out of three presented 
by the people, instead of a caucus nomination of 
whom it pleased. The House of Representatives 
is no longer the small and dangerous electoral col- 
lege that it once was. Instead of thirteen States 
we now have thirty-one ; instead of sixty-five 
representatives, we have now above two hundred. 
Responsibility in the House is now well establish- 
ed, and political ruin, and personal humiliation, at- 
tend the violation of the will of the State. No 
man could be elected now, or endeavor to be 
elected (after the experience of 1800 and 1824:), 
who is not at the head of the list, and the choice 
of a majority of the Union. The lesson of those 
times woidd deter imitation, and the democratic 
principle would again crush all that were instru- 
mental in thwarting the public will. There is 
no longer the former danger from the House of 
Representatives, nor any thing in it to justify a 
previous resort to such assemblages as our na- 
tional conventions have got to be. The House 
i*^ legal and responsible, which the convention is 
not, with a better chance for integrity, as having 
been actually elected by the people ; and more 
restrained by position, by public opinion, and a 
clause in the constitution from the acceptance of 
oflice from the man they elect. It is the consti- 
tutional umpire ; and until the constitution is 
amended, I am for acting upon it as it is. 



CHAPTER XX. 

THE OCCUPATION OF THE COLUMBIA. 

Th's subject had begun to make a lodgment 
in the public mind, and I brought a bill into the 
Senate to enable the President to possess and re- 
tain the country. Tlie joint occupation treaty 
of lt<18 was drawing to a close, and it was my , 



policy to terminate such occupation, and hold 
the Columbia (or Oregon) exclusively, as we had 
the admitted right to do while the question of 
title was depending. The British had no title 
and were simply working for a division— for the 
right bank of the river, and the harbor at its 
mouth — and waiting on time to ripen their joint 
occupation into a claim for half I knew this, and 
wished to terminate a joint tenancy which could 
only be injurious to ourselves while it lasted 
and jeopard our rights when it terminated. The 
bill which I brought in proposed an appropria- 
tion to enable the President to act efficiently, 
with a detatchment of the army and navy ; and 
in the discussion of this bill the whole question 
of title and of policy came up ; and, in a reply 
to Mr. Dickerson, of New Jersey, I found it to 
be my duty to defend both. I now give some 
extracts from that reply, as a careful examina- 
tion of the British pretension, founded upon her 
own exhibition of title, and showing that she 
had none south of forty-nine degrees, and that 
we were only giving her a claim, by putting her 
possession on an equality with our own. These 
extracts will show the history of the case as it 
then stood — as it remained invalidated in all sub- 
sequent discussion — and according to which, and 
after twenty years, and when the question had 
assumed a war aspect, it was finally settled. 
The bill did not pass, but received an encouraging 
vote — fourteen senators voting favorably to it. 
They were : 

Messrs. Barbour, Benton, Bouligny, Cobb. 
Hayne, Jackson (the General), Johnson of 
Kentucky, Johnston of Louisiana, Lloj-d of 
Massachusetts, ]\Iills, Noble, Ruggles, Talbot, 
Thomas. 

" Mr. Benton, in reply to Mr. Dickerson, said 
that he had not intended to speak to this bill. 
Always unwilling to trespass upon the time and 
patience of the Senate, he was particularly so 
at this moment, when the session was drawing 
to a close, and a hundred bills ujmn the table 
were each demanding attention. The occupa- 
tion of the Columbia River was a subject which 
had engaged the deliberations of Congress foi 
four years past, and the minds of gentlemen 
might be supi)Osed to be made up upon it. Rest- 
ing upon this belief, INIr. B., as reporter of the 
bill, had limited himself to the duty of watch- 
ing its progress, and of holding himself in readi- 
ness to answer any inquiries which might be put 
Inquiries he certainly expected ; but a general 
assault, at this late stage of the session, upon 
the principle, the polic}', and the details of the 



ANNO 1825. JAMES MONROE, PRESIDENT. 



51 



bill, had not been anticipated. Such an assault 
had, however, been made by the senator from 
New Jersey (Mr. D.), and Mr. B. would be 
unfaithful to his duty if he did not repel it. In 
discharging this duty, he would lose no time in 
going over the gentleman's calculations about 
the expense of getting a member of Congress 
from the Oregon to the Potomac ; nor would he 
solve his difficulties about the shortest and best 
route — whether Cape Horn should be doubled, a 
new route explored imder the north pole, or 
mountains climbed, whose aspiring summits pre- 
sent twelve feet of defjnng snow to the burning 
rays of a July sun. Mr. B. looked upon these 
calculations and problems as so many dashes of 
the gentleman's v/it, and admitted that wit was 
an excellent article in debate, equally convenient 
for embellishing an ai'gument, and concealing 
the want of one. For which of these purposes 
the senator from New Jersey had amused the 
Senate with the wit in question, it was not for 
Mr. B. to say, nor should he undertake to dis- 
turb him in the quiet enjoyment of the honor 
which he had won thereby, and would proceed 
directly to speak to the merits of the bill. 

"It is now, Mr. President, continued Mr. B., 
precisely two and twenty 3'ears since a contest 
for the Columbia has been going on between the 
United States and Great Britain. The contest 
originated with the discovery of the river itself. 
The moment that we discovered it she claimed 
it ; and without a color of title in her hand, she 
has labored ever since to overreach us in the 
arts of negotiation, or to bully us out of our dis- 
covery by menaces of war. 

" In the year 1790, a citizen of the United 
States, Capt. Gray, of Boston, discovered the 
Columbia at its entrance into the sea ; and in 
1803, Lewis and Clarke were sent by the gov- 
ernment of the United States to complete the 
discovery of the whole river, from its source 
downwards, and to take formal possession in 
the name of their government. In 1793 Sir 
Alexander McKenzie had been sent from Canada 
by the British Government to effect the same 
object ; but he missed the sources of the river, 
fell upon the Tacoutche Tesse, and struck the 
Pacific about five hundred miles to the north of 
the mouth of the Columbia. 

" In 1803, the United States acquired Louisiana, 
and with it an open question of boundaries for 
that vast province. On the side of Mexico and 
Florida this question was to be settled with 
the King of Spain; on the north and north- 
west, with the King of Great Britain. It 
happened in the very time that we were signing 
a treaty in Paris for the acquisition of Louisiana, 
that we were signing another in London for the 
adjustment of the boundary line between the 
northwest possessions of the United States and 
the King of Great Britain. The negotiators 
of each were ignorant of what the others had 
done ; and on remitting the two treaties to the 
Senate of the United States for ratification, that 
for the purchase of Louisiana was ratified with- 



out restriction ; the other, with the exception of 
the fifth article. It was this article which ad- 
justed the boundary line between the United 
States and Great Britain, from the Lake of the 
Woods to the head of the IMississippi ; and the 
Senate refused to ratify it, because, by possibili- 
ty, it might jeopard the northern boundary of 
Louisiana. The treaty was sent back to London, 
the fifth article expunged ; and the British Gov- 
ernment, acting then as upon a late occasion, 
rejected the whole treaty, when it failed in se- 
curing the precise advantage of which it was 
in search. 

" In the year 1807, another treaty was negoti- 
ated between the United States and Great Bri- 
tain. The negotiators on both sides were then 
possessed of the fact that Louisiana belonged to 
the United States, and that her boundaries to 
the north and west were undefined. The settle- 
ment of this boundary was a point in the nego- 
tiation, and continued efforts were made by the 
British plenipotentiaries to overreach the Ame- 
ricans, with respect to the country west of the 
Rocky Mountains, Without presenting any 
claim, they endeavored to ' leave a nest egg for 
future pretensions in that quarter.^ (State 
Papers, 1822-3.) Finally, an article was agreed 
to. The forty-ninth degree of north latitude 
was to be followed west, as far as the territories 
of the two countries extended in that direction, 
w|,th a proviso against its application to the 
country west of the Rocky Mountains. This 
treaty shared the fate of that of 1803. It was 
never ratified. For causes unconnected with the 
questions of boundary, it was rejected by Mr. 
Jefferson without a reference to the Senate. 

"At Ghent, in 1814, the attempts of 1803 and 
1807 were renewed. The British plenipotentia- 
ries offered articles upon the subject of the boun- 
dary, and of the northwest coast, of the same 
character with those previously offered ; but no- 
thing could be agreed upon, and nothing upon 
the subject was inserted in the treaty signed at 
that place. 

"At London, in 1818, the negotiations upon 
this point were renewed ; and the British Gov- 
ernment, for the first time, uncovered the ground 
upon which its pretensions rested. Its plenipo- 
tentiaries, Mr. Robinson and Mr. Goulbourn, 
asserted (to give them the benefit of their own 
words, as reported by jMessrs. Gallatin and Rush) 
'That former voyages, and principally that of 
Captain Cook, gave to Great Britain the rights 
derived from discovery; and they alluded to pur- 
chases from the natives south of the river Co- 
lumbia, which thej^ alleged to have been made 
prior to the American Revolution. They did 
not make any formal proposition for a boundary, 
but intimated that the ricer itself was the most 
convenient that could be adopted, and that they 
would not agree to any which did not give them 
the harbor at the mouth of the r/rer in common 
with the United States.' — Letter from, Messrs. 
Gallatin and Rusfi, October 20th, 1820. 
To this the American plenipotentiaries an- 



52 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



swered, in a way better calculated to encourage 
than to repulse the groundless pretensions of 
Great Britain. ' We did not assert (continue 
these gentlemen in the same letter), we did not 
assert that the United States had a perfect right 
to that country, but insisted that their claim was 
at least good against Great Britain. We did not 
know with precision what value our govern- 
ment set on the country to the westward of these 
mountains ; but we were not authorized to enter 
into any agreement which should be tantamount 
to an abandonment of the claim to it. It was 
at last agreed, but, as we thought, with some re- 
luctance on the part of the British plenipoten- 
tiaries, that the country on the northwest coast, 
claimed by either pai-ty, should, without preju- 
dice to the claims of either, and for a limited 
time, be opened for the purposes of trade to the 
inhabitants of both countries.' 

•' The substance of tliis agreement was inserted 
in the convention of October, 1818. It con- 
stitutes the third article of that treaty, and is 
the same upon which the senator from New 
Jersey (Mr. Dickerson) relies for excluding 
the United States from the occupation of the 
Columbia. 

" In subsequent negotiations, the British agents 
further rested their claim upon the discoveries 
of McKenzie, in 1793, the seizure of Astoria du- 
ring the late war. and the Nootka Sound Treaty, 
of 1790. 

" Such an exhibition of title, said Mr. B., is 
ridiculous, and would be contemptible in the 
hands of any other power than that of Great 
Britain. Of the five grounds of claim which 
she has set up, not one of them is tenable against 
the slightest examination. Cook never saw, 
much less took possession of any part of the 
northwest coast of America, in the latitude of 
the Columbia River. All his discoveries were 
far north of that point, and not one of them was 
followed up by possession, withou* which the 
fact of discovery would confer no title. The 
Indians were not even named from whom the 
purchases are stated to have been made anterior 
to the Revolutionary War. Not a single parti- 
cular is given which could identify a transaction 
of the kind. The only circumstance mentioned 
applies to the locality of the Indians supposed 
to have made the sale ; and that circumstance 
invalidates the whole claim. They arc said to 
have resided to the ' soutli of the Columbia ; 
by consequence they did not reside xipon it, and 
could have no right to sell a country of which 
they were not the possessors. 

" McKenzie was sent out from Canada, in the 
year 1793, to discover, at its head, the river 
which Captain Gray had discovered at its mouth, 
three years before. But McKenzie missed the 
object of his search, and struck the Pacilic live 
hundred miles to the north, as I have already 
stated. The seizure of Astoria, during the war, 
was an operation of arms, conferring no moi-e 
title upon Great Britain to the Columbia, than 
the capture of Castine and Detroit gave her to 



Maine and Michigan. This new ground of claim 
was set up by Mr. Bagot, his Britannic Majesty's 
minister to this republic, in 1817, and set up 
in a way to contradict and relinquish all their 
other pretended titles. Mr. Bagot was remon- 
strating against the occupation, by the United 
States, of the Columbia River, and reciting that 
it had been taken possession of, in his Majesty's 
name, during the late war, ' and had sinck been 
CONSIDERED CLS forming apart of his Majesti/s 
(tominions. The word ^ since,'' is exclusive of 
all previous pretension, and the Ghent Treaty, 
which stipulates for the restoration of all the 
captured posts, is a complete extinguisher to this 
idle pretension. Finally, the British negotiators 
have been driven to take shelter under the Noot- 
ka Sound Treaty of 1790. The character of 
that treaty was well understood at the time that 
it was made, and its terms will speak for them- 
selves at the present day. It was a treaty of 
concession, and not of acquisition of rights, on 
the part of Great Britain. It was so character- 
ized by the opposition, and so admitted to be by 
the ministry, at the time of its communication to 
the British Parliament. 

[Here Mr. B. read passages from the speeches 
of Mr. Fox and Mr. Pitt, to prove the character 
of this Treaty.] 

" Mr. Fox said, ' What, then, was the extent 
of our rights before the convention — (whether 
admitted or denied by Spain was of no conse- 
quence) — and to what extent were they now 
secured to us ? We possessed and exercised the 
free navigation of the Pacific Ocean, without re- 
straint or limitation. We possessed and exer- 
cised the right of carrj'ing on fisheries in the 
South Seas equally unlimited. This was no 
barren right, but a right of which we had avail- 
ed ourselves, as appeared by the papers on the 
table, which showed that the produce of it had 
increased, in five years, from twelve to ninety- 
seven thousand pounds sterling. This estate we 
had, and were daily improving ; it was not to be 
disgraced by the name of an acijuisition. The ad- 
mission of part of these rights by Spain, was all we 
had obtained. Our right, before, was to settle in 
any part of the Soutii or Northwest Coast of 
America, not fortified against us by previous 
occupancy ; and we were now restricted to settle 
in certain places only, and under certain restric- 
tions. This was an important concession on our 
part. Our rights of fishing extended to the 
whole ocean, and now it, too, was limited, and to 
be carried on within certain distances of the 
Spanish settlements. Our right of making set- 
tlements was not, as now, a riglit to build huts, 
but to plant colonies, if we thought proper. 
Surely these were not acquisitions, or rather 
conquests, as they nmst be considered, if we 
were to judge by the triumphant language re- 
specting them, but great and important conces- 
sions. By the third article, we are authorized 
to navigate the Pacific Ocean and South Seas, 
unmolested, for the purpose of carrying on our 
I fisheries, and to land on the unsettled coasts, for 



ANNO 1825. JAMES MONROE, PRESIDENT. 



53 



the purpose of trading with the natives; but, 
after this pompous recognition of right to navi- 
gation, fishery, and commerce, comes another 
article, the sixth, which takes away the right of 
landing, and erecting even temporary huts, for 
any purpose but that of carrying on the fishery, 
and amounts to a complete dereliction of all 
right to settle in any way for the purpose of 
commerce with the natives.' — British Parlia- 
meniary History. Vol. 28, p. 990. 

" Mr. Pitt, in reply. ' Havmg finished that 
part of Mr. Fox's speech which referred to the 
reparation, Mr. Pitt proceeded to the next point, 
namely, that gentleman's argument to prove, 
that the other articles of the convention were 
mere concessions, and not acquisitions. In an- 



swer to this, Mr. Pitt maintained, that, though 
what this country had gained consisted not of 
new rights, it certainly did of new advantages. 
We had, before, a right to the Southern whale , 
fishery, and a right to navigate and carry on 
fisheries in the Pacific Ocean, and to trade on 
the coasts of any part of Northwest America ; 
but that right not only had not been acknow- 
ledged, but disputed and resisted: whereas, by 
the convention, it was secured to us — a circum- 
stance which, though no new right, was a new 
advantage.' — Same — p. 1002, 

" But, continued Mr. Benton, we need not 
take the character of the treaty even from the 
high authority of these rival leaders in the Brit- 
ish Parliament. The treaty will speak for itself. 
I have it in my hand, and will read the article 
relied upon to sustain the British claim to the 
Columbia River. 

"'ARTICLE THIRD OF THE NOOTKA SOUND 

TREATY. 

" ' In order to strengthen the bonds of friend- 
ship, and to preserve, in future, a perfect har- 
mony and good understanding between the two 
contracting parties, it is agreed that their re- 
spective subjects shall not be disturbed or 



molested, either 



navigating 
the Pacific 



or carrymg 



Ocean, or in 



m 
on their fisheries in 

the South Seas, or in landing on the coasts of 
those seas in places not already occupied, for the 
purpose of carrying on their commerce with the 
natives of the country, or of making settlements 
there ; the whole subject, nevertheless, to the 
restrictions and provisions specified in the three 
following articles.' 

" The particular clause of this article, relied 
upon by the advocates for the British claim, is 
that which gives the right of landing on parts 
of the Northwest Coast, not already occupied, 
for the purpose of carrying on commerce and 
making settlements. The first inquiry arising 
upon this clause is, whether the coast, in the 
latitude of the Columbia River, was unoccupied 
at the date of the Nootka Sound Treaty ? The 
answer is in the affirmative. The second is 
whether the English landed upon this coast while 
it was so unoccupied ? The answer is in the 
negative ; and this answer puts ah end to all pre- 
tension of British claim founded upon this treaty. 



without leaving us under the necessity of recur- 
ring to the fact that the permission to land, and 
to make settlements, so far from contemplating 
an acquisition of territory, was limited by subse- 
quent restrictions, to the erection of temporary 
huts for the personal accommodation of fisher- 
men and traders only. 

" Mr. B. adverted to the inconsistency, on the 
part of Great Britain, of following the 49th par- 
allel to the Rocky Mountains, and refusing to 
follow it any further. He affirmed that the 
principle which would make that parallel a 
boundary to the top of the mountain, would 
carry it out to the Pacific Ocean. He proved 
this assertion by recurring to the origin of that 
line. It grew out of the treaty of Utrecht, that 
treaty which, in 1704, put an end to the wars of 
Queen A.nne and Louis the XlVth and fixed the 
boundaries of their respective dominions in 
North America, The tenth article of that treaty 
was applicable to Louisiana and to Canada. It 
provided that commissioners should be appoint- 
ed by the two powers to adjust the boundary 
between them. The commissioners were ap- 
pointed, and did fix it. The parallel of 49 de- 
grees was fixed upon as the common boundary 
from the Lake of the Woods, " indejinitely to 
the West." This boundary was acquiesced in 
for a hundred years. By proposing to follow it 
to the Rocky JNIountains, the British Govern- 
ment admits its validity ; by refusing to follow 
it out, they become obnoxious to the charge of 
inconsistency, and betray a determination to en- 
croach upon the territory of the United States, 
for the undisguised purpose of selfish aggran- 
dizement. 

" The truth is, Mr. President, continued Mr. 
B., Great Britain has no color of title to the 
country m question. She sets up none. There 
is not a paper upon the face of the earth in 
which a British minister has stated a claim. I 
speak of the king's ministers, and not of the 
agents employed by them. The claims we 
have been examining are thrown out in the con- 
versations and notes of diplomatic agents. No 
English minister has ever put his name to them, 
and no one will ever risk his character as a 
statesman by venturing to do so. The claim of 
Great Britain is nothing but a naked pretension, 
founded on the double prospect of benefiting 
herself and injuring the United States. The fur 
trader. Sir Alexander ]\IcKenzie, is at the bottom 
of this policy. Failing in his attempt to explore 
the Columbia River, in 1793, he, nevertheless, 
urged upon the British Government the advan- 
tages of taking it to herself, and of expelling the 
Americans from the whole region west of the 
Rocky Mountains. The advice accorded too 
well with the passions and policy of that govern- 
ment, to be disregarded. It is a government 
which has lost no opportunity, since the peace 
of '83, of aggrandizing itself at the expense of the 
United States. It is a government which listens 
to the suggestions of its experienced subjects, 
and thus an individual, in the humble station of 



54 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



a fur trader, ha.s pointed out the policy which 
has been pursued by every Minister of Great 
Britain, from Pitt to Cannintr. and for the main- 
tenance of which a war is now menaced. 

'■ For a boundary line between the United 
States and Great Britain, west of the Mississippi, 
McKenzie proposes the latitude of 45 degrees, be- 
cause that latitude is necessary to give the Co- 
lumbia River to Great Britain. His words are : 
^ i^et the line begin where it may on the jMissis- 
sippi, it must be continued west, till it termi- 
nates in the Pacific Ocean, to the south of the 
Columbia.'' 

" Mr. B. said it was curious to observe with 
what closeness every suggestion of McKenzie 
had been followed up by the British Govern- 
ment. He recommended that the Hudson Bay 
and Northwest Company should be united ; and 
they have been united. He proposed to extend 
the fur trade of Canada to the shore of the Pa- 
cific Ocean ; and it has been so extended. He 
proposed that a chain of trading posts should be 
formed through the continent, from sea to sea ; 
and it has been formed. He recommended that 
no boundary line should be agreed upon with 
the United States, which did not give the Co- 
lumbia River to the British ; and the British 
ministry declare that none other shall be formed. 
He proposed to obtain the command of the fur 
trade fiom latitude 45 degrees north ; and they 
have it even to the Mandan villages, and the 
neighborhood of the Council Bluffs. He recom- 
mended the expulsion of American traders fi'om 
the whole region west of the Rocky Mountains, 
and they are expelled from it. He proposed to 
command the commerce of the Pacific Ocean ; 
and it will be commanded the moment a British 
fleet takes position in the mouth of the Colum- 
bia. Besides these specified advantages, McKen- 
zie alludes to other 'political considerations,^ 
which it was not necessary for him to particu- 
larize. Doubtless it was not. They were suf- 
ficiently understood. They are the same which 
induced the retention of the northwestern posts, 
in violation of the treaty of 1783; the same 
which induced the acquisition of Gibraltar, 
Malta, the Cape of Good Hope, the Islands of 
Ceylon and Madagascar ; the same which makes 
Great Britain covet the possession of every com- 
manding position in the four quarters of the 
globe." 

I do not argue the question of title on the 
part of the United States, but only state it as 
founded upon — 1. Discovery of the Columbia 
River by Capt. Gray, in 1790 ; 2. Purchase of 
Louisiana in 1803 ; 3. Discovery of the Colum- 
bia from its head to its mouth, by Lewis and 
Clarke, in 1803 ; 4. Settlement of Astoria, in 
1811; 5. Treaty with Spain, 1819 ; G. Contigu- 
ity and continuity of settlement and possession. 
Nor do I argue the question of the advantages 
of retaining the Columbia, and refusing to di- 



' vide or alienate our territory upon it. I merely 
I state them, and leave their value to result from 
the enumeration. 1. To keep out a foreign 
power ; 2. To gain a seaport with a military and 
naval station, on the coast of the Pacific ; 3. To 
save the fur trade in that region, and prevent 
our Indians from being tampered with by British 
traders ; 4. To open a communication for com- 
mercial purposes between the Mississippi and 
the Pacific ; 5. To send the lights of science and 
of religion into eastern Asia. 



CHAPTER XXI. 

COMMENCEMENT OF MR. ADAMS'S ADMINISTRA- 
TION. 

On the 4th of IMarch he delivered his inaugural 
address, and took the oath of office. That ad- 
dress — the main feature of the inauguration of 
every President, as giving the outline of the po- 
licy of his administration — furnished a topic 
against Mr. Adams, and went to the reconstruc- 
tion of parties on the old line of strict, or latitu- 
dinous, construction of the constitution. It was 
the topic of internal national improvement by 
the federal government. The address extolled 
the value of such works, considered the constitu- 
tional objection as yielding to the force of argu- 
ment, expressed the hope that every speculative 
(constitutional) scruple would be solved in a 
practical blessing ; and declared the belief that, 
in the execution of such works posterity would 
derive a fervent gratitude to the founders of our 
Union, and most deeply feel and acknowledge 
the beneficent action of our government. The 
declaration of principles which would give so 
much power to the government, and tlie danger 
of which had just been so fully set forth by Mr. 
Monroe in his veto message on the Cumberland 
road bill, alarmed the old republicans, and gave a 
new ground of opposition to Mr. Adams's adminis- 
tration, in addition to the strong one growing out 
of the election in the House of Representatives, 
in which the fundamental principle of represen- 
tative government had been disregarded. Thih. 
new ground of opposition was greatly strength- 
ened at the delivery of the first annual message, 
in which the topic of internal improvement was 
again largely enforced, other subjects recom- 



ANNO 1825. JOHN QUINCY ADAMS, PRESIDENT. 



55 



mended which would require a liberal use of 
constructive powers, and Congress informed that 
the President had accepted an invitation from 
the American States of Spanish origin, to send 
ministers to their proposed Congress on the 
Isthmus of Panama. It was, therefore, clear 
from the beginning that the new administration 
was to have a settled and strong opposition, and 
that founded in principles of government — the 
same principles, under different forms, which 
had discriminated parties at the commencement 
of the federal government. Men of the old 
school — survivors of the contest of the Adams 
and Jefferson times, with some exceptions, divid- 
ed accordingly — the federalists going for Mr. 
Adams, the republicans against him, with the 
mass of the younger generation. 

In the Senate a decided majority was against 
him, comprehending (not to speak of younger 
men afterwards become eminent,) Mr. Macon of 
North Carolina, Mr. Tazewell of Virginia, Mr, 
Van Buren of New-York, General Samuel 
Smith of Maryland, Mr. Gaillard of South Ca- 
rolina (the long-continued temporary President 
of the Senate), Dickerson of New Jersey, Gover- 
nor Edward Lloyd of Maryland, Rowan of Ken- 
tucky, and Findlay of Pennsylvania. In the 
House of Representatives there was a strong 
minority opposed to the new President, destined 
to be increased at the first election to a decided 
majority : so that no President could have com- 
menced his administration under more unfavor- 
able auspices, or with less expectation of a pop- 
ular career. 

The cabinet was composed of able and expe- 
rienced men — Mr. Clay, Secretary of State; Mr. 
Richard Rush, of Pennsylvania, Secretary of the 
Treasury, recalled from the London mission for 
that purpose ; Mr. James Barbour, of Virginia, 
Secretary at War ; Mr. Samuel L. Southard, of 
New Jersey, Secretary of the Navy under Mr. 
Monroe, continued in that place ; the same of 
Mr. John McLean, of Ohio, Postmaster General, 
and of Mr. Wirt, Attorney General — both occu- 
pying the same places respectively under Mr. 
Monroe, and continued by his successor. The 
place of Secretary of the Treasury was offered 
by Mr. Adams to Mr. William H. Crawford, 
and declined by him — an offer which deserves to 
be commemorated to show how little there was 
of personal feeling between these two eminent 



citizens, who had just been rival candidates for 
the Presidency of the United States. If Mr. 
Crawford had accepted the Treasury department, 
the administration of Mr. John Quincy Adams 
would have been entirely composed of the same 
individuals which composed that of Mr. Monroe, 
with the exception of the two (himself and Mr. 
Calhoun) elected President and Vice-President ; 
— a fact which ought to have been known to Mons. 
de Tocqueville, when he wrote, that " Mr. Quincy 
Adams, on his entry into ofBce, discharged the 
majority of the individuals who had been ap- 
pointed by his predecessor." 

There was opposition in the Senate to the con- 
firmation of Mr. Clay's nomination to the State 
department, growing out of his support of Mr. 
Adams in the election of the House of Represen- 
tatives, and acceptance of office from him ; but 
overruled by a majority of two to one. The af- 
firmative votes were Messrs. Barton and Benton 
of Missouri ; Mr. Bell of New Hampshire ; 
Messrs. Bouligny and Josiah F. Johnston of 
Louisiana; Messrs. Chandler and Holmes of 
Maine ; Messrs. Chase and Seymour of Vermont ; 
Messrs. Thomas Clayton and Van Dyke of Dela- 
ware ; Messrs. DeWolf and Knight of Rhode 
Island ; Jlr. Mahlon Dickerson of New Jersey ; 
Mr. Henry W. Edwards of Connecticut; Mr. 
Gaillard of South Carolina; Messrs. Harrison 
(the General) and Ruggles of Ohio ; Mr. Hen- 
dries of Indiana ; Mr. Elias Kent K ane of Illi- 
nois ; Mr. William R. King of Alabama ; Messrs. 
Edward Lloyd and General Samuel Smith from 
Maryland ; Messrs. James Lloyd and Elijah H. 
Mills from Massachusetts ; Mr. John Rowan of 
Kentucky; Mr. Van Buren of New-York — 27. 
The negatives were : Messrs. Berrien and Thos. 
W. Cobb of Georgia ; Messrs. Branch and Ma- 
con of North Carolina ; Messrs. Jackson (the 
General) and Eaton of Tennessee ; Messrs. Find- 
lay and Marks of Pennsylvania ; Mr. Ilayne ot 
South Carolina; Messrs. David Holmes and 
Thomas A. Williams of Mississippi ; Mr. Mcll- 
vaine of New Jersey ; Messrs. Littleton W. Taze- 
well and John Randolph of Virginia ; ^Ir. Jesse 
B. Thomas of Illinois. Seven senators were 
absent, one of whom (Mr. Noble of Indiana! 
declared he should have voted for the confirma 
tion of Mr. Clay, if he had been present ; and of 
those voting for him about the one half were hia 
political opponents. 



56 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



CHAPTER XXII. 

CASE OF MR. L/VNMAN— TEMPORARY SENATORIAL 
APPOINTMENT FROM CONNECTICUT. 

Mr. Lanman had served a regular term as 
senator from C onnccticut. His term of service 
expired on the 3d of March of this year, and the 
General Assembly of the State having failed to 
make an election of senator in his place, he re- 
ceived a temporary appointment from the gov- 
ernor. On presenting himself to take the oath of 
office, on the 4th day of March, being the first 
day of the special senatorial session convoked by 
the retiring President (Mr. Monroe), according 
to usage, for the inauguration of his successor ; 
his appointment was objected to, as not having 
been made in a case in which a governor of a 
State could fill a vacancy by making a tempo- 
rary appointment. IMr. Tazewell was the prin- 
cipal speaker against the validity of the appoint- 
ment, arguing against it both on the words of 
the constitution, and the reason for the provi- 
sion. The words of the constitution are : " If 
vacancies happen (in the Senate) by resignation 
or otherwise, during the recess of the legislature 
of any State, the executive thereof may make 
temporary appointments, until the next meeting 
of the legislature." " Happen" was held by Mr. 
Tazewell to be the governing word in this pro- 
vision, and it always implied a contingency, and 
an unexpected one. It could not apply to a 
foreseen event, bound to occur at a fixed period. 
Here the vacancy was foreseen ; there was no 
contingency in it. It was regular and certain. 
It was the right of the legislature to fi'l it, and 
if they failed, no matter from what cause, there 
was no right in the governor to supply their 
omission. The reason of the phraseology was 
evident. The Assembly was the appointing 
body. It was the regular authority to elect 
senators. It was a body of more or less mem- 
bers, but always representing the whole body 
of the State, and every county in the State, and 
on that account vested by the constitution witli 
the power of choosing senators. The terms choose 
and elect are the words applied to the legislative 
election of senators. The terra appoint is the 
. word applied to a gubernatorial appointment. 



The election was the regular mode of the con- 
stitution, and was not to be superseded by an 
appointment in any casein which the legislature 
could act, whether they acted or not. Some 
debate took place, and precedents were called 
for. On motion of Mt. Eaton, a committee was 
appointed to searcli for them, and found several. 
The committee consisted of Mr. Eaton, of Ten- 
nessee ; Mr. Edwards, of Connecticut ; and Mr. 
Tazewell, of Virginia. They reported the cases 
of William Cooke, of Tennessee, appointed by 
the governor of the State, in April, 1797, to fill 
the vacancy occasioned by the expiration of his 
own term, the 3d of March preceding ; of Uriah 
Tracy, of Connecticut, appointed by the governor 
of the State, in February, 1801, to fill the va- 
cancy to occur upon the expiration of his own 
term, on the 3d of March following ; of Joseph 
Anderson, of Tennessee, appointed by the gov- 
ernor of the State, in February, 1809, to fill the 
vacancy which the expiration of his own term 
would make on the 4th of March following ; of 
John Williams, of Tennessee, appointed by the 
governor of the State, in January, 1817, to fill 
the vacancy to occur from the expiration of his 
term, on the ensuing 3d of March ; and in all 
these cases the persons so appointed had been 
admitted to their seats, and all of them, except 
in the case of Mr. Tracy, without any question 
being raised ; and in his case by a vote of 13 to 
10. These precedents were not satisfactory to 
the Senate ; and after considering Mr. Lanman's 
case, from the 4th to the 7th of March, the mo- 
tion to admit him to a seat was rejected by a 
vote of 23 to 18. The senators voting in favor 
of the motion were Messrs. Bell, Bouligny, Chase, 
Clayton, DeWolf, Edwards, Harrison (General), 
Hendricks, Johnston of Lousiana, Kane, Knight, 
Lloyd of Massachusetts, Mcllvaine, ]Mills, Noble, 
Rowan, Seymour, Thomas — 10. Those voting 
against it were Messrs. Barton, Benton, Berrien, 
Branch, Chandler, Dickerson, Eaton, Findlay, 
Gaillard, Hayne, Holmes of Maine, Holmes of 
Mississippi, Jackson (General), King of Ala- 
bama, Lloyd of Maryland, Marks, ]\Iacon, Bug- 
gies, Smith of Maryland; Tazewell, Van Buren, 
Vandyke, Williams, of Mississippi — 23 ; and 
with this decision, the subsequent practice of 
the Senate has conformed, leaving States in part 
or in whole unrepresented, when the legislature 
failed to fill a regular vacancy. 



ANNO 1825. JOHN QUINCY ADAMS, PRESIDENT. 



57 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

EETIEING OF MR. RUFUS KING. 

In the summer of this year, this gentleman ter- 
minated a long and high career in the legislative 
department of the federal government, but not en- 
tirely to quit its service. He vras appointed by 
the new President, Mr. John Quincy Adams, to 
the place of Minister Plenipotentiary and Envoy 
Extraordinary to the Court of St. James, the 
same place to which he had been appointed thirty 
years before, and from the same place (the 
Senate) by President Washington ; and from 
which he had not been removed by President 
Jefferson, at the revolution of parties, which 
took place in 1800. He had been connected 
with the government forty years, having served 
in the Congress of the Confederation, and in 
the convention which framed the federal con- 
stitution (in both places from his native State 
of Massachusetts), in the Senate from the State 
of New- York, being one of the first senators from 
that State, elected in 1789, with General Philip 
Schuyler, the father-in-law of General Hamilton. 
He was afterwards minister to Great Britain, 
— again senator, and again minister — having, in 
the mean time, declined the invitation of Presi- 
dent Washington to be his Secretary of State. 
He was a federalist of the old school, and the 
head of that party after the death of General 
Hamilton • and when the name discriminated a 
party, with whose views on government and 
systems of policy, General Washington greatly 
coincided. As chief of that party, he was voted 
for as Vice-President in 1808, and as President 
in 1816. He was one of the federalists who 
supported the government in the war of 1812 
against Great Britain. Opposed to its declara- 
tion, he went into its support as soon as it was 
declared, and in his place in the Senate voted 
the measures and supplies required ; and (what 
was most essential) exerted himself in providing 
for the defence of his adopted State, New- York 
(on the strength and conduct of which so much 
then depended) ; assisting to raise and equip her 
volunteer regiments and militia quotas, and co-op- 
erating with the republican leaders (Gov. Tomp- 
kins and Mr. Van Buren), to maintain the great 
State of New- York in the strong and imited 



position which the war in Canada and repug- 
nance to the war in New England, rendered es- 
sential to the welfare of the Union. History 
should remember this patriotic conduct of Mr. 
King, and record it for the beautiful and instruc- 
tive lesson which it teaches. 

Like Mr. Macon and John Taylor of Carolina, 
Mr. King had his individuality of character, 
manners and dress, but of different type ; they, 
of plain country gentlemen; and he, a high 
model of courtly refinement. He always ap- 
peared in the Senate in full dress ; short small- 
clothes, silk stockings, and shoes, and was ha- 
bitually observant of all the courtesies of life. 
His colleague in the Senate, during the chief 
time that I saw him there, was Mr. Van Buren : 
and it was singular to see a great State represent- 
ed in the Senate, at the same time, by the chiefs 
of opposite political parties ; Mr. Van Buren 
was much the younger, and it was delightful to 
behold the deferential regard which he paid to 
his elder colleague, always returned with mark- 
ed kindness and respect. 

I felt it to be a privilege to serve in the Senate 
with three such senators as Mr. King, Mr. Ma- 
con, and John Taylor of Carolina, and was anx- 
ious to improve such an opportunity into a means 
of benefit to myself. With Mr. Macon it came 
easily, as he was the cotemporary and friend of 
my father and grandfather ; with the venerable 
John Taylor there was no time for any intimacy 
to grow up, as we only served together for one 
session ; with Mr. King it required a little system 
of advances on my part, which I had time to 
make, and which the urbanity of his manners 
rendered easy. He became kind to me ; readily 
supplied me with information from his own vast 
stores, allowed me to consult him, and assisted me 
in the business of the State (of whose admission 
he had been the great opponent), whenever I 
could satisfy him that I was right, — even down to 
the small bills which were entirely local, or mere- 
ly individual. More, he gave me proofs of real 
regard, and in that most difficult of all friendly 
offices, — admonition, counselling against a fault ; 
one instance of which was so marked and so 
agreeable to me (reproof as it was), that I im- 
mediately wrote down the very words of it in a 
letter to Mrs. Benton (who was then absent 
from the city), and now copy it, both to do hon- 
or to an aged senator, who could thus act a 
"father^s " part towards a young one, and be- 



58 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



cause T am proud of the words he used to me. 
The letter says : 

"Yesterday (May 20th, 1824). we carried 
^75,000 for improving the navigation of the I\Iis- 
eissippi and the Oliio. I made a good speech, 
but no part of it will be published. I spoke in 
repbj^ and with force and animation. "When it 
was over, Mr. King, of N. Y., came and sat down 
in a chair by me, and took hold of my hand and 
said he would speak to mc as a father — that I 
had great powers, and that he felt a sincere pleas- 
ure in seeing me advance and rise in the world, 
and that he would take the liberty of warning 
me against an effect of my temperament when 
heated by opposition; that under these circumstan- 
ces I took an authoritative manner, and a look and 
tone of defiance, which sat ill upon the older mem- 
bers ; and advised me to moderate my manner." 

This was real friendship, enhanced by the 
kindness of manner, and had its effect. I sup- 
pressed that speech, through compliment to him, 
and have studied moderation and forbearance 
ever since. Twenty-five years later I served in 
Congress with two of Mr. King's sons (Mr. 
James Gore King, representative from New- 
York, and Mr. John Alsop King, a representa- 
tive from New Jersey) ; and was glad to let 
them both see the sincere respect which I had 
for the memory of their father. 

In one of our conversations, and upon the for- 
mation of the constitution in the federal conven- 
tion of 1787, he said some things to me which, I 
think ought to be remembered by future genera- 
tions, to enable them to appreciate justly those 
founders of our government who were in favor 
of a stronger organization than was adopted. 
He said : " You young men who have been born 
since the Revolution, look with horror upon the 
name of a King, and upon all propositions for a 
strong government. It was not so with us. 
We were born the subjects of a King, and were 
accustomed to subscribe ourselves 'Ilis Majesty's 
most faithful subjects ; ' and we began the quar- 
rel which ended in the Revolution, not against 
the King, but against his parliament ; and in 
making the new government many propositions 
were submitted which would not bear discus- 
sion ; and ought not to be quoted against their 
authors, being offered for consideiation, and to 
bring out opinions, and which, though behind 
the opinions of tliis day, were in advance of those 
of that day." — These things were said cliiefly in 



relation to General Hamilton, who had submit- 
ted propositions stronger than those adopted, 
but nothing like those which party spirit attri- 
buted to him. I heard these words, I hope, with 
profit ; and commit them, in the same hope, to 
after generations. 



CIIAPTEK XXIV. 

KEMOVAL OF THE CREEK INDIANS FROM 
GEORGIA. 

By an agreement with the State of Georgia in 
the year 1802, the United States became bound, 
in consideration of the cession of the western 
territory, now constituting the States of Alabama 
and Mississippi, to extinguish the remainder of 
the Indian title within her limits, and to remove 
the Indians from the State ; of which large and 
valuable portions were then occupied by the 
Creeks and Cherokees. No time was limited 
for the fulfilment of this obligation, and near a 
quarter of a century had passed away without 
seeing its full execution. At length Georgia, seeing 
no end to this delay, became impatient, and just- 
ly so, the long delay being equivalent to a breach 
of the agreement ; for, although no time was 
limited for its execution, yet a reasonable time 
was naturally understood, and that incessant and 
faithful endeavors should be made by the United 
States to comply with her undertaking. In the 
years 1824-'25 this had become a serious ques- 
tion between the United States and Georgia — 
the compact-being but partly complied with — and 
Mr. Monroe, in the last year of his Administra- 
tion, and among its last acts, had the satisfaction 
to conclude a treaty with the Creek Indians for 
a cession of all their claims in the State, and their 
removal from it. This was the treaty of the 
Indian Springs, negotiated the 12th of February, 
1825, the famous chief. Gen. Wm. INIcIntosh, and 
some fifty other chiefs signing it in the presence 
of Mr. Crowell, the United States Indian agent 
It ceded all the Creek country in Georgia, and 
also several millions of acres in the State of Ala- 
bama. Complaints followed it to Washington as 
having been concluded by Mcintosh without the 
authority of the nation. The ratification of the 
treaty was opposed, but finally carried, and by 



ANNO 1826. JOHN QUINCY ADAMS, PRESIDENT. 



59 



the strong vote of 34 to 4. Disappointed in their 
opposition to the treaty at Washington, the dis- 
contented party became violent at home, killed 
Mcintosh and another chief, declared forcible re- 
sistance to the execution of the treaty, and pre- 
pared to resist. Georgia, on her part, determin- 
ed to execute it by taking possession of the ceded 
territory. The Government of the United States 
felt itself bound to interfere. The new Presi- 
dent, Mr. Adams, became impressed with the 
conviction that the treaty had been made with- 
out due authority, and that its execution ought 
not to be enforced ; and sent Gen. Gaines with 
federal troops to the confines of Georgia. All 
Georgia was m a flame at this view of force, and 
the neighboring States sympathized with her. 
In the mean time the President, anxious to avoid 
violence, and to obtain justice for Georgia, treat- 
ed further; and assembling the head men and 
chiefs of the Creeks at Washington City, conclu- 
ded a new treaty with them (January, 1826) ; 
by which the treaty of Indian Springs was an- 
nulled and a substitute for it negotiated, ceding 
all the Creek lands in Georgia, but none in Ala- 
bama. This treaty, with a message detailing all 
the difficulties of the question, was immediately 
communicated by the President to the Senate, 
and by it referred to the Committee on Indian 
Affairs, of which I was chairman. The commit- 
tee reported against the ratification of the treaty, 
earnestly deprecated a collision of arms between 
the federal government and a State, and recom- 
mended further negotiations — a thing the more 
easy as the Creek chiefs were still at "Washing- 
ton. The objections to the new treaty were : 

1. That it annulled the Mcintosh treaty; there- 
by implying its illegality, and apparently justify- 
ing the fate of its authors. 

2. Because it did not cede the whole of the 
Creek lands in Georgia. 

3. Because it ceded none in Alabama. 

Further negotiations according to the recom- 
mendation of the Senate, were had by the Pres- 
ident; and on the 31st of March of the same 
year, a supplemental article was concluded, by 
which all the Creek lands in Georgia were ceded 
to her; and the Creeks within her borders bound 
to emigrate to a new home beyond the Mississip- 
pi. The vote in the Senate on ratifying this new 
treaty, and its supplemental article, was full and 
emphatic — thirty to seven: and the seven nega- 
tives all Southern senators favorable to the object, 



but dissatisfied with the clause which annulled 
the Mcintosh treaty and implied a censure upon 
its authors. Northern senators voted in a body 
to do this great act of justice to Georgia, re- 
strained by no unworthy feeling against the 
growth and prosperity of a slave State. And 
thus was carried into effect, after a delay of a 
quarter of a century, and after great and just 
complaint on the part of Georgia, the compact 
between that State and the United States of 1802, 
Georgia was paid at last for her great cession oi 
territory, and obtained the removal of an Indian 
community out of her limits, and the use and 
dominion of all her soil for settlement and juris- 
diction. It was an incalculable advantage to her, 
and sought in vain under three successive Southern 
Presidents — Jefferson, Madison, Monroe — (who 
could only obtain part concessions from the In- 
dians) — and now accomplished under a Northern 
President, with the full concurrence and support 
of the Northern delegations in Congress : for the 
Northern representatives m the House voted the 
appropriations to carry the treaty into effect as 
readily as the senators had voted the ratification 
of the treaty itself. Candid men, friends to the 
harmony and stability of this Union, should re- 
member these things when they hear the North- 
ern States, on account of the conduct of some 
societies and individuals, charged with unjust 
and criminal designs towards the South. 

An incident which attended the negotiation 
of the supplemental article to the treaty of 
January deserves to be commemorated, as an 
instance of the frauds which may attend Indian 
negotiations, and for which there is so little 
chance of detection by either of the injured 
parties. — by the Indians themselves, or by the 
federal government. When the President sent 
in the treaty of January, and after its rejection 
by the Senate became certain, thereby leaving 
the federal government and Georgia upon the 
point of collision, I urged upon Mr. James Bar- 
bour, the Secretary at War (of whose depart- 
ment the Indian Office was then a branch) the 
necessity of a supplemental article ceding all the 
Creek lands in Georgia ; and assured him that, 
with that additional article, the treaty would 
be ratified, and the question settled. The Secre- 
tary was very willing to do all this, but said it 
was impossible, — that the chiefs would not agree 
to it. I recommended to him to make them 
some presents, so as to overcome their opposi- 



60 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW 



tion ; which he most innocently declined, because 
it would savor of bribery. In the mean time 
it had been communicated, to me, that the 
treaty already made was itself the work of 
great bribery; the sum of $100,000 out of 
^247,000, which it stipulated to the Creek na- 
tion, as a first payment, being a fund for private 
distribution among the chiefs who negotiated 
it. Having received this information, I felt quite 
sure that the fear of the rejection of the treaty, 
and the consequent loss of these .f?lGO,000, to the 
negotiating chiefs, would insure their assent to 
the supplemental article without the inducement 
of further presents. I had an interview with 
the leading chiefs, and made known to them the 
inevitable fact that the Senate would reject the 
treaty as it stood, but would ratify it with a 
supplemental article ceding all their lands in 
Georgia. With this information they agreed to 
the additional article : and then the whole was 
ratified, as I have already stated. But a further 
work remained behind. It was to balk the 
fraud of the corrupt distribution of $160,000 
among a few chiefs ; and that was to be done 
in the appropriation bill, and by a clause 
directing the whole treaty money to be paid 
to the nation instead of the chiefs. The case 
was communicated to the Senate in secret ses- 
sion, and a committee of conference appointed 
(M^essrs. Benton, Van Buren, and Berrien) to 
agree with the House committee upon the pro- 
per clause to be put into the appropriation bi!). 
It was also communicated to the Secretary at 
War. He sent in a report from Mr. McKinney, 
the Indian bureau clerk, and actual negotiator of 
the treaty, admitting the fact of the intended 
private distribution ; which, in fact, could not be 
denied, as I held an original paper showing the 
names of all the intended recipients, with the 
sum allowed to each, beginning at $20,000 and 
ranging down to $5000 : and that it was done 
with his cognizance. 

Some extracts from speeches delivered on 
that occasion will well finish this view of a trans- 
action which at one time threatened violence 
between a State and the federal government, 
and in which a great fraud in an Indian treaty 
was detected and frustrated. 



EXTRACTS FROM THE SPEECHES IN THE SENATE 
AND IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 

" Mr. Van Buren said he should state the cir- 
cumstances of this case, and the views of the 



committee of conference. A treaty was made 
in this city, in which it was stipulated on the 
part of the United States, that $247,000, to- 
gether with an annuitj^ of $20.1)00 a year, 
and other considerations, should be paid to the 
Creeks, as a consideration for the cxtingui.';hment 
of their title to lands in the State of Georgia, 
which the United States, under the cession of 
1802, were under obligations to extingui.sh. The 
bill from the other House to cany this treaty 
into effect, directed that the mone}- should be 
paid and distributed among the chiefs and war- 
riors. That bill came to the Senate, and a con- 
fidential communication was made to tlie Senate, 
from which it appeared that strong suspicions 
were entertained that a design existed on the 
part of the chiefs who made the treaty, to prac- 
tise a fraud on the Creek nation, by dividing the 
money amongst themselves and associates. An 
amendment was proposed by the Senate, which 
provided for the payment of those moneys in 
the usual wa}-, and the distribution of them in 
the usual manner, and in the usual proportion 
to which the Indians were entitled. That 
amendment was sent to the other House, who, 
unadvised as to the facts which were known to 
the Senate, refused to concur in it, and asked a 
conference. The conferees, on the part of the 
Senate, communicated their suspicions to the 
conferees on the part of the House, and asked 
them to unite in an application to the Depart- 
ment of War, for information on the subject. 
This was accordingly done, and the documents 
sent, in. answer, were a letter from the Secre- 
tary of War, and a report by Mr. McKenney. 
From that report it appeared clear and satisfac- 
tor}', that a design thus existed on the part of 
the Indians, by whom the treatj' was negotiated, 
to distribute of the $247,000 to be paid for the 
cession by the United States, $159,750 among 
them.selves, and a few favorite chiefs at home, 
and three Cherokee chiefs who had no interest 
in the property. Kidge and Vann were to re- 
ceive by the original treaty $5000 each. By 
this agreement of the distribution of the money 



each was to receive $15,000 more, making 
$20,000 for each. Kidge, the father of Ridge 
who is here, was to receive $10,000. The other 
$100,000 was to be distributed, $5000, and, in 
some instances, $10,000 to the chiefs who nego- 
tif^ed tlie treaty heie. varying from one to ten 
thousand dollars each. 

" Mr. V. B. said, in his judgment, the char- 
acter of the government was involved in this 
subject, and it would require, under the circum- 
stances of this case, that they should take every 
step they could rightfully take to exculpate 
themselves from having, in any degree or form, 
concurred in this fraud. The .sentiment of the 
American people where he resided was, and had 
been, highly excited on this subject; they had 
applauded, in the most ardent manner, the zeal 
manifested by the government to preserve them- 
selves pure in their negotiations with the Indians ; 
and though he was satisfied — though he deemed 



ANNO 1826. JOHN QUINCY ADAMS, PRESIDENT. 



61 



it impossible to suppose for a moment that 
government could have countenanced the prac- 
tice of this fraud, yet there were circumstances 
in the case which required exculpation. Between 
the negotiation of the treaty and the negotiation 
of the supplementary article on which the treaty 
was finally adopted, all these circumstances were 
communicated to the Department of War by the 
two Cherokees. Mr. V. B. said it was not his 
purpose, because the necessit}'- of the case did not 
require it, to say what the Secretary of War 
ought to have done, or to censure what he did 
do. when the information was given to him. He 
had known him many years, and there was not 
an honester man, or a man more devoted to his 
countrj^, than that gentleman was. Mr. V. B. 
said it was not for him to have said what should 
have been the course of the President of the 
United States, if the information had been given 
to him on the subject. It could not fail to make 
a mortifying and most injurious impression on 
the minds of the people of this country, to find 
that no means whatever were taken for the 
suppression of this fraud. There was, and 
there ought to be, an excitement on the subject 
in the public mind. " 

" Mr. Benton said, that after the explanation 
of the views of the committee of conference 
which had been given by the senator from New- 
York (Mr. Van Buren), he would limit himself 
to a statement of facts on two or three points, 
on which references had been made to his per- 
sonal knowledge. 

"The Secretary of War had referred to him, in 
his letter to the committee, as knowing the fact 
that the Secretary had refused to give private 
gratuities to the Creek chiefs to promote the 
success of the negotiation. The reference was 
correct. Mr. B. had himself i-ecommended the 
Secretary to do so ; it was, however, about forty 
days after the treaty had been signed. He re- 
ferred to a paper which fixed the date to the 
9th or 10th of March, and the treaty had been 
signed in the month of January preceding. It 
was done at the time that Mr. B. had offered his 
services to procure the supplemental article to 
be adopted. The Secretary entirely condemned 
the practice of giving these gratuities. Mr. B. 
said he had recommended it as the only way 
of treating with barbarians ; that, if not grati- 
fied in this way, the chiefs would prolong the 
negotiation, at a great daily expense to the gov- 
ernment, imtil they got their gratuity in one 
way or other, or defeated the treaty altogether. 
He considered the practice to be sanctioned by 
the usage of the United States : he believed it 
to be common in all barbarous nations, and in 
many that were civilized ; and referred to the 
article in the federal constitution against re- 
ceiving "presents" from foreign powers, as a 
proof that the convention thought such a re- 
striction to be necessary, even among ourselves. 

'"The time at which Mr. B. had offered his ser- 
vices to aid this negotiation, had appeared to him 
to be eminently critical, and big with consequences 



which he was anxious to avert. It was after 
the committee had resolved to report against the 
new treaty, and before they had made the report 
to the Senate. The decision, whatsoever it might 
be, and the consequent discussions, criminations, 
and recriminations, were calculated to bring on 
a violent struggle in the Senate itself; between 
the Senate and the Executive ; perhaps between 
the two Houses (for a reference of the subject 
to both would have taken place) ; and between 
one or more States and the federal government. 
Mr. B. had concurred in the report against the 
new treaty, because it divested Georgia of vested 
rights ; and, though objectionable in many other 
respects, he was willing, for the sake of peace, 
to ratify it, provided the vested rights of Georgia 
were not invaded. The supplemental article had 
relieved him upon this point. He thought that 
Georg-ia had no further cause of dissatisfaction 
with the treaty ; it was Alabama that was injured 
by the loss of some millions of acres, which she 
had acquired under the treaty of 1825, and lost 
under that of 1826. Her case commanded his 
regrets and sympathy. She had lost the right 
of jurisdiction over a considerable extent of ter- 
ritory ; and the advantages of settling, cultivat- 
ing, and taxing the same, were postponed ; but, 
he hoped, not indefinitely. But these were con- 
sequential advantages, resulting from an act 
which the government was not bound to do ; 
and, though the loss of themwasan injury, yet 
this injury could not be considered as a violation 
of vested rights ; but the circumstance certainly 
increased the strength of her claim to the total 
extinction of the Indian titles within her Ji.nits 
and, he trusted, would have its due effect upon 
the Government of the United States. 

'• The third and last point on which Mr. B. 
thought references to his name had made it 
proper for him to give a statement, related to the 
circumstance which had induced the Senate to 
make the amendment which had become the 
subject of the conference between the two 
Houses. He had himself come to the knowledge 
of that circumstance in the last days of April, 
some weeks after the supplemental article had 
been ratified. He had deemed it to be his duty 
to communicate it to the Senate, and do it in a 
way that would avoid a groundless agitation of 
the public feeling, or unjust reflections upon any 
individual, white or red, if, peradventure, his 
information should turn out to have been un- 
true. He therefore communicated it to the 
Senate m secret session ; and the effect of the 
information was immediately manifested in the 
unanimous determination of the Senate to adopt 
the amendment which was now under considera- 
tion. He deemed the amendment, or one that 
would effect the same object, to be called for by 
the circumstances of the case, and the relative 
state of the parties. It was apparent that a few 
chiefs were to have an undue proportion of the 
money — the)^ had realized what he had foretold 
to the Secretary ; and it was certain that the 
knowledge of this, whenever it should be found 



62 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



out by the nation, would occasion disturbances, 
and, perhaps, bloodshed. He thought that the 
United States should prevent these consequences, 
by preventing the cause of them, and, for this 
purpose, he would concur in any amendment 
that would effect a fair distribution of the monej^, 
or an}' distribution that was agreeable to the 
nation in open counsel. " 

Mr. Berrien : " You have arrived at the last 
scene in the present act of the great political 
drama of the Creek controversy. In its progress, 
j-ou have seen two of the sovereign States of the 
American Confederation — especially, you have 
seen one of those States, which has always been 
faithful and forward in the discharge of her 
duties to this Union, driven to the wall, by the 
combined force of the administration and its 
allies consisting of a portion of the Creek nation, 
and certain Cherokee diplomatists. Hitherto, in 
the discussions before the Senate on this subject, 
I have imposed a restraint upon my own feel- 
ings under the influence of motives which have 
now ceased to operate. It was my first duty to 
obtain an acknowledgment, on this floor, of the 
rights of Georgia, repressing, for that purpose, 
oven the stor}' of her wrongs. It was my first 
duty, sir, and I have sacrificed to it every other 
consideration. As a motive to forbearance it no 
longer exists. The rights of Georgia have been 
prostrated. 

'• Sir, in the progress of that controversy, 
which has grown out of the treaty of the Indian 
Spiings. the people of Georgia have been grossly 
and wantonly calumniated, and the acts of the 
administration have assisted to give currency to 
the.se calumnies. Her chief magistrate has 
been traduced. The solemn act of her legisla- 
ture has been set at naught by a rescript of the 
federal Executive. A military force has been 
quartered on her borders to coerce her to sub- 
mission ; and without a trial, without the privi- 
lege of being heard, without the semblance of 
evidence, she has been deprived of riglits secured 
to her by the solemn stipulations of treaty. 

" When, in obedience to the will of the legis- 
lature of Georgia, her chief magistrate had com- 
municated to the President his determination 
to survey the ceded territory, his right to do so 
was admitted. It was declared by the President 
that the act would be ' wholly' on the responsi- 
bility of the government of Georgia, and that 
' the Government of the United States would 
not be in any manner responsible for any conse- 
quences which might result from the measure.' 
When his willingness to encounter this responsi- 
bilit}- was announced, it was met by the declara- 
tion that the President would ' not permit the 
survey to be made,' and he was referred to a 
major-general of the army of the United States, 
an(i one thousand regulars. 

" The murder of Mcintosh — the defamation 
of the chief magistrate of Georgia — the menace 
of military force to coerce her to submission — 
were followed by the traduction of two of her 
cherished citizens, employed as the agents of the 



General Government in negotiating the treaty — 
gentlemen whose integrity will not shrink from a 
comparison with that of the proudest and loftiest 
of their accusers. Then the sympathies of the 
people of the I'nion were excited in behalf of ' the 
children of the forest,' who were represented as 
indignantly spurning the gold, which was offered 
to entice them from the graves of their fathers, 
and resolutely determined never to abandon them. 
The incidents of the plot being thus prepared, the 
affair hastens to its consummation. A new treaty 
is negotiated here — a pure and spotless treaty. 
The lights of Georgia and of Alabama are sacri- 
ficed ; the United States obtain a part of the lands, 
and pay double the amount sti])ulatcd by the old 
treaty ; and those poor and noble, and unsophis- 
ticated sons of the forest, having succeeded in 
imposing on the simplicity of this government, 
next concert, under its eye, and with its know- 
ledge, the means of defrauding their own constitu- 
ents, the chiefs and warriors of the Creek nation. 

" For their agency in exciting the Creeks to 
resist the former treaty, and in deluding this 
government to annul it, three Cherokees — 
Ridge, Vann, and the father of the former — are 
to receive forty thousand dollars of the 
money stipulated to be paid bj' the United States 
to the chiefs of the Creek nation ; and the govern- 
ment, when informed of the projected fraud, deems 
itself powerless to avert it. Nay, when apprised 
by your amendment, that you had also detected 
it, that government docs not hesitate to interpose, 
by one of its high functionaries, to resist your 
proceeding, by a singular fatuity, thus giving its 
countenance and support to the commission of 
the fraud. Sir, I sj)eak of what has passed 
before your eyes even in this hall. 

" One fifth of the whole purchase monej^ is to 
be given to three Cherokees. Tkn thousand 
DOLLARS reward one of the heroes of Fort 
^lims — a boon which it so well becomes us to 
bestow. A few chosen favorites divide among 
themselves upwards of one hundkkd and fifty 
thousand dollars, leaving a pittance for distri- 
bution among the great body of the chiefs and 
warriors of the nation. 

'• But the administration, though it condemns 
the fraud, thinks that we have no power to pre- 
vent its consummation. What, sir. have we no 
power to see that our own treaty is carried into 
effect? Have we no interest in doing so ? Have 
we no power ? We have stipulated for the pay- 
ment of two hundred and forty-seven thousand 
dollars to the chiefs of the Creek nation, to he 
distributed among the chiefs and irarriors of 
that nation. Is not the distribution part of 
the contract as well as the paynipnt? AVc know 
that a few of tho.se chiefs, in fraudulent violation 
of the rights secured by that treaty, are about 
to apjiropriate this money to themselves. Are 
we powerless to prevent it? Nay, must we, 
too. suffer ourselves to be made the con.^cious 
instruments of its consummation? AVe have 
made a bargain with a savage tribe which you 
choose to dignify with the name of a treaty. 



ANNO 1826. JOHN QUINCY ADAMS, PRESIDENT. 



63 



concerning whom we legislate with their con- 
sent, or without it, as it seems good in our 
eyes. We know that some ten or twenty of 
them are about to cheat the remainder. We 
have the means in our hands, without which 
their corrupt purpose cannot be effected. Have 
we not the ri,G;ht to see that our own bargain is 
honestly fulfilled? Consistently with common 
honesty, can we put the consideration money of 
the contract into the hands of those who we 
know are about to defraud the people who 
trusted them ? Sir, the proposition is absurd. 

"]Mr. Forsyth (of the House of Representa- 
tives) said : A stupendous fraud, it seems, was 
intended by the delegation who had formed, with 
the Secretary of War, the new contract. The 
chiefs composing the Creek diplomatic train, as- 
sisted by their Cherokee secretaries of legation, 
had combined to put into their own pockets, and 
those of a few select friends, somewhere about 
three fourths of the first payment to be made for 
the second cession of the lands lying in Geor- 
gia. The facts connected with this transaction, 
although concealed from the Senate when the 
second contract was before them for ratification, 
and from the House when the appropriation bill 
to carry it into effect was under consideration, 
were perfectly understood at the War Depart- 
ment by the Secretary, and by his clerk, who 
is called the head of the Indian Bureau (Mr. 
Thomas L. McKinney). The Senate having, by 
some strange fortune, discovered the intended 
fraud, after the ratification of the contract, and 
before they acted on the appropriation bill, wish- 
ed, b)'' an amendment to the bill, to prevent the 
success of the profitable scheme of villany. The 
House, entirely ignorant of the facts, and not 
suspecting the motive of the amendment, had re- 
jected it, insisted upon their disagreement to it, 
and a committee of the two Houses, as usual, had 
conferred on the subject. Now, that the facts are 
ascertained by the separate reports of the Com- 
mittees, there can be no difference of opinion on 
the great point of defeating the intended treache- 
ry of the delegation and secretaries to the Creek 
tribe. The only matter which can bear discus- 
sion, is, how shall the treachery be punished ? 
— how shall the Creek tribe be protected from 
the abominable designs of their worthless and 
unprincipled agents? Will the amendment pro- 
posed by the committee reach their object ? The 
plan is, to pay the money to the chiefs, to be 
divided among the chiefs and warriors, under 
the direction of the Secretarj^ of War, in a full 
council of the nation, convened for the purpo.se. 
Suppose the council in solemn session, the money 
before them, and the division about to be made, 
under the direction of the Secretary of War — 
may not the chiefs and their secretaries claim 
the money, as promised to them under the treaty, 
and how will the Sccretar}^ or his agent resist 
the claim ? They assented — the House will per- 
ceive that the only difficulty was the amount of 
the bribe. The Secretary was willing to go as 
high as five thousand dollars, but could not 



stretch to ten thousand dollars. Notwithstand- 
ing the assent of the Cherokees, and the declara- 
tion of the Secretary, that five thousand dollars 
each was the extent that they could be allowed. 
Ridge and Vann, after the treaty was signed, and 
before it was acted on by the Senate, or submit- 
ted to that body, brought a paper, the precious 
list of the price of each traitor, for the inspection 
and information of the head of the bureau and 
the head of the department ; and what answer 
did they receive from both ? The head of the 
bureau said it was their own affair. The Secre- 
tary said he presumed it was their own affair. 
But I ask this House, if the engagement for the 
five thousand dollars, and the list of the sums to 
be distributed, may not be claimed as part of this 
new contract ? If these pei'sons have not a right 
to claim, in the face of the tribe, these sums, as 
promised to them by their Great Father? Ay, 
sir ; and, if they are powerful enough in the 
tribe, they will enforce their claim. Under what 
pretext will your Secretary of War direct a diP' 
ferent disposition or division of the money, after 
his often repeated declaration, ' it is their own 
affair ' — the affair of the delegation ? Yes, sir, 
so happily has this business been managed at the 
seat of government, under the Executive eye, 
that this division which the negotiators proposed 
to make of the spoil, may be termed a part of the 
consideration of the contract. It must be con- 
fessed that these exquisite ambassadors were 
quite liberal to themselves, their secretaries, and 
particular friends : one hundred and fift5'-nine 
thousand seven hundred dollars, to be divided 
among some twenty persons, is pretty well ! 
What name shall we give to this division of 
money among them ? To call it a bribe, would 
shock the delicacy of the War Department, and 
possibly offend those gentle spirited politicians, 
who resemble Covvper's preachers, ' who could 
not mention hell to ears polite.' The transcend- 
ent criminality of this design cannot be well 
understood, without recalling to recollection the 
dark and bloody scenes of the year past. The 
chief jMcIntosh, distinguished at all times by his 
courage and devotion to the whites, deriving his 
name of the White Warrioi-, from his mixed pa- 
rentage, had formed, with his party, the treaty 
of the Indian Springs. He was denounced for it. 
His midnight sleep was broken by the crackling 
flames of his dwelling burning over his head. 
Escaping from the flames, he was shot down by 
a party acting under the orders of tlie persons 
who accused him of betraying, for his own .selfish 
purposes, the interest of "the tribe. Those who 
condemned that chief, the incendiaries and the 
murderers, are the negotiators of this new con- 
tract ; the one hundred and fifty-nine thousand 
dollars, is to be the fruit of their victory over the 
assassinated chief. What evidence of fraud, and 
selfishness, and treachery, has red or white malice 
been able to exhibit against the dead warrior ? 
A reservation of land for him, in the contract of 
1821, was sold by him to the United States, for 
twenty-five thousand dollars j a price he could 



64 



THIRTY TEARS' VIEW. 



have obtained from individuals, if his title had 
been deemed secure. This sale of projicrty given 
to him hy the tribe, \vas the foundation of the 
calumnies tliat have been heaped u])on his memo- 
ry, and the cause which, in the eyes of our ad- 
ministration newspaper editors, scribblers, and re- 
viewers, justified his execution. Now, sir, the 
executioners are to be rewarded by j>illaiiing the 
public Treasury. I look with some curiosity for 
the indignant denunciations of this accidentally 
discovered treachery. Perhaps it will be dis- 
covered tliat all this new business of the Creeks 
is ' their own affair,' with which the white editors 
and reviewers have nothing to do. Fortunately, 
Mr. F. said, Congress had something to do with 
this affair. We owe a justice to the tribe. This 
amendment, he feared, would not do justice. The 
power of Congress should be exerted, not only to 
keep the money out of the hands of these wretch- 
es, but to secure a faithful and equal distribution 
of it among the whole Creek nation. The whole 
tribe hold the land ; their title by occupancy 
resides in all ; all are rightfully claimants to equal 
portions of the price of their removal from it. 
The country is not aware how the Indian annui- 
ties are distributed, or the monej-s paid to the 
tribes disposed of. They are divided according 
to the discretion of the Indian government, com- 
pletely aristocratical — all the powers vested in a 
few chiefs. jNIr. F. had it from authority he 
could not doubt, that the Creek annuities had, 
for years past, been divided in very unequal pro- 
portions, not among the twenty thousand souls 
of wliich the tribe was believed to be composed, 
but among about one thousand five hundred 
chiefs and warriors. 

"]\Ir. Forsyth expressed his hope that the 
House would reject the report of the committee. 
Before taking his seat, he asked the indulgence 
of the House, while he made a few comments on 
this list of worthies, and the prices to be paid to 
each. At the head of the list stands Mr. Ridge, 
with the sum of $15,000 opposite to his elevated 
name. This man is no Creek, but a Cherokee, 
educated among the whites, allied to them by 
marriage — has received lessons in Christianity, 
morality, and sentiment — perfectly civilized, ac- 
cording to the rules and customs of Cornwall. 
This negotiation, of which he has been, either as 
actor or instrument, the principal manager, is an 
admirable proof of the benefits he has derived 
from his residence among a moral and religious 
people. Vann. another Cherokee, half savage 
and half ciniized, succeeds him with $15,000 
bounty. A few inches below comes another 
Ridge, the major, father to the secretary — a gal- 
lant old fellow, who did .some service against the 
liostile Creeks, during the late war, for which ho 
deserved and received acknowledgments — but 
what claims he had to this Creek money, Mr. F. 
could not comprehend. Probabl}' his name was 
used merely to cover another gratuity for the 
son, whose modesty would not permit him to 
take more than $15,000 in his own name. These 



Cherokees were together to receive $40,000 of 
Creek money, and the Secretary of War is of 
opinion it is quite consistent with the contract, 
which provides for the distribution of it among 
the chiefs and warriors of the Creeks. Look. 
sir, at the distinction made for these exquisites. 
Yopothle Yoholo, whose word General Gaines 
would take against the congregated world, is set 
down for but $10,000. The Little Prince but 
• : $10,000. Even Menawee, distinguished as he is 
as the leader of the party who murdered Mcintosh 
and Etome Tustunnuggee — as one of the accursed 
band who butchered three hundred men, women, 
and children, at Fort Mims— has but $10,000^ 
A distinguished Red Stick, in these days, when 
kindness to Indians is shown in proportion to 
their opposition to the policy of the General Gov- 
ernment, might have expected better treatment 
— only ten thousand dollars to our enemy in war 
and in peace ! Rut, sir, I will not detain the 
House longer. I should hold myself criminal if 
I had exposed these things unnecessarily or use- 
lessly. That patriotism only is lovely which, 
imitating the filial piety of the sons of the Patri- 
arch, seeks, with averted face, to cover the naked- 
ness of the country from the eye of a vulgar and 
invidious curiosity. But the commands of public 
duty must be obeyed ; let those who have im- 
posed this duty upon us answer for it to the 
people." 

" Mr. Tatnall, of Geo. (H. R.) He was as con- 
fident as his colleagues could be, that the foulest 
fraud had been projected by some of the individ- 
uals calling themselves a part of the Creek dele- 
gation, and that it was known to the depart- 
ment of war before the ratification of the treaty, 
and was not communicated by that department 
to the Senate, either before or during the pen- 
dency of the consideration of the treaty by that 
body. Mr. T. said he would not, however, for 
the reasons just mentioned, dwell on this ground, 
but would proceed to state, that he was in favor 
of the amendment offered by the committee of 
conference, (and therein he differed from his col- 
league), which, whilst it would effectually pre- 
vent the commission of the fraud intended, would, 
also, avoid a violation of the terms of ■ the new 
treaty,' as it was styled. He stated, that the 
list which he held in his hand was, itself, con- 
clusive evidence of a corrupt intention to divide 
the greater part of the money among the few 
persons named in it. In this list, different sums 
were written opposite the names of different in- 
dividuals, such, for instance, as the following: 
'John Ridge, $15,000— Joseph Vann, 15,000' 
(both Cherokees, and not Creeks, and, therefore, 
not entitled to one cent). The next, a long and 
barbarous Indian name, which I shall not at- 
tempt to pronounce, '$10,000 '—next, John 

, Stedham, • $10,000,' &c. This list, as it appears 
in the documents received from the Secretary of 
War, was presented to the war deoartment by 

j Ridge and Vann." 



ANNO 1826. JOHN QUINCY ADAMS, PRESIDENT. 



65 



CHAPTER XXV. 

THE PANAMA MISSION. 

The history of this mission, or attempted mis- 
sion (for it never took effect, though eventually 
sanctioned by both Houses of Congress), de- 
serves a place in this inside view of the working 
of our government. Though long since sunk 
into oblivion, and its name almost forgotten, it 
was a master subject on the political theatre 
during its day ; and gave rise to questions of 
national, and of constitutional law, and of na- 
tional policy, the importance of which survive 
the occasion from which they sprung ; and the 
solution of which (as then solved), may be 
some guide to future action, if similar questions 
again occur. Besides the grave questions to 
which the subject gave rise, the subject itself 
became one of unusual and painful excitement. 
It agitated the people, made a violent debate in 
the two Houses of Congress, inflamed the pas- 
sions of parties and individuals, raised a tempest 
before which Congress bent, made bad feeling 
between the President and the Senate ; and led 
to the duel between Mr. Randolph and Mr. Clay. 
It was an administration measure, and pressed 
by all the means known to an administration. 
It was evidently relied upon as a means of act- 
ing upon the people — as a popular movement, 
which might have the effect of turning the tide 
which was then running high against Mr. Adams 
and Mr. Clay on account of the election in the 
House of Representatives, and the broad doc- 
trines of the inaugural address, and of the first 
annual message: and it was doubtless well 
imagined for that purpose. It was an American 
movement, and republican. It was the assembly 
of the American states of Spanish origin, counsel- 
ling for their mutual safety and independence; 
and presenting the natural wish for the United 
States to place herself at their head, as the 
eldest sister of the new republics, and the one 
whose example and institutions the others had 
followed. The monarchies of Europe had formed 
a "Holy Alliance," to check the progress of 
liberty : it seemed just that the republics of 
the New World should confederate against the 
dangers of despotism. The subject had a charm 
in it ; and the name and place of meeting re- 

Vol. I.— 5 



called classic and cherished recollections. It 
was on an isthmus — the Isthmus of Panama — 
vriiich connected the two Americas, the Grecian 
republics had their isthmus — that of Corinth — 
where their deputies assembled. All the ad- 
vantages in the presentation of the question 
were on the side of the administration. It ad- 
dressed itself to the imagination — to the pas- 
sions — to the prejudices; — and could only be 
met by the cold and sober suggestions of reason 
and judgment. It had the prestige of name 
and subject, and was half victor before the con- 
test began ; and it required bold men to make 
head against it. 

The debate began in the Senate, upon the nomi- 
nation of ministers ; and as the Senate sat with 
closed doors, their objections were not heard, 
while numerous presses, and popular speakers, 
excited the public mind in favor of the measure, 
and inflamed it against the Senate for delaying 
its sanction. It was a plan conceived by the new 
Spanish American republics, and prepared as a 
sort of amphictyonic council for the settlement 
of questions among themselves; and, to which, 
in a manner which had much the appearance of 
our own procuring, we had received an invitation 
to send deputies. The invitation was most seduc- 
tively exhibited in all the administration presses ; 
and captivated all young and ardent imagina- 
tions. The people were roused : the majority in 
both Housesof Congress gave way (many against 
their convictions, as they frankly told me), while 
the project itself — our participation in it — was 
utterly condemned by the principles of our con- 
stitution, and by the policy which forbade " en- 
tangling alliances," and the proposed congress 
itself was not even a diplomatic body to which 
ministers could be sent under the law of nations. 
To counteract the effect of this outside current, 
the Senate, on the motion of Mr. Van Buren, 
adopted a resolve to debate the question with 
open doors, " unless, in the opinion of the Presi- 
dent, the publication of documents necessary to 
be referred to in debate should be prejudicial to 
existing negotiations :" and a coY>y of the resolve 
was sent to Mr. Adams for his opinion on that 
point. He declinec^to give it, and left it to the 
Senate to decide for itself, " (he question of an 
unexampled departure from its own usages, 
and upon the motives of which, not being- him- 
self informed, he did not feel himself competent 
to decide.'''' This reference to the motives of the 



66 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW 



members, and the usages of the Senate, with its 
clear implication of the badness of one, and the 
violation of the other, gave great offence in the 
Senate, and even led to a proposition (made by 
Mr. Rowan of Kentucky), not to act on the nom- 
inations until the information requested should 
be given. In the end the Senate relinquished the 
idea of a public debate, and contented itself with 
its publication after it was over. Mr. John Ser- 
geant of Pennsylvania, and Mr. Richard Clark 
Anderson of Kentucky, were the ministers nomi- 
nated ; and, the question turning wholly upon the 
mission itself, and not upon the persons nominated 
(to whose fitness there was no objection), they 
were confirmed by a close vote — 24 to 20. The 
negatives were : Messrs. Benton, Berrien, Branch. 
Chandler, Cobb (Thomas W. of Georgia), Dick- 
erson, Eaton, Findlay, Ilayne, Holmes of Maine, 
Kane, King of Alabama, Macon, Randolph, Taze- 
well, Rowan, Van Buren, White of Tennessee, 
Williams of Mississippi, "Woodbury. The Vice- 
President, Mr. Calhoun, presiding in the Senate, 
bad no vote, the constitutional contingency to 
authorize it not having occurred : but he was full 
and free in the expression of his opinion against 
the mission. 

It was very nearly a party vote, the democracy 
as a party, being against it : but of those of the 
party who voted for it, the design of this history 
(which is to show the working of the govern- 
ment) requires it to be told that there was after- 
wards, either to themselves or relatives, some 
large dispensations of executive patronage. Their 
votes may have been conscientious ; but in that 
case, it would have been better to have vin- 
dicated the disinterestedness of the act, by the 
total refusal of executive favor. Mr. Adams 
commenced right, by asking the advice of the 
Senate, before he instituted the mission ; but the 
manner in which the object was pursued, made it 
a matter of opposition to the administration to 
refuse it, and greatly impaired the liarmony 
which ought to exist between the President and 
the Senate. After all, the whole conception of the 
Panama congress was an abortion. It died out 
of itself, without ever having been once held — 
not even by the states which had conceived it. 
It was incongruous and impracticable, even for 
them, — more apt to engender disputes among 
themselves than to harmonize action against 
Spain, — and utterly foreign to us, and dangerous 
to our peace and institutions. The basis of the 



agreement for the congress, was the existing state 
of war between all the new states and the mother 
country — Spani.sh pride and policy being slow to 
acknowledge the independence of revolted colo- 
nies, no matter how independent in fact ; — and 
the wish to establish concert among themselves, 
in the mode of treating her commerce, and that 
of such of her American possessions (Cuba, 
Porto Rico), as had not thrown off their subjec- 
tion. We were at peace with Spain, and could 
not go into any such council without comprom- 
ising our neutrality, and impairing the integrity 
of our national character. Besides the difficul- 
ties it would involve with Spain, there was one 
subject specified in the treaties for discussion and 
settlement in that congress, namely, the consid- 
erations of future relations with the government 
of Haiti; which would have been a firebrand in 
the southern half of our Union, — not to be han- 
dled or touched by our goverment any where. 
The publication of the secret debates in the Senate 
on the nomination of the ministers, and the pub- 
lic discussion in the House of Representatives on 
the appropriation clauses, to carry the mission 
into effect, succeeded, after some time, in dis- 
sipating all the illusions which had fascinated the 
public mind — turned the current against the ad- 
ministration — made the project a new head of 
objection to its authors ; and in a short time it 
would have been impossible to obtain any con- 
sideration for it, either in Congress or before the 
people. It is now entirely forgotten, but deserves 
to be remembered in this View of the working of 
the government, to show the questions of policy, 
of national and constitutional law which were 
discussed — the excitement which can be got up 
without foundation, and against reason — how 
public men can bend before a storm — how all the 
departments of the government can go wrong : — 
and how the true conservative power in our 
country is in the people, in their judgment and 
reason, and in steady appeals to their intelligence 
and patriotism. 

Mr. Adams communicated the objects of the 
proposed congress, .so far as the United States 
could engage in them, in a special message to 
the Senate ; in which, disclaiming all part in any 
deliberations of a belligerent character, or design 
to contract alliances, or to engage in any project 
importing hostility to any other nation, he enu- 
merated, as the measures in which we could well 
take part, 1. The establishment of liberal prin- 



ANNO 1826. JOHN QUINCY ADAMS, PRESIDENT. 



67 



ciples of commercial intercourse, which he sup- 
posed could be best done in an assembly of all 
the American states together. 2. The consen- 
taneous adoption of principles of maritime neu- 
trality. 3. The doctrine that free ships make 
free goods. 4. An agreement that the " Monroe 
doctrine," as it is called, should be adopted by 
the congress, each state to guard, by its own 
means, its own territory from future European 
colonization. The enunciation of this doctrine, 
so different from what it has of late been sup- 
posed to be, as binding the United States to 
guard all the territory of the New World from 
European colonization, makes it proper to give 
this passage from Mr. Adams's message in his own 
words. They are these: "An agreement between 
all the parties represented at the meeting, that 
each will guard, by its own means, against the 
establishment of any future European colony 
within its borders, may be found advisable. This 
was, more than two years since, announced by 
ray predecessor to the world, as a principle re- 
sulting from the emancipation of both the Ame- 
rican continents. It may be so developed to the 
new southern nations, that they may feel it as 
an essential appendage to their independence." 
These were the words of Mr. Adams, who had 
been a member of Mr. Monroe's cabinet, and 
filling the department from which the doctrine 
would emanate ; written at a time when the 
enunciation of it was still fresh, and when he 
himself, in a communication to the American 
Senate, was laying it down for the adoption of all 
the American nations in a general congress of their 
icputies. The circumstances of the communi- 
cation render it incredible that Mr. Adams could 
be deceived in his understanding ; and, qpcord- 
ing to him, this " Monroe doctrine " (according 
to which it has been of late believed that the 
United States were to stand guard over the two 
Americas, and repulse all intrusive colonists 
from their shores), was entirely confined to our 
own borders : that it was only proposed to get 
the other states of the New \yorld to agree that, 
each for itself, and by its own means, should 
guard its own territories: and, consequently, 
that the United States, so far from extendins 
gratuitous protection to the territories of other 
states, would neither give, nor receive, aid in any 
such enterprise, but that each should use its own 
means, within its own borders, for its own exemp- 
tion from European colonial intrusion. 5. A fifth 



object proposed by Mr. Adams, in which he sup- 
posed our participation in the business of the 
Panama congress might be rightfully and bene- 
ficially admitted, related to the advancement of 
religious liberty : and as this was a point at 
which the message encountered much censure, 
I will give it in its own words. They are these : 
" There is j'et another subject upon which, with- 
out entering into any treaty, the moral influence 
of the United States may, perhaps, be exerted 
with beneficial influence at such meeting — the 
advancement of religious liberty. Some of the 
southern nations are, even j^et, so far under the 
dominion of prejudice, that they have incorpo- 
rated, with their political constitutions, an ex- 
clusive Church, without toleration of any other 
than the dominant sect. The abandonment of 
this last badge of religious bigotry and oppres- 
sion, may be pressed more efifectually by the 
united exertions of those who concur in the 
principles of freedom of conscience, upon those 
who are yet to be convinced of their justice and 
wisdom, than by the solitary eflbrts of a minis- 
ter to any one of their separate governments." 
6. The sixth and last object named by Mr. 
Adams was, to give proofs of our good will to 
all the new southern republics, by accepting 
their invitation to join them in the congress 
which they proposed of American nations. The 
President enumerated no others of the objects 
to which the discussions of the congress might be 
directed ; but in the papers which he commu- 
nicated with the invitations he had received, 
many others were mentioned, one of which was, 
" the basis on which the relations with Haiti 
should be placed ; " and the other, " to consider 
and settle the future relations with Cuba and 
Porto Rico.' 

The message was referred to the Senate's 
Committee on Foreign Affairs, consisting of Mr. 
Macon, Mr. Tazewell, and ]\Ir Gaillard of South 
Carolina, ]\Ir. Mills of Massachusetts, and Mr. 
Hugh L. White of Tennessee. The committee 
reported adversely to the President's recom- 
mendation, and replied to the message, point by 
point. It is an elaborate document, of great 
ability and research, and well expressed the 
democratic doctrines of that day. It was pre- 
sented by Mr. Macon, the chairman of the 
committee, and was drawn by Mr. Tazewell, 
and was the report of which Mr. Macon, when 
complimented upon it, was accustomed to answer, 



68 



THIRTY TEARS' VIEW. 



" Yes : it is a good report. Tazewell wrote it." 
But it was his also ; for no power could have 
made him present it, without declaring the fact, 
if he had not approved it. The general principle 
of the report was that of good will and friend- 
ship to all the young republics, and the cultiva- 
tion of social, commercial and political relations 
with each one individually ; but no entangling 
connection, and no internal interference with any 
one. On the suggestion of advancing religious 
freedom, the committee remark : 

'• In the opinion of this committee, there is no 
proposition, concernirg which the people of the 
United States are now and ever have been more 
unanimous, than that which denies, not merely the 
expediency, but the right of intermeddling with 
the internal affairs of other states; and espe- 
cially of seeking to alter any provision they may 
have thought proper to adopt as a fundamental 
law, or may have incorporated with their politi- 
cal constitutions. And if there be any such 
subject more sacred and delicate than another, 
as to which the United States ought never to 
intermeddle, even by obtrusive advice, it is that 
which concerns religious liberty. The most 
cruel and devastating wars have been produced 
by such interferences ; the blood of man has 
been poured out in torrents ; and. from the days 
of the crusades to the present hour, no benefit 
has resulted to the human famil}-, from discus- 
.sions carried on by nations upon such subjects. 
Among the variety even of Christian nations 
which now inhabit the earth, rare indeed are the 
examples to be found of states who have not 
established an exclusive church ; and to far the 
greater number of these toleration is yet un- 
known. In none of the communications which 
have taken place, is the most distant allusion made 
to this delicate subject, by any of the ministers 
who have given this invitation ; and the com- 
mittee feel very confident in the opinion, that, if 
ever an intimation shall be made to the sove- 
reignties they represent, that it was the purpose 
of the United States to discuss at the proposed 
congress, their plans of internal civil polity, or 
any thing touching the supposed interests of 
their religious establishments, the invitation 
given would soon be withdrawn." 

On the subject of the " Monroe doctrine," the 
report shows that, one of the new republics 
(Colombia) proposed that this doctrine should 
be enforced " by the joint and united efforts of 
all the states to be represented in the congress, 
who should be bound by a solemn convention 
to secure this end. It was in answer to this pro- 
position that the President in his message showed 
the extent of that doctrine to be limited to our 
own territories, and that all that we could do. 



would be to enter into agreement that each 
should guard, by its own means, against the es- 
tablishment of any foreign colony within its bor- 
ders. Even such an agreement the committee 
deemed unadvisable, and that there was no 
more reason for making it a treaty stipulation 
than there was for reducing to such stipulations 
any other of the -'high, just, and universally ad- 
mitted rights of all nations. " The favorable com- 
mercial treaties which the President expected to 
obtain, the committee believed would be more 
readily obtained from each nation separately (in 
which opinion their foresight has been justified 
by the event) ; and that each treaty would be the 
more easily kept in proportion to the smaller 
number of parties to it. The ameliorations of the 
laws of nations which the President proposed, in 
the adoption of princij^les of maritime neutrality, 
and that free ships should make free goods, and 
the restriction of paper blockades, were deemed 
by the committee objects beyond the enforce- 
ment of the American states alone ; and the en- 
forcement of which, if agreed to, might bring the 
chief burthen of enforcement upon the United 
States ; and the committee doubted the policy of 
undertaking, by negotiation with these nations, 
to settle abstract propositions, as parts of public 
law. On the subject of Cuba and Porto Rico, 
the report declared that the United States could 
never regard with indifference their actual condi- 
tion, or future destiny ; — but deprecated any 
joint action in relation to them, or any action to 
which they themselves were not parties; and it 
totally discountenanced any joint discussion or ac- 
tion in relation to the future of Haiti. To the 
whole of the new republics, the report expressed 
the be]ief that, the retention of our present un- 
connected and friendly position towards them, 
would be most for their own benefit, and enable 
the United States to act most effectually' for them 
in the case of needing our good offices. It 
said : 

" While the United States retain the position 
which they have hitherto occupied, and mani- 
fest a constant determination not to mingle their 
interests with those of the other .states of America, 
they may continue to employ the influence which 
they pos.sess, and have already haj)pily exerted, 
with the nations of Europe, in favor of these new 
republics. But, if ever the United States per- 
mit themselves to be associated with these na- 
tions in any general congress, assembled for the 
discussion of common plans, in the wa}- afl'ecting 
European interests, they will, by such an act. not 



ANNO 1826. JOHN QUINCY ADAMS, PRESIDENT. 



69 



only deprive themselves of the ability they now 
possess, of rendering useful assistance to the 
other American states, but also produce other 
efFects, prejudicial to their own interests. Then, 
the powers of Europe, who have hitherto con- 
fided in the sagacity, vigilance, and impartiality 
of the United States, to watch, detect, announce, 
and restrain any disposition that the heat of the 
existing contest might excite in the new states 
of America, to extend their empires beyond their 
own limits, and who have, therefore, considered 
their possessions and commerce in America safe, 
while so guarded, would no longer feel this con- 
fidence. " 

The advantage of pursuing our old policy, and 
maintaining friendly relations with all powers, 
" entangling alliances with none," was forcibly 
presented in a brief and striking paragraph : 

" And the United States, who have grown up 
in happiness, to their present prosperity, by a 
strict observance of their old well-known course 
of policy, and by manifesting entire good will 
and most profound respect for all other nations, 
must prepare to embark their future destinies 
upon an unknown and turbulent ocean, directed 
by little experience, and destined for no certain 
haven. In such a voyage the dissimilitude ex- 
isting between themselves and their associates, 
in interest, character, language, religion, manners, 
customs, habits, laws, and almost every other 
particular : and the rivalship these discrepancies 
must surely produce amongst them, would gen- 
erate discords, which, if they did not destroy all 
hope of its successful termination, would make 
even success itself the ultimate cause of new and 
du-eful conflicts between themselves. Such has 
been the issue of all such enterprises in past 
time ; and we have therefore strong reasons to 
expect in the future, similar results from similar 
causes. 

The committee dissented from the President 
on the point of his right to institute the mission 
without the previous advice and consent of the 
Senate, The President averred his right to do 
so : but decmt'd it advisable, mider all the cir- 
cumstances, to waive the right, and ask the ad- 
vice. The committee averred the right of the 
Senate to decide directly upon the expedience of 
this new mission ; grounding the right upon its 
originality, and holding that when a new mission 
is to be instituted it is the creation of an office, 
not the filling of a vacancy ; and that the Senate 
have a right to decide upon the expediency of the 
office itself. ^ 

I spoke myself on this question, and to all the 
points which it presented, and on the subject of 
relations with Haiti (on which a uniform rule 
was to be determined on. or a rule with modifi- 



cations, according to the proposition of Colombia) 
I held that our policy was fixed, and could be 
neither altered, nor discussed in any foreign as- 
sembly ; and especially in the one proposed ; all 
the other parties to wliich had already placed 
the two races (black and white) on the basis of 
political equalit3^ I said : 

" Our policy towards Haiti, the old San Do- 
mingo, has been fixed for three and thirty years. 
We trade with her, but no diplomatic relations 
have been established between us. We purchase 
coffee from her, and pay her for it ; but we inter- 
change no consuls or ministers. We receive no 
mulatto consuls, or black ambassadors from her. 
And why? Because the peace of eleven States 
in this Union will not permit the fruits of a suc- 
cessful negro insurrection to be exhibited among 
them. It will not permit black consuls and am- 
bassadors to establish themselves in our cities, 
and to parade through our country, and give to 
their fellow blacks in the United States, proof 
in hand of the honors which await them, for a 
like successful effort on their part. It will not 
permit the fact to be seen, and told, that for the 
murder of their masters and mistresses, they are 
to finii friends among the white people of these 
United States. No, this is a question wliich has 
been determined here for three and thirty 
years ; one which has never been open for dis- 
cussion, at home or abroad, neither under the 
Presidency of Gen. Washington, of the first Mr. 
Adams, of Mr. Jefferson, Mr. Madison, or Mr. 
Monroe. It is one which cannot be discussed 
in this chamber on this day ; and shall we go 
to Panama to discuss it ? I take it in the mild- 
est supposed character of this Congress — shall 
we go there to advise and consult in council 
about it % Who are to advise and sit in judg- 
ment upon it 1 Five nations who have already 
put the black man upon an equality with the 
white, not only in their constitutions but in real 
life : five nations who have at this moment (at 
least some of them) black generals in their ar- 
mies and mulatto senators in their congresses ! 

No question, in its day, excited more heat and 
intemperate discussion, or more feeling between 
a President and Senate, than this proposed mis- 
sion to the congress of American nations at Pan- 
ama; and no heated question ever cooled oflT, 
and died out so suddenly and completely. And 
now the chief benefit to be derived from its 
retrospect — and that indeed is a real one — is a 
view of the firmness with which was then main- 
tained by a minority, the old policy of the Uni- 
ted States, to avoid entangling alliances and in- 
terference with the affairs of other nations ; — and 
the exposition of the Monroe doctrine, from one 
so competent to give it as Mr. Adams. 



70 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



CHAPTER XXVI. 

DUEL BETWEEN MR. CLAY AND ME. KANDOLPH. 

It was Saturday, the first day of April, towards 
noon, the Senate not being that day in session, 
that Mr. Randolph came to my room at Brown's 
Hotel, and (without explaining the reason of the 
question) asked me if I was a blood-relation of 
Mrs. Clay ? I answered that I was, and he im- 
mediately replied that that put an end to a re- 
quest which he had Avished to make of me ; and 
then went on to tell me that he had just received 
a challenge from Mr. Clay, had accepted it, was 
ready to go out, and would apply to Col. Tat- 
nall to be his second. Before leaving, he told me 
he would make my bosom the depository of a 
secret which he should commit to no other per- 
son : it was, that he did not intend to fire at 
Mr. Clay. He told it to me because he wanted 
a witness of his intention, and did not mean to 
tell it to his second or any body else ; and en- 
joined inviolable secrecy until the duel was over. 
This was the first notice I had of the affair. 
The circumstances of the delivery of the challenge 
I had from Gen. Jesup, Mr. Clay's second, and 
they were so perfectly characteristic of Mr. Ran- 
dolph that I give them in detail, and in the Gen- 
eral's own words : 

" I was unable to see Mr. Randolph until the 
morning of the 1st of April, when I called on 
liim for the purpose of delivering the note. 
Previous to presenting it, however, I thought it 
proper to ascertain from Mr. Randolph himself 
whether the information which Mr. Clay had 
received — that he considered himself personally 
accountable for the attack on him — was correct. 
I accordmgly informed Mr. Randolph that I was 
the bearer of a message from INIr. Clay, in conse- 
quence of an attack which he had made upon his 
private as well as public character in the Senate; 
that I was aware no one had the right to ques- 
tion liim out of the Senate for any thing said m 
debate, unless he chose voluntarily to waive his 
privileges as a member of that body. Mr. Ran- 
dolph replied, that the constitution (hd protect 
him, but he would never shield himself under 
such a subterfuge as the plea<ling of his privilege 
as a senator from Virginia ; that he did hold him- 
self accountable to Mr. Clay ; but he said that 
gentleman had first two pledges to redeem : one 
that he liad bound himself to fight any member 
of the House of Representatives, who should ac- 
knowledge liimsclf the author of a certain pub- 



lication in a Philadelphia paper ; and the other, 
that he stood pledged to establish certain facta 
in regard to a great man, whom he would not 
name ; but, he added he could receive no verbal 
message from Mr. Clay — that any message from 
him must be in writing. I replied that I was 
not authorized by Mr. Clay to enter into or 
receive ahy verbal explanations — that the in- 
quiries I had made were for my own satisfaction 
and upon mj"- own responsibility — that the only 
message of wliich I was the bearer was in writing. 
I then presented the note, and remarked that I 
knew nothing of Mr. Clay's pledges ; but that if 
they existed as he (Mr. Randolph) understood 
them, and he was aware of them when he made 
the attack complained of, he could not avail him- 
self of them — that by making the attack I thought 
he had waived them himself. He said he had 
not the remotest intention of taking advantage 
of the pledges referred to ; that he had mention- 
ed them merely to remind me that he was waiv- 
ing his privilege, not only as a senator from 
Virginia, but as a private gentleman ; that he 
was ready to respond to Mr. Clay, and would 
be obliged to me if I would bear his note in re- 
ply ; and that he would in the course of the day 
look out for a friend. I declined being the bear- 
er of his note, but informed him my only reason 
for declining was, that I thought he owed it to 
himself to consult his friends before taking so 
important a step. He seized my hand, saying, 
'You are right, sir. I thank you for the sug- 
gestion : but as you do not take my note, you 
must not be impatient if you should not hear from 
me to-day. I now think of only two friends, 
and there are circumstances connected with one 
of them which may deprive me of his services, 
and the other is in bad health — he was sick yes- 
terday, and may not be out to-day.' I assured 
him that any reasonable time which he might 
find necessary to take would be satisfactory. 
I took leave of him ; and it is due to his memory 
to say that his bearing was, throughout the in- 
terview, that of a high-toned, chivalrous gentle- 
man of the old school." 

These were the circumstances of the delivery of 
the challenge, and the only thing necessary to 
give them their character is to recollect that, with 
this prompt acceptance and positive refusal to 
explain, and tliis extra cut about the two pled- 
ges, there was a perfect determination not to fire 
at Mr. Clay. That determination rested on two 
grounds ; first, an entire unwillingness to hurt Mr. 
Clay ; and, next, a conviction that to return the 
fire would be to answer, and would be an implied 
acknowledgment of Mr. Clay's right to make him 
answer. This he would not do, neither by impli- 
cation nor in words. He denied the right of any 
person to question him out of the Senate (oi 
words spoken within it. He took a distinction 



ANNO 1826. JOHN QUINCY ADAMS, PRESIDENT. 



VI 



between man and senator. As senator he had a 
constitutional immunity, given for a wise purpose, 
and which he would neither surrender nor com- 
promise ; as inrlividual he was ready to give satis- 
/ faction for what was deemed an injury. He 
would receive, but not return a fire. It was as 
much as to say : Mr. Clay may fire at me for 
what has offended him ; I will not, by returning 
the fire, admit his right to do so. This was a 
subtle distinction, and that in case of life and 
death, and not very clear to the common intellect ; 
but to Mr. Randolph both clear and convincing. 
His allusion to the " two pledges unredeemed," 
which he might have plead in bar to Mr. Clay's 
challenge, and would not, was another sarcastic 
cut at Mr. Adams and Mr. Clay, while rendering 
satisfaction for cuts already given. The " mem- 
ber of the House" was Mr. George Kremer, of 
Pennsylvania, who, at the time of the presiden- 
tial election in the House of Representatives, had 
avowed himself to be the author of an anonymous 
publication, the writer of which Mr. Clay had 
threatened to call to account if he would avow 
himself— and did not. The " great man" was 
President Adams, with whom Mr. Clay had had 
a newspaper controversy, involving a question of 
fact, — which had been postponed. The cause of 
this sarcastic cut, and of all the keen personality 
in the Panama speech, was the belief that the 
President and Secretary, the latter especially, 
encouraged the newspapers in their interest to 
attack liim, which they did incessantly ; and he 
chose to overlook the editors and retaliate upon 
the instigators, as he believed them to be. This 
he did to his heart's content in that speech — and 
to their great annoyance, as the coming of the chal- 
lenge proved. The " two friends" alluded to were 
Col. Tatnall and myself, and the circumstances 
which might disqualify one of the two were those 
of ray relationship to Mrs. Clay, of which he did 
not know the degree, and whether of aflinity or 
consanguinity — considering the first no obstacle, 
the other a complete bar to my appearing as his 
second — holding, as he did, with the tenacity of 
an Indian, to the obligations of blood, and laying 
but little stress on marriage connections. His 
aflfable reception and courteous demeanor to Gen. 
Jesup were according to his own high breeding, and 
the decorum which belonged to such occasions. 
A duel in the circle to which he belonged was " an 
affair of honor ;" and high honor, according to its 
code, must pervade every part of it. General 



Jesup had come upon an unpleasant business. 
Mr. Randolph determined to put him at his ease ; 
and did it so effectually as to charm him into ad- 
miration. The whole plan of his conduct, down 
to contingent details, was cast in his mind in- 
stantly, as if by intuition, and never departed 
from. The acceptance, the refusal to explain, the 
determination not to fire, the first and second 
choice of a friend, and the cii'cumstances which 
might disqualify one and delay the other, the ad- 
ditional cut, and the resolve to fall, if he fell, on 
the soil of Virginia — was all, to his mind, a single 
emanation, the flash of an instant. He needed 
no consultations, no deliberations to arrive at all 
these important conclusions. I dwell upon these 
small circumstances because they are character- 
istic, and show the man — a man who belongs to 
history, and had his own history, and should be 
known as he was. That character can only be shown 
in his own conduct, his own words and acts : and 
this duel with Mr. Clay illustrates it at many 
points. It is in that point of view that I dwell 
upon circumstances which might seem trivial, 
but which are not so, being illustrative of char- 
acter and significant to their smallest particulars. 
The acceptance of the challenge was in keep- 
ing with the whole proceeding — prompt in the 
agreement to meet, exact in protesting against 
the right to call him out, clear in the waiver of 
his constitutional privilege, brief and cogent in 
presenting the case as one of some reprehension 
— the case of a member of an administration 
challenging a senator for words spoken in de- 
bate of that administration ; and all in brief, 
terse, and superlatively decorous language. It 
ran thus : 

" Mr. Randolph accepts the challenge of Mr. 
Clay. At the same time he protests against the 
right of any minister of the Executive Government 
of the United States to hold him responsible for 
words spoken in debate, as a senator from Vir- 
ginia, in crimination of such minister, or the ad- 
ministration under wliich he shall have taken 
ofiice. Colonel Tatnall, of Georgia, the bearer 
of this letter, is authorized to arrange with Gen- 
eral Jesup (the bearer of Mr. Clay's challenge) 
the terms of the meeting to which iNIr. Randolph 
is invited by that note. " 

This protest which Mr. Randolph entered 
against the right of jMr. Clay to challenge him, 
led to an ' explanation between their mutual 
friends on that delicate point — a point which 
concerned the independence of debate, the pri- 



72 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



Tileges of the Senate, the immunity of a mem- 
ber, and the sanctity of the constitution. It 
was a point which Mr. Clay felt ; and the expla- 
nation which was had between the mutual friends 
presented an excuse, if not a justification, for his 
proceeding. He had been informed that Mr. 
Randolph, in liis speech, had avowed his respon- 
sibility to Mr. Clay, and waived his privilege — a 
thing which, if it had been done, would have been 
a defiance, and stood for an invitation to Mr. Clay 
to send a challenge. Mr. Randolph, through 
Col. Tatnall, disavowed that imputed avowal, 
and confined his waiver of privilege to the time 
of the delivery of the challenge, and in answer 
to an inquiry before it was delivered. 

The following are the communications between 
the respective seconds on this point : 

"In regard to the protest with which Mr. 
Randoli)h's note concludes, it is due to Mr. Clay 
to sa3^ that he had been informed Mr. Randolph 
did, and would, hold himself responsible to him 
for any observations he might make in relation 
to him ; and that I (Gen. Jesup) distinctly un- 
derstood from Mr. Randolph, before I delivered 
the note of ]Mr. Clay, that he waived his privilege 
as a senator. " 

To this Col. Tatnall replied : 

" As this expression (did and would hold him- 
self responsible, &c.) may be construed to mean 
that Mr. Randolph had given this intimation not 
only before called upon, but in such a manner 
as to throw out to Mr. Clay something like an 
invitation to make such a call, I have, on the 
part of Mr. Randolph, to disavow any disposition, 
when expi'essing his readiness to waive his privi- 
lege as a senator from Vu-ginia. to invite, in any 
case, a call upon him for personal satisfaction. 
The concluding paragraph of your note, I pre- 
sume, is intended to show merely that you did 
not present a note, such as that of Mr. Clay 
to Mr. Randolph, until you had ascertained his 
willingness to waive his privilege as a senator. 
This 1 infer, as it was in your recollection that 
the expression of such a reafliness on the part of 
Mr. Randolph was in reply to an inquiry on that 
point made by yourself. " 

Thus an irritating circumstance in the affair was 
virtually negatived, and its offensive import whol- 
Ij' disavowed. For my part, I do not believe that 
Mr. Randolph used such language in liis speech. 
I have no recollection of having heard it. The 
published report of the speech, as taken down by 
the reporters and not revised by the speaker, con- 
tains nothing of it. Such gasconade was foreign 



to Mr. Randolph's character. The occasion was 
not one in which these sort of defiances arc 
thrown out, which are either to purchase a cheap 
reputation when it is known they will be despis- 
ed, or to get an advantage in extracting a chal- 
lenge when there is a design to kill. Mr. Ran- 
dolph had none of these views with respect to ^fr. 
Clay. He had no desire to fight him, or to hurt 
him, or gain cheap character by appearing to 
bully him. He was above all that, and had 
settled accounts with him in his speech, and 
wanted no more. I do not believe it was said ; 
but there was a part of the speech which might 
have received a wrong application, and led to the 
erroneous report : a part which applied to a 
quoted passage in Mr. Adams's Panama message, 
which he condemned and denounced, and dared 
the President and his friends to defend. His 
words were, as reported unrevised: "Here I 
plant my foot ; here I fling defiance right into 
his (the President's) teeth j here I throw the 
gauntlet to him and the bravest of his compeers 
to come forward and defend these lines, " &c. A 
very palpable defiance this, but ver)- different 
from a summons to personal combat, and from 
what was related to Mr. Clay. It was an unfor- 
tunate report, doubtless the effect of indistinct 
apprehension, and the more to be regretted as, 
after having been a main cause inducing the 
challenge, the disavowal could not stop it. 

Thus the agreement for the meeting was ab- 
solute ; and, according to the expectation of the 
principals, the meeting itself would be imme- 
diately ; but their seconds, from the most laud- 
able feelings, determined to delay it, with the 
hope to prevent it, and did keep it off a week, 
admitting me to a participation in the good work, 
as being already privy to the affiiir and friendly 
to both parties. The challenge stated no specific 
ground of offence, specified no exceptionable 
words. It was peremptory and general, for an 
"unprovoked attack on his (Mr. Cla3's) char- 
acter, " and it dispensed with explanations by 
alleging that the notoriety and indisputable ex- 
istence of the injury superseded the necessity for 
them. Of course this demand was bottomed on 
a report of the worfls spoken — a verbal report, 
the full daily publication of the debates having 
not then begun — and that verbal report was of 
a character greatly to exasperate Mr. Clay. It 
stated that in the course of the debate Mr. Ran- 
dolph said : 



ANNO 1826. JOHN QUINCY ADAMS, PRESIDENT. 



73 



" That a letter from General Salazar, the Mexi- 
can Minister at Washington, submitted by the 
Executive to the Senate, bore the ear-mark of 
having been manufactured or forged by the Sec- 
retary of State, and denounced the administra- 
tion as a corrupt coalition between the puritan 
and blackleg ; and added, at the same time, that 
he (Mr. Randolph) held himself personally re- 
sponsible for all that he had said. " 

This was the report to Mr. Clay, and upon 
which he gave the absolute challenge, and re- 
ceived the absolute acceptance, which shut out 
all inquiry between the principals into the causes 
of the quarrel. The seconds determined to open 
it, and to attempt an accommodation, or a 
peaceable determination of the difficulty. In 
consequence. General Jesup stated the complaint 
in a note to Col. Tatnall, thus : 

" The injury of which jNfr. Clay complains con- 
sists in this, that Mr. Randolph has charged him 
with having forged or manufiictured a paper con- 
nected with the Panama mission ; also, that he 
has applied to him in debate the epithet of black- 
leg. The explanation which I consider necessary 
is, that j\Ir. Randolph declare that he had no in- 
tention of charging Mr. Clay, either in his public 
or private capacity, with forging or falsifying any 
paper, or misrepresenting any fact; and also 
that the term blackleg was not intended to apply 
to him. " 

To this exposition of the grounds of the com- 
plaint, Col. Tatnall answered : 

"INIr. Randolph informs me that the words 
used by him in debate were as follows : ' That 
I thought it would be in my power to show 
evidence sufficiently presumptive to satisfy a 
Charlotte (county) jury that this invitation was 
manufactured here — that Salazar's letter struck 
me as bearing a strong likeness in point of style 
to the other jiapers. I did not undertake to 
prove this, but expressed my suspicion that the 
fact was so. I applied to the administration the 
epithet, puritanic-diplomatic-black-legged ad- 
ministration. ' Mr. Randolph, in giving these 
words as those uttered by him in debate, is un- 
willing to afford any explanation as to their mean- 
ing and appHcation. " 

In this answer Mr. Randolph remained upon 
his original ground of refusing to answer out of 
the Senate for words spoken within it. In other 
respects the statement of the words actually 
spoken greatly ameliorated the offensive report, 
the coarse and insulting words, ^^ forging and 
falsifying, " being disavowed, as in fact they 
were not used, and are not to be found in the 
published report. The speech was a bitter phi- 



lippic, and intended to be so, taking for its point 
the alleged coalition between Mr. Clay and Mr 
Adams with respect to the election, and their 
efforts to get up a popular question contrary to 
our policy of non-entanglement with foreign na- 
tions, in sending ministers to the congress of the 
American states of Spanish origin at the Isthmus 
of Panama. I heard it all, and, though sharp 
and cutting, I think it might have been heard, 
had he been present, without any manifestation 
of resentment by Mr. Clay. The part which he 
took so seriously to heart, that of having the 
Panama invitations manufactured in his office, 
was to my mind nothing more than attributing 
to him a diplomatic superiority which enabled 
him to obtain from the South American ministers 
the invitations that he wanted ; and not at all 
that they were spurious fabrications. As to the 
expression, " blackleg and puritan, " it was 
merely a sarcasm to strike by antithesis, and 
which, being without foundation, might have been 
disregarded. I presented these views to the 
parties, and if they had come from Mr. Randolph 
they might have been sufficient ; but he was in- 
exorable, and would not authorize a word to be 
said beyond what he had written. 

All hope of accommodation having vanished, 
the seconds proceeded to arrange for the duel. 
The afternoon of Saturday, the 8th of April, was 
fixed upon for the time ; the right bank of the 
Potomac, within the State of Virginia, above the 
Little Falls bridge, was the place, — pistols the 
weapons, — distance ten paces ; each party to bo 
attended by two seconds and a surgeon, and my- 
self at liberty to attend as a mutual friend. 
There was to be no practising with pistols, and 
there was none ; and the words " one, " " two. " 
" three, " " stop, " after the word " fire, " were, 
by agreement between the seconds, and for the 
humane purpose of reducing the result as near 
as possible to chance, to be given out in quick 
succession. The Virginia side of the Potomao 
was taken at the instance of Mr. Randolph. He 
went out as a Virginia senator, refusing to com- 
promise that character, and, if he fell in defence 
of its rights, Virginia soil was to him the chosen 
ground to receive his blood. Theie was a statute 
of the State against duelling within her limits ; 
but, as he merely went out to receive a lire with- 
out returning it, he deemed that no fighting, and 
consequently no breach of her statute. 'J'his 
reason for choosing Vii-ginia could only be ex 



74 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW 



plained to me, as I alone was the depository of 
his secret. 

The week's delay which the seconds had con- 
trived was about expiring. It was Friday even- 
ing, or rather night, when I went to see ^Ir. Clay 
for the last time before the duel. There had been 
some alienation between us since the time of the 
presidential election in the House of Representa- 
tives, and I wished to give evidence that there 
was nothing personal in it. The family were in 
the parlor — company present — and some of it 
staid late. The youngest child, I believe James, 
went to sleep on the sofa — a circumstance which 
availed me for a purpose the next day. Mrs. 
Clay was, as always since the death of her daugh- 
ters, the picture of desolation, but calm, conversa- 
ble, and without the slightest apparent conscious- 
ness of the impending event. When all were 
gone, and she also had left the parlor, I did what 
I came for, and said to Mr. Clay, that, notwith- 
standing our late political differences, my personal 
feelings towards him were the same as fomerly, 
and that, in whatever concerned his life or honor 
my best wishes were with him. He expressed 
bis gratification at the visit and the declaration, 
and said it was what he would have expected of 
me. ^Ye parted at midnight. 

Saturday, the 8th of April — the day for the 
duel — had come, and almost the hour. It was 
noon, and the meeting was to take place at 4^ 
o'clock. I had gone to see Mr. Randolph before 
the hour, and for a purpose ; and, besides, it was 
so far on the way, as he lived half way to 
Georgetown, and we had to pass through that 
place to cross the Potomac into Yirgmia at the 
Little Falls bridge. I had heard nothing from 
him on the point of not returning the fire since 
the first communication to that eflcct, eight days 
before. I had no reason to doubt the steadiness 
of his determination, but felt a desire to have 
fresh assurance of it after so many daj'^s' delay, 
and so near approach of the trying moment. I 
knew it would not do to ask him the question — 
any question which would imply a doubt of his 
word. His sensitive feelings would be hurt and 
annoyed at it. So I fell upon a scheme to get at 
the inquiry without seeming to make it. I told 
him of my visit to Mr. Clay the night before — 
of the late sitting — the child asleep — the uncon- 
scious tranquillity of Mrs. Clay ; and added, I 
could not help retlecting how different all that 
might be the next night. He understood mc 



perfectly, and immediately said, with a quietude 
of look and expression which seemed to rebuke 
an unworthy doubt, " I shall do nothing to dis- 
turb the sleep of the child or the repose of the 
mother,'''' and went on with his employment — (his 
seconds being engaged in their preparations in a 
different room) — which was, making codicils to 
his will, all in the way of remembrance to 
friends ; the bequests slight in value, but inval- 
uable in tenderness of feeling and beauty of ex- 
pression, and always appropriate to the receiver. 
To Mr. Macon he gave some English sliillings, 
to keep the game when he played whist. His 
namesake, John Randolph Bryan, then at school 
in Baltimore, and since married to his niece, had 
been sent for to see liim, but sent off before the 
hour for going out, to save the boy from a possi- 
ble shock at seeing him brought back. He 
wanted some gold — that coin not being then in 
circulation, and only to be obtained by favor or 
purchase — and sent his fjiithful man, Johnny, 
to the United States Branch Bank to get a few 
pieces, American being the kind asked for. 
Johnny returned without the gold, and delivered 
the excuse that the bank had none. Instantly 
Mr. Randolph's clear silver-toned voice was 
heard above its natural pitch, exclaiming, " Their 
name is legion ! and they are liars from the be- 
ginning. Johnny, bring me ray horse." His 
own saddle-horse was brought him — ^for he 
never rode Johnny's, nor Johnny his, though 
both, and all his hundred horses, were of the 
finest English blood — and rode off to the bank 
down Pennsylvania avenue, now Corcoran & 
Riggs's — Johnny following, as always, forty 
paces behind. Arrived at the bank, tliis scene, 
according to my informant, took place : 

" Mr. Randolph asked for the state of his ac- 
count, was shown it, and found to be some four 
thousand dollars in his favor. lie asked for it. 
The teller took up packages of bills, and civilly 
asked in what sized notes he would have it. ' I 
want money,' said Mr. Randolph, putting em- 
phasis on the word ; and at that time it required 
a bold man to intimate that United States Bank 
notes were not mone3% The teller, beginning to 
understand him, and wiling to make sure, said, 
inquiringly, 'You want silver?' 'I want my 
money I ' was the reply. Then the teller, lifting 
boxes to the counter, said politely : ' Have you 
a cart. Mr. Randolpli, to put it in ? ' ' That is 
my business, sir,' said he. By that time the at- 
tention of the cashier (Mr. Richard Smith) was 
attracted to what was going on, who came up, and 
understanding the question, and its cause, told 



ANNO 1826. JOHN QUINCY ADAilS, PRESIDENT. 



75 



Mr. Randolph there was a mistake in the answer 
giyen to his servant ; that they had gold, and he 
should have what he wanted." 

In fact, he had only applied for a few pieces, 
which he wanted for a special purpose. This 
brought about a compromise. The pieces of gold 
were received, the cart and the silver dispensed 
with ; but the account in bank was closed, and a 
check taken for the amount on New- York. He 
returned and delivered me a sealed paper, which 
I was to open if he was killed — give back to him 
if he was not ; also an open slip, which I was to 
read before I got to the ground. This slip was 
a request to feel in his left breeches pocket, if he 
was killed, and find so many pieces of gold — I 
believe nine — take three for myself, and give the 
same number to Tatnall and Hamilton each, to 
make seals to wear in remembrance of him. We 
were all tlu-ee at Mr. Randolph's lodgings then, 
and soon sat out, Mr. Randolph and his seconds 
in a carriage, I following him on horseback. 

I have already said that the count was to be 
quick after giving the word " fire," and for a 
reason which could not be told to the principals. 
To Mr. Randolph, who did not mean to fire, and 
who, though agreeing to be shot at, had no desire 
to be hit, this rapidity of counting out the time 
and quick arrival at the command " stop " pre- 
sented no objection. With Mr. Clay it was dif- 
ferent. With him it was all a real transaction, 
and gave rise to some proposal for more deliber- 
ateness in counting off the time ; which being 
communicated to Col. Tatnall, and by him to 
Mr. Randolph, had an ill effect upon his feelings, 
and, aided by an untoward accident on the 
ground, unsettled for a moment the noble deter- 
mination which he had formed not to fire at Mr. 
Clay. I now give the words of Gen. Jesup : 

"When I repeated to ]Mr. Clay the 'word' in 
the manner in which it would be given, he ex- 
pressed some apprehension that, as he was not 
accustomed to the use of the pistol, he might 
not be able to fire within the time, and for that 
reason alone desired that it might be prolonged. 
I mentioned to Col. Tatnall the desire of Mr. 
Clay, He replied, ' If you insist upon it, the 
time must be prolonged, but I should very much 
regret it.' I informed him I did not insist upon 
prolonging the time, and I was sure Mr. Clay 
would acquiesce. The original agreement was 
carried out." 

I knew nothing of this until it was too late to 
speak with the seconds or prmcipals. I had 



crossed the Little Falls bridge just after them, 
and come to the place where the servants and 
carriages had stopped. I saw none of the gen- 
tlemen, and supposed they had all gone to the 
spot where the ground was being marked off; 
but on speaking to Johnny, Mr. Randolph, who 
was still in his carriage and heard my voice, 
looked out from the window, and said to me : 
" Colonel, since I saw you, and since I have been 
in this carriage, I have heard something which 
may make me change my determination. Col. 
Hamilton will give you a note which will explain 
it." Col. Hamilton was then in the carriage, 
and gave me the note, in the course of the even- 
ing, of which Mr. Randolph spoke. I readily 
comprehended that this possible change of deter- 
mination related to his firing ; but the emphasis 
with which he pronounced the word "771a?/" 
clearly showed that his mind was undecided, and 
left it doubtful whether he would fire or not. 
No further conversation took place between us ; 
the preparations for the duel were finished ; the 
parties went to their places ; and I went forward 
to a piece of rising ground, from which I could 
see what passed and hear what was said. The 
faithful Johnny followed me close, speaking not 
a word, but evincing the deepest anxiety for his 
beloved master. The place was a thick forest, 
and the immediate spot a little depression, or 
basis, in which the parties stood. The principals 
saluted each other courteously as they took their 
stands. Col. Tatnall had won the choice of po- 
sition, which gave to Gen. Jesup the delivery of 
the word. They stood on a line east and west — 
a small stump just behind Mr. Clay ; a low 
gravelly bank rose just behind Mr. Randolph. 
This latter asked Gen. Jesup to repeat the word 
as he would give it ; and while in the act of doing 
so, and Mr. Randolph adjusting the butt of his 
pistol to his hand, the muzzle pointing down- 
wards, and almost to the ground, it fired. In- 
stantly Mr. Randolph turned to Col. Tatnall and 
said : " I protested against that hair trigger." 
Col. Tatnall took blame to himself for having 
sprung the hair. Mr. Clay had not then receiv- 
ed his pistol. Senator Johnson, of Louisiana 
( Josiah), one of his seconds, was carrying it to him, 
and still several steps from him. This untimely 
fire, though clearly an accident, necessarily gave 
rise to some remarks, and a species of inquiry, 
which was conducted with the utmost delicacy, 
but which, in itself, was of a nature to be inespres- 



76 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



sibly painful to a gentleman's feelings. Mr. Clay- 
stopped it with the generous remark that the fire 
was clearly an accident : and it was so unani- 
mously declared. Another pistol was immedi- 
ately furnished ; and exchange of shots took 
place, and. happily, without effect upon the per- 
sons. Mr. Randolph's bullet struck the stump 
behind Mr. Clay, and Mr. Clay's knocked up the 
earth and gravel behind Mr. Randolph, and in a 
line with the level of his hips, both bullets hav- 
ing gone so true and close that it was a marvel 
how they missed. The moment had come for 
me to interpose, I went in among the parties 
and offered my mediation ; but nothing could be 
done, Mr. Clay said, with that wave of the 
hand with which he was accustomed to put away 
a trifle, " This is chilcPs play ! " and required 
another fire. ]Mr. Randolph also demanded 
another fire. The seconds were directed to re- 
load. While this was doing I prevailed on Mr. 
Randolph to walk away from his post, and re- 
newed to him, more pressingly than ever, my 
importunities to yield to some accommodation ; 
but I found him more determined than I had 
ever seen him, and for the first time impatient, 
and seemingly annoyed and dissatisfied at what 
I was doing. lie was indeed annoyed and dis- 
satisfied. The accidental fire of his pistol preyed 
upon his feelings. He was doubly chagrined at 
it, both as a circumstance susceptible in itself of 
an unfair interpretation, and as having been the 
immediate and controlling cause of his firing at 
Mr, Clay. He regretted this fire the instant it 
was over. He felt that it had subjected him to 
imputations from which he knew himself to be 
free — a desire to kill Mr. Clay, and a contempt 
for the laws of his beloved State ; and the an- 
noyances wliich he felt at these vexatious cir- 
cumstances revived his original determination, 
and decided him irrevocably to carry it out. 

It was in this interval that he told me what 
he had heard since we parted, and to which he 
alluded when he spoke to me from the window 
of the carriage. It was to this effect : That he 
had been informed by Col, Tatnall that it was 
proposed to give out the words with more delib- 
erateness, so as to prolong the time for taking 
aim. This information grated harshly upon his 
feelings. It unsettled his purpose, and brought 
his mind to the inquiry (as he now told me, and 
as I found it expressed in the note which he had 
immediately written in pencil to apprise me o ' 



his possible change), whether, under these cir- 
cumstances, he might not " disable " his adver- 
sary ? This note is so characteristic, and such 
an essential part of this affair, that I here give 
its very words, so far as relates to this point. It 
ran thus : 

" Information received from Col. Tatnall since 
I got into the carriage may induce me to change 
my mind, of not returning !Mr. Clay's fire. I 
seek not his death. I would not have his blood 
upon my hands — it will not be upon my .soul if 
shed in self-defence — for the world. He has de- 
termined, by the use of a long, preparatory cau- 
tion by words, to get time to kill me. May I not, 
then, disable him 1 Yes, if I please." 

It has been seen, by the statement of Gen. 
Jesup, already given, that this '■Hnformalion'''' 
was a misapprehension ; that Mr. Clay had not 
applied for a prolongation of time for the purpose 
of getting sure aim, but only to enable his unused 
hand, long unfamiliar with the pistol, to fire 
within the limited time ; that there was no pro- 
longation, in fact, either granted or insisted upon ; 
but he was m doubt, and General Jesup having 
won the word, he was having him repeat it in 
the way he was to give it out, when his finger 
touched the hair-trigger. How unfortunate that 
I did not know of this in time to speak to Gen- 
eral Jesup, when one word from him would have 
set all right, and saved the imminent risks incur- 
red ! This inquiry, " May I not disable him ? " was 
still on Mr. Randolph's mind, and dependent for 
its solution on the rising incidents of the moment, 
when the accidental fire of his pistol gave the 
turn to his feelings which .solved the doubt. But 
he declared to me that he had not aimed at the 
life of ^Ir. Clay ; that he did not level as high as 
the knees — not higher than the knee-band ; •' for 
it was no mercy to shoot a man in the knee ; " 
that his only object was to disable him and spoil 
his aim. And then added, with a beauty of ex- 
pression and a depth of feeling which no studied 
oratory can ever attain, and which I shall never 
forget, these impressive words : '• / would not 
have seen him fall mortally^ or even doubtfully 
wounded, for all the land that is watered by 
the King of Floods and all his tributary 
streams^ He left me to resume his post, utterly 
refusing to explain out of the Senate any thing 
that he had said in it, and with the positive dec- 
laration that he would not return the next fire. 
I withdrew a little way into the woods, and kept 
iny eyes fixed on Mr. Randolph, who I then knew 



ANNO 1826. JOHN QUINCY ADAMS, PRESIDENT. 



77 



/ to be the only one in danger. I saw him receive 
the fire of IMr. Clay, saw the gravel knocked up 
in the same place, saw Mr. Randolph raise his 
pistol — discharge it in the air ; heard him say, ' / 
do not Jire at ijou, Mr. Claij ;' and immediately 
advancing and offering his hand. He was met in 
the same spirit. They met half wa3^ shook hands, 
IMr. Randolph saying, jocosely, ' You owe me a 
coat, Mr. Clay — (the bullet had passed through 
the skirt of the coat, very near the hip) — to 
which Mr. Clay promptly and happily replied, 
i ' I am glad the debt is no greater.'' I had come 
', up, and was prompt to proclaim what I had been 
"^obliged to keep secret for eight days. The joy 
of all was extreme at this happy termination of a 
most critical affair ; and we immediately left, with 
lighter hearts than we brought. I stopped to 
sup with Mr. Randolph and his friends — none of 
us wanted dinner that day — and had a charac- 
teristic time of it. A ruuner came in from the 
bank to say that they had overpaid him, by mis- 
take, $130 that day. He answered, ' I believe it 
is your rule not to correct mistakes, e.vcept at 
the time, and at your counter.'' And with that 
answer the runner had to return. "When gone, 
Mr. Randolph said, ' / will pay it on Monday : 
people must be honest, if banks are not.'' He 
asked for the sealed paper he had given me, 
opened it, took out a check for $1,000, drawn in 
my favor, and with which I was requested to 
have him carried, if killed, to Virginia, and buried 
under his patrimonial oaks — not let him be buried 
at Washington, with an hundred hacks after 
him. He took the gold from his left breeches 
pocket, and said to us (Hamilton, Tatnall, and 
I), ' Gentlemen, Clay's bad shooting shan't rob 
you of your seals. I am going to London, and 
will have them made for you ;' which he did. and 
most characteristically, so far as mine was con- 
cerned. He went to the herald's office in London 
and inquired for the Benton family, of which I 
had often told him there was none, as we only 
dated on that side from my grandfather in North 
Carohna. But the name was found, and with it 
a coat of arms — among the quarterings a lion 
rampant. That is the family, said he ; and had 
the arms engraved on the seal, the same which T 
have since habitually worn ; and added the motto. 
Factis non ver'bis : of which he was afterwards 
accustomed to say the non should be changed 
into et. But. enough. I run into these details, 
not merely to relate an event, but to show cha- 



racter ; and if I have not done it, it is not for 
want of material, but of ability to use it. 

On Monday the parties exchanged cards, and 
social relations were formally and courteously re- 
stored. It was about the last high-toned due) 
that I have witnessed, and among the highest- 
toned that I have ever witnessed, and so happily 
conducted to a fortunate issue — a result due to 
the noble character of the seconds as well as to 
the generous and heroic spu-it of the principals. 
Certainly duelling is bad, and has been put down, 
but not quite so bad as its substitute — revolvers, 
bowie-knives, blackguarding, and street-assassi- 
nations undef the pretext of self-defence. 



CHAPTER XXVII. 

DEATH OF MR. GAILLAED. 

He was a senator from South Carolina, and 
had been continuously, from the year 1804. He 
was five times elected to the Senate — the first 
time for an unexpired term — and died in the 
course of a term ; so that the years for whicji 
he had been elected were nearly thirty. He was 
nine times elected president of the Senate pro 
tempore, and presided fourteen years over the de- 
liberations of that body, — the deaths of two Vice- 
Presidents during his time (Messrs. Clinton and 
Gerry), and the much absence of another (Gov. 
Tompkins), making long continued vacancies in 
the President's chair, — which he was called to fill. 
So many elections, and such long continued ser- 
vice, terminated at last only by death, bespeaks 
an eminent fitness both for the place of Senator, 
and that of presiding ofiicer over the Senate. In 
the language of Mr. IMacon, he seemed born for 
that station. L^rbane in his manners, amiable in 
temper, scrupulously impartial, attentive to his 
duties, exemplary patience, perfect knowledge of 
the rules, quick and clear discernment, uniting 
absolute firmness of purpose, with the greatest 
gentleness of manners, setting young Senators 
right with a delicacy and amenity, which spared 
the confusion of a mistake — preserving order, not 
by authority of rules, but by the graces of de- 
portment: such were the qualifications which 
commended him to the presidency of the Senate, 



78 



THIRTY TEARS' VIEW. 



and which facilitated the transaction of business 
while preserving the decorum of the body. There 
was probably not an instance of disorder, or a 
disagreeable scene in the chamber, during his 
long continued presidency. lie classed demo- 
cratically in politics, but was as much the favorite 
of one side of the house as of the other, and that 
in the high party times of the war with Great 
Britain, which so much exasperated party spirit. 
Mr. Gaillard was, as his name would indicate, 
of French descent, having issued from one of 
those Huguenot families, of which the bigotry of 
Louis XIV.. dominated by an old woman, depriv- 
ed France, for the benefit of other countries. 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 

AMENDMENT OF THE CONSTITUTION IN RELA- 
TION TO THE ELECTION OF PRESIDENT AND 
VICE-PEESIDENT. 

The attempt was renewed at the session of 
1825-'2G to procure an amendment to the con- 
stitution, in relation to the election of the two 
first magistrates of the republic, so as to do away 
with all intermediate agencies, and give the elec- 
tion to the direct vote of the people. Several 
specific propositions were offered in the Senate 
to that effect, and all substituted by a general 
proposition .submitted by Mr. Macon — " that a 
select committee be appointed to report upon the 
best and most practicable mode of electing the 
President and Vice-President :" and, on the mo- 
tion of Mr. Van Buren, the number of the com- 
mittee was raised to nine — instead of five — the 
usual number. The members of it were ap- 
pointed by ^Ir. Calhoun, the Vice-President, and 
were carefully selected, both geographically as 
coming from different sections of the Union, and 
personally and politically as being friendly to 
the object and known to the country. They 
were : Mr. Benton, chairman, Mr. Macon, Mr. 
Van Buren, Mr. Hugh L. "White of Tennessee, 
Mr. Findlay of Pennsylvania, Mr. Dickcrson of 
New Jersey, Mr. Holmes of JMaine, Mr. Ilayne 
of South Carolina, and Col. Richard M. Johnson 
of Kentucky. The committee agreed upon a 
proposition of amendment, dispensing with elec- 
tors, providing for districts in which the direct 



vote of the people was to be taken ; and obvia- 
ting all excuse for caucuses and conventions to 
concentrate public opinion by proposing a second 
election between the two highest in the event of 
no one receiving a majority of the whole number 
of district votes in the first election. The plan 
reported was in these words : 

" That, hereafter the President and Vice-Pres- 
ident of the United States shall be chosen by the 
People of the respective States, in the manner 
following : Each State shall be divided by the 
legislature thereof, into districts, equal in num- 
ber to the whole number of senators and repre- 
sentatives, to which such State may be entitled 
in the Congress of the United States ; the said 
districts to be composed of contiguous territory, 
and to contain, as nearly as may be, an equal 
number of persons, entitled to be represented, 
under the constitution, and to be laid off, for the 
first time, inunediately after the ratification of 
this amendment, and afterwards at the session 
of the legislature next ensuing the appointment 
of representatives, by the Congress of the United 
States ; or oftener, if deemed necessary by the 
State ; but no alteration, after the first, or after 
each decennial formation of districts, shall take 
effect, at the next ensuing election, after such 
alteration is made. That, on the first Thursday, 
and succeeding Friday, in the month of Augustj 
of the year one thousand eight hundred and 
twenty-eight, and on the same days in every 
fourth year thereafter, the citizens of each State, 
who possess the qualifications requisite for elec- 
tors of the most numerous branch of the State 
Legislature, shall meet witliin their respective 
districts, and vote for a President and Vice- 
President of the United States, one of whom, at 
least, shall not be an inhabitant of the same 
State with himself: and the person receiving the 
greatest number of votes for President, and the 
one receiving the greatest number of votes for 
Vice-President in each district shall be holden to 
have received one vote : which fact shall be im- 
mediately certified to the Governor of the State, 
to each of the senators in Oongress from such 
State, and to the President of the Senate. The 
right of affixing the i)laces in the districts at 
which the elections shall be hold, the manner of 
holding the same, and of canvassing the votes, 
and certifying the returns, is reserved, exclu- 
sively, to the legislatures of the States. The 
Congress of the United States shall be in session 
on the second Mondaj^ of October, in the year one 
thousand eight hundred and twenty-eight, and on 
the same day in every fourth year thereafter : and 
the President of the Senate, in the presence of 
the Senate and House of Representatives, shall 
open all the certificates, and the votes shall then 
be counted. The person having the greatest 
number of votes for President, shall be Presi- 
dent, if such number be equal to a majority of 
the whole number of votes given j but if no per- 



ANNO 1825. JOHN QUINCY ADAMS, PRESIDENT. 



79 



son have such majority, then a second election 
shall be held, on the first Thursday and suc- 
ceeding Friday, in the month of December, then 
next ensuing, tjetween the persons having the 
two highest numbers, for the office of President : 
which second election shall be conducted, the 
result certified, and the votes counted, in the 
same manner as in the first ; and the person hav- 
ing the greatest number of votes for President, 
shall be the President. But, if two or more per- 
sons shall have received the greatest and equal 
number of votes, at the second election, the 
House of Representatives shall choose one of 
them for President, as is now prescribed by the 
constitution. The person having the greatest 
number of votes for Vice-President, at the first 
election, shall be the Vice-President, if such 
number be equal to a majority of the whole 
number of votes given, and, if no person have 
such majority, then a second election shall take 
place, between the persons having the two highest 
numbers, on the same day that the second elec- 
tion is held for President, and the person having 
the highest number of votes for Vice-President, 
shall be the Vice-President. But if two or more 
persons shall have ftceived the greatest number 
of votes in the second election, then the Senate 
shall choose one of them for Vice-President, as is 
now provided in the constitution. But, when a 
second election shall be necessary, in the case 
of Vice-President, and not necessary in the case 
of President, then the Senate shall choose a Vice- 
President, from the persons having the two 
liighest numbers in the first election, as is now 
prescribed in the constitution." 

The prominent features of this plan of election 
are : 1. The abolition of electors, and the direct 
vote of the people ; 2. A second election between 
the two highest on each list, when no one has a 
majority of the whole; 3. Uniformity in the 
mode of election, — The advantages of this plan 
would be to get rid of all the machinery bj"- 
which the selection of their two first magistrates 
is now taken out of the hands of the people, and 
usurped by self-constituted, illegal, and irrespon- 
sible bodies, — and place it in the only safe, prop- 
er, and disinterested hands — those of the people 
themselves. If adopted, there would be no pre- 
text for caucuses or conventions, and no resort to 
the House of Representatives, — where the largest 
State is balanced by the smallest. If any one 
received a majority of the whole number of dis- 
tricts in the first election, then the democratic 
principle— the demos hrateo — the majority to 
govern — is satisfied. If no one receives such 
majority, then the first election stands for a 
popular nomination of the two highest — a nomi- 
nation by the people themselves — out of wliich 



two the election is sure to be made on the sec- 
ond trial. But to provide for a possible contin- 
gency — too improbable almost ever to occur — 
and to save in that case the trouble of a third 
popular election, a resort to the House of Rep- 
resentatives is allowed ; it being nationally un- 
important which is elected where the candidates 
were exactly equal in the public estimation. — 
Such was the plan the committee reported ; and 
it is the perfect plan of a popular election, and 
has the advantage of being applicable to all elec- 
tions, federal and State, from the highest to the 
lowest. The machinery of its operation is easy 
and simple, and it is recommended by every con- 
sideration of public good, which requires the aban- 
donment of a defective system, which has failed — 
the overthrow of usurping bodies, wliich have 
seized upon the elections — and the preservation to 
the people'of the business of selecting, as well as 
electing, their own high officers. The plan was 
unanimously recommended by the whole com- 
mittee, composed as it was of experienced men 
taken from every section of the Union. But it 
did not receive the requisite support of two- 
thirds of the Senate to carry it through that 
body ; and a similar plan proposed in the House 
of Representatives received the same fate there 
— reported by a committee, and unsustained by 
two-thirds of the House : and such, there is too 
much reason to apprehend, may be the fate of 
future similar propositions, originating in Con- 
gress, without the powerful impulsion of the peo- 
ple to urge them through. Select bodies are not 
the places for popular reforms. These reforms 
are for the benefit of the people, and should be- 
gin with the people ; and the constitution itself, 
sensible of that necessity in this very case, has 
very wiselj^ made provision for the popular initi- 
ative of constitutional amendments. The fifth 
article of that instrument gives the power of be- 
ginning the reform of itself to the States, in their 
legislatures, as well as to the federal government 
in its Congress: and there is the place to 
begin, and before the people themselves in 
their elections to the general assembly. And 
there should be no despair on account of the fail- 
ures already suffered. No great reform is carried 
suddenly. It requires j-ears of persevering exer- 
tion to produce the unanimity of opinion which 
is necessary to a great popular reformation : but 
because it is difficult, it is not impossible. The 
greatest reform ever eflfected by peaceful means 



80 



THIRTY TEARS' VIEW. 



in the history of any government was that of the 
parliamentary reform of Great Britain, by which 
the rotten boroughs were disfranchised, populous 
towns admitted to representation, the elective 
franchise extended, the House of Commons puri- 
fied, and made the predominant branch — the 
master branch of the British government. And 
how was that great reform effected ? By a few 
desultor}- exertions in the parliament itself? No, 
but by forty years of continued exertion, and by 
incessant appeals to the people themselves. The 
society for parliamentary reform, founded in 
1702, by Earl Grey and ]Major Cartwright, suc- 
ceeded in its efforts in 1832; and in their success 
there is matter for encouragement, as in their 
conduct there is an example for imitation. They 
carried the question to the people, and kept it there 
forty years, n,nd saw it triumph — the two patriotic 
founders of the society living to see the consum- 
mation of their labors, and the country in the 
enjoyment of the inestimable advantage of a 
" Reformed Parliament." 



CHAPTER XXIX 



KEDUCTION OP EXECUTIVE PATEONAGE. 



i 



In the session 1825-'26, Mr. Macon moved that 
the select committee, to which had been com- 
mitted the consideration of the propositions for 
amending the constitution in relation to the elec- 
tion of President and Vice-President, should also 
be charged with an inquiry into the expediency 
of reducing Executive patronage, in cases in 
which it could be done by law consistently with 
the constitution, and without impairing the effi- 
ciency of the government. The motion was adopt- 
ed, and the committee (^lessrs. Benton, Macon, 
Van Buren, White of Tennessee, Findlay of Penn- 
sylvania, Dickerson, Holmes, Ilayne, and John- 
son of Kentucky) made a report, accompanied 
by six bills ; which report and bills, though not 
acted upon at the time, may still have their use 
in showing the democratic principles, on practical 
points of that day (when some of the fathers of 
the democratic church were still among us) ; — 
and in recalling the administration of the govern- 
ment, to the simplicity and economy of its early 



days. The six bills reported were. 1. To re- 
gulate the publication of the laws of the United 
States, and of the public advertisements. 2. To 
secure in office the faithful collectors and disburs- 
ers of the revenue, and to displace defaulters. 3. 
To regulate the appointment of postmasters. 4. 
To regulate the appointment of cadets. 5. To 
regulate the appointment of midshipmen. 6. To 
prevent military and naval officers from being 
dismissed the service at the pleasure of the Pre- 
sident. — In favor of the general principle, and 
objects of all the bills, the report accompanying 
them, said: 

" In coming to the conclusion that Executive 
patronage ought to be diminished and regulated, 
on the plan proposed, the committee rest their 
opinion on the ground that the exercise of great 
patronage in the hands of one man, has a constant 
tendency to sully the purity of our institutions, 
and to endanger the liberties of the country. This 
doctrine is not new. A jealousy of power, and 
of the influence of patronage, which must always 
accompany its exercise, has ever been a distin- 
guished feature in the American character. It 
displayed itself strongly at the period of the for- 
mation, and of the adoption, of the federal con- 
stitution. At that time the feebleness of the old 
confederation had excited a much greater dread 
of anarchy than of power — ' of anarchy among 
the members than of power in the head ' — and 
although the impression was nearly universal 
that a government of more energetic character 
had become indispensably necessary, yet, even 
under the influence of this conviction — such was 
the dread of power and patronage — that the 
States, with extreme reluctance, yielded their 
assent to the establishment of the federal gov- 
ernment. Nor was this the effect of idle and 
visionary fears, on the part of an ignorant multi- 
tude, without knowledge of the nature and ten- 
dency of power. On the contrar}-, it resulted 
from the most extensive and profound political 
knowledge, — from the heads of statesmen, unsur- 
passed, in any age, in sagacity and patriotism. 
Nothing could reconcile the great men of that 
day to a constitution of so much power, but the 
guards which were put upon it against the abuse 
of power. Dread and jea^lousj' of this abuse dis- 
played it.self throughout the instrument. To this 
spirit we are indebted for the freedom of the 
press, trial b}' jury, liberty of conscience, freedom 
of debate, responsibilit}' to constituents, power 
of impeachment, the control of the Senate over 
appointments to office ; and many other provi- 
sions of a like character. But the committee can- 
not imagine that the jealous foresight of the time, 
great as it was, or that any human sagacity, 
could have foreseen, and placed a competent guard 
upon, every po.'^sihle avenue to the abuse of 
power. The nature of a constitutional act ex- 
cludes the pos.sibility of combining minute pen 



ANNO 1826. JOHN QUINCY ADAMS, PRESIDENT. 



81 



fection with general excellence. After the exer- 
tion of all possible vigilance, something of what 
ought to have been done, has been omitted ; and 
much of what has been attempted, has been found 
insufficient and unavailing in practice. Much re- 
mains for us to do, and much will still remain for 
posterity to do — for those unborn generations to 
do. on whom will devolve the sacred task of 
guarding the temple of the constitution, and of 
keeping alive the vestal flame of liberty. 

" The committee believe that they will be act- 
ing in the spirit of the constitution, in laboring 
to multiply the guards, and to strengthen the 
barriers, against the possible abuse of power. If 
a community could be imagined in which the 
laws should execute themselves — in which the 
power of government should consist in the enact- 
ment of laws — in such a state the machine of 
government would carry on its operations with- 
out jar or friction. Parties would be unknown, 
and the movements of the political machine would 
but little more disturb the passions of men, than 
they are disturbed by the operations of the great 
laws of the material world. But this is not the 
case. The scene shifts from this imaginary re- 
gion, where laws execute themselves, to the thea- 
tre of real life, wherein they are executed by civil 
and military ofiicers, by armies and navies, by 
courts of justice, by the collection and disburse- 
ment of revenue, with all its train of salaries, 
jobs, and contracts ; and in this aspect of the re- 
ahty, we behold the working of patronage, and 
discover the reason why so many stand ready, in 
any country, and in all ages, to flock to the stand- 
ard of POWER, wheresoever, and by whomsoever, 
it may be raised. 

" The patronage of the federal government at 
the beginning, was founded upon a revenue of 
two millions of dollars. It is now operating upon 
twenty-two millions ; and, within the lifetime of 
many now living, must operate upon fifty. The 
whole revenue must, in a few years, be wholly 
applicable to subjects of patronage. At present 
about one half, say ten millions of it, are appro- 
priated to the principal and interest of the public 
debt, which, from the nature of the object, in- 
volves but little patronage. In the course of a 
few years, this debt, without great mismanage- 
ment, must be paid off". A short period of peace, 
and a feithful application of the sinking fund, 
must speedily accomplish that most desirable ob- 
ject. Unless the revenue be then reduced, a work 
as difficult in republics as in monarchies, the 
patronage of the federal government, great as it 
already is. must, in the lapse of a few years, re- 
ceive a vast accession of strength. The revenue 
itself will be doubled, and instead of one half 
being applicable to objects of patronage, the 
whole will take that direction. Thus, the reduc- 
tion of the public debt, aiul the increase of reve- 
nue, will multiply in a four-fold degree the num- 
ber of persons in the service of the federal gov- 
ernment, the quantity of public money in their 
hands, and the number of objects to which it is 
apphcable ; but as each person employed will 

V-OL I.— 6 



have a circle of greater or less diameter, of which 
he is the centre and the soul — a circle composed 
of friends and relations, and of individuals em- 
ployed by himself on public or on private account 
— the actual increase of federal power and patron- 
age by the duplication of the revenue, will be, 
not in the aiithmetical ratio, but in geometrical 
progression — an increase almost beyond the pow- 
er of the mind to calculate or to comprehend." 

This was written twenty-five years ago. Its 
anticipations of increased revenue and patronage 
are more than realized. Instead of fifty millions 
of annual revenue during the lifetime of persons 
then living, and then deemed a visionary specu- 
lation, I saw it rise to sixty millions before I 
ceased to be a senator ; and saw all the objects 
of patronage expanding and multiplying in the 
same degree, extending the circle of its influence, 
and, in many cases, reversing the end of its crea- 
tion. Government was instituted for the protec- 
tion of individuals — not for their support. Office 
was to be given upon qualifications to fill it — not 
upon the personal wants of the recipient. Proper 
persons were to be sought out and appointed— 
(by the President in the higher appointments, 
and by the heads of the different branciies of 
service in the lower ones) ; and importunate 
suppliants were not to beg themselves into an 
office which belonged to the public, and was only 
to be administered for the public good. Such 
was the theory of the government. Practice has 
reversed it. Now office is sought for support, 
and for the repair of dilapidated fortunes ; appli- 
cants obtrude themselves, and prefer '• claims" to 
oflBce. Their personal condition and party ser- 
vices, not qualification, are made the basis of the 
demand ; and the crowds which congregate at 
Washington, at the change of an administration, 
supplicants for office, are humiliating to behold, 
and threaten to change the contests of parties 
from a contest for principle into a struggle for 
plunder. 

The bills which were reported were intended 
to control, and regulate different branches of 
the public service, and to limit some exercises 
of executive power. 1. The publication of the 
government advertisements had been found to be 
subject to great abuse — large advertisements, and 
for long periods, having been often found to be 
given to papers of little circulation, and sometimes 
of no circulation at all, in places where the adver- 
tLsement was to operate — the only effect of that 
favor being to conciliate the support of the paper, 



82 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



or to sustain an efficient one. For remedy, the 
bill for tliat purpose provided for the selection, 
and the limitation of the numbers, of the news- 
papers which were to publish the federal laws 
and advertisements, and for the periodical report 
of tneir names to Congress. 2. The four years' 
'.imitation law was found to operate contrary to 
its intent, and to have become the facile means 
of getting rid of faithful disbursing officers, in- 
stead of retaining them. The object of the law 
was to pass the disbursing officers every four 
years under the supervision of the appointing 
power, for the inspection of their accounts, in 
order that defaulters might be detected and drop- 
ped, while the faithful should be ascertained and 
continued. Instead of this wholesome discrimina- 
tion, the expiration of the four years' term came 
to be considered as the termination and vacation 
of all the offices on which it fell, and the crea- 
tion of vacancies to be filled by new appointments 
at the option of the President. The bill to re- 
medy this evil gave legal effect to the original 
intention of the law by confining the vacation of 
office to actual defaulters. The power of the 
President to dismiss civil officers was not attempt- 
ed to be curtailed, but the restraints of respon- 
sibility were placed upon its exercise by requiring 
the cause of dismission to be communicated to 
Congress in each case. The section of the bill to 
that effect was in these words : " That in all 
nominations made by the President to the 
Senate, to Jill vacancies occasioned by an exer- 
cise of the President's power to remove from 
office, the fact of the removal shall be stated to 
the Senate at the same time that the nomination 
is made, with astatement of the reasoiisfor lohich 
such officer may have been removed.'''' This was 
intended to operate as a restraint upon removals 
without cause, and to make legal and general 
what the Senate itself, and the members of the 
committee individually, had constantly refused 
to do in isolated cases. It was the recognition 
of a principle essential to the proper exercise of 
the appointing power, and entirely consonant to 
Mr. Jefferson's idea of removals ; but never ad- 
mitted by any administration, nor enforced by 
the Senate against any one — always waiting the 
legal enactment. The opinion of nine such 
senators as composed Ijlie committee who pro- 
posed to legalize this priuciple, all of them demo- 
cratic, and most of them aged and experienced, 
should stand for a persuasive reason why tliis 



principle should be legalized. 3. The appoint- 
ment of military cadets was distributed accord- 
ing to the Congressional representation, and 
which has been adopted in practice, and perhaps 
become the patronage of the member from a 
district instead of the President. 5. The selection 
of midshipmen was placed on the same footmg, 
and has been followed by the same practical conse- 
quence. 6. To secure the independence of the 
army and navy officers, the bill proposed to do, 
what never has been done by law, — define the 
tenure by which they held their commissions, 
and substitute " good behavior " for the clause 
which now runs "during the pleasure of the 
President. " The clause in the existing com- 
mission was copied from those then in use, de- 
rived from the British government ; and, in 
making army and navy officers subject to dis- 
mission at the will of the President, departs from 
the principle of our republican institutions, and 
lessens the independence of the officers. 



CHAPTER XXX. 

EXCLUSION OF MEMBERS OF CONGRESS FROM 
CIVIL OFFICE APPOINTMENTS. 

An inquiry into the expediency of amending 
the constitution so as to prevent the appointment 
of any member of Congress to any federal office 
of trust or profit, during the period for which he 
was elected, was moved at the session 1825-26, 
by Mr. Senator Thomas "W. Cobb, of Georgia ; 
and his motion was committed to the consider^ 
ation of the same select committee to which had 
been referred the inquiries into the expediency 
of reducing executive patronage, and amending 
the constitution in relation to the election of 
President and Vice-President. The motion as 
submitted only applied to the term for which the 
senator or representative was elected — only 
carried the exclusion to the end of his constitu- 
tional term ; but the committee were of opinion 
that such appointments were injurious to the in- 
dependence of Congress and to the pui'ity of 
legislation ; and believed that the limitation on 
the eligibility of members should be more compre- 
hensive than the one proposed, and should extend 



ANNO 1826. JOHN QUINCY ADAMS, PRESIDENT. 



83 



to the President's term under whom the member 
served as well as to his own — so as to cut off 
the possibility for a member to receive an appoint- 
ment from the President to whom he might have 
lent a subservient vote : and the committee 
directed their chairman (Mr. Benton) to report 
accordingly. This was done ; and a report was 
made, chiefly founded upon the proceedings of the 
federal convention which framed the constitution, 
and the proceedings of the conventions of the 
States which adopted it — showing that the total 
exclusion of members of Congress from all federal 
appointments was actually adopted in the con- 
vention on a full vote, and struck out in the ab- 
sence of some members ; and afterwards modified 
so as to leave an inadequate, and easily evaded 
clause in the constitution in place of the full re- 
medy which had been at first provided. It also 
showed that conventions of several of the States, 
and some of the earlier Congresses, endeavored 
to obtain amendments to the constitution to cut 
off members of Congress entirely from exf^utive 
patronage. Some extracts from that report are 
here given to show the sense of the early friends 
of the constitution on this important point. 
Thus: 

" That, having had recourse to the history of the 
times in which the constitution was formed, the 
committee find that the proposition now referred 
to them, had engaged the deliberations of the 
federal convention which framed the constitution, 
and of several of the State conventions which 
ratified it. 

" In an early stage of the session of the federal 
convention, it was resolved, as follows : 

" ' Article 6, section 9. The members of each 
House (of Congress) shall be ineligible to, and in- 
capable of holding, any office under the authority 
of the United States, during the time for which 
they shall respectively be elected ; and the mem- 
bers of the Senate shall be ineligible to, and in- 
capable of holding any such office for one year 
afterwards. ' 

" It further appears from the journal, that this 
clause, in the first draft of the constitution, was 
adopted with great unanimity ; and that after- 
wards, in the concluding days of the session, it 
was altered, and its intention defeated, by a ma- 
jority of a single vote, in the absence of one of 
the States by which it had been supported. 

" Following the constitution into tlie State con- 
ventions which ratified it. and the committee find, 
that, in the New- York convention, it was recom- 
mended, as follows : 

" ' That no senator or representative shall, 
during the time for which he was elected, be 
appointed to any office under the authority of 
the United States. 



" By the Virginia convention, as follows : 

" ' That the members of the Senate and House 
of Representatives shall be ineligible to. and in- 
capable of holding, any civil office under the 
authority of the United States, during the term 
for which they shall respectively be elected.' 

" By the North Carolina convention, the same 
amendment was recommended, in the same 
words. 

•• In the first session of the first Congress, which 
was held under the constitution, a member of the 
House of Representatives submitted a similar 
proposition of amendment ; and, in the third 
session of the eleventh Congress, James Madison 
being President, a like proposition was again 
submitted, and being referred to a committee of 
the House, was reported by them in the following 
words : 

" ' No senator or representative shall be ap- 
pointed to an}^ civil oiBce, place, or emolument, 
under the authority of the United States, untill 
the expiration of the presidential term in which 
such person shall have served as a senator or 
representative.' 

•' Upon the question to adopt this resolution,the 
vote stood 71 yeas, 40 nays. — wanting but three 
votes of the constitutional number for referring 
it to the decision of the States. 

" Having thus shown, by a reference to the 
venerable evidence of our early history, that the 
principle of the amendment now under consider- 
ation, has had the support and approbation of the 
first friends of the constitution, the committee 
will now declare their own opinion in ftivor of its 
correctness, and expresses its belief that the rul- 
ing principle in the organization of the federal 
government demands its adoption." 

It is thus seen that in the formation of the 
constitution, and in the early ages of our govern- 
ment, there was great jealousy on this head — 
great fear of tampering between the President 
and the members — and great efforts made to 
keep each independent of the other. For the 
safety of the President, and that Congress should 
not have him in their power, he was made inde- 
pendent of them in point of salary. By a con- 
stitutional provision his compensation was neither 
to be diminished nor increased during the term 
for which he was elected ; — not diminished, lest 
Congress should starve him into acquiescence 
in their views ; — not increased, lest Congress 
should seduce him by tempting his cupidity with 
an augmented compensation. That provision 
secured the independence of the President ; but 
the independence of the two Houses was still to 
be provided for ; and that was imperfectly effect- 
ed by two provisions — the first, prohibiting office 
holders under the federal government from tak- 
ing a seat in either House ; the second, by pro* 



84 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



hibitiug their appointment to any civil ofRce that 
might have been created; or its emoluments in- 
creased, during the term for which he should 
have been elected. Those provisions were deemed 
by the authors of the federalist (No. 55) suffi- 
cient to protect the independence of Congress, and 
would have been, if still observed in their spirit, 
as well as in their letter, as was done by the 
earlier Presidents. A very strong instance of 
this observance was the case of Mr. Alexander 
Smythe, of Virginia, during the administration 
of President Monroe. Mr. Smythe had been a 
member of the House of Representatives, and in 
that capacity had voted for the establishment of a 
judicial district in Western Virginia, and by which 
the office of judge was created. His term of service 
had expired: he was proposed for the judgeship: 
the letter of the constitution permitted the ap- 
pointment : but its spirit did not. Mr. Smythe 
was entirely fit for the place, and Mr. Monroe 
entirely willing to bestow it upon him. But he 
looked to the spirit of the act, and the mischief 
it was intended to prevent, as well as to its let- 
ter ; and could see no difference between bestow- 
ing the appointment the day after, or the day 
before, the expiration of Mr. Smythe's term of 
service : and he refused to make the appointment. 
This was protecting the purity of legislation ac- 
cording to the intent of the constitution ; but it 
has not always been so. A glaring case to the 
contrary occurred in the person of JNIr. Thomas 
Butler King, under the presidency of Mr. Fillmore. 
Mr. King was elected a member of Congress for 
the term at which the office of collector of the 
customs at San Francisco had been created, and 
had resigned his place : but the resignation could 
not work an evasion of the constitution, nor af- 
fect the principle of its provision. He had been 
appointed in the recess of Congress, and sent to 
take the place before his two years had expired 
— and did take it ; and that was against the words 
of the .constitution. His nomination was not 
sent in .until his term expired — the day after it 
expired^having been held back during the regu- 
lar session; and was confirmed b}' the Senate. 
I had then ceased to be a member of the Senate, 
and know not whether any question was raised on 
the nomination ; but if I had been, there should 
have been a question. 

But the constitutional limitation upon the ap- 
pointment of members of Congress, even when 
executed beyond its letter and according to its 



spirit, as done by Mr. Monroe, is but a verj 
small restraint upon their appointment, only ap- 
plying to the few cases of new offices created, or 
of compensation increased, during the period of 
their membership. The whole class of regular 
vacancies remain open ! xill the vacancies which 
the President pleases to create, by an exercise of 
the removing power, are opened ! and between 
these two sources of supply, the fund is ample 
for as large a commerce between members and 
the President — between subservient votes on one 
side, and executive appointments on the other — 
as any President, or any set of members, might 
choose to carry on. And hero is to be noted a 
wide departure from the theorj'^ of the govern- 
ment on this point, and how differently it has 
worked from what its early friends and advocates 
expected. I limit myself now to Hamilton, 
Madison and Jay ; and it is no narrow limit 
which includes three such men. Their names 
would have lived for ever in American history, 
among those of the wise and able founders of our 
government, without the crowning work of the 
" Essays " in behalf of the constitution which 
have been embodied under the name of " Feder- 
alist " — and which made that name so respect- 
able before party assumed it. The defects of the 
constitution were not hidden from them in the 
depths of the admiration which they felt for its 
perfections ; and these defects were noted, and as 
far as possible excused, in a work devoted to its 
just advocation. This point (of dangerous com- 
merce between the executive and the legislative 
body) was obliged to be noticed — forced upon 
their notice by the jealous attacks of the •' Anti- 
Fedeualists" — as the opjjonents of the constitu- 
tion were called : and in the number 55 of their 
work, they excused, and diminished, this defect 
in these terms : 

" Sometimes we are told, that this fund of cor- 
ruption (Executive appointments) is to be ex- 
hausted by the President in subduing the virtue 
of the Senate. Now, the fidelity of the other 
House is to be the victim. The improbability of 
such a mercenary and perfidious combination of 
the several members of the government, stand- 
ing on as different foundations as rcpul)lican prin- 
ciples will well admit, and at the same time ac- 
countable to the society over which they are 
placed, ought alone to quiet this apprehension. 
But, fortunately, the constitution has pi'ovided 
a still further safeguard. The members of the 
Congress are rendered ineligible to any civil 
offices that may be created, or of which tho 



ANNO 1826. JOHN QUINCY ADAMS, PRESIDENT, 



85 



emoluments may be increased, during the term 
of their election. No ofBces, therefore, can be 
dealt out to the existing members, but such as 
may become vacant by ordinary casualties ; 
and to suppose that these would be sufficient to 
purchase the guardians of the people, selected by 
the people themselves, is to renounce every rule 
by vrhich events ought to be calculated, and to 
substitute an indiscriminate and unbounded 
jealousy, with which all reasoning must be vain." 

Such was their defence — the best which their 
great abihties, and ardent zeal, and patriotic de- 
votion, could furnish. They could not deny the 
danger. To diminish its quantum, and to cover 
with a brilliant declamation the little that re- 
mained, was their resource. And, certainly if 
the working of the government had been accord- 
ing to their supposition, their defence would have 
been good. I have taken the liberty to mark in 
italics the ruling words contained in the quota- 
tion which I have made from their works — 
" ordinary casualties. " And what were they 1 
deaths, resignations, removals upon impeach- 
ment, and dismissions by the President and Se- 
nate. This, in fact, would constitute a very 
small amount of vacancies duriug the presidential 
term ; and as new oflBces, and those of increased 
compensation, were excluded, the answer was 
undoubtedly good, and even justified the visible 
contempt with which the objection was repulsed. 
But what has been the fact 1 what has been the 
working of the government at this point 1 and 
how stands this narrow limitation of vacancies 
to ^^ ordinary casualties!''^ In the first place, 
the main stay of the argument in the Federalist 
was knocked from under it at the outset of the 
government; and so knocked by a side-blow 
from construction. In the very first year of the 
constitution a construction was put on that in- 
strument which enabled the President to create 
as many vacancies as he pleased, and at any 
moment that he pleased. This was effected by 
yielding to him the kingly prerogative of dismiss- 
ing officers without the formality of a trial, or 
the consent of the other part of the appointing 
power. The authors of the Federalist had not 
foreseen this construction : so far from it they 
had asserted the contrary : and arguing logically 
from the premises, "' that the dismissing power 
was appurtenant to the appointing power,'''' 
they had maintained in that able and patriotic 
work— (No. 77)— that, as the consent of the 
Senate was necessary to the appointment of an j 



oflBcer, so the consent of the same body would 
be equally necessary to his dismission from 
oflBce. But this construction was overruled by 
the first Congress which sat under the constitu- 
tion. The power of dismission from oflBce was 
abandoned to the President alone ; and, with the 
acquisition of this prerogative, the power and 
patronage of the presidential oflBce was instantly 
increased to an indefinite extent ; and the argu- 
ment of the Federalist against the capacity of the 
President to corrupt members of Congress, 
founded on the small number of places which 
he could use for that purpose, was totally over- 
thrown. This is what has been done by con- 
struction. Now for the efiects of legislation: 
and without going into an enumeration of sta- 
tutes so widely extending and increasing execu- 
tive patronage in the multiplication of oflBces, 
jobs, contracts, agencies, retainers, and sequiturs 
of all sorts, holding at the will of the President, 
it is enough to point to a single act — the four 
years' limitation act ; which, by vacating almost 
the entire civil list — the whole " Blue Book " — 
the 40,000 places which it registers — in every 
period of a presidential term — puts more oflBces 
at the command of the President than the authors 
of the Federalist ever dreamed of; and enough to 
equip all the members and all their kin if they 
chose to accept his favors. But this is not the 
end. Large as it opens the field of patronage, 
it is not the end. There is a practice grown up 
in these latter times, which, upon every revolu- 
tion of parties, makes a political exodus among 
the adversary oflBce-holders, marching them oflf 
into the wilderness, and leaving their places for 
new-comers. This practice of itself, also unfore- 
seen by the authors of the Federalist, again over- 
sets their whole argument, and leaves the mis- 
cliief from which they undertook to defend the 
constitution in a degree of vigor and universality 
of which the original opposers of that' mischief 
had never formed the slightest conception. 

Besides the direct commerce which may take 
place between the Executive and a member, 
there are other evils i-esulting from their ap- 
pointment to oflBce, wholly at war with the 
theory of our government, and the purity of its 
action. Responsibility to his constituents is the 
corner-stone and sheet-anchor, in the system of 
representative government. It is the substance 
without which representation is but a shadow. 
To secure that responsibility the constitution 



86 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



has provided that the members shall be periodi- 
cally returned to their constituents — those of 
the House at the end of every two years, those 
of the Senate at the end of every six — to pass ui 
review before them — to account for what may 
have been done amiss, and to receive the reward 
or censure of good or bad conduct. This re- 
sponsibility is totally destroyed if the President 
takes a member out of the hands of his constit- 
uents, prevents his return home, and places him 
in a situation where he is independent of their 
censure. Again : the constitution intended that 
the three departments of the government, — the 
executive, the legislative, and the judicial — 
should be independent of each other : and this 
independence ceases, between the executive and 



When I first came to the Senate thirty years 
ago. aged members were accustomed to tell me 
that there were always members in the market, 
waiting to render votes, and to receive office ; 
and that in any closely contested, or nearly 
balanced question, in wliich the administration 
took an interest, they could turn the deci.sion 
which way they pleased by tlie help of these 
marketable votes. It was a humiliating revela- 
tion to a young senator — but true ; and I have 
seen too much of it in my time — seen members 
whose every vote was at the service of govern- 
ment — to whom a seat in Congress was but 
the stepping-stone to executive appointment — to 
whom federal office was the pabulum for which 
their stomachs yearned — and who to obtain it, 



— the more so if the President should have 
owed his office to their nomination. Then it 
becomes a commerce, upon the regular principle 
of trade — a commerce of mutual benefit. For 
this reason Congress caucuses for the nomination 
of presidential candidates fell under the ban of 
public opinion, and were ostracised above twenty 
years ago — only to be followed by the same evil 
in a worse form, that of illegal and irresponsible 
" conventions ; " in which the nomination is an 
election, so far as party power is concerned ; and 
into which the member glides who no longer 
dares to go to a Congress caucus ; — whom the 
constitution interdicts from being an elector — 
and of whom some do not blush to receive office, 
and even to demand it, from the President whom 
they have created. The framers of our govern- 
ment never foresaw — far-seeing as they were — 
this state of things, otherwise the exclusion of 
members from presidential appointments could 
never have failed as part of the constitution, 
(after having been first adopted in the original 
draught of that instrument) ; nor repulsed when 
recommended by so many States at the adoption 
of the constitution ; nor rejected by a majority of 
one in the Congress of 1789, when proposed as 
an amendment, and coming so near to adoption 
by the House. 

Thus far I have spoken of this abuse as a po- 
tentiality — as a possibility — as a thing which 
might happen : the inexorable law of history 
requires it to be written that it has happened, is 
happening, becomes more intense, and is ripen- 
ing into a chronic disease of the body politic. 



legislative, the moment the members become were ready to forget that they had either con- 
expectants and recipients of presidential favor; stituents or country.,. And now, why this mor- 
tifying exhibition of a disgusting depravity ? I 
answer — to correct it : — if not by law and con- 
stitutional amendment (for it is hard to get 
lawgivers to work against themselves), at least 
by the force of public opinion, and the stern re- 
buke of popular condemnation. 

I have mentioned ]Mr. Monroe as a President 
who would not depart, even from the spu-it of 
the constitution, in appointing, not a member, 
but an ex-member of Congress, to office. Others 
of the earlier Presidents were governed by the 
same principle, of whom I will only mention 
(for his example should stand for all) General 
Washington, who entirely condemned the prac- 
tice. In a letter to General Hamilton (vol. 6, 
page 53, of Hamilton's Works), he speaks of his 
objections to these appointments as a thing well 
known to that gentleman, ajid wliicli he was 
only driven to think of in a particular instance, 
from the difficulty of finding a Secretary of 
State, successor to Mr. Edmund Randolph. No 
less than four persons had declined the offer of 
it ; and seeing no other suitable person without 
going into the Senate, he offered it to Mr. Rufus 
King of that body — who did not accept it : and 
for this offer, thus made in a case of so much 
urgency, and to a citizen so eminently fit, Wash- 
ington felt that the honor of his administration 
required him to show a justification. What 
would the Father of his country have thought 
if members had come to liim to solicit office? 
and especially, if these members (a thing al- 
most blasphemous to be imagined in connection 
with liis name) had mixed in caucuses and 



ANNO 1826. JOHN QUINCY ADAMS, PRESIDENT. 



87 



conventions to procure his nomination for Presi- 
dent ? Certainly he would have given them a 
look which would have sent such suppliants for 
ever from his presence. And I, who was senator 
for thirty years, and never had office for myself 
or any one of my blood, have a right to con- 
demn a practice which my conduct rebukes, and 
which the purity of the government requires to 
be abolished, and which the early Presidents 
carefully avoided. 



CHAPTER XXXI. 

DEATH OF THE EX-PEESIDENTS JOHN ADAMS 
AND THOMAS JEFFEESON. 

It comes within the scope of this View to notice 
the deaths and characters of eminent public men 
who have died during my time, although not my 
contemporaries, and who have been connected 
with the founding or early working of the fed- 
eral government. This gives me a right to head 
a chapter with the names of Mr. John Adams 
and Mr. Jefferson — two of the most eminent 
political men of the revolution, who, entering 
public life together, died on the same day, — 
July 4th, 1826, — exactly fifty years after they 
had both put their hands to that Declaration of 
Independence which placed a new nation upon 
the theatre of the world. Doubtless there was 
enough of similitude in their lives and deaths to 
excuse the belief in the interposition of a direct 
providence, and to justify the feeling of mys- 
terious reverence with which the news of their co- 
incident demise was received throughout the 
country. The parallel between them was com- 
plete. Born nearly at the same time, Mr. 
Adams the elder, they took the same course in 
life — witli the same success — and ended their 
earthly career at the same time, and in the same 
way :— in the regular course of nature, in the re- 
pose and tranquillity of retirement, in the bosom 
of their families, and on the soil which their 
labors had contributed to make free. 

Born, one in Massachusetts, the other in Vir- 
ginia, they both received liberal educations, em- 
braced the same profession (that of the law), 
mixed literature and science with their legal 



studies and pursuits, and entered early into the 
ripening contest with Great Britain — first in 
their counties and States, and then on the broader 
field of the General Congress of the Confeder- 
ated Colonies. They were both members of the 
Congress which declared Independence — both of 
the committee which reported the Declaration — 
both signed it — were both employed in foreign 
missions — both became Vice-Presidents — and 
both became Presidents. They were both work- 
, ing men ; and, in the great number of efficient 
laborers in the rause of Independence which the 
Confesses of the Revolution contained, thev 
were doubtless the two most efficient — and Mr. 
Adams the more so of the two. He was, as Mr. 
Jefferson styled him, " the Colossus " of the 
Congress — speaking, writing, counselling — a 
member of ninety different committees, and 
(during his three years' service) chairman of 
twenty five — chairman also of the board of war 
and board of appeals : his soul on fire with the 
cause, left no i-est to his head, hands, or tongue. 
Mr. Jefferson drew the Declaration of Indepen- 
dence, but Mr. Adams was " the pillar of its sup- 
port, and its ablest advocate and defender," 
during the forty days it was before the Congress. 
In the letter which he wrote that night to Mrs. 
Adams (for, after all the labors of the day, and 
such a day, he could still write to her), he took 
a glowing view of the future, and used those 
expressions, "gloom" and "glory," which his 
son repeated in the paragraph of his message to 
Congress in relation to the deaths of the two ex- 
Presidents, which I have heard criticized by 
those who did not know their historical allusion, 
and could not feel the force and beauty of their 
application. They were words of hope and con- 
fidence when he wrote them, and of history 
when he died. "I am well aware of the toil, 
and blood, and treasure, that it will cost to main- 
tain this Declaration, and to support and defend 
these States ; yet through all the gloom, I can 
see the rays of light and glory ! " and ho lived to 
see it — to see the glory — with the bodily, as well 
as with the mental eye. And (for the great fact 
will bear endless repetition) it was he that con- 
ceived the idea of making Washington command- 
er-in-chief, and prepared the way for his unani- 
mous nomination. 

In the division of partiijs which ensued the 
establishment of the federal government, Mr. 
Adams and Mr. Jefferson differed in systems of 



88 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



policy, and became heads of opposite divisions, 
but without becoming either unjust or unkind to 
each other. Mr. Adams sided with the party 
discriminated as federal ; and in that character 
became the subject of political attacks, from 
which his competitor generou.sly defended him, 
declaring that "a more perfectly honest man 
never issued from the hands of his Creator ;" and, 
though opposing candidates for the presidency, 
neither would have any thing to do with the elec- 
tion, which they considered a question between 
the S3'stems of policy which they represented, 
and not a question between themselves. Mr. 
Jefferson became the head of the partj^ then 
called republican — now democratic ; and in that 
character became the founder of the political 
school which has since chiefly prevailed in the 
United States. lie was a statesman : that is to 
say, a man capable of conceiving measures use- 
ful to the country and to mankind — able to re- 
commend them to adoption, and to administer 
them when adopted. I have seen many politi- 
cians — a few statesmen — and, of these few, he 
their pre-eminent head. He was a republican 
bj'' nature and constitution, and gave proofs 
of it in the legislation of his State, as well as in 
the policj^ of the United States. He was no 
speaker, but a most instructive and fascinating 
talker ; and the Declaration of Independence, 
even if it had not been sistered by innumerable 
classic productions, would hivvc placed him at 
the head of political writers. I never saw him 
but once, when I went to visit him in his retire- 
ment ; and then I felt, for four hours, the charms 
of his bewitching talk. I was then a J'oung sen- 
ator, just coming on the stage of public life — he a 
patriarchal statesman just going off the stage of 
natural life, and evidently desirous to impress 
some views of policy upou me — a design in which 
he certainly did not fail. I honor him as a patriot 
of the Revolution — as one of the Founders of the 
Republic — as the founder of the political school 
to which I belong ; and for the purity of charac- 
ter which he possessed in common with his com- 
natriots, and which gives to the birth of the 
United States a beauty of parentage which the 
genealogy of no other nation can show. 



CHAPTER XXXII. 

BKITISII INDEMNITY FOR DEPOETED SLAVES. 

In this year was brought to a conclusion the 
long-continued controversy with Great Britain 
in relation to the non-fulfilment of the first arti- 
cle of the treaty of Ghcait (1814), for the resti- 
tution of slaves carried oft' by the British troops 
in the war ofl812. It was a renewal of the mis- 
understanding, but with a better issue, which 
grew up under the seventh article of the treaty 
of peace of 1783 upon the same subject. The 
power of Washington's administration was not 
able to procure the execution of that article, 
either by restoration of the slaves or indemnity. 
The slaves then taken away were can-ied to Nova 
Scotia, where, becoming an annoyance, they were 
transferred to Sierra Leone ; and thus became the 
foundation of the British African colony there. 
The restitution of deported slaves, stipulated in 
the first article of the Ghent treaty, could not be 
accomplished between the two powers ; they dis- 
agreed as to the meaning of words ; and, after 
seven years of vain efforts to come to an under- 
standing, it was agreed to refer the question to 
arbitrament. The Emperor Alexander accepted 
the office of arbitrator, executed it, aud decided 
in favor of the United States. That decision was 
as unintelligible to Great Britain as all the pre- 
vious treat}^ stipulations on the same subject had 
been. She could not understand it. A second 
misunderstanding grew up, giving rise to a second 
negotiation, which was concluded by a final 
agreement to pay the value of the slaves carried 
off. In 1827 payment was made — twelve years 
after the injury and the stipulation to repair it, 
and after continued and most strenuous exertions 
to obtain redress. 

The case was this : it was a part of the system 
of warfare adopted by the British, when operat- 
ing in the slave States, to encourage the slaves to 
desert from their owners, promising them free- 
dom ; and at the end of the war these slaves 
were carried ofF. This carrying ofT was foreseen 
by the United States Commissioners at Ghent, 
and in the first article of the treaty was pro- 
vided against in these words ; " all places taken, 
&c. shall be restored without delay, etc.. or car- 
rying away any of the artillery, or other public 



ANNO 1827. JOHN QUINCY ADAMS, PRESIDENT. 



89 



property originally captured in the said posts or 
places, and which shall remain therein upon the 
exchange of the ratifications of this treaty, or 
any slaves or other private property." The 
British Government undertook to extend the 
limitation which applied to public property to 
that which was private also ; and so to restore 
only such slaves as were originally captured 
within the forts, and which remained therein at 
the time of the exchange of ratifications — a con- 
struction which would have excluded all that 
were induced to run away, being nearly the 
whole ; and all that left the forts before the ex- 
change of ratifications, which would have includ- 
ed the rest. She adhered to the construction 
given to the parallel article in the treaty of 1783, 
and by which all slaves taken during the war 
were held to be lawful prize of war, and free un- 
der the British proclamation, and not to be com- 
pensated for. The United States, on the contrary, 
confined this local limitation to things appurte- 
nant to the forts ; and held the slaves to be pri- 
vate property, subject to restitution, or claim for 
compensation, if carried away at all, no matter 
how acquired. 

The point was solemnly carried before the 
Emperor Alexander, the United States represent- 
ed by their minister, Mr. Henry Middleton, and 
Great Britain bj^ Sir Charles Bagot — the Counts 
Nesselrode and Capo D'Istrias receiving the ar- 
guments to be laid before the Emperor. His 
Majesty's decision was peremptory ; '• that the 
United States of America are entitled to a just 
indemnification from Great Britain for all private 
property carried away by the British forces ; 
and, as the question regards slaves more espe- 
cially, for all such slaves as were carried away 
by the British forces from the places and terri- 
tories of which the restitution was stipulated by 
the treaty, in quitting the said places and territo- 
ries." This was explicit ; but the British minis- 
ter undertook to understand it as not applying 
to slaves who voluntarily joined the British 
troops to free themselves from bondage, and who 
came from places never in possession of the 
British troops ; and he submitted a note to that 
efiect to the Russian minister, Count Nesaelrode, 
to be laid before the Emperor. To this note 
Alexander gave an answer which is a model of 
categorical reply to unfound d dubitation. He 
said; " the Emperor having, by the mutual con- 
sent of the two plenipotentiaries, given an opin- 



ion, founded solely upon the sense which results 
from the text of the article in dispute, does not 
think himself called upon to decide here any 
question relative to what the laws of war permit 
or forbid to the belligerents ; but. alwaj's faithful 
to the grammatical interpretation of the first ar- 
ticle of the treaty of Ghent, his Imperial Majesty 
declares, a second time, that it appears to him, 
according to this interpretation, that, in quitting 
the places and territories of which the treaty of 
Ghent stipulates the restitution to the United 
States, his Britannic Majesty's forces had no 
right to cavry away from the same places and 
territories, absolutely, any slave, by whatever 
means he had fallen or come into their power." 
This was the second declaration, the second de- 
cision of the point ; and both parties having 
bound themselves to abide the decision, be it 
what it might, a convention was immediately con- 
cluded for the purpose of carrying the Emperor's 
decision into efiect, by establishing a board to 
ascertain the number and value of the deported 
slaves. It was a convention formally drawn 
up, signed by the ministers of the three powers, 
done in triplicate, ratified, and ratifications ex- 
changed, and the affair considered finished. Not 
so the fact ! New misunderstanding, new nego- 
tiation, five years more consumed in diplomatic 
notes, and finally a new convention concluded ! 
Certainly it was not the value of the property 
in controversy, not the amoimt of money to be 
paid, that led Great Britain to that pertinacious 
resistance, bordering upon cavilling and bad faith. 
It was the loss of an advantage in war — the loss 
of the future advantage of operating upon the 
slave States through their slave property, and 
which advantage would be lost if this compensa- 
tion was enforced, — which induced her to stand 
out so long against her own stipulations, and the 
decisions of her own accepted arbitrator. 

This new or third treaty, making indemnity 
for these slaves, was negotiated at London, No- 
vember, 1826, between Mr. Gallatin on the part 
of the United States, and Messrs. Iluskisson and 
Addington on the part of Great Britain. It com- 
menced with reciting that " difficulties having 
arisen in the execution of the convention conclud- 
ed at St. Petersburg, July 12th, 1822, under the 
mediation of his majesty the Emperor of all the 
Russias, between the United States of America 
and Great Britain, for the purpose of carrying 
into effect the decision of his Imperial ^Majesty 



90 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



upon the differences which had arisen between 
the said United States and Great Britain as to 
the true construction and meaning of the first 
article of the treaty of Ghent, therefore the said 
parties agree to treat again," &c. The result of 
this third negotiation was to stipulate for the 
payment of a gross sura to the government of 
the United States, to be by it divided among 
those whose slaves had been carried off: and the 
sum of one million two hundred and four thou- 
sand nine hundred and sLxty dollars was the 
amount agreed upon. Tliis sum was satisfactory 
to the claimants, and was paid to the United 
States for their benefit in the year 1827 — just 
twelve years after the conclusion of the war, and 
after two treaties had been made, and two arbi- 
trations rendered to explain the meaning of the 
first treaty, and which fully explamed itself 
Twelve years of persevering exertion to obtain 
the execution of a treaty stipulation which solely 
related to private property, and which good faith 
and sheer justice required to have been complied 
with immediately ! At the commencement of 
the session of Congress, 1827-28, the President, 
Mr. John Quincy Adams, was able to communi- 
cate the fact of the final settling and closing up 
of this demand upon the British government for 
the value of the slaves carried olT by its troops. 
The sura received was large, and ample to pay 
the damages; but that was the smallest part of 
the advantage gained. The example and the 
principle were the main points — the enforcement 
of such a demand against a government so power- 
ful, and after so much resistance, and the con- 
demnation which it carried, and the responsibilty 
which it implied — this was the grand advantage. 
Liberation and abduction of slaves was one of 
the modes of warfare adopted by the British, and 
largely counted on as a means of harassing and 
injuring one half of the Union. It had been 
practised during the Revolution, and indemnity 
avoided. If avoided a second time, impunity 
would have sanctioned the practice and rendered 
it inveterate ; and in future wars, not only with 
Great Britain but with all powers, this mode of 
annoyance would have become an ordinary re- 
sort, leading to servile insurrections. The in- 
demnity exacted carried along with it the con- 
demnation of the practice, as a spoliation of 
private property to be atoned for ; and was both 
a compensation for the past and a warning for 
the future. It implied a responsibility which no 



power, or art, or time could evade, and the prin- 
ciple of which being established, there will be no 
need for future arbitrations. 

I have said that this article in the treaty of 
Ghent for restitution, or corapensation, for de- 
ported slaves was brought to a better issue than 
its parallel in the treaty of peace of 1783. By 
the seventh article of this treaty it was declared 
that the evacuation (by the British troops) should 
be made " without carrying away any negroes or 
other property belonging to the American in- 
habitants.-'' Yet three thousand slaves were 
carried away (besides ten times that number — 
27.000 in Virginia alone — perishing of disease in 
the British camps) ; and neither restitution nor 
compensation made for any part of them. Both 
were resisted — the restitution by Sir Guy 
Carleton in his letter of reply to Washington's 
demand, declaring it to be an impossible infamy 
in a British officer to give up those whom they 
had invited to their standard ; but reserving the 
point for the consideration of his government, and, 
in the mean time, allowing and facilitating the 
taking of schedules of all slaves taken away — 
names, ages, sex, former owners, and States 
from which taken. The British government 
resisted compensation upon the ground of war 
captures ; that, being taken in war, no matter 
how, they became, like other plunder, the pro- 
perty of the captors, who had a right to dispose 
of it as they pleased, and had chosen to set it 
free; that the slaves, having become free, be- 
longed to nobody, and consequently it was no 
breach of the treaty stipulation to carry them 
away. This ground was contested by the Con- 
gress of the confederation to the end of its exist- 
ence, and afterwards by the new federal goveri>- 
ment, from its commencement until the claim 
for indemnity was waived or abandoned, at 
the conclusion of Jay's treaty, in 1796. The 
very first message of Washington to Congress 
when he became President, presented the inexe- 
cution of the treaty of peace in this particular, 
among others, as one of the complaints justly 
existing against Great Britain ; and all the di- 
plomacy of his administration was exerted to 
obtain redress — in vain. The treaties of '94 and 
'96 were both signed without alhision to the sub- 
ject; and, being left unprovided for in these trea- 
ties, the claim sunk into the class of obsolete de- 
mands; and the stipulation remained in the treaty 
a dead letter, although containing the preciso 



ANNO 182'7. JOHN QTJINCY ADAMS, PRESIDENT. 



91 



words, and the additional one " negroes," on which 
the Emperor Alexander took the stand which com- 
manded compensation and dispensed with argu- 
ments founded in the laws of war. Not a shilling 
had been received for that immense depredation 
upon private property ; although the Congress of 
the confederation adopted the strongest resolves, 
and even ordered each State to be furnished with 
copies of the schedules of the slaves taken from 
it ; and hopes of indemnity were kept alive until 
extinguished by the treaty of '96. It was a 
bitter complaint against that treaty, as the Con- 
gress debates of the time, and the public press, 
abundantly show. 

Northern men did their duty to the South in 
getting compensation (and, what is infinitely 
more, establishing the principle that there shall 
be compensation in such cases) for the slaves 
carried away in the war of 1812. A majority 
of the commissioners at Ghent who obtained the 
stipulation for indemnity were Northern men — 
Adams, Kussell, Gallatin, from the free, and 
Clay and Bayard from the slave States. A 
Northern negotiator (Mr. Gallatin), under a 
Northern President (Mr. John Quincy Adams), 
finally obtained it ; and it is a coincidence wor- 
thy of remark that this Northern negotiator, 
who was finally successful, was the same de- 
bater in Congress, in '96, who delivered the best 
argument (in my opinion surpassing even that 
of Mr. Madison), against the grounds on which 
the British Government resisted the execution 
of this article of the treaty. 

I am no man to stir up old claims against the 
federal government; and, I detest the trade 
which exhumes such claims, and deplore the fa- 
cility with which they are considered — too often 
in the hands of speculators who gave nothing, or 
next to nothing, for them. But I must say that 
the argument on which the French spoliation 
claim is now receiving so much consideration, 
applies with infinitely more force to the planters 
whose slaves were taken during the war of the 
Revolution than in behalf of these French spoli- 
ation claims. They were contributing — some in 
their persons in the camp or council, all in their 
voluntary or tax contributions — to the indepen- 
dence of their country when they were thus de- 
spoiled of their property. They depended upon 
these slaves to support their families while they 
were supporting their country. They were in 
debt to British merchants, and relied upon com- 



pensation for these slaves to pay those debts, at 
the very moment when compensation was aban- 
doned by the same treaty which enforced the 
payment of the debts. They had a treaty obli- 
gation for indemnity, express in its terms, and 
since shown to be valid, when deprived of this 
stipulation by another treaty, in order to obtain 
general advantages for the whole Union. This 
is something like taking private property for 
public use. Three thousand slaves, the property 
of ascertained individuals, protected by a treaty 
stipulation, and afterwards abandoned by another 
treaty, against the entreaties and remonstrances 
of the owners, in order to obtain the British 
commercial treaty of '94, and its supplement of 
'96 : such is the case which this revolutionary 
spoliation of slave property presents, and which 
puts it immeasurably ahead of the French spoli- 
ation claims prior to 1800. There is but four 
years' difference in their ages — in the dates of 
the two treaties by which they were respectively 
surrendered — and every other difference between 
the two cases is an argument of preference in 
favor of the losers under the treaty of 1796. 
Yet I am against both, and each, separately or 
together ; and put them in contrast to make one 
stand as an argument against the other. But 
the primary reason for introducing the slave 
spoliation case of 1783, and comparing its less 
fortunate issue with that of 1812, was to show 
that Northern men will do justice to the South ; 
that Northern men obtained for the South an 
indemnity and security in our day wliich a 
Southern Administration, with Washington at 
its head, had not been able to obtain in the days 
of our fathers. 



CHAPTER XXXIII. 

MEETING OF THE FIRST CONGRESS ELECTED UN- 
DER TUE ADMINISTRATION OF MK. ADAMS. 

The nineteenth Congress, commencing its legal 
existence, March the 4th, 1825, had been chiefly 
elected at the time that Mr. Adams' administra- 
tion commenced, and the two Houses stood di- 
vided with respect to him — the majority of the 
Representatives being favorable to him, while the 



92 



THIRTY YEAR'S VIEW. 



majority of the Senate was in opposition. The 
elections for the twentieth Congress — the first 
under his administration — were looked to with 
great interest, both as showing whether the new 
President was supported by the country, and his 
election by the House sanctioned, and also as an 
index to the issue of the ensuing presidential 
election. For, simultaneously with the election 
in the House of Representatives did the canvass 
for the succeeding election begin — General Jack- 
son being the announced candidate on one side, 
and Mr. Adams on the other ; and the event in- 
volving not only the question of merits between 
the parties, but also the question of approved or 
disapproved conduct on the part of the represen- 
tatives who elected Mr. Adams. The elections 
took place, and resulted in placing an opposition 
majority in the House of Representatives, and 
increasing the strength of the opposition majori- 
ty in the Senate. The state of parties in the 
House was immediately tested by the election of 
speaker, Mr. John W. Taylor, of New- York, 
the administration candidate, being defeated by 
Mr. Andrew Stevenson, of Virginia, in the op- 
position. The appointment of the majority of 
members on all the committees, and their chair- 
men, in both Houses adverse to the administra- 
tion^ was a regular consequence of the inflamed 
state of parties, although the proper conducting 
of the public business would demand for the ad- 
ministration the chairman of several important 
committees, as enabling it to place its measures 
fairly before the House. The speaker (Mr. Ste- 
venson) could only yield to this just sense of 
propriety in the case of one of the committees, 
that of foreign relations, to which Mr. Edward 
Everett, classing as the political and personal 
friend of the President, was appointed chairman. 
In other committees, and in both Hou.ses, the 
stem spirit of the times prevailed ; and the or- 
ganization of the whole Congress was adverse to 
the administration. 

The presidential message contained no new 
recommendations, but referred to those previ- 
ously made, and not yet acted upon; among 
which internal improvement, and the encourage- 
ment of home industry, were most prominent. 
It gave an account of the failure of the proposed 
congress of Panama ; and, consequently, of the 
inutilit}- of all our exertions to be represented 
there. And. as in this final and valedictory no- 
tice by Mr. Adams of that once far-famed con- 



gress, he took occasion to disclaim some views 
attributed to him, I deem it just to give him the 
benefit of his own words, both in making the 
disclaimer, and in giving the account of the 
abortion of an impracticable scheme which had 
so lately been prosecuted, and opposed, with so 
much heat and violence in our own country. He 
said of it : 

" Disclaiming alike all right and all intention 
of interfering in those concerns which it is the 
prerogative of their independence to regulate as 
to them shall seem fit, Ave hail with joy every 
indication of their prosperity, of their harmony, 
of their persevering and inflexible homage to 
those principles of fieedom and of equal rights, 
which are alone suited to the genius and temper 
of the American nations. It has been therefore 
with some concern that we have observed indi- 
cations of intestine divisions in some of the re- 
publics of the South, and appearances of less 
union with one another, than we believe to be 
the interest of all. Among the results of this 
state of things has been that the treaties con- 
cluded at Panama do not appear to have been 
ratified by the contracting parties, and that the 
meeting of the Congress at Tacubaya has been 
indefinitely postponed. In accepting the Invita- 
tions to be represented at this Congress, while a 
manifestation was intended on the part of the 
United States, of the most friendly disposition 
towards the Southern republics b}- whom it 
had been proposed, it was hoped that it would 
furnish an opportunity for bringing all the na- 
tions of this hemisphere to the common acknow- 
ledgment and adoption of tlie principles, in the 
regulation of their international relations, which 
would have secured a lasting peace aiid harmony 
between them, and have promoted the cause of 
mutual benevolence throughout the globe. But 
as obstacles appear to have arisen to tiie re- 
assembling of the Congress, one of the two min- 
isters commissioned on the part of the United 
States has returned to the bosom of his country, 
while the minister charged with the ordinary 
mission to Mexico remains authorized to attend 
at the conferences of the Congress whenever 
they may be resumed." 

This is the last that was heard of that so much 
vaunted Congress of American nations , and in 
the manner in which it died out of itself, among 
those who proposed it, without ever having been 
reached by a minister from the United States, 
we have the highest confirmation of the sound- 
ness of the objections taken to it by the opposi- 
tion members of the two Houses of our Con- 
gress. 

In stating the condition of the finances, the 
message, without intending it, gave proof of the 
paradoxical proposition, first, I believe, broached 



ANNO 1828. JOHN QUINCY ADAMS, PRESIDENT. 



93 



by myself, that an annual revenue to the extent 
of a fourth or a fifth below the annual expendi- 
ture, is sufficient to meet that annual expendi- 
ture ; and consequently that there is no neces- 
sity to levy as much as is expended, or to pro- 
vide by law for keeping a certain amount in the 
treasury when the receipts are equal, or superior 
to the expenditure. He said : 

" The balance in the treasury on the first 
of January last was six millions three hun- 
dred and fifty-eight thousand six hundred and 
eighty-six dollars and eighteen cents. The 
receipts from that day to the 30th of Septem- 
ber last, as near as the returns of them yet 
received can show, amount to sixteen millions 
eight hundred and eighty-six thousand five 
hundred and eighty-one dollars and thirty-two 
cents. The receipts of the present quarter, 
estimated at four millions five hundred and fif- 
teen thousand, added to the above, form an ag- 
gregate of twenty-one millions four hundred 
thousand dollars of receipts. The expenditures 
of the year may perhaps amount to twenty-two 
millions three hundred thousand dollars, present- 
ing a small excess over the receipts. But of 
these twenty-two millions, upwards of six have 
been applied to the discharge of the principal of 
the public debt; the whole amount of which, 
approaching seventy-four millions on the first of 
January last, will on the first day of next year 
fall short of sixty-seven millions and a half. 
The balance in the treasury on the first of Jan- 
uary next, it is expected, will exceed five millions 
four hundred and fifty thousand dollars ; a sum 
exceeding that of the first of January, 1825, 
though falling short of that exhibited on the first 
of January last." 

In this statement the expenditures of the year 
are shown to exceed the income, and yet to leave 
a balance, about equal to one fourth of the whole 
in the treasury at the end of the year; also 
that the balance was larger at the end of the 
preceding year, and nearly the same at the end 
of the year before. And the message might 
have added, that these balances were about the 
same at the end of every quarter of every year, 
and every day of every quarter — all resulting 
from the impossibility of applying money to ob- 
jects until there has been time to apply it. Yet 
in the time of those balances of which Mr. Ad- 
ams speaks, there was a law to retain two mil- 
lions in the treasury ; and now there is a law to 
retain six millions ; while the current balances, 
at the rate of a fourth or a fifth of the income are 
many times greater than the sura ordered to be 
retained; and cannot be reduced to that sum 
by regular payments from the treasury, until 



the revenue itself is reduced below the ex- 
penditure. This is a financial paradox, sustain- 
able upon reason, proved by facts, and visible 
in the state of the treasury at all times; yet I 
have endeavored in vain to establish it; and 
Congress is as careful as ever to provide an an- 
nual income equal to the annual expenditure ; 
and to make permanent provision by law to keep 
up a reserve in the treasury ; which would be 
there of itself without such law as long as the 
revenue comes witliin a fourth or a fifth of the 
expenditure. 

The following members composed the two 
Houses at this, the first session of the twentieth 



Congress ; 



SENATE. 



Maine — John Chandler, Albion K. Parris. 

New Hampshire — Samuel Bell, Levi Wood- 
bury. 

Massachusetts — Nathaniel Silsbee, Daniel 
Webster. 

Connecticut — Samuel A. Foot, Calvin "Wfiley. 

Rhode Island — Nehemiah R. Knight, Asher 
Bobbins. 

Vermont — Dudley Chase, Horatio Seymour. 

New-Yoek — Martin Van Buren, Nathan San- 
ford. 

New Jersey — Mahlon Dickerson, Ephraim 
Bateman. 

Pennsylvania — William Marks, Isaac D. 
Barnard. 

Delaware — Louis M'Lane, Henry M. Ridge- 
ley. 

Maryland — Ezekiel F. Chambers, Samuel 
Smith. 

Virginia — Littleton W. Tazewell, John Tyler. 

North Carolina — John Branch, Nathaniel 
Macon. 

South Carolina — William Smith, Robert Y. 
Hayne. 

Georgia — John MTherson Berrien, Thomas 
W. Cobb. 

Kentucky — Richard M.Johnson, John Rowan. 

Tennessee — John H. Eaton, Hugh L. White. 

Ohio — William H. Harrison, Benjamin Bug- 
gies. 

Louisiana — Dominique Bouligny, Josiah S. 
Johnston. 

Indiana — William Hendricks, James Noble. 

Mississippi — Powhatan Ellis, Thomas H. Wil- 
liams. 

Illinois — Elias K. Kane, Jesse B. Thomas. 

Alabama — John McKinley, William R. King. 

Missouri — David Barton, Thomas H. Benton. 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 

Maine — John Anderson, Samuel Butman, 
Rufus M'Intire, Jeremiah O'Brien, James W. 
Ripley, Peleg Sprague, Joseph F. Wingate — 7. 

New Hampshire — Ichabod Bai-tlett, David 



94 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



Barker, jr., Titus Brown, Joseph Ilcaley, Jona- 
than Harvej"^. Thomas Whipple, jr. — G. 

Massachusetts — Samuel C. Allen, John Bai- 
ley, Issac 0. Bates, B. W. Crowninshield, John 
Davis, Henry W. Dwight, Edward Everett, 
Benjamin Gorham, James L. Hodges, John 
Locke, John Reed, Joseph Richardson, John 
Vamum — 15. 

Rhode Island — Tristam Burges, Dutee J. 
Pearce — 2 

Connecticut — John Baldwin. Noyes Barber, 
Ralph J. Ingersoll, Orange Merwin, Elisha 
Phelps, David Plant — 6. 

Vermont — Daniel A. A. Buck, Jonathan 
Hunt, Rolin C. Mallary, Benjamin Swift George 
E. Wales— 5. 

New-York — Daniel D. Barnard, George 0. 
Belden, Rudolph Bunner, C. C. Cambreleng, 
Samuel Chase, John C. Clark, John D. Dickin- 
son, Jonas Earll, jr., Daniel G. Garnsey, Na- 
thaniel G arrow, John I. De Graflf^ John Hallock. 
jr., Selah R. Hobbie, Michael Hoffman, Jeromus 
Johnson, Richard Keese, Henry Markell, H. C. 
Martindale, Dudley Marvin, John ^lagee, John 
JIaj-nard, Thomas J. Oakley, S. Van Rensselaer, 
Henry R. Storrs. James Strong, John G. Stower, 
Phineas L. Tracy, John W. Taylor, G. C. Ver- 
planck, Aaron Ward, John J. Wood, Silas Wood, 
David Woodcock, Silas Wright, jr. — 34. 

New Jersey — Lewis Condict, George Hol- 
combe, Isaac Pierson, Samuel Swan, Edge 
Thomp.son, Ebenezer Tucker — 6 

Pennsylvania — William Addams, Samuel 
Anderson, Stephen Barlow, James Buchanan, 
Richard Coulter, Chauncey Forward, Joseph Fry, 
jr., Innes Green, Samuel D. Ingham, George 
Kremcr, Adam King, Joseph Lawrence, Daniel 
H. Miller, Charles Miner, John Mitchell, Samuel 
M'lvean, Robert Orr, jr., William Ramsay, John 
Sergeant, James S. Stevenson, John B. Sterigere, 
Andrew Stewart. Joel B. Sutherland, Espy Van 
Horn, James Wilson, George Wolf^26. 

Delaware — Kensy Johns, jr. — 1. 

Maryland — John Barney, Clement Dorsey, 
Levin Gale, John Leeds Kerr, Peter Little, 
Michael C. Sprigg, G. C. Washington, John C. 
Wecms, Ephraim K. Wilson — 9. 

Virginia — Mark Alexander, Robert Allen, 
Wm. S. Archer, Wm. Armstrongjr., JohnS. Bar- 
bour, Philip P. Barbour, Burwell Bassctt, N. H. 
Claiborne, Thomas Davenport, John Floj^d, Isaac 
Lelilcr, Lewis Ma.xwell, Charles F. Mercer, 
William M'Coy, Thomas Newton, John Ran- 
dolph. William C. Rives, John Roane, Alexan- 
der Smvth, A Stevenson, John Talliaferro, James 
Trezvant— 22. 

North Carolina — WilHs Alston. Daniel L. 
Barringer, John II. Bryan, Samuel P. Carson, 
Henry W. Conner, John Culpeper. Thomas H. 
Hall, Gabriel Holmes, John Long, Lemuel Saw- 
yer, A. II. Shepperd, Daniel Turner, Lewis Wil- 
liams — 13. 

South Carolina — John Carter, Warren R. 
Davis, William Drayton, James Hamilton, jr., 
George M'Duffie, William D. ^Martin, Thomas 



R. Mitchell, Wm. T. Nuckolls, Starling Tuckei 
—9. 

Georgia — John Floyd, Tomlinson Fort, 
Charles E. Haynes, George R. Gilmer, Wilson 
Luinpkin,AViley 'J'hompson,Richard H. Wilde — 7. 

Kentucky- — Richard A. Buckner, James Clark, 
Henry Daniel, Joseph Lecompte, Robert P. 
Letcher, Chittenden Lyon, Thomas ]Metcalfe, 
Robert M'Hatton, Thomas P. Moore, Charles A. 
Wickliffe, Joel Yancey, Thomas Chilton— 12, 

Tennessee — John IBell, John Blair, David 
Crockett, Robert Desha, Jacob C. Isacks, Pryor 
Lea, John H. jNIarable, James C. Mitchell, James 
K. Polk— 9. 

Ohio — Mordecai Bartley, Philemon Beecher, 
William Creighton, jr., John Davenport, James 
Findlay, Wm. M'Lean, William Russell. John 
Sloane, William Stanberry, Joseph Vance, Samuel 
F. Vinton, Elisha Whittlesey, John Woods, John 
C. Wright— 14. 

Louisiana — William L. Brent, Henry H. 
Gurley, Edward Livingston — 3. 

Indiana — Thomas IL Blake, Jonathan Jen- 
nings, Oliver H. Smith— 3. 

^Mississippi — William Haile — 1. 

Illinois— rJoseph Duncan — 1. 

Alabama — Gabriel Moore, John M'Kee. 
George W. Owen — 3. 

Missouri — Edward Bates — 1. 

delegates. 

Arkansas Territory — A. H. Sevier. 
Michigan Territory — Austin E. Wing. 
Florida Territory — Joseph M. White. 

This list of members presents an immenso 
array of talent, and especially of business talent; 
and in its long succession of respectable names, 
many will be noted as having attained national 
reputations — others destined to attain that dis- 
tinction — while many more, in the first class of 
useful and lespectable members, remained without 
national renown for want of that faculty which 
nature seems most capriciously to have scattered 
among the children of men — the faculty of fluent 
and copious speech ; — giving it to some of great 
judgment— denying it to others of equal, or still 
greater judgment — and lavishing it upon some 
of no judgment at all. The national eyes are 
fixed upon the first of these classes — the men 
of judgment and copious .speech ; and even those 
in the third class obtain national notoriety ; while 
the men in the second class — the men of judg- 
ment and few words — are extremely valued and 
respected in the bodies to which they belong, 
and have great weight in the conduct of business. 
They are, in fact, the business men, often more 
practical and eflicient than the great orators. 
This twentieth Congress, as all others that have 



ANNO 1828. JOHN QUINCY ADAMS, PRESIDENT. 



95 



been, contained a large proportion of these most 
useful and respectable members ; and it will be 
the pleasant task of this work to do them the 
justice which their modest merit would not do 
for themselves. 



CHAPTEK XXXIV. 

EEVISION OP THE TARIFF. 

The tariff of 1828 is an era in our legislation, 
being the event from which the doctrine of 
" nullification '" takes its origin, and from which 
a serious division dates between the North and 
the South. It was the work of politicians and 
manufacturers ; and was commenced for the 
benefit of the woollen interest, and upon a bill 
chiefly designed to favor that branch of manu- 
facturing industry. But, like all other bills of 
the kind, it required help from other interests to 
get itself along ; and that help was only to be 
obtained by admitting other interests into the 
benefits of the bill. And so, what began as a 
special benefit, intended for the advantage of a 
particular interest, became general, and ended 
with including all manufacturing interests — or 
at least as many as were necessary to make up 
the strength necessary to carry it. The produc- 
tions of different States, chiefly in the West, 
were favored by additional duties on their rival 
imports ; as lead in Missouri and Illinois, and 
hemp of Kentucky ; and thus, though opposed 
to the object of the bill, many members were 
necessitated to vote for it. Mr. Rowan, of Ken- 
tucky, well exposed the condition of others in 
this respect, in showing his own in some remarks 
which he made, and in which he said : 

" He was not opposed to the tariff as a system 
of revenue, honestly devoted to the objects and 
purposes of revenue— on the contrarv, he was 
friendly to a tariff of that character ; ^but when 
perverted by the ambition of political aspirants, 
and the secret influence of inordinate cupidity, to 
purposes of individual, and sectional ascendency, 
he could not be seduced by the captivation of 
names, or terms, however attractive, to lend it 
his individual support. 

" It is in vain, Mr. President, said he, that it is 
•idled the American System — names do not alter 
things. There is but one American System, and 
*hat is delineated in the State and Federal consti- 



tutions. It is the system of equal rights and 
privileges secured by the representative principle 
— a system, which, instead of subjecting the pro- 
ceeds of the labor of some to taxation, in the 
view to enrich others, secures to all the proceeds 
of their labor — exempts all from taxation, ex- 
cept for the support of the protecting power of 
the government. As a tax necessary to the sup- 
port of the government, he would support it — 
call it by what name you please ; — as a tax for 
any other purpose, and especially for the purposes 
to which he had alluded — it had his individual 
reprobation, under whatever name it might as- 
sume. 

" It might, he observed, be inferred from what 
he had said, that he would vote against the bill. 
He did not wish any doubts to be entertained as 
to the vote he should give upon this measure, or 
the reasons which would influence him to give 
it. He was not at liberty to substitute his in- 
dividual opinion for that of his State. He was 
one of the organs here, of a State, that had, by the 
tariff of 1824, been chained to the car of the East- 
ern manufacturer.? — a State that had been from 
that time, and was now groaning under the press- 
ure of that unequal and unjust measure — a 
measure from the pressure of which, owing to 
the prevailing illusion throughout the United 
States, she saw no hope of escape, by a speedy 
return to correct principles ; — and seeing no hope 
of escaping from the ills of the system, she is con- 
strained, on principles of self-defence, to avail 
herself of the mitigation which this bill presents, 
in the duties which it imposes upon foreign hempj 
spirits, iron, and molasses. The hemp, iron, and 
distilled spirits of the West, will, like the woollens 
of the Eastern States, he encouraged to the extent 
of the tax indirectly imposed by this bill, upon 
those who shall buy and consume them. Those 
who may need, and buy those articles, must pay 
to the grower, or manufacturer of them, an in- 
creased price to the amount of the duties imposed 
upon the like articles of foreign growth or fabric. 
To this tax upon the labor of the consumer, his 
individual opinion was opposed. But, as the 
organ of the State of Kentucky, he felt himself 
bound to surrender his individual opinion, and 
express the opinion of his State. " 

Thus, this tariff bill, like every one admitting 
a variety of items, contains a vicious principle, by 
which a majority may be made up to pass a 
measure which they do not approve. But be- 
sides variety of agricultural and manufacturing 
items collected into this bill, there was another 
of very diflerenc import admitted into it, namely, 
that of party politics. A presidential election 
was approaching: General Jackson land Mr. 
Adams were the candidates — the latter in favor 
of the " American System " — of which Mr. Clay 
(his Secretary of State) was the champion, and 
indissolubly connected with him in the public 



96 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



mind in the issue of the election. This tariff 
was made an administration measure, and be- 
came an issue in the canvass ; and to this Mr. 
Rowan significantly alluded when he spoke of a 
tarifl' as being '' perverted by the ambition of 
pohtical aspirants." It vras in vain that the 
manufacturers were warned not to mix their in- 
terests with the doubtful game of politics. They 
yielded to the temptation — yielded as a class, 
though with individual exceptions — for the sake 
of the temporary benefit, without seeming to re- 
alize the danger of connecting their interests 
with the fortunes of a political party. This 
tariff of '28, besides being remarkable for giving 
birth to "nullification," and heart-burning be- 
tween the North and the South, was also re- 
markable for a change of policy in the New 
England States, in relation to the protective 
system. Being strongly commercial, these States 
had hitherto favored free trade ; and Mr. Web- 
ster was the champion of that trade up to 1824. 
At this session- a majority of those States, and 
especially those which classed politically with 
Mr. Adams and Mr. Clay, changed their policy : 
and "Webster became a champion of the protec- 
tive system. The cause of this change, as then 
alleged, was the fact that the protective system 
had become the established policy of the govern- 
ment, and that these States had adapted their 
industry to it ; though it was insisted, on the 
other hand, that political calculation had more 
to do with the change than federal legislation : 
and, in fact, the question of this protection was 
one of those which lay at the foundation of par- 
ties, and was advocated by General Hamilton in 
one of Ids celebrated reports of fifty years ago. 
But on this point it is right that New England 
should speak for herself, which she did at the time 
of the discussion of the tariff in '28 ; and through 
the member, now a senator (Mr. Webster), who 
typified in his own person the change which his 
section of the Union had undergone. lie said : 

" New England, sir, has not been a leader in 
this policy. On the contrary, she held back, her- 
self, and tried to hold others back from it, from 
the adoption of the constitution to 1<S24. Up to 
1824, she was accused of sinister and selfish de- 
signs, because she discountenanced the progress 
of this pglicy. It was laid to her charge, then, 
that having established her manufactures her.self 
she wished that others should not have the power 
of rivalling her ; and. for that reason, opposed all 
legislative eiii-ouragement. Under this angry 
denunciation against her, the act of 1824 passed. 



Now the imputation is precisely of an opposite 
character. The present measure is pronounced 
to be exclusively for the benefit of New England; 
to be brought forward by her agency, and de- 
signed to gratify the cupidity of her wealthy es- 
tablishments. 

" Both charges, sir, are equally without the 
slightest foundation. The opinion of New Eng- 
land, up to 1824, was founded in the conviction, 
that, on the whole, it was wisest and best, both 
for herself and others, that manufacturers should 
make haste slowly. She felt a reluctance to trust 
great interests on the foundation of government 
patronage ; for who could tell how long such 
patronage would last, or with what steadiness, 
skill, or perseverance, it would continue to be 
granted? It is now nearlj'' fifteen years, since, 
among the first things which I ever ventured to 
say here, was the expression of a serious doubt, 
whether this government was fitted b}' its con- 
struction, to administer aid and protection to 
particular pursuits ; whether, having called such 
pursuits into being b}^ indications of its favor, it 
would not, afterwards, desert them, when troubles 
come ujjon them ; and leave them to their fate. 
Whether this prediction, the result, certainly, of 
chance, and not of sagacity, will so soon be ful- 
filled, remains to be seen. 

" At the same time it is true, that from the 
very first commencement of the government, 
those who have administered its concerns have 
held a tone of encouragement and invitation to- 
wards those who should embark in manufactures. 
All the Presidents. I believe, without exception, 
have concurred in this general sentiment ; and 
the verj' first act of Congress, laying duties of im- 
post, adopted the then unusual expedient of a 
preamble, apparentl}' for little other purpose than 
that of declaring, that the duties, which it impos- 
ed, were imposed for the encouragement and pro- 
tection of mauuf^ictures. When, at the com- 
mencement of the late war, duties were doubled, 
we were told that we should find a mitigation of 
the weight of taxation in the new aid and suc- 
cor which would be thus afforded to our own 
manufacturing labor. Like arguments were 
urged, and prevailed, but not by the aid of New 
England votes, when the tariff was afterwards 
arranged at the close of the war, in 181G. Fi- 
nally, after a whole winter's deliberation, the act 
of 1824 received the sanction of both Houses of 
Congress, and settled the policy of the country. 
What, then, was New England to do? She was 
fitted for manufacturing operations, by the 
amovint and character of her population, by her 
capital, by the vigor and energy of her free labor, 
by the skill, economy, enterprise, and persever- 
ance of her people. I repeat, what was she, un- 
der these circumstances, to do? A great and 
prosperous rival in her near neighborhood, threat- 
ening to draw from her a part, perhaps a great 
part, of her foreign commerce ; was she to use. 
or to neglect, those other means of seeking her 
own prosperity which belonged to her character 
and her condition ? Was she to hold out, for- 



ANNO 1828. JOHN QUINCY ADAMS, PRESIDENT. 



97 



ever, against the course of the government, and 
see herself losing, on one side, and yet making no 
efforts to sustain herself on the other ? No, sir. 
Nothing was left to New England, after the act 
of 1824, but to conform herself to the will of 
others. Nothing was left to her, but to consider 
that the government had fixed and determined 
its own policy ; and that policy was protection. " 

The question of a protective tariff had now 
not only become political, but sectional. In the 
early years of the federal government it was not 
so. The tariff bills, as the first and the second 
that were passed, declared in their preambles 
that they were for the encouragement of manu- 
factures, as well as for raising revenue ; but 
then the duties imposed were all moderate — 
such as a revenue system really required ; and 
there were no " vmiimuvis,''^ to make a false ba- 
sis for the calculation of duties, by enacting 
that all which cost less than a certain amount 
should be counted to have cost that amount ; 
and be rated at the custom-house accordingly. 
lu this early period the Southern States were 
as ready as any part of. the Union in extending 
the protection to home industry which resulted 
from the imposition of revenue duties on rival 
imported articles, and on articles necessary to 
ourselves in time of war; and some of her 
statesmen were amongst the foremost members 
of Congress in promoting that policy. As late 
as 1816, some of her statesmen were still in favor 
of protection, not merely as an incident to reve- 
nue, but as a substantive object : and among 
these was Mr. Calhoun, of South Carolina — who 
even advocated the minimum provision — then 
for the first time introduced into a tariff bill, and 
upon his motion — and applied to the cotton 
goods imported. After that year (1816) the 
tariff bills took a sectional aspect — the Southern 
States, with the exception of Louisiana (led by 
her sugar-planting interest), against them : the 
New England States also against them: the 
Middle and Western States for them. After 
1824 the New England States (always meaning 
the greatest portion when a section is spoken of) 
classed with the protective States— leaving the 
South alone, as a section, against that policy. 
My personal position was that of a great 
many others in the three protective sections — 
opposed to the policy, but going wnth it, on ac- 
count of the interest of the State in the protec- 
tion of some of its productions. I moved an ad- 
ditional duty upon lead, equal to one hundred 

YoL. I.— 7 



per centum; and it was carried. I moved a 
duty upon indigo, a former staple of the South, 
but now declined to a slight production ; and I 
proposed a rate of duty in harmony with the 
protective features of the bill. No southern 
member would move that duty, because he op- 
posed the principle : I moved it, that the "Amer- 
ican System," as it was called, should work 
alike in all parts of our America. I supported 
the motion with some reasons, and some views 
of the former cultivation of that plant in the 
Southern States, and its present decline, thus : 

•' Mr. Benton then proposed an amendment, to 
impose a duty of 25 cents per pound on imported 
indigo, with a progressive increase at the rate of 
25 cents per pound per annum, until the whole 
duty amounted to .^1 per pound. He stated his 
object to be two-fold in proposing this duty, first, 
to place the American System beyond the reach 
of its enemies, by procuring a home supply of an 
article indispensable to its existence ; and next, 
to benefit the South by reviving the cultivation 
of one of its ancient and valuable staples. 

Indigo was first planted in the Carolinas and 
Georgia about the year 1740, and succeeded so 
well as to command the attention of the British 
manufacturers and the British parliament. An 
act was passed for the encouragement of its pro- 
duction in these colonies, in the reign of George 
the Second ; the preamble to which Mr. B. read, 
and recommended to the consideration of the 
Senate. It recited that a regular, ample, and 
certain supply of indigo was indispensable tq the 
success of British manufacturers ; that these 
manufacturers were then dependent upon foreign- 
ers for a supply of this article ; and that it was 
the dictate of a wise policy to encourage the pro- 
duction of it at home. The act then went on to 
direct that a premium of sixpence sterling should 
be paid out of the British treasury for every 
pound of indigo imported into Great Britain, 
from the Carolinas and Georgia. Under the fos- 
tering influence of this bounty, said Mr. B., the 
cultivation of indigo became great and extensive. 
In six years after the passage of the act, tlie ex- 
port was 217,000 lbs. and at the breaking out of 
the Revolution it amounted to 1,100,000 lbs. The 
Southern colonies became rich upon it ; for the 
cultivation of cotton was then unknown ; rice and 
indigo were the staples of the South. After the 
Revolution, and especially after the great territo- 
rial acquisitions which the British made in India, 
the cultivation of American indigo declined. The 
premium was no longer paid ; and the British 
government, actuated by the same wise policy 
which made them look for a home supply of this 
article from the Carolinas, wheii they were a part 
of the British possessions, now looked to India 
for the same reason. The export of American 
indigo rapidly declined. In 1800 it had fallen to 
400,000 lbs.; in 1814 to 40,000 lbs, ; and in the 



98 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



last few j-ears to G or 8,000 lbs. Tn the mean 
time our manufactories were gromng up ; and 
havinp; no supply of indi5::o at home, they had to 
import from abroad. In 1826 this importation 
amounted to 1,150,000 lbs., costing a fraction less 
than two millions of dollars, and had to be paid 
for almost entirely in ready money, as it was 
chiefly obtained from places where American pro- 
duce was in no denumd. Upon this state of 
facts, Mr. B. conceived it to be the part of a wise 
and prudent polic}' to follow the example of the 
British parliament in the reign of George II. and 
provide a home supply of this indispensable ar- 
ticle. Our manufacturers now paid a higli price 
for fine indigo, no less than ^2 50 per jmund, as 
testified by one of themselves before the Com- 
mittee on Manufactures raised in the House of 
Representatives. The duty which he proposed 
was only 40 per cent, upon that value, and would 
not even reach that rate for four years. It was 
less than one half the duty which the same bill 
proposed to lay instanter upon the very cloth 
wliich this indiijo was intended to dye. In the 
end it would make all indigo come cheaper to the 
manufacturer, as the home supply would soon be 
equal, if not superior to the demand ; and in the 
mean time, it could not be considered a tax on 
the manufacturer, as he would levy the advance 
which he had to pay, with a good interest, upon 
the wearer of the cloth. 

" i\Ir. B. then went into an exposition of the 
reasons for encouraging the home production of 
indigo, and showed that the life of the American 
System depended upon it. Neither cotton nor 
woollen manufactures could be carried on with- 
out indigo. The consumption of that article was 
prodigious. Even now, in the infant state of our 
manufactories, the importation was worth two 
millions of dollars : and must soon be worth 
double or treble that sum. For this great sup- 
ply of an indispensable article, we were chiefly 
indebted to the jealous rival, and vigilant 
enemJ^ of the.se very manufactures, to Creat Bri- 
tain herself. Of the 1.150,000 lbs. of indigo im- 
ported, we bring 020,000 lbs. from the British 
East Indies ; which one word from the British 
eovernment would stop for ever ; we l^rinsr the 
further quantity of 120.000 lbs. from Manilla, a 
Spanish possession, which British, inliuenco and 
diplomacy could immediately stop : and the re- 
mainder came from diilbrent parts of South Ame- 
rica, and might be taken from us bj' the arts of 
diplomacy, or by a monopoly of the whole on the 
part of our rival. A stoppage of a supply of in- 
digo for one 3'ear, would prostrate all our manu- 
factories, and give them a blow from which they 
would not recover in many pears. Great Britain 
could effect this stoppage to the amount of three 
fourths of the whole quantity by speaking a sin- 
gle word, and of the remainder by a slight exer- 
tion of policy, or the expenditure of a sum sufii- 
cient to monopolize for one 3'ear, the pm-chase of 
wliat South America sent into the market. 

" Mr. B. said he expected a unanimous vote 
in favor of his amendment. The North should 



vote for it to secure the life of the American Sys- 
tem ; to give a proof of their regard for the South ; 
to show that the countrj* south of the Potomac 
is included in the bill for some other purpose be- 
sides that of oppression. The South itself, al- 
though opposed to the further increase of duties, 
should vote for this duty ; that the bill, if it 
passes, may contain one provision favorable to its 
interests. The West should vote for it through 
gratitude for fifty years of guardian protection, 
generous defence, and kind assistance, which the 
South had given it under all its trials ; and for 
the purpose of enlarging the market, increasing 
the demand in the South and its ability to pur- 
chase the horses, mules, and provisions which the 
West can sell nowhere else. For himself he had 
personal reasons for wishing to do this little ju.s- 
tice to the South. He was a native of one of 
these States (N. Carolina) — the bones of his fa- 
ther and his grandfathers rested there. Her 
Senators and Representatives were his early and 
his hereditary friends. The venerable Senator 
before him (Mr. Macon) had been the friend of 
him and his, through four generations in a 
straight line ; the other Senator (Mr. Branch) 
was his schoolfellow : the other branch of the 
legislature, the House of Representatives, also 
showed him in the North Carolina delegation, 
the friends of him and his through successive 
generations. Nor was this all. He felt for the 
sad changes which had taken place in the South 
in the last fifty years. Before the Revolution it 
was the seat of wealth as well as of hospitality, 
^loney, and all that it commanded, abounded 
there. But how now ? All this is reversed. 

'' Wealth has fled from the South, and settled 
in the regions north of the Potomac, and this in 
the midst of the fact that the South, in four staples 
alone, in cotton, tobacco, rice and indigo (while 
indigo was one of its staples), had exported pro- 
duce .since the Revolution, to the value of eight 
hundred million of dollars, and the North had 
exported comparativeh^ nothing. This sum was 
prodigious ; it was nearly equal to half the coin- 
age of the mint of ^lexico since the conquest by 
Cortez. It was twice or thrice the amount of 
the product of the three thousand gold and silver 
mines of Mexico, for the same period of fifty 
years. Such an export would indicate unparal- 
leled wealth ; but what was the fact ? In place 
of wealth, a universal pressure for money wa.s 
felt ; not enough for current expenses ; the price 
of all property down ; the countrj' drooping and 
hinguishing; towns and cities decaying ; and the 
frugal habits of the jjeople pu.shed to the verge 
of universal self-denial, for the preservation of 
their family estates. Such a result is a strange 
and wonderful phenomenon. It calls upon states- 
men to inquire into the cause ; and if thej' in- 
quire upon the theatre of this strange metamor- 
phosis, they will receive one universal answer 
from all ranks and all ages, that it is federal 
legislation which has worked this ruin. Under 
this legislation the exports of the South have 
been made the basis of the federal revenue. The 



ANXO 1828. JOHX QUINCY ADAMS, PRESIDENT. 



99 



twenty odd millions annually levied upon im- 
ported goods, are deducted out of the price of 
their cotton, rice and tobacco, either in the dimi- 
nished price which they receiye for these staples 
in foreign ports, or in the increased price which 
they pay for the articles they have to consume 
at home. Virginia, the two Carolinas and Georgia, 
may be said to defray three fourths of the annual 
expense of supporting the federal government ; 
and of this great sum annually' furnished by them, 
nothing, or next to nothing, is returned to them 
in the shape of government expenditure. That 
expenditure flows in an opposite direction ; it 
flows northwardly, in one uniform, uninterrupted 
and perennial stream ; it takes the course of trade 
and of exchange ; and this is the reason why 
wealth disappears from the South and rises up in 
the North. Federal legislation does all this ; it 
does it by the simple process of eternally taking 
away from the South, and returning nothing to 
it. If it returned to the South the whole, or 
even a good part of what it exacted, the four 
States south of the Potomac might stand the 
action of this system, as the earth is enabled to 
stand the exhausting influence of the sun's daily 
heat by the refreshing dews which are returned 
to it at night ; but as the earth is dried up, and 
all vegetation destroyed in regions where the 
heat is great, and no dews returned, so must the 
South be exhausted of its money and its pro- 
perty by a course of legislation which is for ever 
taking from it, and never returning any thing to 
it. 

'' Every new tariff" increases the force of this 
action. No tariff" has ever yet included Virginia, 
the two Carolinas, and Georgia, within its pro- 
visions, except to increase the burdens imposed 
upon them. This one alone, presents the oppor- 
tunity to form an exception, by reviving and re- 
storing the cultivation of one of its ancient sta- 
ples, — one of the sources of its wealth before the 
Revolution. The tariff' of 1828 owes this repara- 
tion to the South, because the tariff" of 1816 con- 
tributed to destroy the cultivation of indigo; 
sunk the duty on the foreign article, from twenty- 
five to fifteen cents per pound. These are the 
reasons for imposing the duty on indigo, now pro- 
posed. What objections can possibly be raised 
to it ? Not to the quality ; for it is the same 
which laid the foundation of the British manu- 
factures, and sustained their reputation for more 
than half a century ; not to the quantity ; for 
the two Carohnas and Georgia alone rai'sed as 
much fifty years ago as we now import, and we 
have now the States of Louisiana, Alabama, and 
Mississippi, and the Territories of Florida and Ar- 
kansas, to add to the countries which produce it ; 
not to the amount of the duty ; for its maximum 
will be but forty pei' cent., only one half of the 
duty laid by this bill on the cloth it is to dye ; 
and that maximum, not immediate, but attained 
by slow degrees at the end of four years, in order 
to give time for the domestic article to supply the 
place of the imported. And after all. it is not a 
duty on the manufacturer, but on the wearer of 



the goods ; from whom he levies, with a good 
interest on the price of the cloths, all that he ex- 
pends in the purchase of materials. For once, 
said Mr. B., I expect a unanimous vote on a clause 
in the tariff". This indigo clause must have the 
singular and unprecedented honor of an unani- 
mous voice in its favor. The South must vote for it, 
to revive the cultivation of one of its most ancient 
and valuable staples ; the West must vote for it 
through gratitude for past favors — through grati- 
tude for the vote on hemp this night* — and to 
save, enlarge, and increase the market for its own 
productions ; the North must vote for it to .show 
their disinterestedness ; to give one proof of just 
feeling towards the South ; and, above all, to 
save their favorite American System from the 
deadly blow which Great Britain can at any mo- 
ment give it by stopping or interrupting the sup- 
plies of foreign indigo ; and the whole Union, the 
entire legislative body, must vote for it, and vote 
for it with joy and enthusiasm, because it is im- 
possible that Americans can deny to sister States 
of the Confederacy what a British King and a 
British Parliament granted to these same States 
when they were colonies and dependencies of the 
British crown." 

Mr. Hayne, of South Carolina, seconded my 
motion in a speech of which this is an extract : 

" Mr. Hayne said he was opposed to this bill 
in its principles as well as in its details. It could 
assume no shape which would make it accepta- 
ble to him, or which could prevent it from ope- 
rating most oppressively and unjustly on his 
constituents. With these views, he had deter- 
mined to make no motion to amend the bill in 
an}^ respect whatever ; but when such motions 
were made by others, and he was compelled to 
vote on them, he knew no better rule than to 
endeavor to make the bill consistent with itself. 
On this principle he had acted in all the votes he 
had given on this bill. He had endeavored to 
carry out to its legitimate consequences what 
gentlemen are pleased to miscall the 'American 
System.' With a fixed resolution to vote against 
the bill, he still considered himself at liberty to 
assist in so arranging the details as to extend to 
every great interest, and to all portions of the 
country, as far as may be practicable, equal pro- 
tection, and to distribute the burdens of the 
system equally, in order that its benefits as well 
as its evils maj^ be fully tested. On tliis prin- 
ciple, he should vote for the amendment of the 
gentleman from Missouri, because it was in strict 
conformity with all the principles of the bill. As 
a southern man, he would ask no boon for the 
South — he should propose nothing ; but he must 
say that the protection of indigo rested on the 
same principles as every other article proposed 



* "Tlio vote on beiiip tliis night" In rejecting Mr. Web- 
ster's motion to strike out the duty on hemp, and a vote ia 
which the South went unanimously with the West,— ^"bfe by 
Mr.B. 



100 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



to be protected by this bill, and he did not see 
how gentlemen coidd, consistently with their 
maxims, vote against it. What was the principle 
on which this bill was professedly founded ? If 
there was any principle at all in the bill, it was 
that, whenever the country had the capacity to 
produce an article with which any imported ar- 
ticle could enter into competition, the domestic 
product was to be protected by a duty. Now, 
had the Southern States the capacity to produce 
indigo ? The soil and climate of those States 
were well suited to the culture of the article. At 
the commencement of the Revolution our exports 
of the article amounted to no less than 1,100,000 
lbs. The whole quantity now imported into the 
United States is only 1,150,000 lbs. ; so that the 
capacity of the country to produce a sufficient 
quantity of indigo to supply the wants of the 
manufacturers is unquestionable. It is true that 
the quantity now produced in the country is not 
great. 

" In 1818 only 700 lbs. of domestic indigo were 
exported. 
•' In 1825 9,955 do. 

'=Inl82G 5,289 do. 

" This proves that the attention of the country 
is now directed to the subject. The senator from 
Indiana, in some remarks which he made on this 
subject yesterday, stated that, according to the 
principles of the American System (so called), 
protection was not extended to any article which 
the country was not in the habit of exporting. 
This is entirely a mistake. Of the articles pro- 
tected by the tariff of 1824, as Avell as those in- 
cluded in this bill, very few are exported at all. 
Among these are iron, woollens, hemp, flax, and 
several others. If indigo is to be protected at all, 
the duties proposed must surely be considered 
extremely reasonable, the maximum proposed 
being much below that imposed by this bill on 
wool, woollens, and other articles. The duty on 
indigo till 181G, was 25 cents per pound. It was 
then (in favor of the manufacturers) reduced to 
15 cents. The first increase of duty proposed 
here, is only to put back the old duty of 25 cents 
per pound, equal to an ad valorem duty of from 
10 to 15 per cent. — and the maximum is only 
from 40 to 58 per cent, ad valorem, and that will 
not accrue for several years to come. With this 
statement of facts. Mr. II. said he would leave 
the question in the hands of those gentlemen 
who were engaged in giving this bill the form in 
which it is to be submitted to the final decision 
of the Senate." 

The proposition for this duty on imported indigo 
did not prevail. In lieu of the amount proposed, 
and which was less than any protective duty in 
the bill, the friends of the '" American System " 
(constituting a majority of the Senate) substi- 
tuted a nominal duty of live cents on the pound 
' — to be increased five cents annually for ten 
years — and to remain at fifty. This was only 



about twenty per centum on the cost of the ar- 
ticle, and that only to be attained after a pro- 
gression of ten years ; while all other duties in 
the bill were from four to ten times that amount 
— and to take eflect immediately. A duty so 
contemptible, so out of proportion to the other 
provisions of the bill, and doled out in such mis- 
erable drops, was a mockery and insult ; and so 
viewed by the southern members. It increased 
the odiousness of the bill, by showing that the 
southern section of the Union was only included 
in the " American System " for its burdens, and 
not for its benefits. Mr. McDuffie, in the House 
of Representatives, inveighed bitterly against it, 
and spoke the general feeling of the Southern 
States when he said : 

" Sir, if the union of these States shall ever be 
severed, and their liberties subverted, the histo- 
rian who records these disasters will have to as- 
cribe them to measures of this description. I do 
sincerely believe that neither this government 
nor any free government, can exist for a quarter 
of a century, under such a system of legislation. 
Its inevitable tendency is to corrupt, not only the 
public functionaries, but all those portions of the 
Union and classes of society who have an interest, 
real or imaginary, in the bounties it provides, by 
taxing other sections and other classes. What, 
sir, is the essential characteristic of a freeman V 
It is that independence which results from an 
habitual reliance upon his own resources and his 
own labor for his support. lie is not in fact a 
freeman, who habitually looks to the government 
for pecuniary bounties. And I confess that no- 
thing in the conduct of those who arc the promi- 
nent advocates of this system, has excited more 
apprehension and alarm in my mind, than the 
constant eftbrts made by all of them, from the 
Secretary of the Treasury down to the humblest 
coadjdtor, to impress upon the public mind, the 
idea that national prosperity and individual 
wealth are to be derived, not from individual in- 
dustry and economy, V)ut from government boun- 
ties. An idea more fatal to liberty could not be 
inculcated. I said, on another occasion, that the 
days of Roman liberty were numbered when the 
people consented to receive bread from the pub- 
lic granaries. From that moment it was not the 
patriot who had shown the greatest capacity and 
made the greatest sacrifices to serve the republic, 
but the demagogue who would promise to dis- 
tribute most profusely the spoils of the plundered 
provinces, that was elevated to office by a degen- 
erate and mercenary populace. Every thing be- 
came venal, even in" the country of Fabricius, un- 
til finally the cmpiie itself was sold at public 



auction! And what, sir, is the nature aud ten- 
dency of the system we are discussing ? It bears 
an analogy, but too lamentably striking, to that 
which corrupted the lepublican purity of the 



ANNO 1828. JOHN QUINCY ADAMS, PRESIDENT. 



101 



Roman people. God forbid that it should con- 
summate its triumph over the public liberty, by 
a similar catastrophe, though even that is an 
event by no means improbable, if we continue to 
legislate periodically in this way, and to connect 
the election of our Chief Magistrate with the 
question of dividing out the spoils of certain 
States — degraded into Roman provinces — among 
the influential capitalists of the other States of 
this Union ! Sir, when I consider that, by a 
single act like the present, from five to ten mil- 
lions of dollars may be transferred annually from 
one part of the community to another ; when I 
consider the disguise of disinterested patriotism 
under which the basest and most profligate am- 
bition may perpetrate such an act of injustice 
and political prostitution. I cannot hesitate, for a 
moment, to pronounce this very sj^stem of indi- 
rect bounties, the most stupendous instrument 
of corruption ever placed in the hands of public 
functionaries. It brings ambition and avarice 
and wealth into a combination, which it is fearful 
to contemplate, because it is almost impossible to 
resist. Do we not perceive, at this very moment, 
the extraordinary and melancholy spectacle of 
less than one hundred thousand capitalists, by 
means of this unhallowed combination, exercising 
an absolute and despotic control over the opin- 
ions of eight millions of free citizens, and the 
fortunes and destinies of ten millions ? Sir, I 
will not anticipate or forebode evil. I will not 
permit myself to believe that the Presidency of 
the United States will ever be bought and sold, 
by this system of bounties and prohibitions. But 
I must say that there are certain quarters of this 
Union in which, if a candidate for the Presidency 
were to come forward with the Harrisburg tariff 
in his hand, nothing could resist his pretensions, 
if his adversary were opposed to this unjust sys- 
tem of oppression. Yes, sir, that bill would be 
a talisman which would give a charmed existence 
to the candidate who would pledge himself to 
support it. And although he were covered with 
all the "multiplying vUlanies of nature," the 
most immaculate patriot and profound statesman 
in the nation could hold no competition with him, 
if he should refuse to grant this new species of 
imperial donative." 

Allusions were constantly made to the combi- 
nation of manufacturing capitalists and poli- 
ticians in pressing this bill. There was evident- 
ly foundation for the imputation. The scheme 
of it had been conceived in a convention of man- 
ufacturers in the State of Pennsylvania, and had 
been taken up by politicians, and was pushed as 
a party measure, and with the visible purpose 
of influencing the presidential election. In fact 
these tarifl" bills, each exceeding the other in its 
degree of protection, had become a regular ap- 
pendage of our presidential elections— coming 
round in every cycle of four years, with that re- 



turning event. The year 1816 was the starting 
point: 1820, and 1824, and now 1828, having 
successively renewed the measure, with succes- 
sive augmentations of duties. The South be- 
lieved itself impoverished to enrich the North 
by this system; and certainly a singular and 
unexpected result had been seen in these two 
sections. In the colonial state, the Southern 
were the rich part of the colonies, and expected 
to do well in a state of independence. They had 
the exports, and felt secure of their prosperity : 
not so of the North, whose agricultural resources 
were few, and who expected privations from the 
loss of British favor. But in the first half cen- 
tury after Independence this expectation was 
reversed. The wealth of the North was enor- 
mously aggrandized : that of the South had de- 
clined. Northern towns had become great cities : 
Southern cities had decayed, or become station- 
ary ; and Charleston, the principal port of the 
South, was less considerable than before the 
Revolution. The North became a money-lender 
to the South, and southern citizens made pil- 
grimages to northern cities, to raise money upon 
the hypothecation of their patrimonial estates. 
And this in the face of a southern export since 
the Revolution to the value of eight hundred 
millions of dollars !— a sum equal to the product 
of the Mexican mines since the days of Cortez ! 
and twice or thrice the amount of their product 
in the same fifty years. The Southern States 
attributed this result to the action of the federal 
government — its double action of levying reve- 
nue upon the industry of one section of the 
Union and expending it in another — and espe- 
cially to its protective tariffs. To some degree 
this attribution was just, but not to the degree 
assumed ; which is evident from the fact that the 
protective system had then only been in force for 
a short time — since the year 1816 ; and the re- 
versed condition of the two sections of the Union 
had commenced before that time. Other causes 
must have had some effect : but for the present 
we look to the protective system ; and, without 
admitting it to have done all the mischief of 
which the South complained, it had yet done 
enough to cause it to be condemned by every 
friend to equal justice among the States — by 
every friend to the harmony and stabilit}' of the 
Union — bj^ all who detested sectional legislation 
— by every enemy to the mischievous combinar 
tion of partisan poUtics with national legislation. 



102 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



And this was the feeling with tlie mass of the 
democratic members who voted for the tariff of 
1828, and who were determined to act upon that 
feehng upon the overthrow of the political party 
which advocated the protective system ; and 
which overthrow they believed to be certain at 
the ensuing presidential election. 



CHAPTER XXXV. 

THE PUBLIC LANDS— THEIR PEOPEK DISPOSITION 
—GRADUATED PRICES -PRE-EMPTION RIGHTS— 
DONATIONS TO SETTLERS. 

About the year 1785 the celebrated Edmund 
Burke brought a bill into the British House of 
Commons for the sale of the crown lands, in 
which he laid down principles in political econ- 
omy, in relation to such property, profoundly 
sagacious in themselves, applicable to all sove- 
reign landed possessions, whether of kings or 
republics — applicable in all countries — and no- 
where more applicable and less known or ob- 
served, than in the United States. In the course 
of the speech in support of his bill he said : 

" Lands sell at the current rate, and nothing 
can sell for more. But be the price what it may, 
a great object is alwa3's answered, whenever any 
property is transferred from hands which are not 
fit for that property, to those that are. The 
buyer and the seller must mutually profit by 
such a bargain ; and, what rarely happens in 
matters of revenue, the relief of the subject will 
go hand in hand with the profit of the Exchequer. 
* * * The revenue to be derived from the 
sale of the forest lands will not be so considera- 
ble as many have imagined ; and I conceive it 
would be unwise to screw it up to the utmost, 
or even to suffer bidders to enhance, according 
to their eagerness, the purchase of objects, 
wherein the expense of that purcliase may 
weaken the capital to be emplo3'ed in their culti- 
vation. * * * The principal revenue which I 
propose to draw from these uncultivated wastes, 
is to spring from the improvement and popula- 
tion of the kingdom ; events infinitely more 
advantageous to the revenues of the cro^\•n than 
the rents of the best landed estate which it can 
hold. * * * It is thus I would dispose of the 
unprofitable landed estates of the crown : throw 
them into the viass nf ])rivate property : by 
which they will come, through the course of cir- 
culation and through the political secretions of 
the State, into well-regulated revenue. * ♦ * 



Thus would fall an expensive agency, with all 
the influence which attends it." 

I do not know how old, or rather, how young 
I was, when I first took up the notion that sales 
of land by a government to its own citizens, and 
to the highest bidder, was false policy ; and that 
gratuitous grants to actual settlers was the true 
policy, and their labor the true way of extract- 
ing national wealth and strength from the soil. 
It might have been m childhood, when reading 
the Bible, and seeing the division of the prom- 
ised land among the children of Israel : it might 
have been later, and in learning the operation of 
the feudal system in giving lands to those who 
would defend them : it might have been in early 
life in Tennessee, in seeing the fortunes and re- 
spectability of many families derived from the 
640 acre head-rights which the State of North 
Carolina had bestowed upon the first settlers. 
It was certainly before I had read the speech of 
Burke from wliich the extract above is taken j 
for I did not see that spee,ch until 1826 ; and 
seventeen years before that time, when a very 
young member of the General Assembly of 
Tennessee, I was fully imbued with the doctrine 
of donations to settlers, and acted upon the prin- 
ciple that was in me, as far as the case admitted, 
in advocating the pre-emption claims of the set- 
tlers on Big and Little Pigeon, French Broad, 
and Nolichucky. And when I came to the then 
Territory of Missouri in 1815, and saw land ex- 
posed to sale to the highest bidder, and lead 
mines and salt springs reserved from sale, and 
rented out for the profit of the federal treasury, 
I felt repugnance to the whole system, and de- 
termined to make war upon it whenever I should 
have the power. The time came round with my 
election to the Senate of the L^nited States in 
1820 : and the years 1824, '26, and '28, found 
me do-ing battle for an ameliorated sj'stem of 
disposing of our public lands; and with some 
success. The pre-emption system was estab- 
lished, though at first the pre-emption claimant 
was stigmatized as a trespasser, and repulsed as 
a criminal ; the reserved lead mines and salt 
springs, in the State of Missouri, were brought 
into market, like other lands; iron ore lands, in 
tended to have been withheld from sale, wero 
rescued from that fate, and brought into market. 
Still the two repulsive features of the federal 
land system — sales to the highest bidder, and 
donations to no one — with an aibitrary minimum 



ANNO 1828. JOHN QUINCY ADAMS, PRESIDENT. 



103 



price which placed the cost of all lands, good 
and bad, at the same uniform rate (after the 
auctions were over), at one dollar twenty-five 
cents per acre. I resolved to move against the 
whole system, and especially in favor of gradu- 
ated prices, and donations to actual and destitute 
settlers. I did so in a bill, renewed annually 
for a long time ; and in speeches which had more 
effect upon the public mind than upon the fed- 
eral legislation — counteracted as my plan was 
by schemes of dividing the public lands, or the 
money arising from their sale, among the States. 
It was in support of one of these bills that I 
produced the authority of Burke in the extract 
quoted; and no one took its spirit and letter 
more promptly and entirely than President 
Jackson. He adopted the principle fully, and 
in one of his annual messages to Congress recom- 
mended that, as soon as the public (revolution- 
ary) debt should be discharged (to the payment 
of which the lands ceded by the States were 
pledged), that they should cease to be a sub- 
ject OF REVENUE, AND BE DISPOSED OF CHIEFLY 
WITH A VIEW TO SETTLEMENT AND CULTIVATION. 

His teims of service expired soon after the ex- 
tinction of the debt, so that he had not an oppor- 
tunity to carry out his wise and beneficent design. 
Mr. Burke considered the revenue derived 
from the sale of crown lands as a trifle, and of 
no account, compared to the amount of revenue 
derivable from the same lands through their 
settlement and cultivation. He was profoundly 
right! and provably so, both upon reason and 
experience. The sale of the land is a single 
operation. Some money is received, and the 
cultivation is disabled to that extent from its 
improvement and cultivation. The cultivation is 
perennial, and the improved condition of the 
farmer enables him to pay taxes, and consume 
dutiable goods, and to sell the products which 
command the imports which pay duties to the 
government, and this is the "well-regulated 
revenue" which comes through the course of cir- 
culation, and through the " political secretions" 
of the State, and which Mr. Burke commends 
above all revenue derived from the sale of lands. 
Does any one know the comparative amount of 
revenue derived respectively from the sales and 
from the cultivation of lands in any one of our 
new States where the federal government was the 
proprietor, and the auctioneerer, of the lands ? 
and can he tell which mode of raising money has 



been most productive 7 Take Alabama, for ex- 
ample. How much has the treasury received for 
lands sold within her limits ? and how much in 
duties paid on imports purchased with the ex- 
ports derived from her soil ? Perfect exactitude 
cannot be attained in the answer, but exact 
enough to know that the latter already exceeds 
the former several times, ten times over; and is 
perennial and increasing for ever ! while the sale 
of the land has been a single operation, performed 
once, and not to be repeated ; and disabling the 
cultivator by the loss of the money it took from 
him. Taken on a large scale, and applied to the 
whole United States, and the answer becomes 
more definite — but still not entirely exact. The 
whole annual receipts .from land sales at this 
time (1850) are about two millions of dollars : the 
annual receipts from customs, founded almost en- 
tirely upon the direct or indirect productions of 
the earth, exceed fifty millions of dollars ! giving 
a comparative diflerence of twenty-five to one 
for cultivation over sales; and triumphantly 
sustaining Mr. Burke's theory. I have looked 
into the respective amounts of federal revenue, 
received into the treasury from these two sources, 
since the establishment of the federal government ; 
and find the customs to have yielded, in that 
time, a fraction over one thousand millions of 
dollars net — the lands to have yielded a little less 
than one hundred and thirty millions gross, not 
forty millions clear after paying all expenses of 
surveys, sales and management. This is a dif- 
ference of twenty-five to one — with the further 
difference of endless future production from one, 
and no future production from the laud once 
sold ; that is to say, the same acre of land is 
paying for ever through cultivation, and pays 
but once for itself in purchase. 

Thus far I have considered Mr. Burke's theory 
only under one of its aspects — the revenue as- 
pect : he presents another — that of population — 
and here all measure of comparison ceases. The 
sale of land brings no people : cultivation pro- 
duces population : and people are the true wealth 
and strength of nations. These various views 
were presented, and often enforced, in the course 
of the several speeches wliich I made in support 
of my graduation and donation bills : and, on 
the point of population, and of freeholders, 
against tenants, I gave utterance to these senti- 
ments : 

" Tenantry is unfavorable to freedom. It lays 




THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



the foundation for separate orders in society, 
annihilates the love of country, and weakens the 
spirit of independence. The farming tenant has, 
in fact, no country, no hearth, no domestic altar, 
no household pod. The freeholder, on the con- 
trary, is the natural supporter of a free govern- 
ment ; and it should be the policy of republics 
to multiply their fi-eeholders, as it is the policy 
of monarchies to multiply tenants. We are a 
republic, and we wish to continue so : then 
multipl}' the class of freeholders ; pass the public 
lands cheaplA' and easily into the hands of the 
people ; sell, for a reasonable price, to those who 
are able to pay ; and give, without price, to those 
who are not. I say give, without price, to those 
who are not able to pay ; and that which is so 
given, I consider as sold for the best of prices ; 
for a price above gold and silver ; a price which 
cannot be carried away by delinquent officers, 
nor lost in failing banks^or stolen by thieves, 
nor squandered by an improvident and extrava- 
gant administration. It brings a price above 
rubies — a race of virtuous and independent la- 
borers, the true supporters of their country, 
and the stock from which its best defenders must 
be drawn. 

" ' What constitutes a State ? 

Not liiirli-raisM battlements, nor labored mound, 

Thick wall, nor moated gate ; 

Nor cities proud, with spires and turrets crown'd, 

Nor starr'd and spangled courts, 

Where low-born baseness wafts perfume to pride: 

But MKN ! higli-niinded men, 

"Who their duties know, but know their rights, 

And, knowing, dare maintain them.' '" 

In favor of low prices, and donations, I quot- 
ed the example and condition of the Atlantic 
States of this Union — all settled under liberal 
systems of land distribution which dispensed 
almost (or altogether in many instances) with 
sales for money. I said : 

"These Atlantic States were donations from 
the Britisli crown ; and the great proprietors dis- 
tributed out their possessions with a free and 
generous hand. A few shillings for a hundred 
acres, a nominal quitrent, and gifts of a hun- 
dred, five hundred, and a thousand acres, to ac- 
tual settlers : such were the terms on which 
they dealt out the .soil which is now covered by 
a nation of freemen. Provinces, which now 
form sovereign States, were sold from hand to 
hand, for a less sum than the federal govern- 
ment now demands for an area of two miles 
square. I could name instances. I could name 
the State of ]\Iaine — a name, for more reasons 
than one. familiar and agreeaV)le to Missouri, 
and whose pristine territory was sold by Sir 
Ferdinando Gorges to the proprietors of the 
Massachusetts Bay, for twelve hundred pounds, 
provincial money. And well it was for Maine 
that she was so sold ; well it was for her that 
the modern policy of waiting for the rise, and 



sticking at a minimum of $1 25, was not then 
in vogue, or else Maine would have been a desert 
now. Instead of a numerous, intelligent, and 
virtuous population, we should have had trees and 
wild beasts. My respectable friend, the senator 
from that State (Gen. Chandler), would not 
have been here to watch so steadily the interest 
of the public, and to oppose the bills which I 
bring in for the relief of the land claimants. And 
I mention this to have an opportunity to do 
justice to the integrity of his heart, and to the 
soundness of his understanding — qualities in 
which he is excelled by no senator — and to ex- 
press my belief that we will come together upon 
the final passage of this bill : for the cardinal 
points in our policy are the same — economy hi 
the public expenditures, and the prompt extinc- 
tion of the public debt. I say, wiell it was for 
Maine that she was sold for the federal price 
of four sections of Alabama pine, Louisiana 
swamp, or jNIissouri prairie. Well it was for 
every State in this Union, that their soil was 
sold for a song, or given as a gift to whomsoever 
would take it. Happy for them, and for the 
liberty of the human race, that the kings of 
England and the " Lords Proprietors," did not 
conceive the luminous idea of waiting for the rise, 
and sticking io & minimxim o^ ^\ 25 per acre. 
Happy for Kentucky, Tennessee, and Ohio, that 
they were settled under States, and not under 
the federal government. To this happy exemp- 
tion they owe their present greatness and pros- 
peritj;-. When they were settled, the State laws 
prevailed in the acquisition of lands ; and dona- 
tions, pre-emptions, and settlement rights, and 
sales at two cents the acre, were the order of the 
day. I include Ohio, and I do it with a know- 
ledge of what I say : for ten millions of her soil, 
— that which now constitutes her chief wealth and 
strength. — were settled upon the liberal princi- 
ples which I mention. The federal system only 
fell upon fifteen millions of her soil ; and, of that 
quantity, the one half now lies waste and useless, 
paying no tax to the State, yielding nothing to 
agriculture, desert spots in the midst of a smiling 
garden, '"waiting for the rise," and exhibiting. in 
high and bold relief, the miserable folly of pre- 
scribing an arbitrary ??ii?M"»t?f?>i upon that article 
which is the gift of God to man, and which no 
parental government lias ever attempted to con- 
vert into a source of revenue and an article of 
merchandise." 

Against the policy of holding up refuse lands 
until they should rise to the price of good land, 
and against the reservation of saline and mineral 
lands, and making money by boiling salt water, 
and digging lead ore, or holding a body of tenantry 
to boil and dig, I delivered these sentiments : 

"I do trust and believe, Mr. President, that 
the Executive of this free government will not 
be .second to George the Third in patriotism, nor 
au American Congress prove itself inferior to & 



ANNO 1828. JOHN QUINCY ADAMS, PRESIDENT. 



105 



British Parliament in political wisdom. I do 
trust and believe that this whole system of hold- 
ing up land for the rise, endeavoring to make 
revenue out of the soil of the country, leasing 
and renting lead mines, salt springs, and iron 
banks, with all its train of penal laws and civil 
and military agents, will be condemned and abol- 
ished. I trust that the President himself will 
give the subject a place in his next message, and 
lend the aid of his recommendation to the success 
of so great an object. The mining operations, 
especially, should fix the attention of the Con- 
gress. They are a reproach to the age in which 
we live. National mining is condemned by every 
dictate of prudence, by every maxim of political 
economy, and by the voice of experience in 
every age and country, xind 3-et we are engaged 
in that business. This splendid federal gov- 
ernment, created for great national purposes, 
has gone to work among the lead mines of Up- 
per Louisiana, to give us a second edition, no 
doubt, of the celebrated " Mississippi Scheme " 
of John Law. For that scheme was nothing 
more nor less than a project of making money 
out of the same identical mines. Yes, Mr. 
President, upon the same identical theatre, 
among the same holes and pits, dug by John 
Law^s men in 1720 ; among the cinders, ashes, 
broken picks, and mouldering furnaces, of that 
celebrated projector, is our federal government 
now at work ; and, that no circumstance should 
be wanting to complete the folly of such an un- 
dertaking, the task of extracting " revenue " 
from these operations, is confided, not to the 
Tr easier ij J but to the tVar Department. 

" Salines and salt springs are subjected to the 
same system — reserved from sale, and leased for 
the purpose of raising revenue. But I flatter 
myself that I see the end of this branch of the 
system. The debate which took place a few 
weeks ago on the bill to repeal the existing duty 
upon salt, is every word of it applicable to the 
bill which I have introduced for the sale of the 
reserved salt springs. I claim the benefit of it 
accordingly, and shall expect the support of all 
the advocates for the repeal of that tax, when- 
ever the bill for the sale of the salines shall be 
put to the vote." 

Argument and sarcasm had their effect, in re- 
lation to the mineral and saline reserves in the 
State in which I lived— the State of Missouri. 
An act was passed in 1828 to throw them into 
the mass of private property — to sell them like 
other public lands. And thus the federal gov- 
ernment, in that State, got rid of a degrading and 
unprofitable pursuit ; and the State got citizen 
freeholders instead of federal tenants; and pro- 
fitably were developed in the hands of individuals 
the pursuits of private industry wliich languished 
and stagnated in the hands of federal agents and 
tenants. But it was continued for some time 



longer (so far as lead ore was concerned) on the 
Upper Mississippi, and until an argument ar- 
rived which commanded the respect of the legis- 
lature : it was the argument of profit and loss — an 
argument which often touches a nerve which is 
dead to reason. Mr. Polk, in his message to 
Congress at the session of l845-'46 (the first of 
his administration), stated that the expenses of 
the system during the preceding four years — 
those of Mr. Tyler's administration — were twen- 
ty-six thousand one hundred and eleven dollars, 
and eleven cents ; and the whole amount of rents 
received during the same period was six thou- 
sand three hundred and fifty-four dollars, and 
seventy-four cents : and recommended the aboli- 
tion of the whole system, and the sale of the re- 
served mines ; which was done ; and thus was 
completed for the Upper Mississippi what I had 
done for Missouri near twenty years before. 

The advantage of giving land to those who 
would settle and cultivate it, was illustrated in 
one of my speeches, by reciting the case of 
" Granny White " — well known in her time to 
all the population of Middle Tennessee, and es- 
pecially to all who travelled south from Nash- 
ville, along the great road which crossed the 
" divide " between the Cumberland and Harpeth 
waters, at the evergreen tree which gave name 
to the gap — the Holly Tree Gap. The aged 
woman, and her fortunes^ were thus introduced 
into our senatorial debates, and lodged on a page 
of our parliamentary history, to enlighten, by 
her incidents, the councils of national legisla- 
tion : 

" At the age of sixty, she had been left a 
widow, in one of the counties in the tide-water 
region of North Carolina. Her poverty was so 
extreme, that when she went to the county 
court to get a couple of little orphan grandchil- 
dren bound to her, the Justices refused to let 
her have them, because slie could not give security 
to keep them off the parish. This compelled her 
to emigrate ; and she set off witli the two little 
boys, upon a journey of eight or nine hundred 
miles, to what was then called "^/jt Cumberland 
Settlement." Arrived in the neighborliocvl of 
Nashville, a generous-hearted Irishman (his 
name deserves to be remembered — Thomas 
McCrory) let her have a corner of his land, on 
her own terms, — a nominal price and indelinito 
credit. It was fifty acres in extent, and com- 
prised the two faces of a pair of confronting hills, 
whose precipitous declivities lacked a few de- 
grees, and but a few, of mathematical perpendic- 
ularity. Mr. B. said he knew it well, for he had 
seen the old lady's pumpkins propped and sup- 



106 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



ported with stakes, to prevent their ponderous 
■weip;lit from tearinti' up the vine, and rolling to 
the bottom of the liills. There was just room at 
then- base for a road to run between, and not 
room for a house, to find a level place for its foun- 
dation ; for which purpose a part of the hill had 
to be dug away. Yet, from this hopeless begin- 
ning, with the advantage of a little piece of 
ground that was her own, this aged widow, and 
two little grandchildren, of eight or nine j-ears 
old, advanced herself to comparative wealth : 
money, slaves, horses, cattle; and her fields ex- 
tended into the valley below, and her orphan 
grandchildren, raised up to honor and indepen- 
dence : these were the fruits of economy and in- 
dustry, and a noble illustration of the advantage 
of giving land to the poor. But the federal gov- 
ernment would have demanded sixty-two dollars 
and fifty cents for that land, cash in hand ; and 
old Granny White and her grandchildren might 
have li\ed in misery and sunk into vice, before 
the opponents of this bill would have taken less." 

I quoted the example of all nations, ancient 
and modern, republican and monarchical, in fa- 
vor of giving lands, in parcels suitable to their 
wants, to meritorious cultivators ; and denied 
that there was an instance upon earth, except 
that of our own federal government, which made 
merchandise of land to its citizens — exacted the 
highest price it could obtain — and refused to suf- 
fer the country to be settled until it was paid 
for. The " promised land " was divided among 
the children of Israel — the women getting a share 
where there was no man at the head of the 
family — as with the daughters of Manasseh. All 
the Atlantic States, when British colonies, were 
settled upon gratuitous donations, or nominal 
sales. Kentucky and Tennessee were chiefly 
settled in the same way. The two Floridas, and 
Upper and Lower Louisiana, were gratuitously 
distributed by the kings of Spain to settlers, in 
quantities adapted to their means of cultivation 
— and with the whole vacant domain to select 
from accoi'ding to their pleasure. Land is now 
given to settlers in Canada ; and £30,000 ster- 
ling, has been voted at a single session of Par- 
liament, to aid emigrants in their removal to 
these homes, and commencing life upon them. 
The republic of Colombia now gives 400 acres to 
a settler : other South American republics give 
more or less. Quoting these examples, I added : 

" Such, ]Mr. President, is the conduct of the 
free republics of the South. I say republics : 
for it is the same in all of them, .and it would be 
tedious and monotonous to repeat their numerous 
decrees. In fact, throughout the New "World, 



from Hudson's Bay to Cape Horn (with the 
single exception of these United States), land, 
the gift of God to man, is also the gift of the 
government to its citizens. Nor is tliis wise 
policy confined to the New World. It prevails 
even in Asia ; and the present age has seen — we 
ourselves have seen — published in the capital of 
the European world, the proclamation of the 
King of Persia, inviting Christians to go to the 
ancient kingdom of Cyrus, Cambyses and Dari- 
us, and there receive gifts of land — first rate, not 
refuse — with a total exemption from taxes, and 
the free enjoyment of their religion. Here is the 
proclamation : listen to it. 

The Proclamation. 

" ' Mirza Mahomed Saul, Ambassador to Eng- 
land, in the name, and by the authority of Ab- 
bas Mirza, King of Persia, offers to those who 
shall emigrate to Persia, gratuitous grants of 
land, good for the production of wheat, barley, 
rice, cotton, and fruits, — free from taxes or contri- 
butions of any kind, and with the free enjoyment 
of their religion; the king's object being to 

IiMPROVE HIS COUNTRY. 

"'London, July 8th, 1823.'" 

The injustice of holding all lands at one uni- 
form price, waiting for the cultivation of the good 
land to give value to the poor, and for the poorest 
to rise to the value of the richest, was shown in a 
reference to private sales, of all articles ; in the 
whole of which sales the price was graduated to 
suit different qualities of the same article. The 
heartless and miserly policy of waiting for 
government land to be enhanced in value by the 
neighboring cultivation of private land, was de- 
nounced as unjust as well as unmse. The new 
States of the West were the sufferers by this fed- 
eral land policy. They were in a different con- 
dition from other States. In these others, the 
local legislatures held the primary disposal of the 
soil, — so much as remained vacant within their 
limits, — and being of the same communitj^, made 
equitable alienations among their constituents. 
In the new States it was different. The federal 
government held the pi'imary disposition of the 
soil ; and the majority of Congress (being inde- 
pendent of the people of these States), was less 
heedful of their wants and wishes. They were as 
a stepmother, instead of a natural mother : and 
the federal government being sole purchaser from 
foreign nations, and sole recipient of Indian ces- 
sions, it became the monopolizer of vacant lands 
in the West : and this monopoly, like all mono- 
polies, resulted in hardships to those upon whom 
it acted. Few, or none of our public men, had 



ANNO 1828. JOHN QUINCY ADAMS, PRESIDENT. 



107 



raised their voice against this hard policy before 
I came into the national councils. My own was 
soon raised there against it : and it is certain that 
a great amelioration has taken place in our 
federal land policy during my time : and that the 
sentiment of Congress, and that of the public 
generally, has become much more liberal in land 
alienations ; and is approximating towards the 
beneficent systems of the rest of the world. But 
the members in Congress from the new States 
should not intermit their exertions, nor vary 
their policy ; and should fix their eyes steadily 
upon the period of the speedy extinction of the 
federal title to all the lands within the limits 
of their respective States; — to be effected by 
pre-emption rights, by donations, and by the 
sale (of so much as shall be sold), at graduated 
prices, — adapted to the different qualities of the 
tracts, to be estimated according to the time it 
has remained in market unsold — and by liberal 
grants to objects of general improvement, both 
national and territorial. 



CHAPTER XXXVI. 

CESSION OF A PART OF THE TEEEITOEY OF 
ARKANSAS TO THE CHEROKEE INDIANS. 

Arkansas was an organized territory, and 
had been so since the year 1819. Her western 
boundary was established by act of Congress in 
May 1824 (chiefly by the exertions of her then 
delegate, Henry W. Conway), — and was an ex- 
tension of her existing boundary on that side ; 
and for national and State reasons. It was an 
outside territory — beyond the Mississippi — a 
frontier both to Mexico (then brought deep into 
the Valley of the Mississippi by the Florida 
treaty which gave away Texas), and to the nu- 
merous Indian tribes then being removed from 
the South Atlantic States to the west of the 
Mississippi. It was, therefore, a point of national 
policy to make her strong — to make her a first 
class State, — both for her own sake and that of 
the Union, — and equal to all the exigencies of 
her advanced and frontier position. The exten- 
sion was on the west — the boundaries on the 
other three sides being fixed and immovable — 



and added a fertile belt — a parallelogram of 
forty miles by three hundred along her whole 
western border — and which was necessary to 
compensate for the swamp lands in front on the 
river, and to give to her certain valuable salt 
springs there existing, and naturally appurtenant 
to the territory, and essential to its inhabitants. 
Even with this extension the territory was still 
deficient in arable land — not as strong as her 
frontier position required her to be, nor suscepti- 
ble (on account of swamps and sterile districts) 
of the population and cultivation which her su- 
perficial contents and large boundaries would im- . 
ply her to be. Territorially, and m mere extent, 
the western addition was a fourth part of the ter- 
ritory : agriculturally, and in capacity for popula- 
tion, the addition might be equal to half of the 
whole territory ; and its acquisition was celebrat- 
ed as a most auspicious event for Arkansas at the 
time that it occurred. 

In the month of May, 1828, by a treaty nego- 
tiated at Washmgton by the Secretary at War, 
Mr. James Barbour, on one side, and the chiefs of 
the Cherokee nation on the other, this new west- 
ern boundary for the territory was abolished — 
the old line re-established : and what had been an 
addition to the territory of Arkansas, was ceded to 
the Cherokees. On the ratification of this treaty 
several questions arose, all raised by myself — 
some of principle, some of expediency— as, whether 
a law of Congress could be abolished by an Indian 
treaty ? and whether it was expedient so to re- 
duce, and thus weaken the territory (and future 
State) of Arkansas? I was opposed to the 
treaty, and held the negative of both questions, 
and argued against them with zeal and perse- 
verance. The supremacy of the treaty -making 
power I held to be confined to subjects within 
its sphere, and quoted " Jefferson's Manual," to 
show that that was the sense in which the clause 
in the constitution was understood. The treaty- 
making power was supreme ; but that suprem- 
acy was within its proper orbit, and free from 
the invasion of the legislative, executive, or judi- 
cial department. The proper objects of treaties 
were international interests, which neither party 
could regulate by municipal law, and which re- 
quired a joint consent, and a double execution, to 
give it effect. Tried by tliis test, and this Indian 
treaty lost its supremacy. The subject was one of 
ordinary legislation, and specially and exclusively 
confined to Congress. It was to repeal a law which 



108 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



Congress had made in relation to territory ; and to 
reverse the disposition which Congress had made 
of a part of its territory. To Congress it be- 
longed to dispose of territory ; and to her it be- 
longed to repeal her own laws. The treaty 
avoided the word "repeal," while doing the 
thing : it used the word " abolish " — which was 
the same in effect, and more arrogant and 
offensive — not appropriate to legislation, and 
evidently used to avoid the use of a word 
which would challenge objection. If the word 
" repeal " had been used, every one would 
have felt that the ordinary legislation of Con- 
gress was flagrantly invaded ; and the avoidance 
of that word, and the substitution of another of 
the same meaning, could have no effect in legal- 
izing a transaction which would be condemned 
under its proper name. And so I held the 
treaty to be invalid for want of a proper subject 
to act upon, and because it invaded the legisla- 
tive department. 

The inexpediency of the treaty was in the ques- 
tion of crippling and mutilating Arkansas, re- 
ducing her to the class of weak States, and that 
asjainst all the reasons which had induced Con- 
gress, four years before, to add on twelve thou- 
sand square mUes to her domain ; and to almost 
double the productive and inhabitable capacity 
of the TeiTitory, and future State, by the char- 
acter of the country added. I felt this wrong 
to Arkansas doubly, both as a neighbor to my 
own State, and because, having a friendship for 
the delegate, as well as for his territory, I had ex- 
erted myself to obtain the addition which had 
been thus cut off. I argued, as I thought, con- 
clusively ; but in vain. The treaty was largely 
ratified, and by a strong slaveholding vote, not- 
withstanding it curtailed slave territory, and 
made soil free which was then slave. Anxious 
to defeat the treaty for the benefit of Arkansas, 
I strongly presented this consequence, showing 
that there was, not only legal, but actually 
slavery upon the amputated part — that these 
twelve thousand square miles were inhabited, 
organized into counties, populous in some parts, 
and with the due proportion of slaves found in a 
southern and planting State. Nothing would 
do. It was a southern measure, negotiated, on 
the record, by a southern secretary at war, in 
reality by the clerk ^IcKinncy ; and voted for 
by nineteen approving slaveholding senators 
against four dissenting. The afiSrraative vote 



was: Messrs. Barton, Berrien, Boulignj^, Branch, 
Ezckiel Chambers, Cobb, King of Alabama, 
McKinley, McLane of Delaware, Macon, Ridge- 
ly, Smith of Maryland, Smith of South CarolinOi 
John Tyler of Virginia, and "Williams of Mis- 
sissippi. The negative was, Messrs. Benton, 
Eaton, Rowan, and Tazewell. — Mr. Calhoun 
was then Vice-President, and did not vote ; but 
he was in favor of the treaty, and assisted its 
ratification through his friends. The House of 
Representatives voted the appropriations to carry 
it into effect; and thus acquiesced in the repeal 
of an act of Congress by the President, Senate, 
and Cherokee Indians ; and these appropriations 
were voted with the general concurrence of the 
southern members of the House. And thus 
another slice, and a pretty large one (twelve 
thousand square miles), was taken off of slave 
territory in the former province of Louisiana ; 
which about completed the excision of what 
had been left for slave State occupation after 
the Missouri compromise of 1820, and the 
cession to Texas of contemporaneous date, and 
previous cessions to Indian tribes. And all 
this was the work of southern men, who then 
saw no objection to the Congressional legis- 
lation which acted upon slavery in terri- 
tories — which further curtailed, and even ex- 
tinguished slave soil in all the vast expanse 
of the former Louisiana — save and except the 
comparative little that was left in the State of 
^Missouri, and in the mutilated Territory of Ar- 
kansas. The reason of the southern members 
for promoting this amputation of Arkansas in 
favor of the Cherokees, was simply to assist 
in inducing their removal by adding the best 
part of Arkansas, Avith its salt springs, to the 
ample millions of acres west of that territory 
already granted to them ; but it was a gra- 
tuitous sacrifice, as the large part of the tribe 
had already emigrated to the seven millions 
of acres, and the remainder were waiting for 
moneyed inducements to follow. And besides, 
the desire for this removal could have no effect 
upon the constitutional power of Congress to 
legislate upon slavery in territories, or ujjon the 
policy which curtails the boundaries of a future 
slave State. 

I have said that the amputated part of Ar- 
kansas was an organized part of the territory, 
divided into counties, settled and cultivated. 
Now, what became of these inhabitants ? — their 



ANNO 1828. JOHN QUINCY ADAMS, PRESIDENT. 



109 



property ? and possessions ? They were bought 
out by the federal government ! A simultaneous 
act was passed, making a donation of three hun- 
dred and twenty acres of land (within the re- 
maining part of Arkansas), to each head of a 
family who would retire from the amputated 
part; and subjecting all to military removal 
that did not retire. It was done. They all 
withdrew. Three hundred and twenty acres of 
land in front to attract them, and regular troops 
in the rear to push them, presented a motive 
power adequate to its object ; and twelve thou- 
sand square miles of slave territory was evacu- 
ated by its inhabitants, with their flocks, and 
herds, and slaves; and not a word was said 
about it ; and the event has been forgotten. But 
it is necessary to recall its recollection, as an 
important act, in itself, in relation to the new 
State of Arkansas — as being the work of the 
South — and as being necessary to be known in 
order to understand subsequent events. 



CHAPTER XXXVII. 

RENEWAL OF THE OREGON JOINT OCCUPATION 
CONVENTION. 

The American settlement at the mouth of the 
Columbia, or Oregon, was made in 1811. It was 
an act of private enterprise, done by the eminent 
merchant, Mr. John Jacob Astor, of New- York ; 
and the young town christened after his own 
name, Astoria : but it was done with the coun- 
tenance and stipulated approbation of the gov- 
ernment of the United States; and an officer of 
the United States navy — the brave Lieutenant 
Thorn, who was with Decatur at Tripoli, and 
who afterwards blew up his ship in Nootka 
Sound to avoid her capture by the savages 
(blowing liimself, crew and savages all into the 
air),— was allowed to command his (Mr. Astor's) 
leading vessel, in order to impress upon the en- 
terprise the seal of nationality. This town was 
captured during the war of 1812, by a ship of 
war detached for that purpose, by Commodore 
Hillyar, commanding a British squadron in the 
Pacific Ocean. No attempt was made to recover 
it during the war ; and, at Ghent, after some ef- 



forts on the part of the British commissioners, 
to set up a title to it, its restitution was stipu- 
lated under the general clause which provided 
for the restoration of ajl places captured by 
either party. But it was not restored. An 
empty ceremony was gone through to satisfy the 
words of the treaty, and to leave the place in the 
hands of the British. An American agent, Mr. 
John Baptist Prevost, was sent to Valparaiso, to 
go m a British sloop of war (the Blossom) to receive 
the place, to sign a receipt for it, and leave it in 
the hands of the British. This was in the au- 
tumn of the year 1818; and coincident with that 
nominal restitution was the conclusion of a con- 
vention in London between the United States 
and British government, for the joint occupation 
of the Columbia for ten years — Mr. Gallatin 
and Mr. Rush the American negotiators — ^if 
those can be called negotiators who are tied 
down to particular instructions. The joint occu- 
pancy was provided for, and in these words : 
" That any country claimed by either party on 
the northwest coast of America, together with its 
harbors, bays, and creeks, and the navigation of 
all rivers within the same, be free and open, for 
the term of ten years, to the subjects, citizens, 
and vessels of the two powers ; without preju- 
dice to any claim which either party might have 
to any part of the country." — ^I was a practising 
lawyer at St. Louis, no way engaged in politics, 
at the time this convention was published ; but 
I no sooner saw it than I saw its delusive nature 
— its one-sidedness — and the whole disastrous 
consequences which were to result from it to the 
United States ; and immediately wrote and pub- 
lished articles against it : of which the following 
is an extract : 

" This is a specimen of the skill with which 
the diplomatic art deposits the seeds of a new 
contestation in the assumed settlement of an ex- 
isting one, — and gives unequal privileges in words 
of equality, — and breeds a serious question, to be 
ended perhaps by war, where no question at all 
existed. Every word of the article for this joint 
occupation is a deception and a blunder — sug- 
gesting a belief for which there is no foundation, 
granting privileges for which tliere is no equiv- 
alent, and presenting ambiguities whicli require 
to be solved — peradvcnturc by the sword. It 
speaks as if there was a mutuality of countries 
on the northwest coast to wliich the article was 
applicable, and a nintnality of benefits to accrue 
to the citizens of both governments by each occu- 
pying the country claimed by the other. Not 
so the fact. There is but one country in ques- 



110 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



tion, and that is our own ; — and of this the Brit- 
ish arc to have equal possession with ourselves, 
and we no possession of theirs. The Columbia 
is ours ; Frazer's River is a British possession to 
which no American ever went, or ever will go. 
The convention gives a joint right of occupying 
the ports and harbors, and of navigating the 
rivers of each other. This would implj^ that each 
government possessed in that quarter, ports, and 
harbors, and navigable rivers ; and were about 
to bring them into hotch-potch for mutual en- 
joyment. No such thing. There is but one port, 
and that the mouth of the Columbia — but one 
river, and that the Columbia itself: and both 
port and river our own. We give the equal use 
of these to the British, and receive nothing in re- 
turn. The convention saj'S that the "claim " of 
neither party is to be prejudiced by the joint 
possession. This admits that Great Britain has 
a claim — a thing never admitted before by us, 
nor pretended by her. At Ghent she stated no 
claim, and could state none. Her ministers 
merely asked for the river as a boundary, as be- 
ing the most convenient ; and for the use of the 
harbor at its mouth, as being necessary to their 
ships and trade ; but stated no claim. Our com- 
missioners reported that they (the British com- 
missioners) endeavored ' to lay a nest-egg ' for 
a future pretension ; which they failed to do at 
Ghent in 1815, but succeeded in laying in Lon- 
don in 1818 ; and before the ten years are out, a 
full grown fighting chicken will be hatched of 
that egg. There is no mutuality in any thing. 
We furnish the whole stake - country, river, 
harbor; and shall not even maintain the joint 
use of our own. We shall be driven out of it, 
and the British remain sole possessors. The fur 
trade is the object. It will fere with our traders 
on the Columbia under this convention as it 
fared with them on the INIiami of the Lakes (and 
on the lakes themselves), under the British 
treaties of '94 and '96, which admitted British 
traders into our territories. Our traders will be 
driven out ; and that by the fair competition of 
trade, even if there should be no foul play. The 
difference between free and duticd goods, would 
work that result. The British traders pay no 
duties : ours pay above an average of fifty per 
centum. No trade can stand against such odds. 
But the competition will not be fair. The sav- 
ages will be incited to kill and rob our traders, 
and they will be expelled by violence, without 
waiting the slower, but equallj^ certain process, 
of expulsion by underselHug. The result then 
is, that we admit the British into our country, 
our river, and our harbor ; and we get no admit- 
tance into theirs, for they have none — F razor's 
River and New Caledonia being out of the ques- 
tion — that they will become sole possessors of 
our river, our harbor, and our countrj' ; and at 
the end of the ten years will have an admitted 
'claim ' to our property, and the actual posses- 
sion of it." 

Thus I wrote in the year 1818, when the joint 



occupation convention of that year was promul- 
gated. I wrote in advance ; and long before the 
ten years were out, it was all far more than 
verified. Our traders were not only driven from 
the mouth of the Columbia River, but from all 
its springs and branches ; — not only from all the 
Valley of the Columbia, but from the whole re- 
gion of the Rocky Mountains between 49 and 
42 degrees ; — not only from all this mountain 
region, but from the upper waters of all our far 
distant rivers — the ]Missouri, tlie Yellow Stone, 
the Big Horn, the North Platte ; and all their 
mountain tributaries. And, by authentic reports 
made to our government, not less than five hun- 
dred of our citizens had been killed, nor less than 
five hundred thousand dollars worth of goods 
and furs robbed from them; — the British re- 
maining the undisturbed possessors of all the 
Valley of the Columbia, acting as its masters, and 
building forts from the sea to the mountains. 
This was the effect of the first joint occupation 
treaty, and every body in the West saw its ap- 
proaching termination with pleasure; but the 
false step which the government had made in- 
duced another. They had admitted a "claim" 
on the part of Great Britain, and given her the 
sole, under the name of a joint, possession ; and 
now to get her out was the difficulty. It could 
not be done ; and the United States agreed to a 
further continued "joint " occupation (as it was 
illusively called in the renewed convention), not 
for ten years more, but " indefinitely, " determin- 
able on one year's notice from cither party to 
the other. The reason for this indefinite, and 
injurious continuance, was set forth in the pre- 
amble to the renewed convention (Mr. Gallatin 
now the sole United States negotiator) ; and 
recited that the two governments " being desirous 
to prevent, as far as possible, all hazard of mis- 
understanding, and with a view to give further 
time for maturing measures which shall have for 
their object a more definite settlement of the 
claims of each party to the said territory ; " did 
thereupon agree to renew the joint occupation 
article of the convention of 1818, &c. Thus, we 
had, by our diplomacy in 1818, and by the per- 
mitted non-execution of the Ghent treaty in the 
delivery of the post and country, hatched a 
question which threatened a " misunderstanding" 
between the two countries ; and for maturing 
measures for the settlement of which indefinite 
time was required — and granted — Great Britain 



ANNO 1828. JOHN QUTNCY ADAMS, PRESIDENT. 



Ill 



remaining, in the mean time, sole occupant of the 
whole country. This was all that she could ask, 
and all that we could grant, even if we actually 
intended to give up the country. 

I was a member of the Senate when this re- 
newed convention was sent in for ratification, 
and opposed it with all the zeal and ability of 
which I was master : but in vain. The weight 
of the administration, the indifference of many to 
a remote object, the desire to put off a difficulty, 
and the delusive argument that we could terminate 
it at any time — (a consolation so captivating to 
gentle temperaments) — were too strong for reason 
and fact ; and I was left in a small minority on 
the question of ratification. But I did not limit 
myself to opposition to the treaty. I proposed, 
as well as opposed ; and digested my opinions 
into three resolves ; and had them spread on the 
executive journal, and made papt of our parlia- 
mentary history for future reference. 

The resolves were : 1. " That it is not expe- 
dient for the United States and Great Britain to 
treat further in relation to their claims on the 
northwest coast of America, on the basis of a 
joint occupation by their respective citizens. 2. 
That it is expedient that the joint-occupation 
article in the convention of 1818 be allowed to 
expire upon its own limitation. 3. That it is ex- 
pedient for the government of the United States 
to continue to treat with His Britannic Majesty 
in relation to said claims, on the basis of a se- 
paration of interests, and the establishment of a 
permanent boundary between their dominions 
westward of the Rocky Mountains, in the short- 
est possible time." These resolves were not 
voted upon ; but the negative vote on the rati- 
fication of the convention showed what the vote 
would have been if it had been taken. That 
negative vote was— Messrs. Benton, Thomas 
W. Cobb of Georgia, Eaton of Tennessee, Ellis 
of Mississippi, Johnson of Kentucky, Kane of 
Illinois, and Rowan of Kentucky— in all 7. 
Eighteen years afterwards, and when we had 
got to the cry of " inevitable war, " I had the 
gratification to see the whole Senate, all Congress 
and all the United States, occupy the same ground 
in relation to this joint occupation on which only 
seven senators stood at the time the convention 
for it was ratified. 



CHAPTER XXXVIII. 

PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 1828, AND FURTHER 
ERRORS OF MONS. DE TOCQUEVILLE. 

General Jackson and Mr. Adams were the 
candidates; — with the latter, JNIr. Clay (his 
Secretary of State), so intimately associated in 
the public mind, on account of the circumstances 
of the previous presidential election in the House 
of Representatives, that their names and interests 
were inseparable during the canvass. General 
Jackson was elected, having received 178 elec- 
toral votes to 83 received by Mr. Adams. Mr. 
Richard Rush, of Pennsylvania, was the vice- 
presidential candidate on the ticket of ]Mr. Adams, 
and received an equal vote with that gentleman : 
Mr. Calhoun was the vice-presidential candidate 
on the ticket with General Jackson, and receiv- 
ed a slightly less vote — the deficiency being in 
Georgia, where the friends of Mr. Crawford still 
resented his believed connection with the " A. B. 
plot." In the previous election, he had been 
neutral between General Jackson and Mr. Adams ; 
but was now decided on the part of the General, 
and received the same vote every whei'e, except 
in Georgia. In this election there was a circum- 
stance to be known and remembered. Mr. 
Adams and JMr. Rush were both from the non- 
slaveholding— General Jackson and Mr. Cal- 
houn from the slaveholding States, and both 
large slaveowners themselves — and both receiv- 
ed a large vote (73 each) in the free States — 
and of which at least forty were indispensable to 
their election. There was no jealous}^, or hos- 
tile, or aggressive spirit in the North at that 
time against the South ! 

The election of General Jackson was a triumph 
of democratic principle, and an assertion of the 
people's right to govern themselves. That prin- 
ciple had been violated in the presidential elec- 
tion in the House of Representatives in the ses- 
sion of 1824-'25 ; and the sanction, or rebuke, of 
that violation was a leading question in the whole 
canvass. It was also a triumph over the high 
protective policy, and the federal internal im- 
provement policy, and the latitudinous construc- 
tion of the constitution ; and of the democracy 
over the federalists, then called national repub- 
licans ; and was tlie re-establishment of parties 
on principle, according to the landmarks-of the 



112 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



early ages of the government. For although 
Mr. Adams had received confidence and office 
from Mr. Madison and ^Mr. Monroe, and had 
classed with the democratic party during the 
fusion of parties in the " era of good feeling," 
yet he had previously been federal ; and in the 
re-establishment of old party lines which began 
to take place after the election of Mr. Adams in 
the House of Representatives, his affinities, and 
policy, became those of his former party : and as 
a part)', with many individual exceptions, they 
became his supporters and his strength. Gen- 
eral Jackson, on the contrary, had always been 
democratic, so classing when he was a senator in 
Congress under the administration of the first 
Mr. Adams, and when party lines were most 
straightly drawn, and upon principle: and as 
such now receiving the support of men and 
States which took their political position at that 
time, and had maintained it ever since — Mr. 
]\Iacon and Mr. Randolph, for example, and the 
States of Virginia and Pennsylvania. And here 
it becomes m}'^ duty to notice an error, or a con- 
geries of errors, of Mons. de Tocqueville, in rela- 
tion to the causes of General Jackson's election ; 
and which he finds exclusively in the glare of a 
military fame resulting from " a very ordinary 
achievement, only to be remembered where bat- 
tles are rare." He says : 

" General Jackson, whom the Americans have 
twice elected to the head -of their government, is 
a man of a violent temper and mediocre talents. 
No one circumstance in the whole course of his 
career ever proved that he is qualified to govern 
a free people ; and, indeed, the majority of the 
enlightened classes of the Union has always 
been opposed to him. But he was raised to the 
Presidencj'-, and has been maintained in that 
lofty station, solely by the recollection of a vic- 
tory which he gained twent}^ years ago, under 
the walls of New Orleans ; — a victory which, 
however, was a very ordinary achievement, and 
which could only be remembered in a country 
where battles are rare." — {^Chapter 17.) 

This may pass for American history, in Europe 
and in a foreign language, and even finds abet- 
tors here to make it American history in the 
United States, with a preface and notes to en- 
force and commend it: but America will find 
historians of her own to do justice to the nation- 
al, and to individual character. In the mean time 
I have some knowledge of General Jackson, and 
the American people, and the two presidential 
elections with which they honored the General ; 



and will oppose it, that is, my knowledge, to the 
flippant and shallow statements of !Mons. de Toc- 
queville. " A man of violent temper?'' I ought 
to know something about that — contemporaries 
will understand the allusion — and I can say that 
General Jackson had a good temper, kind and 
hospitable to every body, and a feeling of protec- 
tion in it for the whole human race, and espe- 
cially the weaker and humbler part of it. lie had 
few quarrels on his own account ; and probably 
the very ones of which Mons. de Tocqueville had 
heard were accidental, against his will, and for 
the succor of friends. " Mediocre talent^ and 
no capacity to govern a free people.'''' In the 
first place, free people are not governed by any 
man, but by laws. But to understand the phrase 
as perhaps intended, that he had no capacity for 
civil administration, let the condition of the coun- 
try at the respective periods when he took up, 
and when he laid down the administration, 
answer. He found the country in domestic dis- 
tress — pecuniary distress — and the national and 
state legislation invoked by leading politicians to 
relieve it by empirical remedies ; — tariffs, to re- 
lieve one part of the community by taxing the 
other ; — internal improvement, to distribute pub- 
lic money ; — a national bank, to cure the paper 
money evils of which it was the author ; — the 
public lands the pillage of broken bank paper ; — 
depreciated currency and ruined exchanges ; — 
a million and a half of " unavailable funds " in 
the treasury ; — a large public debt ; — the public 
money the prey of banks ; — no gold in the coun- 
try — only twenty millions of dollars in silver, 
and that in banks which refused, when they 
pleased, to pay it down in redemption of their 
own notes, or even to render back to depositors. 
Stay laws, stop laws, replevin laws, baseless 
paper, the resource in half the States to save the 
debtor from his creditor ; and national bankrupt 
laws from Congress, and local insolvent laws, in 
the States, the demand of every session. Indian 
tribes occupying a half, or a quarter of the area of 
southern States, and unsettled questions of wrong 
and insult, with half the powers of Europe. 
Such was the state of the country when General 
Jackson became President : what wjws it when 
he left the Presidency ? Protective tariffs, and 
federal internal improvement discarded ; the na- 
tional bank left to expire upon its own limita- 
tion ; the public lands redeemed from the pillage 
of broken bank paper; no more "unavailable 



ANNO 1828. JOHN QUINCY ADAMS, PRESIDENT. 



1 1 •> 



funds ; " an abundant gold and silver currency ; 
the public debt paid off; the treasury made 
independent of banks ; the Indian tribes remov- 
ed from the States ; indemnities obtained from 
all foreign powers for all past aggressions, and 
10 new ones committed ; several treaties obtain- 
ed from great powers that never would treat 
with us before ; peace, friendship, and commerce 
with all the world ; and the measures established 
which, after one great conflict with the expiring 
Bank of the United States, and all her affiliated 
banks in 1837, put an end to bank dominion in 
the United States, and all its train of contractions 
and expansions, panic and suspension, distress 
and empirical relief. This is the answer which 
the respective periods of the beginning and the 
ending of General Jackson's administration 
gives to the flippant imputation of no capacity 
for civil government. I pass on to the next. 
•' The majority of the enlightened classes al- 
ways opposed to him?'' A majority of those class- 
es which Mons. de Tocqueville would chiefly see 
in the cities, and along the highways — bankers, 
brokers, jobbers, contractors, politicians, and spe- 
culators — were certainly against him, and he as 
certainly against them : but the mass of the in- 
telligence of the country was with him! and 
sustained him in retrieving the country from the 
deplorable condition in which the " enlightened 
classes " had sunk it ! and in advancing it to that 
state of felicity at home, and respect abroad, 
which has made it the envy and admiration of 
the civilized world, and the absorbent of popula- 
tions of Europe. I pass on. " Raised to the Pre- 
sidency and maintained there solely by the 
recollection of the victory at New Orleans.'''' 
Here recollection, and military glare, reverse the 
action of their ever previous attribute;;, and be- 
come stronger, instead of weaker, upon the lapse 
of time. The victory at New Orleans was gain- 
ed in the first week of the year 1815 ; and did 
not bear this presidential fruit until fourteen and 
eighteen years afterwards, and until three previ- 
ous good seasons had passed without prctluction. 
There was a presidential election in 1816, when 
the victory was fresh, and the country ringing, 
and imaginations dazzled with it : but it did not 
make Jackson President, or even bring him for- 
ward as a candidate. The same four years after- 
wards, at the election of 1820 — not even a can- 
didate then. Four years still later, at the election 
of 1824, he became a candidate, and — was not 

Vol. I.— 8 



elected ; — receiving but 99 electoral votes out of 
261. In the year 1828 he was first elected, re- 
ceiving 178 out of 261 votes ; and in 1832 he 
was a second time elected, receivins: 219 out 
of 288 votes. Surely there must have been 
something besides an old military recollection to 
make these two elections so different from the 
two former; and there was! That something 
else was principle! and the same that I have 
stated in the beginning of this chapter as enter- 
ing into the canvass of 1828, and ruling its issue. 
I pass on to the last disparagement. " A victory 
which was a very ordinary achievement, and only 
to be remembered where battles were rare." 
Such was not the battle at New Orleans. It 
was no ordinary achievement. It was a victory 
of 4,600 citizens just called from their homes, 
without knowledge of scientific war, under a lead- 
er as little schooled as themselves in that parti- 
cular, without other advantages than a slight 
field work (a ditch and a bank of earth) hastily 
thrown up— over double their numbers of 
British veterans, survivors of the wars of the 
French Revolution, victors in the Peninsula and 
at Toulouse, under trained generals of the Wel- 
lington school, and with a disparity of loss never 
before witnessed. On one side 700 killed (in- 
cluding the first, second and third generals) ; 
1400 wounded ; 500 taken prisoners. On the 
other, .six privates killed, and seven wounded; 
and the total repulse of an invading army which 
instantly fled to its " wooden walls," and never 
again placed a hostile foot on American soil. 
Such an achievement is not ordinary, much less 
"very" ordinary. Does Mons. de Tocqueville 
judge the importance of victories by the num- 
bers engaged, and the quantity of blood shed, 
or by their consequences 1 If the former, the 
cannonade on the heights of Valmy (which was 
not a battle, nor even a combat, but a distant 
cannon firing in which few were hurt), must 
seem to him a \crj insignificant affair. Yet it 
did what the marvellous victories of Champau- 
bcrt, JMontmirail, Chateau-Tliierry, Yauchanips 
and Moutereau could not do — turned back the 
invader, and saved the soil of France from the 
iron hoof of the conqueror's horse! and was 
commemorated twelve years afterwards by the 
great emperor in a ducal title bestowed upon one 
of its generals. The victory at New Orleans 
did what the connonade at Valmy did— drove back 
the invader ! and also what it did not do — de- 



114 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



stroyed tlie one fourth part of his force. And, 
therefore, it is not to be disparaged, and will not 
be, by any one who judges victories by their 
consequences, instead of by the numbers engaged. 
And so llie victory at New Orleans will remain 
in hi.Ntorv as one of the great achievements of 
the world, in spite of the low opinion which the 
writer on American democracy entertains of it. 
But ^loas. do Tocqueville's disparagement of 
General .lackson, and his achievement, does not 
stop at him and his victory. It goes beyond 
both, and reaches the American people, their re- 
publican institutions, and the elective franchise : 
It represents the people as incapable of self- 
government — as led off by a little military glare 
to elect a man twice President who had not one 
qualification for the place, who was violent and 
mediocre, and whom the enlightened classes op- 
posed : all most unjustly said, but still to pass 
for American history in Europe, and with some 
Americans at home. 

Regard for ^lons. de Tocqueville is the cause 
of this correction of his errors : it is a piece of 
respect which I do not extend to the riflTrafF of 
European writers who come here to pick up the 
gossip of the highways, to sell it in Europe for 
American history, and to requite with defama- 
tion the hospitalities of our houses. He is not 
of that class : he is above it : he is evidently not 
intentionally unjust. But he is the victim of the 
company which he kept while among us ; and his 
book must i)ay the penalty of the impositions 
practised upon him. The character of our coun- 
tiy. and the cause of republican government, 
require his errors to be corrected : and, unhap- 
pily, I shall have further occasion to perform 
that duty. 



CHAPTER XXXIX. 

KETIRING OF MR. MACON. 

Philosophic in his temperament aiid wise in his 
conduct, governed in all his actions by reason 
and judgment, aud deeply imbued with Bible 
images, this virtuous and patriotic man (whom 
Mr Jcflerson called " the last of the Romans) " 
had long fixed tlie term of his political existence 
%t the age which the Psalmist assigns for the 



limit of manly life : " The da3-s of our years are 
threescore years and ten ; and if by reason of 
strength they be fourscore years, yet is their 
strength labor and sorrow, for it is soon cut off. 
and we fly away. " He touched that age in 
1828 ; and, true to all his purposes, he was true 
to his resolve in this, and executed it with the 
quietude and indifference of an ordinary transac- 
tion. He was in the middle of a third senatorial 
term, and in the full possession of all his faculties 
of mind and body ; but his time for retirement 
had come — the time fixed by himself ; but fixed 
upon conviction and for well-considered reasons, 
and inexorable to him as if fixed by fate. To 
the friends who urged him to remain to the end 
of his term, and who insisted that liis mind was 
as good as ever, he would answer, that it was 
good enough yet to let him know that he ought 
to quit oSice before his mind quit him, and that 
he did not mean to risk the fate of the Archbishop 
of Grenada. He resigned his senatorial honors 
as he had worn them — meekly, unostentatiously, 
in a letter of thanks and gratitude to the General 
x\ssembly of his State ; — and gave to repose at 
home that interval of thought and quietude which 
every wise man would wish to place between the 
turmoil of life and the stillness of eternity. He 
had nine years of this tranquil enjoyment, and 
died without pain or suffering June 29 th, 1837, 
— characteristic in death as in life. It was eight 
o'clock in the morning when he felt that the su- 
preme hour had come, had himself full-dressed 
with his habitual neatness, walked in the room 
and lay upon the bed, by turns conversing kind- 
ly with those who were about him, and showing 
by his conduct that he was ready and waiting, but 
hurr3nng nothing. It was the death of Socrates, 
all but the hemlock, and in that full faith of 
which the Grecian sage had only a glimmering. 
He directed his own grave on the point of a sterile 
ridge (where nobody would wish to plough), 
and covered with a pile of rough flint-stone, 
(which nobody would wish to build with), deem- 
ing this sterility and the uselessness of tliis rock 
the best security for that undisturbed repose of 
the bones which is still desirable to those who 
are indifferent to monuments. 

In almost all strongly-marked characters there 
is usually some incident or sign, in early life, 
wliich shows that character, and reveals to the 
close observer the type of the future man. So 
it was with Mr. Macon. His firmness, his pa- 



ANNO 182S. JOHN QUINCY ADAMS, PRESIDENT. 



115 



triotism, his self-denial, his devotion to duty 
and disregard of office and emolument ; his mod- 
esty, integrity, self-control, and subjection of 
conduct to the convictions of reason and the dic- 
tates of virtue, all so steadily exemplified in a 
long life, were all shown from the early age of 
eighteen, in the miniature representation of indi- 
vidual action, and only confirmed in the subse- 
quent public exhibitions of a long, beautiful, and 
exalted career. 

He was of that age, and a student at Princeton 
college, at the time of the Declaration of Ameri- 
can Independence. A small volunteer corps was 
then on the Delaware. He quit his books, join- 
ed it, served a term, returned to Princeton, and 
resumed his studies. In the year 1778 the South- 
ern States had become a battle-field, big with 
their own fate, and possibly involving the issue 
of the war. British fleets and armies appeared 
there, strongly supported by the friends of the 
British cause ; and the conquest of the South 
was fully counted upon. Help was needed in 
these States ; and Mr. Macon, quitting college, 
returned to his native county in North Carolina, 
joined a militia company as a private, and march- 
ed to South Carohna — then the theatre of the 
enemy's operations. He had liis share in all the 
hardships and disasters of that trying time ; was 
at the fall of Fort Moultrie, surrender of Charles- 
ton, defeat at Camden ; and in the rapid winter 
retreat across the upper part of North Carolina. 
He was in the camp on the left bank of the Yad- 
kin when the sudden flooding of that river, in 
the brief interval between the crossing of the 
Americans and the coming up of the British, ar- 
rested the pursuit of Cornwallis, and enabled 
Greene to allow some rest to his wearied and 
exhausted men. In this camp, destitute of every 
thing and with gloomy prospects ahead, a sum- 
mons came to Mr. Macon from the Governor of 
North Carolina, requiring him to attend a meet- 
ing of the General Assembly, of which he had 
been elected a member, without his knowledge, 
by the people of his county. He refused to go : 
and the incident being talked of through the 
camp, came to the knowledge of the general. 
Greene was a man himself, and able to know a 
man. He felt at once that, if this report was true, 
this young soldier was no common character; and 
determined to verify the fact. He sent for the 
young man, inquired of him, heard the truth, 
and then asked for the reason of this unexpected 



conduct — this preference for a suffering camp 
over a comfortable seat in the General Assem- 
bly ? Mr. Macon answered him, in his quaint 
and sententious way, that he had seen the faces 
of the British many times, but had never seen 
their backs, and meant to stay in the army till 
he did. Greene instantly saw the material the 
young man was made of, and the handle by 
which he was to be worked. That material was 
patriotism; that handle a sense of duty; and 
laying hold of this handle, he quickly worked 
the young soldier into a different conclusion from 
the one that he had arrived at. He told him he 
could do more good as a member of the General 
Assembly than as a soldier ; that in the army 
he was but one man, and in the General Assem- 
bly he might obtain many, with the supplies 
they needed, by showing the destitution and 
suffering which he had seen in the camp ; and 
that it was his duty to go. This view of duty 
and usefulness was decisive. Mr. Macon obeyed 
the Governor's summons ; and by his represen- 
tations contributed to obtain the supplies which 
enabled Greene to turnback and face Cornwallis, 
— fight him, cripple him, diive him further back 
than he had advanced (for Wilmington is South 
of Camden), disable him from remaining in the 
South (of which, up to the battle of Guilford, 
he believed himself to be master) ; and sending 
him to Yorktown, where he was captured, and 
the war ended. 

The philosophy of history has not yet laid hold 
of the battle of Guilford, its consequences and 
effects. That battle made the capture at York- 
town. The events are told in every history; 
their connection and dependence in none. It 
broke up the plan of Cornwallis in the South, and 
changed the plan of "Washington in the North. 
Cornwalhs was to subdue the Southern States, 
and was doing it until Greene turned upon him • 
at Guilford. Washington was occupied with 
Sir Henry Clinton, then in New-York, with: 
12,000 British troops. He had formed the heroic 
design to capture Clinton and his army (the 
French fleet co-operating) in that city, and there- 
by putting an end to the war. All his prepara- 
tions were going on for that grand consummation 
when he got the news of the battle of Guilford, 
the retreat of Cornwallis to Wilmington, his in- 
ability to keep the field in the South, and his 
return northward through the lower part of 
Virginia. He saw liis advantage — an easier prey 



116 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



— and the same result, if successful. Cornwallis 
or Clinton, cither of them captured, would put 
an end to the war. Washington changed his 
plan, deceived Clinton, moved rapidly upon the 
weaker general, captured hira and his 7000 men ; 
and ended the revolutionary war. The battle 
of Guilford put that capture into Washington's 
hands ; and thus Guilford and Yorktown became 
connected ; and the philosophy of history shows 
their d^endence, and that the lesser event was 
fother to the greater. The State of North Caro- 
lina gave General Greene 25,000 acres of west- 
ern land for that day's work, now worth a million 
of dollars ; but the day itself has not yet obtain- 
ed its proper place in American history. 

The military life of Mr. INIacon finished with 
his departure from the camp on the Yadkin, and 
his civil public Ufe commenced on his arrival at 
the General Assembly, to which he had been 
summoned — that civil public life in which he was 
continued above forty years by free elections — 
representative in Congress under Washington, 
Adams, Jefferson, and Madison, and long the 
Speaker of the House ; senator in Congress un- 
der Madison, Monroe, and John Quincy Adams ; 
and often elected President of the Senate, and 
until voluntarily declining ; twice refusing to be 
Postmaster General under JefTcrson ; never tak- 
ing any office but that to which he was elected ; 
and resigning his last senatorial term when it 
was only half run. But a characteristic trait 
remains to be told of his military life — one that 
has neither precedent nor imitation (the example 
of Washington being out of the line of compari- 
son) : he refused to receive pay, or to accept pro- 
motion, and served three years as a private 
through mere devotion to his country. And all 
the long length of his life was conformable to this 
patriotic and disinterested beginning: and thus 
the patriotic principles of the future senator were 
all revealed in early life, and in the obscurity of 
an unknown situation. Conformably to this be- 
ginning, he refused to take any thing under the 
modern acts of Congress for the benefit of the 
surviving officers and soldiers of the Revolution, 
and voted against them all, saying they had suf- 
fered alike (citizens and military), and all been 
rewarded together in the establislnnent of inde- 
pendence ; that the debt to the army had been 
settled by pay, by pensions to the wounded, by 
half-pay and land to the officers ; that no mili- 
tary claim could be founded on depreciated con- 



tinental paper money, from which the civil 
functionaries who performed service, and the far- 
mers who furnished supplies, suifered as much 
as any. On this principle he voted against tho 
bill for Lafayette, against all the modern revo- 
lutionary pensions and land bounty acts, and 
refused to take any thing under them (for many 
were applicable to himself). 

His political pi-inciples were deep-rooted, in- 
nate, subject to no change and to no machinery 
of party. He was democratic in the broad sense 
pf the word, as signifj-ing a capacity in the people 
for self-government ; and in its party sense, as 
in favor of a plain and economical administra 
tion of the federal government, and against lati- 
tudinarian constructions of the constitution. He 
was a party man, not in the hackneyed sense of 
the word, but only where principle was concern- 
ed ; and was independent of party in all his so- 
cial relations, and in all the proceedings which 
he disapproved. Of this he gave a strong in- 
stance in the case of General Hamilton, whom 
he deemed honorable and patriotic ; and utterly 
refused to be concerned in a movement proposed 
to affect him personally, though politically op- 
posed to him. He venerated Washington, ad- 
mired the varied abilities and high qualities of 
Hamilton ; and esteemed and respected the emi- 
nent federal gentlemen of his time. He bad af- 
fectionate regard for Madison and Monroe ; bul 
Mr. Jeiferson was to him the full and perfect 
exemplification of the republican statesman. 
His almost fifty years of personal and political 
friendship and association with Mr. Randolph is 
historical, and indissolubly connqpts their names 
and memories in the recollection of their friends, 
and in history, if it does them justice. He was 
the early friend of General Jackson, and intimate 
with him when ho was a senator in Congress 
under the administration of the elder Mr. Adams ; 
and was able to tell Congress and the world who 
he was when he began to astonish Europe and 
America by his victories. He was the kind ob- 
server of the conduct of young men, encourag- 
ing them by judicious commendation when he 
saw them making efforts to become useful and 
respectable, and never noting their faults. He 
was just in all things, and in that most difficult 
of all things, judging political opponents, — to 
whom he would do no wrong, not merely in 
word or act, but in thought. He spoke frequent- 
ly in Congress, always to the point, and briefly 



ANNO 1828. JOHN QUINCY ADAMS, PRESIDENT. 



117 



and wisely ; and was one of those speakers which 
Mr. Jefferson described Dr. Franklin to have 
been — a speaker of no pretension and great per- 
formance, — who spoke more good sense while he 
was getting up out of his cliair, and getting back 
into it, than many others did in long discourses ; 
and he suffered no reporter to dress up a speech 
for him* 

He was above the pursuit of wealth, but also 
above dependence and idleness ; and, like an old 
Roman of the elder Cato's time, worked in the 
fields at the head of his slaves in the intervals 
of public duty ; and did not cease tliis labor until 
advancing age rendered him unable to stand the 
hot sun of summer — the only season of the year 
when senatorial duties left him at liberty to fol- 
low the plough, or handle the hoe. I think it 
was the summer of 1817,— that was the last time 
(he told me) he tried it, and found the sun too 
hot for him — then sixty years of age, a senator, 
and the refuser of all oflBce. How often I think 
of him, when I see at Washington robustious 
men going through a scene of supplication, tribu- 
lation, and degradation, to obtam office, which 
the salvation of the soul does not impose upon 
the vilest sinner ! His fields, his flocks, and his 
herds yielded an ample supply of domestic pro- 
ductions. A small crop of tobacco — three hogs- 
heads when the season was good, two when bad 
— purchased the exotics which comfort and ne- 
cessity required, and which the farm did not pro- 
duce. He was not rich, but rich enough to dis- 
pense hospitality and charity, to receive all guests 
in his house, from the President to the day la- 
borer—no other title being necessary to enter 
his house but that of an honest man; rich 
enough to bring up his family (two daughters) 
as accomplished ladies, and marry them to ac- 
complished gentlemen— one to William Martin, 
Esq., the other to William Eaton, Esq., of Roan- 
oke, my early school-fellow and friend for more 
than half a century ; and, above all, he was rich 
enough to pay as he went, and never to owe a 
dollar to any man. 

He was steadfast in his friendships, and would 
stake himself for a friend, but would violate no 
pomt of public duty to please or oblige him. Of 
this his relations with Mr. Randolph gave a si"-- 
nal instance. He drew a knife to defend him in 
the theatre at Philadelphia, when menaced by 
>ome naval and military oflScers for words 
spoken in debate, and deemed offensive to their 



professions ; yet, when speaker of the House of 
Representatives, he displaced Mr. Randolph from 
the head of the committee of ways and means 
because the chairman of that con.mittee should 
be on terms of political friendship with the ad- 
ministration,— which Mr. Randolph had then 
ceased to be with Mr. Jefferson's. He was 
above executive office, even the highest the 
President could give ; but not above the lowest 
the people could give, taking that of just^e of the 
peace in his county, and refusmg that of Post- 
master-General at Washington. He was op- 
posed to nepotism, and to all quartering of his 
connections on the government; and in the 
course of his forty-years' service, with the abso- 
lute friendship of many administrations and the 
perfect respect of all, he never had office or con- 
tract for any of his blood. He refused to be a 
candidate for the vice-presidency, but took the 
place of elector on the Van Buren ticket in 1836. 
He was against paper money and the paper sys- 
tem, and was accustomed to present the strong 
argument against both in the simple phrase, that 
this was a hard-money government, made by 
hard-money men, who had seen the evil of paper- 
money, and meant to save their posterity from it. 
He was opposed to securityships, and held that 
no man ought to be entangled in the afiairs 
of another, and that the interested parties alone 
— those who expected to find their profit in the 
transaction— should bear the bad consequences, 
as well as enjoy the good ones, of their own 
dealings. He never called any one "friend" 
without being so ; and never expressed faith in 
the honor and integrity of a man without acting 
up to the declaration when the occasion required 
it. Thus, in constituting his friend Weldon N. 
Edwards, Esq., his testamentary and sole execu- 
tor, with large discretionary powers, he left all 
to his honor, and forbid him to account to any 
court or power lor the manner in which he 
should execute that trust. This prohibition 
was so characteristic, and so honorable to both 
parties, and has been so well justified by the 
event, that I give it in liis own words, as copied 
from his will, to wit : 



"I subjoin the following, in my own hanH- 
writing, as a codicil to this my last will and tes- 
tament, and direct that it be a jiart thereof— that 
is to say, having full faith in the honor and in- 
tegrity of my executor above named, he shall not 
1 be held to account to any court or power what- 



118 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



ever for the discharge of the trust confided by 
me to liim in and by the foregoing will." 

And the event has proved that his judgment, 
as always, committed no mistake when it be- 
stou-ed that confidence. He had his peculiarities — 
idiosyncracies, if any one pleases — but they were 
born with him, suited to him, constituting a part of 
his character, and necessary to its completeness. 
He never subscribed to charities, but gave, and 
freely, according to liis means — the left hand not 
knowing what the right hand did. He never 
subscribed for new books, giving as a reason to 
the soliciting agent, that nobody purchased his 
tobacco until it was inspected; and he could 
buy no book until he had examined it. He 
would not attend the Congress Presidential Cau- 
cus of 1824, although it was sure to nominate 
his own choice (Mr. Crawford) ; and, when a 
reason was wanted, he gave it in the brief answer 
that he attended one once and they cheated him, 
and he had said that he would never attend 
another. He always wore the same dress — that 
is to say, a suit of the same material, cut, and 
color, superfine navy blue — the whole suit from 
the same piece, and in the fashion of the time of 
the Revolution ; and always replaced by a new 
one before it showed age. He was neat in his 
person, always wore fine linen, a fine cambric 
stock, a fine fur hat with a brim to it, fair top- 
boots — the boot outside of the pantaloons, on the 
principle that leather was stronger than cloth. 
He would wear no man's honors, and when com- 
plimented on the report on the Panama mission, 
which, as chairman of the committee on foreign 
relations, he had presented to the Senate, he 
would answer, " Yes ; it is a good report ; Taze- 
well wrote it." Left to himself, he was ready 
to take the last place, and the lowest seat any 
where ; but in his representative capacity he 
would suffer no derogation of a constitutional or 
of a popular right. Thus, when Speaker of 
the House, and a place behind the President's 



Secretaries had been assigned him in some cere- 
mony, he disregarded the programme ; and, as 
the elect of the elect of all the people, took his 
place next after those whom the national vote 
had elected. And in 1803, on the question to 
change the form of voting for President and 
Vice-President, and the vote wanting one of the 
constitutional number of two thirds, he resisted 
the rule of the House which restricted the 
speaker's vote to a tie, or to a vote which would 
make a tie, — claimed his constitutional right to 
vote as a member, obtained it, gave the vote, 
made the two thirds, and carried the amend- 
ment. And, what may well be deemed idiosyn- 
cratic in these days, he was punctual in the per- 
formance of all his minor duties to the Senate, 
attending its sittings to the moment, attending 
all the committees to which he was appointed, 
attending all the funerals of the members 
and oflicers of the Houses, always in time at 
every place where duty required him ; and re- 
fusing double mileage for one travelling, when 
elected from the House of Representatives to the 
Senate, or summoned to an extra session. He 
was an habitual reader and student of the Bible, 
a pious and religious man, and of the " Baptist 
persuasion" as he was accustomed to express it. 
I have a pleasure in recalling the recollections 
of this wise, just, and good man, and in writing 
them down, not without profit, I hope, to rising 
generations, and at least as extending the know- 
ledge of the kind of men to whom we are indebt- 
ed for our independence, and for the form of 
government which they established for us. Mr. 
Macon was the real Cincinnatus of America, the 
pride and ornament of my native State, my he- 
reditary friend through four generations, my 
mentor in the first seven years of my senatorial, 
and the last seven of his senatorial life ; and a 
feeling of gratitude and of filial aflPection mingles 
itself with this discharge of historical duty to his 
memory. 



ANNO 1829. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



119 



ADMINISTRATION OF ANDREW JACKSON. 



CHAPTER XL 



COMMENCEMENT OF GENERAL JACKSON'S 
MINISTRATION. 



AD- 



On the 4th of March, 1829, the new President 
was inaugurated, with the usual ceremonies, 
and delivered the address which belongs to the 
occasion ; and which, like all of its class, was a 
general declaration of the political principles by 
which the new administration would be guided. 
The general terms in which such addresses are 
necessarily conceived preclude the possibility of 
minute practical views, and leave to time and 
events the qualification of the general declarations. 
Such declarations are always in harmony with 
the grounds upon which the new President's 
election had been made, and generally agreeable 
to his supporters, without being repulsive to his 
opponents ; harmony and conciliation being an 
especial object with every new administration. 
So of General Jackson's inaugural address on 
this occasion. It was a general chart of demo- 
cratic principles ; but of which a few paragraphs 
vnll bear reproduction in this work, as being 
either new and strong, or a revival of good old 
principles, of late neglected. Thus: as a military 
man his election had been deprecated as possibly 
leading to a military administration : on the con- 
trary he thus expressed himself on the subject 
of standing armies, and subordination of the 
military to the civil authority : '• Considering 
standing armies as dangerous to free govern- 
ment, in time of peace, I shall not seek to en- 
large our present establishment ; nor disregard 



that salutary lesson of political experience wliich 
teaches that the military should be held subor- 
dinate to the civil power. " On the cardinal 
doctrine of economy, and freedom from public 
debt, he said : " Under every aspect in which it 
can be considered, it would appear that advantage 
must result from the observance of a strict and 
faithful economy. This I shall aim at the more 
anxiously, both because it will facilitate the ex- 
tinguishment of the national debt — the unneces- 
sary duration of which is incompatible with real 
independence; — and because it will counteract 
that tendency to public and private profligacy 
which a profuse expenditure of money by the 
government is but too apt to engender." Reform 
of abuses and non-interference with elections, 
were thus enforced : " The recent demonstration 
of public sentiment inscribes, on the list of ex- 
ecutive duties, in characters too legible to be 
overlooked, the task of reform, which will re- 
quire, particularly, the correction of those abuses 
that have brought the patronage of the federal 
government into conflict with the freedom of 
elections. " The oath of oflice was administered 
by the venerable Chief Justice, Marshall, to whom 
that duty had belonged for about tliirty j-ears. 
The Senate, according to custom, having been 
convened in extra session for the occa.sion, the 
cabinet appointments were immediately sent in 
and confirmed. They were, Martin Van Burcn, 
of New- York, Secretary of State (i\Ir. James A. 
Hamilton, of New-York, son of the late General 
Hamilton, being charged with the duties of the 
office until Mr. Van Buren could enter ujwn 
them) ; Samuel D. Ingham, of Pennsylvania, 



120 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



Secretary of the Treasury ; John II. Eaton, of 
Tennessee, Secretary at War; John Branch, of 
North Carolina, Secretary of the Navy ; John M. 
Berrien, of Georgia, Attorney General ; William 
T. Barr\-, of Kentucky, Postmaster General ; 
those who constituted the late cabinet, under 
Mr. Adams, only one of them, (^Ir. John 
McLean, the Postmaster General,) classed poli- 
tically with General Jackson ; and a vacancy 
having occurred on the bench of the Supreme 
Court by the death of Mr. Justice Trimble, of 
Kentucky, Mr. McLean was appointed to fill it ; 
and a further vacancy soon after occurring, the 
death of Mr. Justice Bushrod Washington 
(nephew of General Washington), Mr. Henry 
Baldwin, of Pennsylvania, was appointed in his 
Iilace. The Twenty-first Congress dated the 
commencement of its legal existence on the day 
of the commencement of the new administration , 
and its members were as follows : 

SENATE. 

Maine — John Holmes, Peleg Sprague. 

New Hampshire — Samuel Bell, Levi Wood- 
bury. 

Massachusetts — Nathaniel Silsbee, Daniel 
Webster. 

Connecticut — Samuel A. Foot, Calvin Willey. 

Rhode Island — Nehemiah R. Knight, Asher 
Robbins. 

Vermont — Dudley Chase, Horatio Seymour. 

New-Yokk — Nathan Sanford, Charles E. Dud- 
ley. 

New Jersey — Theodore Frelinghuysen, Mah- 
lon Dickerson. 

Pennsylvania — William Marks, Isaac D. 
Barnard. 

Delaware — John M. Clayton, ( Vacant) 

Maryland — Samuel Smith, Ezekiel F. Cham- 
bers. 

Virginia — L. W. Tazewell, John Tyler. 

NoKTH Carolina — James Iredell, {Vucarit.) 

South Carolina — William Smith, Robert Y. 
Hayne. 

Geokgia — George M. Troup, John Forsyth. 

Kentucky — John Rowan, George IM. Bibb. 

Tennessee — Hugh L. White, Felix Grundy. 

Ohio — Benjamin Ruggles, Jacob Burnet. 

Louisiana — Josiah S. Johnston, Edward Liv- 
mgston. 

Indiana — William Hendricks, James Noble. 

Mississippi — Powhatan Ellis, ( Vacant.) 

Illinois — Elias K. Kane, John McLane. 

Alabama — John McKinlcy. William ]{. King. 

Missouri — David Bailon, Thomas H. Benton. 

HOUSE OF KEPKESENTATIVES. 

Maine — John Anderson, Samuel Butman, 
George Evans. Ilufus Mclntire, James W. Ripley, 
Joseph F. Wingatc — G. ( One vacant.) 



New Hampshire — John Brodhead, Thomas 
Chandler, .Jossph Ilammons, Jonathan Harvey. 
Henry Hubbard, John W. Weeks — G. 

Massachusetts — John Bailey, Tssac C.Bates, 
B. W. Crowninshield, John Davis, Henry W, 
Dwight, Edward Everett, Benjamin Gorham, 
George Grennell, jr., James L. Hodges, Joseph 
G. Kendall, John Reed, Joseph Richardson, 
John Vamum — 13. 

Rhode Island — Tristam Burgess, Dutee J. 
Pearce — 2. 

Connecticut — Noyes Barber, Wm. W. Ells- 
worth, J. W. Huntington, Ralph J. Ingersoll, 
W. L, Storrs, Eben Young— G. 

Vermont — William Cahoon, Horace Everett, 
Jonathan Hunt, Rollin C. Mallary, Benjamin 
Swift— 5. 

New-York — William G. Angel, Benedict Ar- 
nold, Thomas Beekman, Abraham Bockee, Peter 
I. Borst, C. C. Oambreleng, Jacob Crocheron, 
Timothy Childs, Henry B. Cowles, Hector Craig, 
Charles G. Dcwitt, John D. Dickinson, Jonas 
Earll, jr.,George Fisher, Isaac Finch, Michael Iloflf- 
man, Joseph Hawkins, Jehiel H. Halsey, Perkins 
King, James W. Lent, John Magce, Henry C. 
Martindale, Robert JMonell, Thomas Maxwell, E. 
Norton, Gershom Powers, Robert S. Rose, Hen- 
ry R. Storrs, James Strong, Ambrose Spencer, 
John W. Taylor, Phineas L. Tracy, Gulian. C. 
Verplanck, Campbell P. White— 34. 

New Jersey — Lewis Condict, Richard M. 
Cooper, Thomas H. Hughes, Isaac Pierson, 
James F. Randolph, Samuel Swan — G. 

Pennsylvania— James Buchanan, Richard 
Coulter, Thomas H. Crawford, Joshua Evans, 
Chauncey Forward, JosephFry, jr., James Ford, 
Innes Green, John Gilmore, Joseph HcmphiU, 
Peter Ihrie, jr., Toonias Irwin, Adam King, 
George G. Leijjer, H. A. Muhlenburg, Alem 
j\Iarr, Daniel II. JNIillcr, William McCreery. W^il- 
liam Ramsay, John Scott, Philander Stephens, 
John B. Sterigere, Joel B. Sutherland, Samuel 
Smith, Thomas H. Sill — 25. ( One vacant.) 

Delaware — Kensy Johns, jr. — 1. 

Maryland — Elias Brown, Clement Dorsey, 
Benjamin C. Howard, George E. ISIitchell, Mi- 
chael C. Sprigg, Benedict I. Semmes, Richard 
Spencer, George C. Washington, Ephraim K. 
Wilson— 9. 

Virginia — Mark Alexander, Robert Allen, 
Wm. S. Archer, Wm. Armstrong, jr., John S. 
Barbour, Philip P. Barbour, J. T. Boulding, 
Richard Coke, jr., Nathaniel II. Claiborne, 
Robert B. Craig, Philip Doddridge, Thomas 
Davenport, William F. Gordon, Lewis Max- 
well, Charles F. Mercer, William jNIcCoy, 
Thomas Newton, John Roane, Alexander Smyth, 
Andrew Stevenson, John Taliaferro, James 
Trezvant— 22. 

North Carolina — WiUis Alston, Daniel L. 
Barringcr, Samuel P. Carson, II. W. Conner, 
Edmund Deberry, Edward B. Dudley, Thomas 
H. Hall, Robert Potter, AVilliam B. Shepard, 
Augustine H. Shepperd, Jesse Speight, Lewis 
W illiams— 12. ( One vacant.) 



ANNO 1829. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



121 



South Carolina — Robert W. Barnwell, James 
Blair, John Campbell, "Warren R. Davis, Wil- 
liam Drayton, William D. Martin, George 
McDuffle, William T. Nuckolls, Starling Tucker 
—9. 

Georgia — Thomas F. Forster, Charles E. 
Haynes, Wilson Lumpkin, Henry G. Lamar, 
Wiley Thompson, Richard H. Wilde, James M. 
Wayne — 7. 

Kkntucky — James Clark, N. D. Coleman, 
Thomas Chilton, Henry Daniel, Nathan Gaither, 
R. M. Johnson, John Kinkaid, Joseph Lccompte, 
Chittenden Lyon, Robert P. Letcher, Charles 
A. Wickliffe, Joel Yancey— 12. 

Tennessee — John Blair, John Bell, David 
Crockett, Robert Desha, Jacob C. Isacks, Cave 
Johnson, Pryor Lea, James K. Polk, James 
Standifer — 9. 

Ohio — Mordecai Bartley, Joseph H. Crane, 
William Creighton, James Findlay, John M. 
Goodenow, Wm. W. Irwin, Wra. Kennon, Wm. 
Russell. William Stanberry, James Shields, John 
Thomson, Joseph Vance, Samuel F. Vinton, 
Elisha Whittlesey— 14. 

Louisiana — Henry H. Gurley, W. H. Over- 
ton, Edward D. White— 3. 

Indiana — Ratliff Boon, Jonathan Jenninsrs, 
lohn Test -3. 

Alabama— R. E. B. Baylor, C. C. Clay. Dix- 
on H. Lewis. — 3. 

Mississippi — Thomas Hinds — 1. 

Illinois — Joseph Duncan — 1. 

Missouri — Spencer Pettis — 1. 

delegates. 

Michigan Territory — John Biddle — 1. 
Arkansas Territory — A. H. Sevier — 1. 
Florida Territory — loseph M. White — 1. 

Andrew Stevenson, of Virginia, was re-elected 
speaker of the House, receiving 152 votes out of 
191 ; and he classing politically with General 
Jackson, this large vote in his favor, and the 
small one against him (and that scattered and 
thrown away on several different names not can-' 
didates), announced a pervading sentiment among 
the people, in harmony with the presidential elec- 
tion — and showing that political principles, and 
not military glare, had produced the G neral's 
election. 



CHAPTER XLI. 

FIRST ANNUAL MESSAGE OF GENERAL JACKSON 
TO THE TWO HOUSES OP CONGRESS. 



The first annual message of a new President 

being . always a recommendation of practical | proper 



'5 I 



measures, is looked to with more interest than 
the inaugural address, confined as this latter 
must be, to a declaration of general principles. 
That of General Jackson, delivered the 8th of 
December, 1829, was therefore anxiously looked 
for ; and did not disappoint the public expecta- 
tion. It was strongly democratic, and contained 
many recommendations of a nature to simplify, 
and purify the working of the government, and 
to carry it back to the times of Mr. Jefferson — 
to promote its economy and efficiency, and to 
maintain the rights of the people, and of the 
States in its administration. On the subject of 
electing a President and Vice-President of the 
United States, he spoke thus : 

" I consider it one of the most urgent of ray 
duties to bring to your attention the propriety 
of amending that part of our Constitution which 
relates to the election of President and Vice- 
President. Our system of government was, by 
its' framers, deemed an experiment ; and they, 
therefore, consistently pi'ovided a mode of reme- 
dying its defects. 

" To the people belongs the right of electing 
their chief magistrate: it was never designed 
that their choice should, in any case, be defeated, 
either by the intervention of electoral colleges, 
or by the agency confided, under certain contin- 
gencies, to the House of Representatives. Expe- 
rience proves, that, in proportion as agents to 
execute the will of the people are multiplied, 
there is danger of their wishes being frustrated! 
Some may be unfaithful : all are liable to err. 
So far, therefore, as the people can, witli conve- 
nience, speak, it is safer for them to express their 
own will. 

'• In this, as in all other matters of public con- 
cern, policy requires that as few impediments as 
possible should exist to the free operation of the 
public will. Let us, then, endeavor so to amend 
our system, as that the office of chief magistrate 
may not be conferred upon any citizen .but in 
pursuance of a fair expression of the will of the 
majority. 

" I would therefore recommend such an amend- 
ment of the constitution as may remove all in- 
termediate agency in the election of President 
and Vice-President. The mode may be so regu- 
lated as to preserve to each State its present 
relative weight in the election ; and a failure 
in the first attempt may be provided for, by con- 
fining the second to a choice between the two 
highest candidates. In connection with such an 
amendment, it would seem advisable to limit the 
service of the chief magistrate to a single term, 
of either four or six years. If, however, it should 
not bo adopted, it is wortliy of consideration 
whether a provision disqualifying for office the 
Representatives in Congress on whom such an 
ck'ction may have devolved, would not bo 



may 



122 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



This recommendation in relation to our elec- 
tion system has not yet been carried into effect, 
thouf^h doubtless in harmony with the principles 
of our government, necessary to prevent abuses, 
and now generally demanded by the voice of the 
people. But the initiation of amendments to the 
federal constitution is too far removed from the 
people. It is in the hands of Congress and of 
the State legislatures ; but even there an almost 
impossible majority — that of two thirds of each 
House, or two thirds of the State legislatures — 
is required to commence the amendment ; and a 
still more difficult majority — that of tlu'ce 
fourths of the States — to complete it. Hitherto 
all attempts to procure the desired amendment 
has failed ; but the friends of that reform should 
not despair. The great British parliamentary 
reform was only obtained after forty j^ears of 
annual motions in parliament ; and forty years 
of organized action upon the public mind through 
societies, clubs, and speeches ; and the incessant 
action of the daily and periodical press. In the 
meantime events are becoming more impressive 
advocates for this amendment than any language 
could be. The selection of President has gone 
from the hands of the people — usurped by irre- 
sponsible and nearly self-constituted bodies — in 
which the selection becomes the result of a jug- 
gle, conducted by a few adroit managers, who 
baffle the nomination until they are able to 
govern it, and to substitute their own will for 
that of the people. Perhaps another example is 
not upon earth of a free people voluntarily relin- 
quishing the elective franchise, in a case so great 
as that of electing their own chief magistrate, 
and becoming the passive followers of an irre 
sponsible bod}' — juggled, and baffled, and govern- 
ed by a few dextrous contrivers, always looking 
to their own interest in the game which they 
play in putting down and putting iip men. 
Certainly the convention system, now more un- 
fair and irresponsible than the exploded congress 
caucus system, must eventually share the same 
fate, and be consigned to oblivion and disgrace. 
In the meantime the friends of popular election 
should press the constitutional amendment which 
would give the Presidential election to the peo- 
ple, and discard the use of an intermediate body 
which disregards the public will and reduces the 
people to the condition of political automatons. 

Closely allied to this proposed reform was 
another recommended by the President in rela- 



tion to members of Congress, and to exclude 
them generally from executive appointments; 
and especially from appointments conferred by 
the President for whom they voted. The evil 
is the same whether the member votes in the 
House of Representatives Avhen the election goes 
to that body, or votes and manages in a Congress 
caucus, or in a nominating convention. The act 
in either case opens the door to corrupt practices ; 
and should be prevented by legal, or constitu- 
tional enactments, if it cannot be restrained by 
the feelings of decorum, or repressed by public 
opinion. On this point the message thus recom- 
mended : 

" While members of Congress can be consti- 
tutionally appointed to offices of trust and profit, 
it will be the practice, even under the most con- 
scientious adherence to duty, to select them for 
such stations as they are believed to be better 
qualified to fill than other citizens ; but the 
purity of our government would doubtless be 
promoted by their exclusion from all appoint- 
ments in the gift of the President in whose elec- 
tion they may have been officially concerned. The 
nature of the judicial office, and the necessity 
of securing in the cabinet and in diplomatic sta- 
tions of the highest rank, the best talents and 
political experience, should, perhaps, except these 
from the exclusion. 

On the subject of a navy, the message con- 
tained sentiments worthy of the democracy in its 
early day, and when General Jackson was a 
member of the United States Senate. The re- 
publican party had a policy then in respect to 
a navy : it was, a navy for defence, instead of 
CONQUEST ; and limited to the protection of our 
coasts and commerce. That policy was im- 
pressively set forth in the celebrated instructions 
to the Virginia senators in the j'car 1800, in 
which it was said : 

" With respect to the navy, it may be proper 
to remind you that whatever ma}^ be the pro- 
posed object of its establishment, or whatever 
may be the prospect of temporary advantages 
resulting therefrom, it is demonstrated by the 
experience of all nations, who have ventured far 
into naval policy, that such prospect is ultimate- 
ly delusive ; and that a navy has ever in practice 
been known more as an instrument of power, 
a .source of expense, and an occasion of collisions 
and wars with other nations, than as an instru- 
ment of defence, of economy, or of protection to 
commerce." 

These were the doctrines of the republican 
party, in the early stage of our government — in 
the great days of Jefferson and his compeera 



ANNO 1829. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



123 



We had a policy then — the result of thought, of 
iudgment, and of experience : a navy for defence, 
and not for conquest : and, consequently, con- 
finable to a limited number of sliips, adequate to 
their defensive object — instead of thousands, 
aiming at the dominion of the seas. That policy 
was overthrown by the success of our naval 
combats during the war ; and the idea of a great 
navy became popular, without any definite view 
of its cost and consequences. Admiration for 
good fighting did it, without having the same 
effect on the military polic}^. Our army fought 
well also, and excited admiration ; but without 
subverting the policy which interdicted standing 
armies in time of peace. The army was cut 
down in peace : the navy was building up in 
peace. In this condition President Jackson 
found the two branches of the service — the army 
reduced by two successive reductions from a 
large body to a very small one — 6000 men — and 
although illustrated with military glory yet re- 
fusing to recommend an army increase : the navy, 
from a small one during the war, becoming large 
during the peace — gradual increase the law — 
ship-building the active process, and rotting 
down the active effect ; and thus we have been 
going on for near forty years. Correspondent 
to his army policy was that of President Jack- 
son in relation to the navy ; he proposed a 
pause in the process of ship-building and ship- 
rotting. He recommended a total cessation of 
the further building of vessels of the first and 
second class — ships of the line, and frigates — 
with a collection of materials for future use — 
and the limitation of our naval policy to the ob- 
ject of commercial protection. He did not even 
include coast defence, his experience having 
shown him that the men on shore could defend 
the land. In a word, he recommended a naval 
policy ; and that was the same wliich the re- 
publicans of 1798 had adopted, and which Vir- 
ginia made obligatory upon her senators in 
1800 ; and which, under the blaze of shining 
victories, had yielded to the blind, and aimless, 
and endless operation of building and rotting 
peaceful ships of war. He said : 

" In time of peace, we have need of no more 
ships of war than are requisite to the protection 
of our commerce. Those not wanted for this 
object must lay in the harbors, where, without 
proper covering, they rapidly decay ; and, even 
under the best precautions for their preserva- 
tion, must soon become useless. Such is already 



the case with many of our finest vessels ; which, 
though unfinished, will now require immense 
sums of money to be restored to the condition 
in which they were, when committed to their 
proper element. On this subject there can be 
but little doubt that our best policy would be, 
to discontinue the building of ships of the first 
and second class, and look rather to the pos- 
session of ample materials, prepared for the 
emergencies of war, than to the number of ves- 
sels which we can float in a season of peace, as 
the index of our naval power." 

This was written twenty years ago, and by a 
President who saw what he described — many of 
our finest ships going to decay before they were 
finished — demanding repairs before they had 
sailed — and costing millions for which there was 
no return. We have been going on at the same 
rate ever since — building, and rotting, and sink- 
ing millions ; but little to show for forty years 
of ship-carpentry ; and that little nothing to do 
but to cruise where there is nothing to catch, 
and to carry out ministers to foreign courts who 
are not quite equal to the Franklins, Adamses 
and JefFersons — the Pinckneys, Rufus Kings, 
and Marshalls — the Clays, Gallatins and Baj^- 
ards — that went out in common merchant ves- 
sels. Mr. Jefferson told me that this would be 
the case twenty-five years ago when naval glory 
overturned national policy, and when a navy 
board was created to facilitate ship-construction. 
But this is a subject which will require a chapter 
of its own, and is only incidentally mentioned 
now to remark that we have no policy with re- 
spect to a navy, and ought to have one — that 
there is no middle point between defence and 
conquest — and no sequence to a conquering navy 
but wars with the world, — and the debt, taxes, 
pension list, and pauper list of Great Britain. 

The inutility of a Bank of the United States 
as a furnisher of a sound and uniform currency, 
and of questionable origin under our constitution, 
was thus stated : 

" The charter of the Bank of the United States 
expires in 1836, and its stockholders will most pro- 
bably apply for a renewal of (iicir privileges. In 
order to avoid the evils resulting from precipi- 
tancy in a measure involving such important 
principles, and such deep pecuniar}^ interests, I 
feel that I cannot, in justice to the pai'ties inter- 
ested, too soon present it to the deliberate con- 
sideration of tlie legislature and the people. 
Both the constitutionality and the expediency of 
the law creating this bank, are well ques- 
tioned by a large portion of our fellow-citizens; 
and it must be admitted by all, that it has failed 



124 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



in the great end of establishing a uniform and 
Bound currency." 

This is the clause which party spirit, and 
bank tactics, perverted at the time (and which 
has gone into history), into an attack upon the 
bank — a war upon the bank — with a bad mo- 
tive attributed for a war so wanton. At the 
Bame time nothing could be more fair, and just, 
and more in consonance with the constitution 
which requires the President to make the legis- 
lative recommendations which he believes to be 
proper. It was notice to all concerned — the 
bank on one side, and the people on the other — that 
there would be questions, and of high import — 
constitutionality and expediency — if the present 
corporators, at the expiration of their charter, 
should apply for a renewal of their privileges. 
It was an intimation against the institution, not 
against its administrators, to whom a compliment 
was paid in another part of the same message, in 
ascribing to the help of their "judicious arrange- 
ment " the averting of the mercantile pressure 
which might otherwise have resulted from the 
sudden withdrawal of the twelve and a half mil- 
lions which had just been taken from the bank and 
ipplied to the payment of the public debt. But of 
this hereafter. The receipts and expenditures were 
ftated, respectively, for the preceding year, and 
estimated for the current year, the former at a 
fraction over twenty-four and a half millions — 
the latter a fraction over twenty-six millions — 
witli large balances in the treasurj^, exhibiting 
the constant financial paradox, so diflBcult to be 
understood, of permanent annual balances with 
an even, or even deficient revenue. The passage 
of the message is in these words : 

" The balance in the treasury on the 1st of 
January, 1829, was five millions nine hundred 
and seventy-two thousand four hundred and 
thirty-five dollars and eighty-one cents. The 
receii)ts of the current year are estimated at 
twenty-four millions, six hundred and two thou- 
sand, two hundred and tliirty dollars, and the 
expenditures for tlie same time at twenty-six 
millions one hundred and sixty-four thousand 
five hundred and ninety-five dollars ; leaving a 
balance in the treasury on the 1st of January 
next, of four millions four hundred and ten thou- 
sand and seventy dollars, eightj^-one cents." 

Other recommendations contained the sound 
democratic doctrines — speedy and entire extinc- 
tion of the public debt — reduction of custom- 
house duties — equal and fair incidental protec- 
tion to the great national interests (agriculture, 
manufactures and commerce) — the disconnection 



of politics and tariffs — and the duty of retrench- 
ment by discontinuing and abolishing all useless 
oflBces. In a word, it was a message of the old 
republican school, in which President Jackson 
had been bred ; and from which he had never 
departed ; and which encouraged the young dis- 
ciples of democracy, and consoled the old surviv- 
ing fathers of that school. 



CHAPTER XLII. 

THE RECOVERY OF THE DIRECT TRADE WITH 
THE BRITISH WEST INDIA ISLANDS. 

The recovery of this trade had been a large ob- 
ject with the American government from the 
time of its establishment. As British colonies 
we enjoyed it before the Revolution ; as revolted 
colonies we lost it ; and as an independent na- 
tion we sought to obtain it again. The position 
of these islands, so near to our ports and shores 
— the character of the exports they received 
from us, being almost entirely the product of 
our farms and forests, and their large amount, 
always considerable, and of late some four mil- 
lions of dollars per annum — the tropical pro- 
ductions which we received in return, and the 
large employment it gave to our navigation — 
all combined to give a cherished value to this 
branch of foreign trade, and to stimulate our 
government to the greatest exertions to obtain 
and secure its enjoyment ; and with the advan- 
tage of being carried on by our own vessels. 
But these were objects not easily attainable, 
and never accomplished until the administration 
of President Jackson. All powers are jealous 
of alien intercourse with their colonies, and have 
a natural desire to retain colonial trade in their 
own hands, both for commercial and political 
reasons ; and have a perfect right to do so if 
they please. Partial and conditional admission 
to trade with their colonics, or total exclusion 
from them, is in the discretion of the mother 
country ; and any participation in their trade 
by virtue of treaty stipulations or legislative 
enactment, is the result of concession — general- 
ly founded in a sense of self-interest, or at best 
in a calculation of mutual advantage. No less 
than six negotiations (besides several attempts 
at "concerted legislation") had been carried on 



ANNO 1829. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



125 



between the United States and Great Britain on i 
this subject ; and all, until the second year of 
General Jackson's administration, resulting in 
nothing more than limited concessions for a 
year, or for short terms ; and sometimes cou- 
pled with conditions which nullified the privi- 
lege. It was a primary object of concern with 
General Washington's administration ; and a 
knowledge of the action then had upon it eluci- 
dates both the value of the trade, the diflBculty 
of getting admission to its participation, and the 
right of Great Britain to admit or deny its en- 
joyment to others. General Washington had 
practical knowledge on the subject. He had 
seen it enjoyed, and lost — enjoyed as British 
subjects, lost as revolted colonies and inde- 
pendent states — and knew its value, both from 
the use and the loss, and was most anxious to 
recover it. It was almost the first thing, in our 
foreign relations, to wliich he put his hand on 
becoming President ; and literally did he put 
his hand to it. For as early as the 14th of Oc- 
tober, 1789 — just six months after his inaugura- 
tion — in a letter of unofiicial instructions to Mr. 
Gouverneur Morris, then in Europe, written 
with his own hand (requesting him to sound 
the British government on the subject of a com- 
mercial treaty with the United States), a point 
that he made was to ascertain their views in re- 
lation to allowing ns the "privilege" of this 
trade. Privilege was his word, and the instruc- 
tion ran thus : " Let it be strongly impressed 
on your mind that the privilege of carrying our 
productions in our own vessels to their islands, 
and bringing, in return, the productions of those 
islands to our ports and markets, is regarded 
here as of the highest importance," &c. 

It was a prominent point in oup very first ne- 
gotiation with Great Britain in 1794 ; and the 
instructions to Mr. Jay, in May of that year, 
shows that idmission to the trade was then 
only asked as a privilege, as in the j^car '89 
and upon terms of limitation and condition. 
This is so material to the right understanding 
of this question, and to the future history of the 
case,- and especially of a debate and vote in the 
Senate, of which President Jackson's instruc- 
tions through Mr. Van Buren on the same sub- 
ject was made the occasion, that I think it right 
to give the instructions of President Washing- 
ton to Mr. Jay in his own words. They were 
these : 



" If to the actual footing of our commerce and 
navigation in the British European dominions 
could be added the privilege of carrying directly 
from the United States to the British AVest In- 
dies in our own bottoms generally, or of certain 
specified burthens, the articles which by the Act 
of Parliament, 28, Geo. III., chap. 6, may be 
carried thither in British bottoms, and of bring- 
ing them thence directly to the United States in 
American bottoms, this would afford an accepta- 
ble basis of treaty for a term not exceeding fif- 
teen years." 

An article was inserted in the treaty in con- 
formity to these principles — our carrying vessels 
limited in point of burthen to seventy tons and 
under ; the privilege limited in point of duration 
to the continuance of the then existing war be- 
tween Great Britain and the French Republic, 
and to two years after its termination ; and re- 
stricted in the return cargo both as to the na- 
ture of the articles and the port of their destina- 
tion. These were hard terms, and precarious , 
and the article containing them was " suspended " 
by the Senate in the act of ratification, in the 
hope to obtain better ; and are only quoted here 
in order to show that this direct trade to the 
British West Indies was, from the beginning of 
our federal government, only sought as a privi- 
lege, to be obtained under restrictions and limi- 
tations, and subordinately to British policy and 
legislation. This was the end of the first nego- 
tiation; five others were had in the ensuing 
thirty years, besides repeated attempts at " con- 
certed legislation " — all ending either abortively 
or in temporary and unsatisfactory arrange 
ments. 

The most important of these attempts was in 
the years 1822 and 1823 : and as it forms an es- 
sential item in the history of this case, and shows, 
besides, the good policy of letting " well-enough " 
alone, and the great mischief of inserting an ap- 
parently harmless word in a bill of which no one 
sees the drift but those in the secret, I will here 
give its particulars, adopting for that purpose 
the language of senator Samuel Smith, of Mary- 
land, — ^the best qualified of all our statesmen to 
speak on the subject, he having the practical 
knowledge of a merchant in addition to experi- 



ence as a legislator. 



His statement is this : 



" During the session of 1822, Congress was in- 
formed that an act was pending in Parliament 
for the opening of the colonial ports to the com- 
merce of the United States. In consequence, an 
act was passed authorizing the President (then 



126 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



Mr. Monroe), in case the act of Parliament was 
satisfactory to liim, to open the ports of the 
United States to British vessels by his procla- 
mation. The act of Parliament was deemed 
satisfactorj', and a proclamation was accordingly 
issued, and the trade commenced. Unfortunate- 
ly for our commerce, and I think contrary to 
justice, a treasury circular issued, directing the 
collectors to charge British vessels entering our 
ports with the alien tonnage and discriminating 
duties. This order was remonstrated against by 
the British minister (I think Mr. Vaughan). 
The trade, however, went on uninterrupted. 
Congress met, and a bill was drafted in 1823 by 
Mr. Adams, then Secretary of State, and passed 
both Houses, with little, if any, debate. I voted 
for it, believing that it met, in a spirit of reci- 
procity, the British act of Parliament. This bill, 
however, contained one little word, " elsewhere," 
which completely defeated all our expectations. It 
was noticed by no one. The senator from JMas- 
sachusetts (Mr. Webster) may have understood 
its effect. If he did so understand it, he was si- 
lent. The effect of that word " elsewhere " was 
to assume the pretensions alluded to in the in- 
structions to Mr. McLane. (Pretension to a 
" right " in the trade.) The result was, that the 
British government shut their colonial ports im- 
mediately, and thenceforward. This act of 1822 
gave us a monopoly (virtually) of the West In- 
dia trade. It admitted, free of duty, a variety 
of articles, such as Indian corn, meal, oats, peas, 
and beans. The British government thought 
we entertained a belief that they could not do 
without our produce, and by their acts of the 
27th June and 5th July, 1825, they opened then- 
ports to all the world, on terms far less advan- 
tageous to the United States, than those of the 
act of 1822." 

Such is the important statement of General 
Smith. Mr. Webster was present at the time, 
and said nothing. Both these acts were clear 
rights on the part of Great Britain, and that of 
1825 contained a limitation upon the time within 
which each nation was to accept the privilege it 
offered, or lose the trade for ever. This legisla- 
tive privilege was accepted by all nations which 
had any thing to send to the British West Indies, 
except the United States. Mr. Adams did not 
accept the proffered privilege — undertook to ne- 
gotiate for better terms — failed in the attempt — 
and lost all. Mr. Clay was Secretary of State, 
Mr. Gallatin the United States Minister in Lon- 
don, and the instructions to him were, to insist 
upon it as a "' right " that our produce should be 
admitted on the same terms on which produce 
from the British possessions were admitted. — 
This was the "elsewhere," &c. The British 
;TOvernment refused to negotiate ; and then Mr. 



Gallatin was instructed to waive temporarily 
the demand of right, and accept the privilege 
offered by the act of 1825. But in the mean 
time the year allowed in the act for its accept- 
ance had expired, and Mr. Gallatin was told 
that his offer was too late ! To that answer the 
British ministry adhered ; and, from the month 
of July, 182G, the direct trade to the British 
West Indies was lost to our citizens, leaving 
them no mode of getting any share in that trade, 
either in sending out our productions or receiv- 
ing theirs, but through the expensive, tedious, 
and troublesome process of a circuitous voyage 
and the intervention of a foreign vessel. The 
shock and dissatisfaction in the United States 
were extreme at this unexpected bereavement ; 
and that dissatisfaction entered largely into the 
political feelings of the day, and became a point 
of attack on Mr. Adams's administration, and an 
element in the presidential canvass which ended 
in his defeat. 

In giving an account of this untoward event 
to his government, Mr. Gallatin gave an account 
of his final interview with Mr. Iluskisson, from 
wliich it appeared that the claim of " right " on 
tlie part of the United States, on which Mr. Gal» 
latin had been instructed to "insist," was "tem- 
porarily waived ;" but without effect. Irritation, 
on account of old scores, as expressed by Mr 
Gallatin — or resentment at our pertinacious per- 
sistence to secure a " right " where the rest of 
the world accepted a " privilege," as intimated 
by Mr. Iluskisson — mixed itself Avitli the re- 
fusal ; and the British government adhered to 
its absolute right to regulate the foreign trade 
of its colonies, and to treat us as it did the rest 
of the world. The following are passages from 
]Mr. Gallatin's dispatch, from London, September 
11,1827: 

" Mr. Iluskisson said it was the intention of 
the British government to consider the inter- 
course of the British colonies as being exclusive- 
ly under its control, and any relaxation from 
the colonial system as an indulgence, to be 
granted on such terms as might suit the policy 
of Great Britain at the time it was granted. I 
said every question of riirht had, on this occa- 
sion, been waived on the part of the United 
States, the only object of the present inquiry 
being to ascertain whether, as a matter of mu- 
tual convenience, the intercourse might not be 
opened in a manner satisfactory to both coun- 
tries. He (Mr. II.) said that it had appeared as 
if America had entertained the opinion that the 



ANNO 1829. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESmENT. 



127 



British West Indies could not exist without her 
supplies ; and that she might, therefore, compel 
Great Britain to open the intercourse on any 
terras she pleased. I disclaimed any such belief 
or intention on the part of the United States. 
But it appeared to me, and I intimated it, indeed, 
to Mr. Huskisson, that he was acting rather un- 
der the influence of irritated feelings, on account 
of past events, than with a view to the mutual 
interests of both parties." 

This was Mr. Gallatin's last dispatch. An 
order in council was issued, interdicting the trade 
to the United States ; and he returned home. 
Mr. James Barbour, Secretary at War, was sent 
to London to replace him, and to attempt again 
the repulsed negotiation; but without success. 
The British government refused to open the ques- 
tion : and thus the direct access to this valuable 
commerce remained sealed against us. President 
Adams, at the commencement of the session of 
Congress, 1827-28, formally communicated this 
fact to that body, and in terms which showed at 
once that an insult had been received, an injury 
sustained, redress refused, and ill-will established 
between the two governments. He said: 

" At the commencement of the last session of 
Congress, they were informed of the sudden and 
unexpected exclusion by the British government, 
of access, in vessels of the United States, to all 
their colonial ports, except those immediately 
bordering upon our own territory. 

" In the amicable discussions which have suc- 
ceeded the adoption of this measure, which, as it 
affected harshly the interests of the United States, 
became a subject of expostulation oa our part, 
the principles upon which its justification has 
been placed have been of a diversified character. 
It has at once been ascribed to a mere recurrence 
to the old long-established principle of colonial 
monopoly, and at the same time to a feeling of 
resentment, because the offers of an act of Par- 
liament, opening the colonial ports upon certain 
conditions, had not been grasped at with suflBcieut 
eagerness by an instantaneous conformity to 
them. At a subsequent period it has been inti- 
mated that the new exclusion was in resentment, 
because a prior act of Parliament, of 1822, open- 
ing certain colonial ports, under heavy and bur- 
densome restrictions, to vessels of the United 
States, had not been reciprocated by an admis- 
sion of British vessels from the colonics, and 
their cargoes, without any restriction or discrimi- 
nation whatever. But, be the motive for the 
interdiction what it may, the British government 
have manifested no disposition, either by negoti- 
ation or by corresponding legislative enactntents, 
to recede from it ; and we have been given dis- 
tinctly to understand that neither of the bills 
which were under the consideration of Congress 
at their last session, would have been deemed 



sufficient in their concessions to have been reward- 
ed by any relaxation from the British interdict. 
The British government have not only declined 
negotiation upon the subject, but, by the princi- 
ple they have assumed with reference to it, have 
precluded even the means of neg ttiation, It be- 
comes not the self-respect of the United States, 
either to solicit gratuitous favours, or to accept, 
as the grant of a ftivor, that for which an ample 
equivalent is exacted." 

This was the communication of Mr. Adams to 
Congress, and certainly nothing could be more 
vexatious or hopeless than the case which he 
presented — an injury, an insult, a rebuff, and a 
refusal to talk with us upon the subject. Nego- 
tiation, and the hope of it, having thus terminat- 
ed. President Adams did what the laws required 
of him, and issued his proclamation making known 
to the country the total cessation of all direct com- 
merce between the United States and the British 
West India Islands. 

The loss of this trade was a great injury to the 
United States (besides the insult), and was at- 
tended by circumstances which gave it the air of 
punishment for something that was past. It was 
a rebuff in the face of Europe; for while the 
United States were sternly and unceremoniously 
cut off from the benefit of the act of 1825, for 
omission to accept it within tlie year, yet other 
powers in the same predicament (France, Spain 
and Russia) were permitted to accept after the 
}^ear ; and the "irritated feelings" manifested by 
i\Ir. Huskisson indicated a resentment which was 
finding its gratification. We were ill-treated, 
and felt it. The people felt it. It was an ugly 
case to manage, or to endure ; and in this period 
of its worst aspect General Jackson was elected 
President. 

His position was delicate and difficult. His 
election had been deprecated as that of a rash 
and violent man, who would involve us in quar- 
rels with foreign nations ; and here was a dissen- 
sion with a great nation lying in wait for him — 
prepared to his hand — the legacy of his piv,'deces- 
sor — either to be composed satisfactorily, or to 
ripen into retaliation and hostility ; for it was 
not to be supposed that things could remain as 
they were. He had to choose between an attempt 
at amicable recovery of the trade by new over- 
tures, or retaliation — leading to, it is not known 
what. He determined upon the first of these al- 
ternatives, and Mr. Louis McLane. of Delaware, 
was selected for the delicate occasion. He wa& 



128 



THIRTY YEARS* VIEW. 



sent minister to London; and in renewing an 
application which had been so lately and so cate- 
gorically rejected, some reason had to be given 
for .a persistancc which might seem both impor- 
tunate and desperate, and even deficient in self- 
respect ; and that reason was found in the simple 
truth that there had been a change of adminis- 
tration in the United States, and with it a change 
of opinion on the subject, and on the essential 
point of a " right " in us to have our productions 
admitted into her West Indies on the same terms 
as British productions were received; that we 
were willing to take the trade as a "privilege,'' 
and simply and unconditionally, under the act of 
Parliament of 1825. Instructions to that effect 
had been drawn up by Mr. Van Buren, Secretary 
of State, under the special directions of General 
Jackson, who took this early occasion to act 
upon his cardinal maxim in our foreign inter- 
course: ^'-Ask nothing but what is right— sub- 
mit to nothing wrong. " This frank and candid 
policy had its effect. The great object was ac- 
complished. The trade was recovered; and 
what had been lost under one administration, and 
precariously enjoyed under others, and been the 
subject of fruitless negotiation for forty years, and 
under six different Presidents — Washington. John 
Adams, Jefferson, Madison, IMonroe, Quincy Ad- 
ams — with all their accomplished secretaries and 
ministers, was now amicably and satisfactorily 
obtained under the administration of General 
Jackson ; and upon the basis to give it perpetu- 
ity — that of mutual interest and actual recipro- 
city. The act of Parliament gave us the trade 
on terms nearly as good as those suggested by 
Washington in 1789; fully as good as those 
asked for by him in 1794 ; better than those in- 
serted in the treaty of that year, and suspended 
by the Senate ; and, though nominally on the 
same terms as given to the rest of the world, yet 
practically better, on account of our proximity to 
this British market; and our superabundance 
of articles (chiefly provisions and lumber) which 
it wants. And the trade has been enjoyed un- 
der this act ever since, with such entire satisfac- 
tion, that there is already an oblivion of the forty 
years' labor which it cost us to obtain it ; and a 
generation has grown up, almost without know- 
ing to whom they are indebted for its present 
enjoyment. But it made its sensation at the 
time, and a great one. The friends of the Jack- 
son administration exulted ; the people rejoiced ; 



gratification was general — but not universal; 
and these very instructions, under which such 
great and lasting advantages had been obtained, 
were made the occassion in the Senate of the 
United States of rejecting their ostensible author 
as a minister to London. But of this hereafter. 
The auspicious conclusion of so delicate an af- 
fair was doubtless first induced by General Jack- 
son's frank policy .in falling back upon Washing- 
ton's ground of '• privilege, " in contradistinction 
to the new pretension of '• right, "' — helped out a 
little, it may be, by the possible after-clap sug- 
gested in the second part of his maxim. Good 
sense and good feeling may also have had its in- 
fluence, the trade in question being as desirable 
to Great Britian as to the United States, and 
better for each to carry it on direct in their own 
vessels, than circuitously in the vessels of others; 
and the articles on each side being of a kind to 
solicit mutual exchange — tropical productions on 
one part, and those of the temperate zone on the 
other. But there was one thing which certainly 
contributed to the good result, and that was the 
act of Congress of May 29th, of which General 
Samuel Smith, senator from IMaryland, was the 
chief promoter ; and by which the President was 
authorized, on the adoption of certain measures 
by Great Britian, to open the ports of the United 
States to her vessels on reciprocal terms. The 
effect of this act was to strengthen General Jack- 
son's candid overture; and the proclamation 
opening the trade was issued October the 5th, 
1830, in the second year of the first term of the 
administration of President Jackson. And under 
that proclamation this long desired trade has 
been enjoyed ever since, and promises to be en- 
joyed in after time co-extendingly with the dura 
tion of peace between the two countries. 



CHAPTER XLIII. 

ESTABLISHMENT OF THE GLOBE NEWSPAPER. 

At a presidential levee in the winter of 1830 
-'31, Mr. Duff Green, editor of the Telegraph 
new^iaper, addressed a person then and now a 
respectable resident of Washington city (^Slr. J 
M. Duncanson), and invited him to call at his 
house, as he had something to say to him which 



ANNO 1829. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



129 



would require a confidential interview. The call 
was made, and the object of the interview dis- 
closed, which was nothing less than to engage 
his (jMr. Duncanson's) assistance in the execu- 
tion of a scheme in relation to the next presiden- 
tial election, in which General Jackson should 
be prevented from becoming a candidate for re- 
election, and Mr. Calhoun should be brought for- 
ward in his place. He informed Mr. Duncanson 
that a rupture was impending between General 
Jackson and Mr. Calhoun ; that a correspond- 
ence had taken place between them, brought 
about (as he alleged) by the intrigues of Mr. 
Van Buren ; that the correspondence was then 
in print, but its publication delayed until certain 
arrangements could be made ; that the demo- 
cratic papers at the most prominent points in 
the States were to be first secured ; and men well 
known to the people as democrats, but in the ex- 
clusive interest of Mr. Calhoun, placed in charge 
of them as editors ; that as soon as the arrange- 
ments were complete, the Telegraph would 
startle the country with the announcement of 
the difficulty (between General Jackson and 
Mr. Calhoun), and the motive for it ; and that 
all the secured presses, taking their cue from the 
Telegraph, would take sides with Mr. Calhoun, 
and cry out at the same time ; and the storm 
would seem to be so universal, and the indigna- 
tion against Mr. Van Buren would appear to be 
so great, that even General Jackson's popularity 
would be unable to save him. 

;Mr. Duncanson was then invited to take part 
in the execution of this scheme, and to take 
charge of the Frankfort (Kentucky) Argzts ; and 
flattering inducements held out to encourage him 
to do so. Mr. Duncanson expressed surprise and 
regret at all that lie heard— declared himself the 
friend of General Jackson, and of his re-election 
— opposed to all schemes to prevent him from 
being a candidate again— a disbeliever in their 
success, if attempted — and made known his de- 
termination to reveal the scheme, if it was not 
abandoned. Mr. Green begged him not to do so 
— said that the plan was not fully agreed upon ; 
and might not be carried out. This was the end 
of 'the first interview. A few days afterwards 
Mr. Green called on Mr. Duncanson, and inform- 
-^d him that a rupture was now determined upon 
and renewed his proposition that he should take 
charge of some paper, either as proprietor, or as 
editor on a liberal salary — one that would tell on 

Vol. I.— 9 



the farmers and mechanics of the country, and 
made so cheap as to go into every workshop and 
cabin. Mr. Duncanson was a practical printer 
— owned a good job oflBce — was doing a large 
business, especially for the departments— and 
only wished to remain as he was. Mr. Green 
offered, in both interviews, to relieve him from 
that concern by purchasing it from him, and as- 
sured him that he would otherwise lose the 
printing of the departments, and be sacrificed. 
Mr. Duncanson again refused to have any thing 
to do with the scheme, consulted with some 
friends, and caused the whole to be communicat- 
ed to General Jackson. The information did not 
take the General by surprise ; it was only a con- 
firmation of what he well suspected, and had 
been wisely providing against. The history of 
the movement in Mr. Monroe's cabinet, to brino- 
him before a military court, for his invasion of 
Spanish territory during the Seminole war, had 
just come to his knowledge; the doctrine of 
nullification had just been broached in Congress; 
his own patriotic toast: "The Federal Union: 
it must be preserved " — had been delivered ; his 
own intuitive sagacity told him all the rest— the 
breach with Mr. Calhoun, the defection of the 
Telegraph, and the necessity for a new paper at 
Washington, faithful, fearless and incorruptible. 
The Telegraph had been the central metro- 
politan organ of his friends and of the demo- 
cratic party, during the long and bitter canvass 
which ended in the election of General Jackson, 
in 1828. Its editor had been gratified with the 
first rich fruits of victory — the public printing 
of the two Houses of Congress, the executive 
patronage, and the organship of the administra- 
tion. The paper was still (in 1830) in its 
columns, and to the public eye, the advocate and 
supporter of General Jackson ; but he knew 
what was to happen, and quietly took his mea- 
sures to meet an inevitable contingency. In the 
summer of 1830, a gentleman in one of the pub- 
lic offices showed him a paper, the Frankfort 
(Kentucky) Argus, containing a powciful and 
spirited review of a certain nullification speech 
in Congress. He inquired for the author, ascer- 
tained him to be Mr. Francis P. Blair — not the 
editor, but an occasional contributor to the Argtis 
— and had him wTittcn to on the subject of tak- 
ing charge of a paper in Washington. The ap- 
plication took IMr. Blair by surprise. He was 
not thinking if clianging his residence and i)ur- 



130 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



suits. He was well occupied where he was — 
clerk of the lucrative office of the Stale Circuit 
Court at the capital of the State, salaried presi- 
dent of the Common wealth Bank (by the elec- 
tion of the legislature), and proprietor of a farm 
and slaves in that rich State. But he was devot- 
ed to General Jackson and his measures, and did 
not hesitate to relinquish his secure advantages 
at home to engage in the untried business of 
editor at Washington. He came — established the 
Globe newspaper — and soon after associated with 
John C. Rives, — a gentleman worthy of the 
association and of the confidence of General Jack- 
son and of the democratic part}' : and under their 
management, the paper became the efficient and 
faithful organ of the administration during the 
whole period of his service, and that of his suc- 
cessor, Mr. Van Buren. It was established in 
time, and just in time, to meet the advancing 
events at Washington City. All that General 
Jackson had foreseen in relation to the conduct 
of the Telegraph, and all that had been com- 
municated to him through Mr. Duncanson, came 
to pass : and he found himself, early in the first 
term of his administration, engaged in a triple 
war — with nullification, the Bank of the United 
States, and the whig party : — and must have 
been without defence or support from the news- 
paper press at Washington had it not been for 
his foresight in establishing the Globe. 



CHAPTER XLIV. 

LIMITATION OF I'UBLIC LAND SALES. SUSPEN 
SION OF SURVEYS. ABOLITION OF THE OFFICE 
OF SURVEYOIi GENERAL. ORIGIN OF THE UNI- 
TED STATES LAND SYSTEM. AUTHORSHIP OF 
THE ANTI-SLAVERY ORDINANCE OF 177S. SLA- 
VERY CONTROVERSY. PROTECTIVE TARIFF. 
INCEPTION OF THE DOCTRINE OF NULLIFICA- 
TION. 

At the commencement of the session 1829-'30, 
Mr. Foot, of Connecticut, submitted in the Sen- 
ate a resolution of inquiry which excited mu«h 
feeling among the western members of that bod}-. 
It was a proposition to inquire into the expe- 
diency of limiting the .sales of the public lands to 
those then in market — to suspend the surveys 
of the public lands— and to aboli.sh the office of 
Surveyor General. The effect of such a resolu- 



tion, if sanctioned upon inquiry and carried into 
legislative effect, would have been to check emi- 
gration to the new States in the West — to check 
the growth and .settlement of these States and 
territories — and to deliver up large portions of 
them to the dominion of wild beasts. In that 
sense it was immediately taken up by myself, 
and other western members, and treated as an 
injurious proposition — insulting as well as inju- 
rious — and not fit to be considered by a com- 
mittee, much less to be reported upon and adop- 
ted. I opened the debate against it in a speech, 
of which the following is an extract : 

'• Mr. Benton disclaimed all intention of hav- 
ing any thing to do with the motives of the 
mover of the re.solution : he took it according to 
its effect and operation, and conceiving this to be 
eminent'}' injurious to the rights and interests 
of the new States and Territories, he should jus- 
tify the view which he had taken, and the vote 
he intended to give, by an exposition of facts 
and reasons which would show the disastrous 
nature of the practical effects of this resolution. 

" On the first branch of these effects — check- 
ing emigration to the West — it is clear, that, if 
the sales are limited to the lands now in market, 
emigration will cease to flow ; for these lands 
are not of a character to attract people at a dis- 
tance. In Missouri they are the refu.se of forty 
years picking under the Spanish Government, 
and twenty more under the Government of the 
United States. The character and value of this 
refuse had been shown, officially, in the reports 
of the Registers and Receivers, tiiade in obedience 
to a call from the Senate. Other gentlemen 
would .show what was said of it in their respec- 
tive States ; he would confine himself to his 
own, to the State of j\Iissouri. and show it to be 
miserable indeed. The St. Louis District, con- 
taining two and a quarter millions of acres, was 
estimated at an average value of fifteen cents per 
acre ; the Cape Girardeau District, containmg 
four and a half millions of acres, was estimated 
at twelve and a half cents per acre ; the Wes- 
tern District, containing one million and three 
quarters of acres, was estimated at sixty-two 
and a half cents ; from the other two districts 
there was no intelligent or pertinent return ; but 
assuming them to be equal to the Western Dis- 
trict, and the average value of the lands they 
contain would be only one half the amount of 
the present minimum price. This being the 
state of the lands in Missouri which would be 
subject to sale under the operation of this reso- 
lution, no emigrants would be attracted to them. 
Persons who remove to new countries want new 
lands, first choices ; and if they cannot get these, 
they have no suflicient inducement to move. 

'■ The second ill effect to result from this reso- 
lution, supposing it to ripen into the measures 
which it implies to be necessary would be, in 



ANNO 1829. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



131 



limiting the settlements in the new States and 
Territories. This limitation of settlement would 
be the inevitable effect of confining; the sales to 
the lands now in market. These lands in Mis- 
souri, only amount to one third of the State. 
By consequence, only one third could be settled. 
Two thirds of the State would remain without 
inhabitants ; the resolution says, for ' a certain 
period,' and the gentlemen, in their speeches, 
expound this certain period to be seventy-two 
years. The}^ say seventy-two millions of acres 
are now in market ; that we sell but one million 
a j'car ; therefore, we have enough to supply the 
demand for seventj^-two j^ears. It does not en- 
ter their heads to consider that, if the price was 
adapted to the value, all this seventy-two mil- 
lions that is fit for cultivation would be sold 
immediately. They must go on at a million a 
year for seventy-two 3'ears, the Scripture term of 
the life of man — a long period in the age of a 
nation ; the exact period of the Babylonish cap- 
tivity — a long and sorrowful period in the his- 
tory of the .Jews ; and not less long nor less 
sorrowful in the history of the West, if this 
resolution should take effect. 

" The third point of objection is. that it would 
deliver up large portions of new States and Ter- 
ritories to the dominion of wild beasts. In Mis- 
souri, this surrender would be equal to two-thirds 
of the State, comprising about forty thousand 
square miles, covering the whole valley of the 
Osage River, besides many other parts, and ap- 
proaching within a dozen miles of the centre and 
capital of the State. All this would be deliver- 
ed up to wild beasts : for the Indian title is ex- 
tinguished, and the Indians gone ; the white peo- 
ple would be excluded from it ; beasts alone 
would take it ; and all this in violation of the 
Divine command to replenish the earth, to in- 
crease and multiply upon it, and to have domin- 
ion over the beasts of the forest, the birds of the 
air, the fish in the waters, and the creeping 
things of the earth. 

•' The fourth point of objection is, in the remo- 
val of the land records — the natural effect of 
abolishing all the offices of the Surveyors General. 
These offices are five in number. It is proposed 
to abolish them all, and the reason assigned in 
debate is, that they are sinecures ; that is to 
say, offices which have revenues and no emploj-- 
ment. This is the description of a sinecure. 
A\'e have one of these offices in INIissouri, and I 
know something of it. The Surveyor General, 
Colonel McRee, in point of fidelity to his trust. 
belongs to the school of Nathaniel Macon ; in 
point of science and intelligence, he belongs to 
the first order of men that Europe or America 
contains. He and his clerks carry labor and 
drudgery to the ultimate jioint of human exer- 
tion, and still f^iU short of the task before them ; 
and this is an office which it is proposed to 
abolish under the notion of a sinecure, as an 
office with revenues, and without employment. 
The aVjolition of these offices would involve the 
necessity of removmg all their records, and thus 



depri\'ing the country of all the evidences of the 
foundations of all the land titles. This would 
be sweeping work ; but the gentleman's plaii 
would be incomplete without including the 
General Land Office in this city, the principal 
business of which is to superintend the five Sur- 
vej'or General's offices, and for which there could 
be but little use after they were abolished. 

" These are the practical effects of the resolu- 
tion. Emigration to the new States checked ; 
their settlement limited ; a large portion of their 
surface delivered up to the dominion of beasts ; 
the land records removed. Such are the injuries 
to be inflicted upon the new States, and we, the 
senators from those States, are called upon to 
vote in favor of the resolution which proposes to 
inquire into the expediency of committing all 
these enormities ! I, for one. will not do it. I 
will vote for no such inquiry. I would as soon 
vote for inquiries into the expediency of confla- 
grating cities, of devastating provinces, and of 
submerging fruitful lands under the waves of the 
ocean. 

" I take my stand upon a great moral principle : 
that it is never right to inquire into the expedi- 
ency of doing wrong. 

" The propos.ed inquiry is to do wrong ; to in- 
flict unmixed, unmitigated evil upon the new 
States and Territories. Such inquiries are not 
to be tolerated. Courts of law will not sustain 
actions which have immoral foundations ; legis' 
lative bodies should not sustain inquiries which 
have iniquitous conclusions. Courts of law make 
it an object to give public satisfaction in the ad- 
ministration of justice ; legislative bodies should 
consult the public tranquillity in the prosecution 
of their measure?. They should not alarm and 
agitate the coimtry ; yet, this inquiry, if it goes 
on. will give the greatest dissatisfaction to the 
new States in the West and South. It will alarm 
and agitate them, and ought to do it. It will 
connect itself with other inquiries going on else- 
where — in the other end of this building — in the 
House of Representatives — to make the new 
States a source of revenne to the old ones, to de- 
liver them up to a new set of masters, to throw 
them as grapes into the wine press, to be trod 
and squeezed as long as one drop of juice oould 
be pressed from their hulls. These measures will 
go together ; and if that resolution passes, and 
this one j)asses, the transition will be easy and 
natural, from dividing the money after the lands 
are sold, to divide the lands before they arc sold, 
and then to rcntino: the land and drawino; an an- 
nual income, instead of selling it for a price in 
hand. The signs are portentous ; the crisis is 
alarming; it is time for the new States to wake 
up to their danger, and to prepare for a struggle 
which carries ruin and disgrace to them, if the 
issue is against them." 

The debate spread, and took an acrimonious 

turn, and sectional, imputing to the quarter of 

the Union from which it came an old, and early 

policy to check the growth of the West at tbfl 



132 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



outset by proposing to limit the sale of the west- 
ern lands to a '• clean riddance " as they went — 
selling no tract in advance until all in the rear 
was sold out. It so happened that the first or- 
dinance reported for the sale and survej' of west- 
ern lands in the Congress of the Confederation, 
(1785.) contained a provision to this eflfect ; and 
came from a committee strongly Northern — two 
to one. eight against four : and was struck out 
in the House on the motion of southern members, 
supported by the whole power of the South. I 
gave this account of the circumstance : 

'■ The ordinance reported by the committee, 
cont;iined the plan of surveying the public lands, 
which has since been followed. It adopted the 
scientific principle of ranges of townships, which 
has been continued ever since, and found so 
beneficial in a variety of ways to the country. 
The ranges began on the Pennsylvania line, and 
proceeded west to tlio Mississippi ; and since the 
acquisition of Louisiana, they have proceeded 
west of that river ; the townships began upon 
the Ohio River, and proceeded north to the Lakes. 
The townships were divided into sections of a 
mile squai-e, six hundred and forty acres each ; 
and the minimum price was fixed at one dollar 
per acre, and not less than a section to be sold 
together. This is the outline of the present plan 
of sales and surveys; and, with the modifica- 
tions it has received, and may receive, in gradua- 
ting the price of the land to the quality, the plan 
is excellent. But a principle was incorporated 
in the ordinance of the most fatal character. It 
was, that each township should be sold out com- 
plete before any land could be offered in the next 
one! This was tantamount to a law that the 
lands should not be sold ; that the country should 
not be settled : for it is certain that every town- 
ship, or almost every one, would contain land un- 
fit for cultivation, and for which no person would 
give six hundred and forty dollars for six hun- 
dred and forty acres. The effect of such a pro- 
vision may be judged by the fact that above one 
hundred thousand acres remain to this day un- 
sold in the first land district ; the district of Steu- 
benville. in Ohio, which included the first range 
and first township. If that provision had re- 
mained in the ordinance, the settlements would 
not 3^et have got out of sight of the I'ennsylva- 
nia line. It was an tinjust and preposterous 
provision. It required the people to take the 
country clean before them ; buy all as they went ; 
mountains, hills, and swamps ; rocks, glens, and 
prairies. They were to make clean work, as the 
giant Polyphenms did when he ate up the com- 
panions of Ulysses : 

' No entrails, blood, nor solid bono remains.' 

Nothing could be more iniquitous than such a 
provision. It was like requiring your guest to eat 
all the bones on his plate before he should have 
more meat. To say that township No. 1 should 



be sold out complete before township No. 2 should 
be offered for sale, was like requiring the bones 
of the first turkey to be eat up before the breast 
of the second one should be touched. Yet such 
was the provision contained in the first ordinance 
for the sale of the public lands, reported by a 
committee of twelve, of which eight were from 
the north and four from the south side of the 
Potomac. IIow invincible must have been the 
determination of some politicians to prevent the 
settlement of the West, when they would thu.s 
counteract the sales of the lands which had just 
been obtained after years of importunity, for the 
payment of the public debt ! 

" When this ordinance was put upon its pas- 
sage in Congress, two Virginians, whose names, 
for that act alone, would deserve the lasting gra- 
titude of the West, levelled their blows against 
the obnoxious provision. Mr. Grayson moved to 
strike it out, and ^Ir. Monroe seconded him ; and. 
after an animated and arduous contest, they suc- 
ceeded. The whole South supported them ; not 
one recreant arm from the South ; many sca^tter- 
ing members from the North also voted with 
the South, and in favor of the infant West ; prov- 
ing then, as now, and as it always has been, that 
the West has true supporters of her rights and 
interests — unhappily not enough of them — in 
that quarter of the Union from which the mea- 
sures have originated that several times threaten- 
ed to be fatal to her." 

Still enlarging its circle, but as yet still confined 
to the sale and disposition of the public lands, 
the debate went on to discuss the propriety oJ 
selling them to settlers at auction prices, and at 
an abitrar}' minimum for all qualities, and a re- 
fusal of donations ; and in this hard policy the 
North was again considered as the exacting part 
of the Union — the South as the favorer of liberal 
terms, and the generous dispenser of gratuitous 
"•rants to the settlers in the new States and Ter- 
ritories. On this point, Mr. Hayne, of South 
Carolina, thus expressed himself: 

"The payment of 'a penn}',' or a 'pepper 
corn,' was the stipulated price which our fathers 
along the whole Atlantic coast, now composing 
the old thirteen States, paid for their lands ; and 
even when conditions, seemingly more substan- 
tial, were annexed to the grants ; such for instance 
as ' settlement and cultivation ; ' these were con- 
sidered as substantially complied with, by the 
cutting down a few trees and erecting a log cabin 
— the work of only a few dajs. Even these con- 
ditions very soon came to be considered as merely 
nominal, and were never required to be pursued, 
in order to vest in the grantee the fee simple of 
the soil. Such was the system under which this 
country was originally settled, and under which 
the thirteen colonies llourished and grew up to 
that early and vigorous manhood, which enabled 
them in a few years to achieye their independence ; 



ANNO 1829. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



133 



and I beg gentlemen to recollect, and note the 
fact, that, while the}^ paid substantially nothing 
to the mother country, the whole profits of their 
industry were suffered to remain in their own 
hands. Now, what, let us inquire, was the rea- 
son which has induced all nations to adopt this 
system in the settlement of new countries? 
Can it be any other than this ; that it affords the 
only certain means of building up in a wilder- 
ness, great and prosperous communities ? Was 
not that policy founded on the universal belief, 
that the conquest of a new country, the driving 
out '• the savage beasts and still more savage men," 
cutting down and subduing the forest, and en- 
countering all the hardships and privations neces- 
sarily incident to the conversion of the wilder- 
ness into cultivated fields, was worth the fee sim- 
ple of the soil ? And was it not believed that 
the mother country found ample remuneration 
for the value of the land so granted, in the addi- 
tions to her power and the new sources of com- 
merce and of wealth, furnished by prosperous 
and populous States 1 Now, sir, I submit to the 
candid consideration of gentlemen, whether the 
policy so diametricall}^ opposite to this, which has 
been invariably pursued by the United States to- 
wards the new States in the West has been quite 
so just and liberal, as we have been accustomed 
to believe. Certain it is, that the British colo- 
nies to the north of us. and the Spanish and French 
to the south and west, have been fostered and 
reared up under a very different sj'stem. Lands, 
which had been for fifty or a hundred years open to 
ever}'' settler, without any charge bej^ond the ex- 
pense of the survey, were, the moment they fell 
into the hands of the United States, held up for 
sale at the highest price that a public auction, at 
the most favorable .seasons, and not unfrequently 
a spirit of the wildest competition, could produce ; 
with a limitation that they should never be sold 
below a certain minimum price ; thus making it. 
as it would seem, the cardinal point of our policy, 
not to settle the countr}^, and facilitate the forma- 
tion of new States, but to till our coffers by coin- 
ing our lands into gold." 

The debate was taking a turn which was for- 
eign to the expectations of the mover of the res- 
olution, and which, in leading to sectional crimi- 
nations, would only inflame feelings without lead- 
ing to any practical result. Mr. Webster saw 
this ; and to get rid of the whole subject, moved 
its indefinite postponement ; but in arguing his 
motion he delivered a speech which introduced 
new topics, and greatly enlarged the scope, and 
extended the length of the debate which he pro- 
{wsed to terminate. One of these new topics re- 
ferred to the author':hip, and the merit of pass- 
ing the famous ordinance of 1787, for the gov- 
ernment of the Northwestern Territory, and es- 
pecially in relation to the antislavery clause 



which that ordinance contained. Mr. Webster 
claimed the merit of this authorship for Mr. 
Nathan Dane — an eminent jurist of Massachu- 
setts, and avowed that " it was carried by the 
No7'th. and by the North alone.'''' I replied, 
claiming the authorship for Mr. Jefferson, and 
showing from the Journals that he (Mr. Jeffer- 
son) brought the measure into Congress in the 
year 1784 (the 19th of April of that 3'ear), as 
chairman of a committee, with the antislavery 
clause in it, which Mr. Speight, of North Caroli- 
na, moved to strike out ; and it was struck out 
— the three Southern States present voting for 
the striking out. because'the clause did not then 
contain the provision in favor of the recovery of 
fugitive slaves, which was afterwards ingrafted 
upon it. Mr. Webster saj^s it was struck out 
because " nine States " did not vote for its reten- 
tion. That is an error arising from confounding 
the powers of the confederation. Nine States 
were only required to concur in measures of the 
highest import, as declaring war, making peace, 
negotiating treaties, &c., — and in all ordinary 
legislation the concurrence of a bare majority 
(seven) was sufBcient ; and in this case there 
were only six States voting for the retention. 
New Jersey being erroneously counted by jMr. 
Webster to make seven. If she had voted the 
number would have been seven, and the clause 
would have stood. He was led into the error by 
seeing the name of Mr. Dick appearing in the 
call for New Jersey ; but New Jersey was not 
present as a State, being represented by only one 
member, and it requiring two to constitute the 
presence of a State. Mr. Dick was indulged with 
putting his name on the Journal, but his vote 
was not counted. jNIr. Webster says the ordi- 
nance reported by Mr. Jefferson in 1784. did no*^ 
pass into a law. This is a mistake again. Ii 
did pass ; and that within five daj^s after the 
antislavery clause was struck out — and that 
without any attempt to renew that clause, 
although the competent number (seven) of 
non-slavcholding States were present — the col- 
league of jMr. Dick having joined him, and con- 
stituted the presence of New Jersey. Two years 
afterwards, in July 1787, the ordinance was pass* 
ed over again, as it now stands, and was pre- 
eminently the work of the South. The ordi- 
nance, as it now stands, was reported by a com- 
mittee of five members, of whom three were 
from slaveholding States, and two (and one of 



134 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW, 



them the chairman) were from Virginia alone. 
It received its first reading the day it was re- 
ported — its second reading the Hcxt day, when 
one other State had appeared — the third reading 
on the day ensuing; going through all the 
forms of legislation, and becoming a law in three 
days — receiving the votes of the eight States 
present, and the vote of everj^ member of each 
State, except one; and that one from a free 
State north of the Potomac. These details I 
verified by producing the Journals, and showed 
under the dates of July llth,1787, and July 12th 
and 13th, the votes actually given for the ordi- 
nance. The same vote repealed the ordinance 
(Mr. Jefferson's) of 1784. I read in the Senate 
the passages from the Journal of the Congress 
of the confederation, the passages which showed 
these votes, and incorporated into the speech 
which I published, the extract from the Journal 
which I produced ; and now incorporate the same 
in this work, that the authorship of that ordi- 
nance of 1787, and its passage through the old 
Congress, may be known in all time to come as 
the indisputable work, both in its conception and 
consummation, of the South. This is the ex- 
tract : 

THE JOURNAL. 

Wednesday, July llth, 1787. 

" Congress assembled : Present, the seven 
States above mentioned." (Massachusetts, New 
York, New Jersey, Virginia. North Carolina, 
South Carolina, and Georgia — 7.) 

" The Committee, consisting of Mr. Carring- 
ton (of Virginia), ]\Ir. Dane (of ^Massachusetts), 
Mr. K. H. Lee (of Virginia), Mr. Kean (of South 
Carolina), and ]Mr. Smith (of New York), to 
whom was referred the report of a committee 
touching the temporary government of the West- 
ern Territorj', reported an ordinance for the go- 
vernment of the Territory of the United States 
northwest of the river Ohio ; which was read a 
first time. 

" Ordered, That to-morrow be assigned for 
the second reading." 

" Thursday, July 12t7i, 1787. 

" Congress assembled : Present, Massachu- 
setts, New York, New Jersey. Delaware, Vir- 
ginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Geor- 
gia— (8.) 

"According to order, the ordinance for the 
government of the Territory of the United States 
northwest of the river Ohio, was read a second 
time. 

" Ordered, That to-morrow be assigned for 
the third reading of said ordinance." 



" Friday, July Vith, 1787. 

" Congress assembled : Present, as yesterday. 

" According to order, the oidinance for the 

government of the Territor}' of the United States 

northwest of the river Ohio, was read a third 

time, and passed as follows." 

[Here follows the whole ordinance, in the 
very words in which it now appears among the 
laws of the United States, with the non-slavery 
clause, the provisions in favor of schools and 
education, against impaiiing the obligation of 
contracts, laying the foundation and security of 
all these stipulations in compact, in favor of re- 
storing fugitives from service, and repealing the 
ordinance of 23d of April, 1784 — the one report- 
ed by Mr. Jefierson.] 

" On passing the above ordinance, the yeas 
and nays being required by Mr. Yates : 

Massachusetts — Mr. Holten, aye ; Mr. Dane, 
aye. 

Ne\o York — Mr. Smith, aye ; Mr. Yates, no ; 
Mr. Harring, aye. 

New Jersey — I\Ir. Clarke, aye ; Mr. Scheur- 
man, aye. 

Delaware — Mr. Kearney, aye ; Mr. Mitchell, 
aye. 

Virginia — Mr. Grayson, aye ; Mr. R. H. Lee, 
aye ; Mr. Carrington, aye. 

North Carolina — Mr. Blount, aye ; Mr. Haw- 
kins, aye. 

South Carolina — Mr. Kean, aye ; Mr. Hu« 
ger, aye. 

Georgia — Mr. Few, aye ; ]\Ir. Pierce, aye. 

So it was resolved in the afiSrmative." (Pagt 
754, volume 4.) 

The bare reading of these passages from the 
Journals of the Congress of the old confedera- 
tion, shows how erroneous JMr. Webster was in 
these portions of his speech : 

'• At the foundation of the constitution of these 
new northwestern States, we are accustomed, 
sir, to praise the lawgivers of antiijuity ; we 
help to perpetuate the fame of Solon and Lycur- 
gus ; but 1 doubt whether one single law of any 
lawgiver, ancient or modern, has produced effects 
of more distinct, marked, and lasting character, 
than the ordinance of '87. That instrument, 
was drawn by Nathan Dane, then, and now, a 
citi7X'n of Massachusetts. It was adopted, as I 
think I have understood, without the slightest 
alteration ; and certainly it has happened to few 
men to be the authors of a political measure of 
more large and enduring consequence. It fixed, 
for ever, the character of the population in the 
vast regions northwest of the Ohio, by exclud- 
ing from them involuntary servitude. It im- 
pressed on the soil itself, while it was yet a wil- 
derness, an incapacity to bear up any other than 
free men. It laid the interdict against personal 
servitude, in original compact, not onl}' deeper 
than all local law, but deeper, also, than all local 



ANNO 1829. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



135 



constitutions. Under the circumstances then 
existing, I look upon this original and season- 
able provision, as a real good attained. We see 
its consequences at this moment, and we shall 
never cease to see them, perhaps, while the Ohio 
shall flow. It was a great and salutary measure 
of prevention. Sir. I should fear the rebuke of 
no intelligent gentleman of Kentucky, were I 
to ask whether if such an ordinance could have 
been applied to his own Si.ate, while it yet was 
a wilderness, and before Boon had passed the 
gap of the Alleghany, he does not suppose it 
would have contributed to the ultimate great- 
ness of that commonwealth ? It is, at any rate, 
not to be doubted, that where it did apply it has 
produced an effect not easily to be described, or 
measured in the growth of the States, and the 
extent and increase of their population. Now, 
sir, this great measure again was carried by the 
north, and by the north alone. There were, in- 
deed, individuals elsewhere favorable to it ; but 
it was supported as a measure, entirely by the 
votes of the northern States. If New England 
had been governed by the narrow and selfish 
views now ascribed to her, this very measure 
was, of all others, the best calculated to thwart 
her purposes. It was, of all things, the very 
means of rendering certain a vast emigration 
from her own population to the west. She 
looked to that consequence only to disregard it. 
She deemed the regulation a most useful one to 
the States that would spring up on the territory, 
and advantageous to the country at large. She 
adhered to the principle of it perseveringly, year 
after year, until it was finally accomplished. 

" An attempt has been made to transfer, from 
the North to the South, the honor of this exclu- 
sion of slavery from the northwestern territory. 
The journal, without argument or comment, re- 
futes such attempt. The cession by Virginia 

On the 19th of April 
a committee, consisting of Messrs. 
Jefferson, Chase, and Howell, reported a plan 
for a temporary government of the territory, in 
which was tliis article : ' that, after the year 
1800, there shall be neither slavery, nor invol- 
untary servitude in any of the said States, other- 
wise than in punishment of crimes, whereof the 
party shall have been convicted.' Mr. Speight, 
of North Carolina, moved to strike out this 
paragraph. The question was put, according to 
the form then practised : ' Shall these words 
stand, as part of the plan,' &c. ? New Hamp- 
shire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecti- 
cut, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania 
— seven States, voted in the affirmative. Mary- 
laud, Virginia, and South Carolina, in the nega- 
tive. North Carolina was divided. As the con- 
sent of nine States was necessary, the words 
could not stand, and were struck out according- 
ly. Mr. Jeiierson voted for the clause, but was 
overruled by his colleagues. 

" In MarcL the next year [1785], Mr, King 
of Massachusetts, seconded by Mr. Ellery of 
Rhode Island, proposed the formerly rejected 



was made, March, 1784. 
following. 



article, with this addition : ^And that this regii- 
lation shall be an article of comjpact. and re- 
main a fundamental principle of the constitu- 
tions between, the thirteen original States, and 
each of the States described in the resolve,'' &c. 
On this clause, which provided the adequate and 
thorough security, the eight northern States at 
that time voted affirmatively, and the four 
southern States negatively. The votes of nine 
States were not yet obtained, and thus, the pro- 
vision was again rejected by the southern States. 
The perseverance of the north held out, and two 
years afterwards the object was attained," 

This is shown to be all erroneous in relation to 
this ordinance. It was not first drawn b}- Mr. 
Dane, but by Mr. Jefferson, and that nearly two 
years before Mr. Dane came into Congress. It 
was not passed by the North alone, but equally 
by the South — there being but eight States pre- 
sent at the passing, and they equally of the North 
and the South — and the South voting unani- 
mously for it, both as States and as individual 
members, while the North had one member against 
it. It was not bafliled two years for the want of 
nine States ; if so, and nine States had been neces- 
sary, it would not have been passed when it was. 
and never by free State votes alone. There were 
but eight States (both Northern and Southern) 
present at the passing ; and there were not nine 
free States in the confederacy at that time. There 
were but thirteen in all : and the half of these, 
as nearly as thirteen can be divided, were slave 
States. The fact is, that the South only delayed 
its vote for the antislavery clause in the ordi- 
nance for want of the provision in favor of re- 
covering fugitives from service. As soon as that 
was added, she took the lead again for the ordi- 
nance — a fiict which gives great emphasia to the 
corresponding provision in the constitution. 

.Mr. Webster was present when I read these 
extracts, and said nothing. He neither reaffirm- 
ed his previous statement, that Mr. Dane was 
the author of the ordinance, and that " this great 
measure was carried by the North, and by the 
North alone.'''' He said nothing ; nor did he af- 
terwards correct the errors of his speech : and 
they now remain in it ; and have given occasion 
to a very authentic newspaper contradiction of 
his statement, copied, like my statement to the 
Senate, from the Journals of the old Congress. 
It was by Edward Coles, Esq., formerly of Vir- 
ginia, and private secretary to President Madi- 
son, afterwards governor of the State of Illinois, 
and now a citizen of Pennsylvania, resident of 



136 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW 



Philadelphia. He made his correction through 
the National Intelligencer, of Washington City ; 
and being drawn from the same sources it agrees 
entirely with my own. And thus the South is 
entitled to the credit of originating and pass- 
iBg this great measure — a circumstance to be re- 
membered and quoted, as showing the South at 
that time in taking the lead in curtailing and re- 
stricting the existence of slavery. The cause of 
Mr. Webster's mistakes may be found in the 
fact that the ordinance was three times before the 
old Congress, and once (the third time) in the 
hands of a committee of which Mr. Dane was a 
member. It was first i-eported by a committee 
of three (April, 1784) of which two were from 
slave states, (Mr. Jefferson of Virginia and Mr. 
Chase of ■Maryland,) Mr. Howard, of Rhode 
Island ; and this, as stated, was nearly two years 
before Mr. Dane became a member. The anti- 
slavery clause was then dropped, there being but 
six States for it. The next year, the antislavery 
clause, with some modification, was moved by Mr. 
Rufus King, and sent as a proposition to a commit- 
tee : but did not ripen into a law. Afterwards 
the whole ordinance was passed as it now stands, 
upon the report of a committee of six, of whom 
Mr. Dane was one ; but not the chairman. 

Closelj'' connected with this question of author- 
ship to which ]Mr. Webster's remarks give rise, 
was another which excited some warm discussion 
— the topic of slavery — and the eflect of its ex- 
istence or non-existence in different States. Ken- 
tucky and Ohio were taken for examples, and the 
superior improvement and population of Ohio 
were attributed to its exemption from the evils 
of slavery. This was an excitable subject, and 
the more so because the wounds of the Missouri 
controversy, in which the North was the undis- 
puted aggressor, were still tender, and hardly 
scarred over. Mr. Ilayne answered with warmth 
and resented as a reflection upon the slave States 
this disadvantageous comparison. I replied to 
the same topic myself, and said : 

" I was on the subject of slavery, as connected 
with the Missouri question, when last on the 
floor. The senator from South Carolina [Mr. 
Hayne] could see nothing in the question before 
the Senate, nor in any previous part of the de- 
bate, to justify the introduction of that topic. 
Neither could I. He thought he saw the ghost 
of the Missouri question brought in among us. 
So did T. lie was astonished at the apparition. 
I was not : for a close observance of the signs 
in the \Vest had prepared me for this develop- 



ment from the East. I was well prepared for 
tliat invective against slaverj'', and for that am- 
plification of the blessings of exemption fiora 
slavery, exemplified in the condition of Ohio, 
which the senator from ^lassachusetts indulged 
in, and which the object in view required to be 
derived from the Northeast. I cut the root of 
that derivation by reading a passage from the 
Journals of the old Congress ; but this will not 
l)revent the invective and encomium from going 
forth to do their office ; nor obliterate the line 
which was drawn between the free State of Ohio 
and the slave State of Kentucky. If the only 
results of this invective and encomium were 
to exalt still higher the oratorical fame of the 
speaker, I should spend not a moment in remark- 
ing upon them. But it is not to be forgotten that 
the terrible Missouri agitation took its rise from 
the " substance of two speeches" delivered on 
this floor ; and since that time, antislavery speech- 
es, coming from the same political and geographi- 
cal quarter, are not to be disregarded here. What 
was said upon that topic was certainly intended 
for the north side of the Potomac and Ohio ; to 
the people, then, of that division of the Union, 
I wish to address myself, and to disabuse them 
of some erroneous impressions. To them I can 
truly say, that slavery, in the abstract, has but 
few advocates or defenders in the slave-holding 
States, and that slavery as it is, an hereditary in- 
stitution descended upon us from our ancestors, 
would have fewer advocates among us than it 
has, if those who have nothing to do with the 
subject would only let us alone. The sentiment 
in favor of slavery was much weaker before those 
intermeddlers began their operations than it is at 
present. The views of leading men in the North 
and the South were indisputably the same in 
the earlier periods of our government. Of this 
our legislative history contains the highest proof. 
The foreign-slave trade was prohibited in Virgi- 
nia, as soon as the Revolution began. It Avas one 
of her first acts of sovereignty. In the conven- 
tion of that State which adopted the federal con- 
stitution, it was an objection to that instrument 
that it tolerated the African slave-trade for twen- 
t}^ years. Nothing that has appeared since has 
surpassed the indignant denunciations of this 
traffic by Patrick Henry, George Mason, and 
others, in that convention. 

" Sir, I regard with admiration, that is to say, 
with wonder, the sublime morality of those who 
cannot bear the abstract contemplation of sla- 
very, at the distance of five hundred or a thou- 
sand miles off. It is entirely above, that is to 
say, it aflects a vast superiority over the moral- 
ity of the primitive Christians, the apostles of 
Christ, and Christ himself. Christ and the 
apostles appeared in a province of the Roman 
empire, when that empire was called the Roman 
woi'ld, and that woi'ld was filled with slaves. 
Forty millions was the estimated number, being 
one-fourth of the whole population. Single indi- 
viduals held twenty thousand slaves. A freed 
man, one who had himself been a Siavc, died the 



ANNO 1829. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



137 



possessor of four thousand — such were the num- 
bers. The rights of the owTiers over this multi- 
tude of human beings was that of life and death, 
without protection from law or mitigation from 
public sentiment. The scourge, the cross, the 
fish-pond, the den of the wild beast, and the 
arena of of the gladiator, was the lot of the slave, 
upon the slightest expression of the master's will. 
A law of incredible atrocity made all slaves re- 
sponsible with their own lives for the life of their 
master; it was the law that condemned the 
whole household of slaves to death, in case of the 
assassination of the master — a law under which 
as many as four hundred have been executed at 
a time. And these slaves were the white people 
of Europe and of Asia Minor, the Greeks and 
other nations, from whom the present inhabitants 
of the world derive the most valuable productions 
of the human mind. Christ saw all this — the 
number of the slaves — their hapless condition — 
and their white color, which was the same with 
his own ; yet he said nothing against slavery ; 
he preached no doctrines which led to insurrec- 
tion and massacre ; none which, in their applica- 
tion to the state of things in our country, would 
authorize an inferior race of blacks to extermi- 
nate that superior race of whites, in whose ranks 
he himself appeared upon earth. He preached 
no such doctrines, but those of a contrary tenor, 
which inculcated the duty of fidelity and obedi- 
ence on the part of the slave — humanity and 
kindness on the part of the master. His apostles 
did the same. St Paul sent back a runaway 
slave. Onesimus, to his owner, with a letter of 
apology and supplication. He was not the man 
to harbor a runaway, much less to entice him 
from his master ; and, least of all, to excite an 
insurrection. " 

This allusion to the Missouri controversy, and 
invective against the free States for their part in 
it, brought a reply from Mr. Webster, showing 
what their conduct had been at the first introduc- 
tion of the slavery topic in the Congress of the 
United States, and that they totally refused to 
interfere between master and slave in any way 
whatever. This is what he said : 

" When the present constitution was submitted 
for the ratification of the people, there were those 
who imagined that the powers of the government 
which it proposed to establish might, perhaps, in 
some possible mode, be exerted in measures tend- 
ing to the abolition of slavery. This suggestion 
would, of course, attract much attention ''in the 
southern conventions. In tliat of Virginia, Gover- 
nor Randolph said : 

" ' I hope there is none here who, considering 
the subject in the calm light of philosophy, will 
make an objection dishonorable to Virginia— that, 
at tlie moment they are securing the rights of 
their citizens, an objection is started, that there 
is a spark of hope that those unfortunate men 



now held in bondage may, by the operation cf 
the general government, be made free. ' 

" At the very first Congress, petitions on the 
subject were presented, if I mistake not, from 
diflerent States. The Pennsylvania society for 
promoting the abolition of slavery, took a lead, 
and laid before Congress a memoriel, pra3nng 
Congress to promote the abolition by such powers 
as it possessed. This memorial was referred, in 
the House of Representatives, to a select commit- 
tee consisting of Mr. Foster of New Hampshire ; 
Mr. Gerry of Massachusetts , l\Ir. Huntington of 
Connecticut; Mr. Lawrence of New- York ; Mr. 
Sinnickson of New Jersey; Mr. Hartley of 
Pennsylvania, tnd Mr. Parker of Virginia; all 
of them, sir, as you will observe, northern men, 
but the last. This committee made a report, 
which was committed to a committee of the whole 
house, and there considered and discussed on 
several days ; and being amended, although in 
no material respect, it was made to express three 
distinct propositions on the subject of slavery 
and the slave-trade. First, in the words of the 
constitution, that Congress could not, prior to the 
year 1808, prohibit the migration or importation 
of such persons as any of the States, then exist- 
ing, should think proper to admit. Second, that 
Congress had authority to restrain the citizens 
of the United States from carrying on the Afri- 
can slave-trade, for the purpose of supplying 
foreign countries. On this proposition, our laws 
against those who engage in that traflBc, are 
founded. The third proposition, and that which 
bears on the present question, was expressed in 
the following terms : 

'■ ' Resolved, That Congress have no authority 
to interfere in the emancipation of slaves, or in 
the treatment of them in any of the States ; it re- 
maining with the several States alone to provide 
rules and regulations therein, which humanity 
and true policy may require. ' 

'' This resolution received the sanction of the 
House of Repr(?sentatives so early as jMarch, 1790. 
And now, sir. the honorable member will allow 
me to remind him, that not only were the select 
committee who reported the resolution, with a 
single exception, all northern men. but also that 
of the members t.^en composing the House of 
Representatives, a large majorit}', I believe near- 
ly two thirds, were northern men also. 

'■ The house agreed to insert these resolutions 
in its journal, and, from that day to this, it has 
never been maintained or contended that Con- 
gress had any authority to regulate, or interfere 
with, the condition of slaves in the several States. 
No northern gentleman, to my knowledge, has 
moved any such question in either house of Con- 
gress. 

" The fears of the South, whatever fears they 
might have entertained, were allayed and quieted 
by this early decision ; and so remained, till they 
were excited afresli, without cause, but for col- 
lateral and indirect pin po.scs. When it became 
necessary, or was thonght so; b}'' some political 
persons, to find an unvarying ground for the ex- 



138 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



elusion of northern men from confidence and 
from lead in the affairs of the republic, then, and 
not till then, the cry was raised, and the feeling 
industriously excited, that the intluence of north- 
ern men in the public councils would endanger 
the relation of master and slave. For myself I 
claim no other merit than that this gross and 
enormous injustice towards the whole North, has 
not wrought upon me to change my opinions, or 
my political conduct. I hope I am above violat- 
ing m}- principles, even under the smart of in- 
jury and false imputations. Unjust suspicions 
and undeserved reproach, whatever pain I may 
experience from them, will not induce me, I trust, 
nevertheless, to overstep the limits of constitution- 
al duty, or to encroach on the rights of others. 
The domestic slavery of the South I leave where 
I find it — in the hands of their own governments. 
It is their affair, not mine. Nor do I complain 
of the peculiar effect wliich the magnitude of that 
population has had in the distribution of power 
under this federal government. "We know, sir, 
that the representation of the states in the other 
house is not equal. We know that great ad- 
vantage, in that respect, is enjoyed by the slave- 
holding States ; and we know, too, that the in- 
tended equivalent for that advantage, that is to 
say, the imposition of direct taxes in the same 
ratio, has become merely nominal ; the habit of 
the government being almost invariably to col- 
lect its revenues from other sources, and in other 
modes. Nevertheless, I do not complain : nor 
would I countenance any movement to alter this 
arrangement of representation. It is the original 
bargain, the compact — let it stand : let the ad- 
vantage of it be fully enjoyed. The Union itself 
is too full of benefit to be hazarded in proposi- 
tions for changing its original basis. I go for the 
constitution as it is, and for the Union as it is. 
But I am resolved not to submit, in silence, to 
accusations, either against myself individually, 
or against the North, wholly unfounded and un- 
just ; accusations which impute to us a disposi- 
tion to evade the constitutional compact, and to 
extend the power of the government over the in- 
ternal laws and domestic condition of the States. 
All such accusations, wherever and whenever 
made, all insinuations of the existance of any 
such j)urposes, I know, and feel to be groundless 
and injurious. And we must confide in southern 
gentlemen themselves ; we must trust to those 
whose integrity of heart and magnanimity of 
feeling will lead them to a desire to maintain and 
disseminate truth, and who possess the means of 
its diffusion with the southern public ; we must 
leave it to them to disabuse that public of its 
prejudices. But, in the mean time, for my own 
part, I shall continue to act justly, whether those 
towards whom justice is exercised, receive it with 
candor or with contumely. " 

This is what Mr. Webster said on the subject 
of slavery ; and although it was in reply to an in- 
rective of my own, excited bj the recent agitation 



of the Missouri question, I made no answer im- 
pugning its correctness; and must add that I 
never saw any thing in Mr. Webster inconsistent 
with what he then said ; and believe that the 
same resolves could have been passed in the same 
way at any time during the thirty years that 
I was in Congress. 

But the topic which became the leading feature 
of the whole debate ; and gave it an interest 
which cannot die, was that of nullification — the 
assumed right of a state to annul an act of Con- 
gress — then first broached in our national legis- 
lature — and m the discussion of which Mr. Web- 
ster and ]\Ir. Hayne were the champion speakers 
on opposite sides—the latter understood to be 
speaking the sentiments of the Vice-President, 
Mr. Calhoun. This new turn in the debate was 
thus brought about : Mr. Hayne, in the sectional 
nature of the discussion wliich had grown up, 
made allusions to the conduct of New England 
during the war of 1812; and especially to the 
assemblage known as the Hartford Convention, 
and to which designs unfriendly to the Union 
had been attributed. This gave Mr. Webster 
the rights both of defence and of retaliation ; and 
he found material for the iirst in the character 
of the assemblage, and for the second in the 
public meetings which had taken place in South 
Carolina on the subject of the tariff — and at 
which resolves were passed, and propositions 
adopted significant of resistance to the act ; and, 
consequentlj', of disloyalty to the Union. He. 
in his turn, made allusions to these resolves and 
propositions, until he drew out Mr. Hayne into 
their defence, and into an avowal of what has 
since obtained the current name of " Nullifica- 
tion ;" although at the time (during the debate) it 
did not at all strike me as going the length which 
it afterwards avowed ; nor have I ever believed 
that Mr. Hayne contemplated disunion, in any 
contingency, as one of its results. In entering 
upon the argument, Mr. Webster first summed 
up the doctrine, as he conceived it to be avowed, 
thus : 

" T understand the honorable gentleman from 
South Carolina to maintain, that it is a right of 
the State legislature to intorfere, whenever, in 
their .judgment, this government transcends its 
constitutional limits, and to arrest the operation 
of its laws. 

•• I understand him to maintain this right, as a 
right existing under the constitution; not as a 
right to overthrow it, on the ground of extrems 



ANNO 1829. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



139 



necessity, such as would justify violent revolu- 
tion. 

" I understand him to maintain an authority, 
on the part of the States, thus to interfere, for 
the piirpose of correcting the exercise of power 
by the general government, of checking it, and 
of compelling it to conform to their opinion of the 
extent of its powers. 

" I understand him to maintain that the ulti- 
mate power of judging of the constitutional ex- 
tent of its own authority is not lodged exclusive- 
ly in the general government, or any branch of 
it; but that, on the contrary, the States may 
lawfully decide for themselves, and each State 
for itself, whether, in a given case, the act of the 
general government transcends its power. 

" I understand him to insist that, if the exi- 
gency of the case, in the ojjinion of any State 
government, require it, such State government 
may, by its own sovereign authority, annul an 
act of the general government, which it deems 
plainly and palpably unconstitutional." 

Mr. Hayne, evidently unprepared to admit, or 
fully deny, the propositions as broadly laid down, 
had recourse to a statement of his own ; and, 
adopted for that purpose, the third resolve of 
the Virginia resolutions of the year 1798 — re- 
affirmed in 1799. He rose immediately and said 
that, for the purpose of being clearly understood, 
he would state that his proposition was in the 
words of the Virginia resolution ; and read it — 

"That this Assembly doth explicitly and 
peremptorily declare, that it views the powers 
of the federal government as resulting from the 
compact, to which the States are parties, as lim- 
ited by the plain sense and intention of the in- 
strument constituting that compact, as no farther 
valid than they are authorized by the grants 
enumerated in that compact; and that, incase 
of a deliberate, palpable, and dangerous exercise 
of other powers, not granted by the said com- 
pact, the States who are parties thereto have the 
right, and are in duty bound, to interpose, for 
arresting the progress of the evil, and for main- 
taining, within their respective limits, the author- 
ities, rights, and liberties, appertaining to them." 

Thus were the propositions stated, and argued 
— each speaker taking his own proposition for 
his text ; which in the end, (and as the Virginia 
resolutions turned out to be understood in the 
South Carolina sense) came to be identical. Mr. 
Webster, at one point, giving to his argument a 
practical form, and showing what the South 
Carolina doctrine would have accomplished in 
New England if it had been acted upon by the 
Hartford Convention, said : 

" Let me here say, sir, that, if the gentleman's 
doctrine had been received and acted upon in 



New England, in the times of the embargo and 
non-intercourse, we .should probably not now 
have been here. The government would, very 
likely, have gone to pieces, and crumbled into 
dust. No stronger case can ever arise than ex- 
isted under those laws ; no States can ever en- 
tertain a clearer conviction than the New Eng- 
land States then entertained ; and if they had 
been under the influence of that heresy of opin- 
ion, as I must call it, which the honorable mem- 
ber espouses, this Union would, in all probabil- 
ity, have been scattered to the four winds. I 
ask the gentleman, therefore, to apply his prin- 
ciples to that case ; I ask him to come forth and 
declare, whether, in his opinion, the New Eng- 
land States would have been justified in inter- 
fering to break up the embargo system, under 
the conscientious opinions which they held upon 
it ? Had they a right to annul that law ? Does 
he admit or deny ? If that which is thought 
palpably unconstitutional in South Carolina, 
justifies that State in arresting the progress of 
the law, tell me, whether that which was thought 
palpably unconstitutional also in Massachusetts, 
would have justified her in doing the same thing ? 
Sir, I deny the whole doctrine. It has not .-i 
foot of ground in the constitution to stand on. 
No public man of reputation ever advanced it in 
Massachusetts, in the warmest times, or could 
maintain himself upon it there at any time." 

He argued that the doctrine had no founda- 
tion either in the constitution, or in the Virginia 
resolutions — that the constitution makes the 
federal government act upon citizens within the 
States, and not upon the States themselves, as in 
the old confederation : that within their consti- 
tutional limits the laws of Congress were su- 
preme — and that it was treasonable to resist 
them with force : and that the question of theii 
constitutionality was to be decided by the Su 
preme Court. On this point, he said : 

" The people, then, sir, erected this govern- 
ment. They gave it a constitution ; and in that 
constitution they have enumerated the powers 
which they bestow on it. They have made it a 
limited government. They have defined its 
authorit3^ They have restrained it to the exer- 
cise of such powers as are granted ; and all 
others, they declare, are reserved to the States 
or to the jwople. . But, sir, they have not stop- 
ped here. If they had, thoy would have accom- 
plished but half their work. No definition can 
be so clear as to avoid possibility of doubt ; no 
limitation so precise as to exclude all uncertainty. 
Who then shall construe this grant of the peo- 
ple 1 "Who shall interpret their will, where it 
may be supposed they have left it doubtful ? 
With whom do they repose this ultimate right 
of deciding on the powers of the government'? 
Sir, the>^ have settled all this in the fullest man- 
ner. They have left it with the government it- 



140 



THmiT YEARS' VIEW. 



self, in its appropriate branches. Sir. the very 
chief end. the main design, for which the whole 
constitution was framed and adopted was, to es- 
tablish a government that should not be obliged 
to act through State agency, or depend on State 
opinion and State discretion. The people had 
had quite enough of that kind of government 
under the confederacy. Under that system, the 
legal action, the application of law to individuals, 
belonged exclusively to the States. Congress 
could only recommend ; their acts were not of 
binding force, till the States had adopted and 
sanctioned them. Are we in that condition still ? 
Are we yet at the mercy of State discretion, and 
State construction '? Sir. if we are, then vain 
will be our attempt to maintain the constitution 
under which we sit. But, sir, the people have 
wiselj- provided, in the constitution itself, a pro- 
per, suitable mode and tribunal for settling ques- 
tions of constitutional law. There are, in the 
constitution, grants of powers to Congress, and 
restrictions on these powers. There are, also, 
prohibitions on the States. Some authority 
must, therefore, necessarily exist, having the 
ultimate jurisdiction to fix and ascertain the in- 
terpretation of these grants, restrictions, and 
prohibitions. The constitution has. itself point- 
ed out, ordained, and established, that authority. 
How has it accomplished this great and essential 
end ? By declaring, sir, that ' the constitution. 
and the laws of the United States made in pur- 
suance thereof, shall be the supreme law of the 
land, any thing in the constitution or laws of 
any State to the contrary notwithstanding.' 

'• This, sir, was the first great step. By this. 
the supremacy of the constitution and laws of 
the United States is declared. The people so 
will it. No State law is to be valid which comes 
in conflict with the constitution or any law of 
the United States. But who shall decide this 
question of interference ? To whom lies the last 
appeal ? This, sir, the constitution itself decides 
also, by declaring ' that the judicial power shall 
extend to all cases arising under the constitution 
and laws of the United States.' These two pro- 
visions, sir, cover the whole ground. They are, 
in truth, the kc3--stone of the arch. "With these, 
it is a constitution ; without them it is a confed- 
eracy. In pursuance of these clear and express 
provisions. Congress established, at its very first 
session, in the Judicial Act, a mode for carrying 
them into full effect, and for bringing all ques- 
tions of constitutional power to the final decision 
of the Supreme Court. It then, sir, became a 
government. It then had the means of self- 
protection ; and, but for this, it would, in all pro- 
bability, have been now among things which are 
past. Having constituted the government, and 
declared its powers, the peoj)le have farther said, 
that, since somebody must decide on the extent 
of these powers, the government shall itself 
decide ; subject, always, like other popular go- 
vernments, to its responsibility to the people. 
And now, sir, I repeat, how is it that a Stote 
legislature acquires any power to interfere? 



"Who or what gives them the right to say to the 
people, ' we, who are your agents and servants 
for one purpo.se, will undertake to decide that 
your other agents and servants, appointed by 
you for another purpose, have transcended the 
authority you gave them?' The reply would 
be. I think, not impertinent: Avho made you 
judge over another's servants? To their own 
masters they stand or fall." 

With respect to the Virginia resolutions, on 
which Mr. Hayne relied, ]\Ir. "Webster disputed 
the interpretation put upon them — claimed for 
them an innocent and justifiable meaning — and 
exempted Mr. Madison from the suspicion of 
having penned a resolution asserting the right 
of a State legislature to annul au act of Con- 
gress, and thereby putting it in the power of one 
State to destroy a form of government which he 
had jusi labored so hard to establish. To this 
effect he said : 

'• I wish now, sir, to make a remark upon the 
Virginia resolutions of 1798. I cannot under- 
take to say how these resolutions were under- 
stood by those who passed them. Their lan- 
guage is not a little indefinite. In the case of the 
exercise, by Congress, of a dangerous power, not 
granted to them, the resolutions as.sert the right, 
on the part of the State, to interfere, and arrest 
the progress of the evil. This is su.sceptible of 
more than one interpretation. It may mean no 
more than that the States may interfere by com- 
plaint and remonstrance ; or by proposing to the 
people an alteration of the federal constitution. 
This would all be quite unobjectionable ; or. it 
may be, that no more is meant than to assert the 
general right of revolution, as against all gov- 
ernments, in cases of intolerable oppression. 
Tliis no one doubts ; and this, in my opinion, is 
all that he who framed the resolutions could 
have meant by it : for I shall not readily believe 
that he (Mr. Madison) was ever of opinion that a 
State, under the constitution, and in conformity 
with it, could, upon the ground of her own opinion 
of its unconstitutionality, however clear and pal- 
pable she might think the case, annul a law of 
Congress, so far as it should operate on herself, 
bj' her own legislative power." 

Mr. Hayne, on his part, disclaimed all imita- 
tion of the Hartford Convention ; and gave (as 
the practical part of his doctrine) the pledge of 
forcible resistance to any attempt to enforce un- 
constitutional laws. He said : 

" Sir, unkind as my allusion to the Hartford 
Convention has been considered by its supporters, 
I apprehend that this disclaimer of the gentle- 
man will be regarded as 'the unkindest cut of 
all.' "When the gentleman spoke of the Caro- 
lina conventions of Colleton and Abbeville, let 
me tell him that he spoke of that wliich never 



ANNO 1829. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



141 



had existence, except in his own imagination. 
There hare, indeed, been meetings of the people 
in those districts, composed, sir, of as liigli- 
minded and patriotic men as any country can 
boast ; but we have had no ' convention ' as yet ; 
and when South Carolina shall resort to such a 
measure for the redress of her grievances, let me 
tell the gentleman that, of all the assemblies 
that have ever been convened in this country, 
the Hartford Convention is the very last we 
shall consent to take as an example ; nor will it 
find more favor in our eyes, from being recom- 
mended to us by the senator from Massachu- 
setts. Sir, we would scorn to take advantage 
of difficulties created by a foreign war, to wring 
from the federal government a redress even of 
our grievances. We are standing up for our 
constitutional rights, in a time of profound peace ; 
but if the country should, unhappily, be involved 
m a war to-morrow, we should be found flying 
to the standard of our country — first driving 
back the common enemy, and then insisting 
upon the restoration of our rights. 

" The gentleman has called upon us to carry 
out our scheme practically. Now, sir, if I am 
correct in my view of this matter, then it fol- 
lows, of course, that the right of a State being 
established, the federal government is bound to 
acquiesce in a solemn decision of a State, acting 
in its sovereign capacity, at least so far as to 
make an appeal to the people for an amendment 
to the constitution. This solemn decision of a 
State (made either through its legislature, or a 
convention, as may be supposed to be the proper 
organ of its sovereign will — a point I do not pro- 
pose now to discuss) binds the federal govern- 
ment, under the highest constitutional obligation, 
not to resort to any means of coercion against 
the citizens of the dissenting State. How, then, 
can any collision ensue between the federal and 
State governments, unless, indeed, the former 
should determine to enforce the law by uncon- 
stitutional means? What could the federal 
government do, in such a case ? Resort, says 
the gentleman, to the courts of justice. Now, 
can any man believe that, in the face of a solemn 
decision of a State, that an act of Congress is 
' a gross, palpable, and deliberate violation of the 
constitution,' and the interposition of its sove- 
reign authority to protect its citizens from the 
usurpation, that juries could be found ready 
merely to register the decrees of the Congress, 
wholly regardless of the unconstitutional char- 
acter of their acts 1 Will the gentleman con- 
tend that juries are to be coerced to find verdicts 
at the point of the bayonet '? And if not how 
are the United States to enforce an act solemnly 
pronounced to be unconstitutional ? But if the 
attempt should be made to carry such a law 
into effect, by force, in what would the case dif- 
fer from an attempt to carry into effect an act 
nullified by the courts, or to do any other un- 
lawful and unwarrantable act ? Suppose Con- 
gress should pass an agrarian law, or a law 
emancipating our slaves, or should coi^mit any 



other gross violation of our constitutional rights, 
will any gentleman contend that the decision of 
every branch of the federal government, in favor 
of such laws, could prevent the States from de- 
claring them null and void, and protecting their 
citizens from their operation ? 

■' Sir, if Congress should ever attempt to en- 
force any such laws, they would put themselves 
so clearly in the wrong, that no one could doubt 
the right of the State to exert its protecting 
power, 

" Sir, the gentleman has alluded to that por- 
tion of the militia of South Carolina with which 
I have the honor to be connected, and asked 
how they would act in the event of the nullifi- 
cation of the tariff law by the State of South 
Carolina ? The tone of the gentleman, on tliis 
subject, did not seem to me as respectful as I 
could have desired. I hope, sir, no imputation 
was intended. 

[Mr. Webster: "Not at all; just the re- 
verse."] 

"Well, sir, the gentleman asks what their 
leaders would be able to read to them out of 
Coke upon Littleton, or any other law book, to 
justify their enterprise? Sir, let me assure the 
gentleman that, whenever any attempt shall be 
made from any quarter, to enforce unconstitu- 
tional laws, clearly violating our essential rights, 
our leaders (whoever they may be) will not be 
found reading black letter from the musty pages 
of old law books. They will look to the consti- 
tution, and when called upon, by the sovereign 
authority of the State, to preserve and protect 
the rights secured to them by the charter of 
their liberties, they will succeed in defending 
them, or ' perish in the last ditch.' " 

I do not pretend to give the arguments of the 
gentlemen, or even their substance, but merely 
to state their propositions and their conclusions. 
For myself, I did not believe in any thing serious 
in the new interpretation given to the Virginia 
resolutions — did not believe in any thing practi- 
cal from nullification — did not believe in forcible 
resistance to the tariff laws from South Carolina 
— did not believe in any scheme of disunion — 
believed, and still believe, in the patriotism of 
I\Ir. Hayne : and as he came into the argument 
on my side in the article of the public lands, so 
my wishes were with him, and I helped liim 
where I could. Of this desire to help, and disbe- 
lief in disunion, I gave proof, in ridiculing, as 
well as I could, ^Ir. Webster's fine peroration 
to liberty and union, and really thought it out 
of place — a fine piece of rhetoric misplaced, for 
want of circumstances to justify it. He had 
concluded thus : 

" When my eyes shall be turned to behold, 
for the last time, the sun in heaven, may I not see 



142 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



him shining on the broken and dishonored frag- 
ments of a once glorious Union ; on States dis- 
severed, discordant, belligerent ; on a land rent 
with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fra- 
ternal blood ! Let their last feeble and lingering 
glance, rather, behold the gorgeous ensign of the 
republic, now known and honored throughout 
the earth, still full high advanced, its arms and 
trophies streaming in their original lustre, not a 
stripe erased or polluted, nor a single star ob- 
scured, bearing for its motto no such miserable 
interrogatory as, What is all this worth ? Nor 
those other words of delusion and folly, Liberty 
first, and Union afterwards: but every w^here, 
spread all over in characters of living light, blaz- 
ing on all its ample folds, as they float over the sea 
and over the land, and in every wind under the 
whole heavens, that other sentiment, dear to every 
true American heart — Liberty and Union, now 
and for ever, one and inseparable ! " 

These were noble sentiments, oratorically ex- 
pressed, but too elaborately and too artistically 
composed for real grief in presence of a great ca- 
lamity — of which calamity I saw no sign ; and 
therefore deemed it a fit subject for gentle casti- 
gation : and essayed it thus : 

" I proceed to a different theme. Among the 
novelties of this debate, is that part of the speech 
of the senator from Massachusetts which dwells 
with such elaboration of declamation and orna- 
ment, upon the love and blessings of union — 
the hatred and horror of disunion. It was a 
part of the senator's speech which brought into 
full play the favorite Ciceronian figure of ampli- 
fication. It was up to the rule in that particu- 
lar. But, it seemed to me, that there was an- 
other rule, and a higher, and a precedent one. 
which it violated. It was the rule of propriety ; 
that rule which requires the fitness of things to 
be considered ; which requires the time, the 
place, the subject, and the audience, to be consid- 
ered; and condemns the delivery of the argu- 
ment, and all its flowers, if it fails in congru- 
ence to these particulars. I thought the essay 
upon union and disunion had so failed. It came 
to us W'hen we were not prepared for it ; when 
there was nothing in the Senate, nor in the coun- 
try to grace its introduction ; nothing to give, or 
to receive, effect to, or from, the impassioned 
scene that we witnessed. It may be, it was the 
prophetic cry of the distracted daughter of Pri- 
am, breaking into the council, and alarming its 
tranquil members with vaticinations of the fall 
of Troy : but to me, it all sounded like the sud- 
den proclamation for an earthquake, when the 
sun, the earth, the air, announced no such prodi- 
gy ; when all the elements of nature were at 
rest, and sweet repose pervading the world. 
There was a time, and you, and 1. and all of us, 
did sec it, sir, when such a speech would have 
found, in its delivery, every attribute of a just 
and rigorous propriety ! It was at a time, when 
the five-striped banner was waving over the laud 



of the North ! when the Hartford Convention 
was in session ! when the language in the capi- 
tol was, " Peaceably, if we can ; forcibly, if we 
must ! " when the cry, out of doors, was, " the 
Potomac the boundary ; the negro States by 
themselves ! The Alleghanies the boundary ; 
the Western savages bj^ themselves ! The Mis- 
sippi the boundary, let Missouri be governed by 
a prefect, or given up as a haunt for wild beasts I " 
That time was the lit occasion for this speech ; 
and if it had been delivered then, either in the 
hall of the House of Representatives, or in the 
den of the Hartford Convention, or in the high- 
way among the bearers and followers of the 
five-striped banner, what effects must it not have 
produced ! What terror and consternation among 
the plotters of disunion I But, here, in this loyal 
and quiet assemblage, in this season of general 
tranquillity and universal allegiance, the whole 
performance has lost its effect for want of affin- 
ity, connection, or relation, to any subject de- 
pending, or sentiment expressed, in the Senate ; 
for want of any application, or reference, to any 
event impending in the country." 

I do not quote this passage for any thing 
that I now see out of place in that perora- 
tion ; but for a quite different purpose — for 
the purpose of showing that I was slow to 
believe in any design to subvert this Union — 
that at the time of this great debate (February 
and March, 1830) I positively discredited it, 
and publicly proclaimed my incredulity. I did 
not want to believe it. I repulsed the belief. I 
pushed aside every circumstance that Mr. Web- 
ster relied on, and softened every expression that 
Mr. Hayne used, and considered him as limiting 
(practically) his threatened resistance to the tariff 
act, to the kind of resistance which Virginia 
made to the alien a,nd sedition laws — which was 
an appeal to the reason, judgment and feelings 
of the other States — and which had its effect in 
the speedy repeal of those laws. Mr. Calhoun 
had not then imcovered his position in relation to 
nullification. I knew that Mr, Webster was 
speaking at him in all that he said to Mr. Hayne: 
but I would believe nothing against him except 
upon his own showing, or undoubted evidence. 
Although not a favorite statesman with me, I felt 
admiration for his high intellectual endowments, 
and respect for the integrity and purity of his 
private life. Mr. Hayne I cordially loved ; and 
believed, and still believe, in the loyalty of 
his intentions to the Union. Thej^ were both 
from the South — that sister Carolina, of which 
the other was my native State, and in both of 
wdiich l^ave relatives and hereditary friends— 



ANNO 1830. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



143 



and for which I still have the affections which 
none but the wicked ever lose for the land of their 
birth : and I felt as they did in all that relates 
to the tariff— except their remedy. But enough 
for the present. The occasion will come, when 
we arrive at the "t-actical application of the mo- 
dern nullification doctrine, to vindicate the con- 
stitution from the political solecism of containing 
within itself a suicidal principle, and to vindi- 
cate the Virginia resolutions, and their authors 
(and, in their own language), from the " anarchi- 
cal and preposterov-S " interpretation which has 
been put upon their words. 



CHAPTER XLV. 

REPEAL OF THE SALT TAX. 

A TAX on Salt is an odious measure, hated by 
all people and in all time, and justly, because 
being an article of prime necessity, indispensable 
to man and to beast, and bountifully furnished 
them by the Giver of all good, the cost should 
not be burthened, nor the use be stinted by gov- 
ernment regulation ; and the principles of fair 
taxation would require it to be spared, because 
it is an agent, and a great one, in the develop- 
ment of many branches of agricultural and me- 
chanical industry which add to the wealth of 
the country and produce revenue from the ex- 
ports and consumption to which they give rise. 
, People hate the salt tax, because they are obliged 
to have the salt, and cannot evade the tax : gov- 
ernments love the tax for the same reason — be- 
cause people are obliged to pay it. This would 
seem to apply to governments despotic or mo- 
narchial, and not to those which are representa- 
tive and popular. But representative govern- 
ments sometimes have calamities — war for exam- 
ple — when subjects of taxation diminish as need 
for revenue increases: and then representa- 
tive governments, like others, must resort to the 
objects which vdll supply its necessities. This 
has twice been the case with the article of salt 
in the United States. The duty on that article 
was carried up to a high tax in the qi(.asi war 
vdth France (1798), having been small before; 
and then only imposed as a war measure — to 
cease as soon as the war was over. But all gov- 



ernments work alike on the imposition and re- 
lease of taxes — easy to get them on in a time of 
necessity — hard to get them off when the neces- 
sity has passed. So of this first war tax on 
salt. The " speck of war " with France, visible 
above the horizon in '98, soon sunk below it ; 
and the sunshine of peace prevailed. In the 
year 1800 — two years after the duty was raised 
to its maximum — the countries were on the most 
friendly terms ; but it was not until 1807, and 
under the whole power of Mr. Jefferson's ad- 
ministration, that this temporary tax was abol- 
ished ; and with it the whole system of fishing 
bounties and allowances founded upon it. 

In the war of 1812, at the commencement of 
the war with Great Britain, it was renewed, 
with its concomitant of fishing bounties and 
allowances ; but still as a temporary measure, 
limited to the termination of the war which in- 
duced it, and one year thereafter. The war ter- 
minated in 1815, and the additional year expired 
in 1816 ; but before the year was out, the tax 
was continued, not for a definite period, but 
without time — on the specious argument that, 
if a time was fixed, it would be difficult to get it 
off before the time was out: but if unfixed, it 
would be easy to get it off at any time : and all 
agreed that that was to be soon — that a tempo- 
rary continuance of all the taxes was necessary 
until the revenue, deranged by the war, should 
become regular and adequate. It was continued 
on this specious argument — and remained in full 
until General Jackson's administration — and, in 
part, until this day (1850) — the fishing boun- 
ties and allowances in full : and that is the work- 
ing of all governments in the levy and repeal of 
taxes. I found the salt tax in full force when I 
came to the Senate in 1820, strengthened by 
time, sustained by a manufacturing interest, and 
by the fishing interest (which made the tax a 
source of profit in the supposed return of the 
duty in the shape of bounties and allowances) : 
and by the whole American system ; which took 
the tax into its keeping, as a protection to a 
branch of home industry. I found efibrts bemg 
made in each House to suppress this burthen 
upon a prime necessary of life ; and, in the ses- 
sion 1829-'30, delivered a speech !n support 
of the laudable endeavor, of which these are 
some parts: 

"'Mr. Benton commenced his speech, by say- 
ing that he was no advocate for unprofitable de- 



144 



TIIIIITY YEARS' VIEW. 



bate, and had no ambition to add his name to 
the catalogue of barren orators ; but that there 
were cases in which speakinj;; did good ; cases in 
which moderate abilities produced great results ; 
and he believed the question of repealing the 
salt tax to be one of those cases. It had cer- 
tainl}^ been so in England. There the salt tax 
had been overthrown by the labors of plain men, 
under circumstances much more unfavorable to 
their undertaking than exist here. The English 
salt tax had continued one hundred and fifty 
years. It was cherished by the ministry, to 
whom it yielded a million and a half sterling of 
revenue ; it was defended by the domestic salt 
makers, to whom it gave a monopoly of the 
home market ; it was consecrated by time, hav- 
ing subsisted for five generations ; it was forti- 
fied by the habits of the people, who were bom, 
and had grown gray imder it ; and it was sanc- 
tioned by the necessities of the State, which re- 
quired every resource of rigorous taxation. Yet 
it was overthrown ; and the overthrow was ef- 
fected by two debates, conducted, not by the 
orators whose renown has filled the world — not 
by Sheridan, Burke, Pitt, and Fox— but by plain, 
business men— Mr. Calcraft, Mr. Curwen, and 
Mr. Egerton. These patriotic members of the 
British Parliament commenced the war upon the 
British salt tax in 1817, and finished it in 1822. 
They commenced with the omens and auspices 
aU against them, and ended with complete suc- 
cess. They abolished the salt tax in toto. They 
swept it all off, bravely rejecting all compro- 
mises when they had got their adversaries half 
vanquished, and carrying their appeals home to 
the people, until they had roused a spirit before 
which the ministry quailed, the monopolizers 
trembled, the Parliament gave way, and the tax 
fell. Tliis example is encouraging ; it is full of 
eonsolation and of hope ; it shows what zeal and 
perseverance can do in a good cause : it shows 
that the cause of truth and justice is triumphant 
when its advocates are bold and faithful. It 
leads to the conviction that the American salt 
tax will fall as the British tax did, as soon as 
the people shall see that its continuance is a 
burthen to them, without adequate advantage to 
the government, and that its repeal is in their 
own hands. 

" The enormous amount of the tax was the 
first point to which ]\Ir. B. would direct his at- 
tention. He said it was near three hundred per 
cent, upon Liverpool blown, and four hundred 
per cent, upon alum salt ; but as the Liverpool 
was a very inferior salt, and not much used in 
the West, he would confine his observations to 
the salt of Portugal and the West Indies, called 
by the general name of alum. The import price 
of this saJt was from eight to nine cents a bush- 
el of fifty-six pounds each, and the duty upon 
that bushel was twcntj^ cents. Here was a tax 
of upwards of two hundred per cent. Then the 
merchant had his profit upon the duty as well 
as the cost of the article : and when it went 
through the hands of several merchants before 



it got to the consumer, each had his profit upon 
it ; and whenever this profit amounted to fifty 
per cent, upon the duty, it was upwards of one 
hundred per cent, upon the salt. Then, the 
tariff laws have deprived the consumer of thirty- 
four pounds in the bushel, by substituting weight 
for measure, and that weigh* a false one. The 
true weight of a measured busbel of alum salt 
is eighty-four pounds ; but the British tariff 
laws, for the sake of midtiplying the bushels, 
and increasing the product of the tax, substi- 
tuted weight for measure ; and our tariff laws 
copied after them, and adopted their standard 
of fifty-six pounds to the bushel. 

" Mr. B. entered into statistical details, to show 
the aggregate amount of this tax, which he stat- 
ed to be enormous, and contrary to every princi- 
ple of taxation, even if taxes were so necessary 
as to justify the taxing of salt. He stated the 
importation of foreign salt, in 1820, at six mil- 
lions of bushels, round numbers ; the value seven 
hundred and fifteen thousand dollars, and the 
tax at twenty cents a bushel, one million two 
hundred thousand dollars, the merchant's profit 
upon that duty at fifty per cent, is six hundred 
thousand dollars ; and the secret or hidden tax, 
in the shape of false weight for true measure, at 
the rate of thirty pounds in the bushel, was four 
hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Here, then, 
is taxation to .the amount of about two millions 
and a quarter of dollars, upon an article costing 
seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and 
that article one of prime necessity and universal 
use, ranking next after bread, in the catalogue 
of articles for human subsistence. 

" The distribution of this enormous tax upon 
the different sections of the Union, was the next 
object of Mr. B.'s inquiry ; and, for this purpose, 
he viewed the Union under three great divisions 
—the Northeast, the South, and the West. To 
the northeast, and especially to some parts of it, 
he considered the salt tax to be no burthen, but 
rather a benefit and a money-making business. 
The fishing allowances and bounties produced 
this effect. In consideration of the salt duty, the 
curers and exporters of fish are allowed money 
out of the treasury, to the amount, as it was 
intended, of the salt duty paid by them ; but it 
has been proved to be twice as much. The an- 
nual allowance is about two hundred and fifty 
thousand dollars, and the aggregate drawn from 
the treasury since the first imposition of the salt 
duty in 1789. is shown by the treasury returns 
to be five millions of dollars. i\Iuch of this is 
drawn by undue means, as is shown by the re- 
port of the Secretary of the Treasury, at the 
commencement of the present session, page^eight 
of the annual report on the finances. The North- 
east makes much salt at home, and chiefly by 
solar evaporation, which fits it for curing fish 
and provisions. Much of it is proved, by the 
returns of the salt makers, to be used in the fish- 
eries, while the fisheries are drawing money from 
the treasury under the laws which intended to 
indemnify them for the duty paid on foreign salt 



ANNO 1830. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



145 



To this section of the Union, then, the salt tax 
is not felt as a burthen. 

" Let us proceed to the South. In this section 
there are but few salt works, and no bounties or 
allowances, as there are no fisheries. The con- 
sumers are thrown almost entirely upon the 
foreign supply, and chiefly use the Liverpool 
blown. The import price of this is about fifteen 
cents a bushel ; the weight and strength is less 
than that of alum salt ; and the tax falls heavily 
and directly upon the people, to the whole amount 
of their consumption. It is a heavy burthen 
upon the South. 

" The West is the last section to be viewed, 
and it will be found to be the true seat of the 
most oppressive operations of the salt tax. The 
domestic supply is high in price, deficient in 
quantity, and altogether unfit for one of the 
greatest purposes for Avhich salt is there wanted 
— curing provisions for exportation. A foreign 
supply is indispensable, and alum salt is the kind 
used. The import price of this kind, from the 
West Indies, is nine cents a bushels ; from Port- 
ugal, eight cents a bushel. At these prices, the 
West could be supplied with this salt at New 
Orleans, if the duty was abolished ; but, in con- 
sequence of the duty, it costs thirty-seven and a 
half cents per bushel there, being four times the 
import price of the article, and seventy-five cents 
per bushel at Louisville and other central parts 
of the valley of the xMississippi. This enormous 
price, resolved into its component parts, is thus 
made up: 1. Eight or nine cents a bushel for 
the salt. 2. Twenty cents for duty. 3. Eight 
or ten cents for merchant's profit at New Orleans. 
4. Sixteen or seventeen cents for freight to Lou- 
isville. 5. Fifteen or twenty cents for the second 
merchant's profit, who counts his per centum on 
liis whole outlay. In all, about seventy-five cents 
for a bushel of fifty pounds, which, if there was 
no duty, and the tariif regulations of weight for 
measure abolished, would be bought in New Or- 
leans, by the measured bushel of eighty pounds 
weight, for eight or nine cents, and would be 
brought up the river, by steamboats, at the rate 
of thirty-three and a third cents per hundred 
weight. It thus appears that the salt tax falls 
heaviest upon the West. It is an error to sup- 
pose that the South is the greatest suSerer. The 
West wants it for every purpose the South does, 
and two great purposes besides — curing provision 
for export, and salting stock. The West uses 
alum salt, and on this the duty is heaviest, be- 
cause the price is lower, and the weight greater. 
Twenty cents on salt which costs eight or nine 
cents a bushel is a much heavier duty than on 
that which costs fifteen cents ; and then the de- 
ception in the substitution of weight for measure 
is much greater in alum salt, which weighs so 
much more than the Liverpool blown. Like the 
South, the West receives no bounties or allow- 
ances on account of the salt duties. This may 
be fair in the South, where the imported salt is 
not re-exported upon fish or provisions ; but it is 
unfair in the West, where the exportation of 

Vol. I.— 10 



beef, pork, bacon, cheese, and butter, is prodigi- 
ous, and the foreign salt re-exported upon the 
whole of it. 

"Mr. B. then argued, with great warmth, that 
the provision curers and exporters were entitled 
to the same bounties and allowances with the ex- 
porters of fish. The claims of each rested upon 
the same principle, and upon the principle of all 
drawbacks — that of a reimbursement of the duty 
which was paid on the imported salt when re-ex- 
ported on fish and provisions. The same princi- 
ple covers the beef and pork of the farmer, which 
covers the fish of the fisherman ; and such was 
the law in the beginning. The first act of Con- 
gress, in the year 1789, which imposed a duty 
upon salt, allowed a bounty, in lieu of a draw- 
back, on beef and pork exported, as well as fish. 
The bounty was the same in each case ; it was 
five cents a quintal on dried fish, five cents a 
barrel on pickled fish, and five on beef and pork. 
As the duty on salt was increased, the bounties 
and allowances were increased also. Fish and 
salted beef and pork fared alike for the first 
twenty years. 

" They fared alike till the revival of the salt 
tax at the commencement of the late war. Then 
they parted company ; bounties and allowances 
were continued to the fisheries, and dropped on 
beef and pork ; and this has been the case ever 
since. The exporters of fish are now drawing at 
the rate of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars 
per annum, as a reimbursement for their salt tax ; 
while exporters of provisions draw nothing. The 
aggregate of the fishing bounties and allowances, 
actually drawn fi-om the treasury, exceeds five 
millions of dollars ; while the exporters of pro- 
visions, who get nothing, would have been en- 
titled to draw a greater sum ; for the export in 
salted provisions exceeds the value of exported 
fish. 

" Mr. B. could not quit this part of his sub- 
ject, without endeavoring to fix the attention of 
the Senate upon the provision trade of the West. 
He took this trade in its largest sense, as includ- 
ing the export trade of beef, pork, bacon, cheese, 
and butter, to foreign countries, especially the 
West Indies ; the domestic trade to the I.ower 
Mississippi and the Southern States ; the neigh- 
borhood trade, as supplying the towns in the up- 
per States, the miners in Missouri and the Upper 
iMississippi. the arm}' and the navy ; and the 
various jirofessions, which, being otherwise cm- 
ployed, did not raise their own provisions. The 
amount of this trade, in this comprehensive view, 
was prodigious, and annually increasing, and in- 
volving in its current almost "the entire population 
of the West, either as the growers and makers 
of the provisions, the curers, exporters, or con- 
sumers. The amount could scarcely be ascer- 
tained. What was exported fi-om New Orleans 
was shown to be great ; but it was only a frac- 
tion of the whole trade. He declared it to be en- 
titled to the favorable consideration of Congress, 
and that the repeal of the salt duty was the 
greatest favor, if an act of justice ought to come 



146 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



under the name of favor, whicli could be ren- 
dered it, as the salt was necessary in growing 
the hogs and cattle, as well as in preparing the 
beef and pork for market. A reduction in the 
price of salt, next to a reduction in the price of 
land, was the greatest blessing which the federal 
government could now confer upon the West. 
Mr. B. referred to the e? ample of England, who 
favored her provision cnrers, and permitted them 
to import alum salt free of duty, for the encou- 
ragement of the provision trade, even when her 
own salt manufacturers were producing an abun- 
dant and superfluous supply of common salt. 
He showed that she did more ; that she extend- 
ed the same relief and encouragement to the 
Irish ; and he read from the British statute book 
an act of the British Parliament, passed in 1807, 
entitled ' An act to encourage the export of 
salted beef and pork from Ireland.' which allow- 
ed a bounty of ten pence sterling on every hund- 
red weight of beef and pork so exported, in con- 
sideration of the duty paid on the salt which 
was used in the curing of it. He stated, that, 
at a later period, the duty had been entirely re- 
pealed, and the Irish, in common with other 
British subjects, allowed a free trade with all 
the world, in salt ; and then demanded, in the 
most emphatic manner, if the people of the West 
could not obtain from the American Congress 
the justice which the oppressed Irish had pro- 
cured from a British Parliament, composed of 
hereditary nobles, and filled with representa- 
tives of rotten boroughs, and slavish retainers 
of the king's ministers. 

" The ' American system ' has taken the salt 
tax under its shelter and protection. The prin- 
ciples of that system, as I understand them, and 
practise upon them, are to tax, through the cus- 
tomhouse, the foreign rivals of our own essential 
productions, when, by that taxation, an adequate 
supply of the same article, as good and as cheap, 
can be made at home. These were the princi- 
ples of the system (Mr. B. said) when he was 
initiated, and, if they had changed since, he had 
not changed with them ; and he apprehended a 
promulgation of the change would produce a 
schism amongst its followers. Taking these to be 
the principles of the system, let the salt tax be 
brought to its test. In the first place, the do- 
mestic manufacture had enjoyed all possible pro- 
tection. The duty was near three hundred per 
cent, on Liverpool salt, and four hundred upon 
alum salt ; and to this must be added, so far as 
relates to all the interior manufactories, the pro- 
tection arising from transportation, frequently 
equal to two or three hundred per cent. more. 
This great and excessive protection has been en- 
joyed, without interruption, for the last eighteen 
years, and partially for twenty years longer. 
This surely is time enough for the trial of a man- 
ufacture which requires but little skill or expe- 
rience to carry it on. Now for the results. Have 
the domestic manufactories produced an aile- 
quate supply for the country ? They have not ; 
nor half enough. The production of the last 



year (1829) as shown in the returns to the Sec- 
retary of the Treasury, is about five millions of 
bushels ; the importation of foreign salt, for the 
same period, as shown by the custom-house re- 
turns, is five million nine hundred and fort3r-five 
thousand five hundred and forty-seven bu.shels. 
This shows the consumption to be eleven mil- 
lions of bushels, of which five are domestic. 
Hero the failure in the essential particular of an 
adequate sup})!}' is more than one half. In the 
next place, how is it in point of price? Is the 
domestic article furnished as cheap as the 
foreign? Far from it, as alrendy shown, and 
still further, as can be shown. The price of the 
domestic, along the coast of the Atlantic States, 
varies, at the works, from thirtj^-seven and a 
half to fifty cents; in the interior, the usual 
prices, at the works, are from thirty-three and a 
third cents to one dollar for the bushel of fifty 
pounds, which can nearly be put into a half 
bushel measure. The prices of the foreign salt, 
at the import cities, as shown in the custom- 
hou.se returns for 1829, are, for the Liverpool 
blown, about fifteen cents for the bushel of fifty- 
six pounds ; for Turk's Island and other West 
India salt, about nine cents ; for St. Ubes and 
other Portugal salt, about eight cents ; for Span- 
ish salt. Bay of Biscay and Gibraltar, about 
seven cents; from the Island of Malta, six cents. 
Leaving out the Liverpool salt, which is made 
by boiling, and, therefore, contains slack and 
bittern, a septic ingredient, which promotes putre- 
faction, and renders that salt unfit for curing 
provisions, and which is not used in the West, 
and the average price of the strong, pure, alum 
salt, made by solar evaporation, in hot climates, 
is about eight cents to the bushel. Here, then, 
is another lamentable failure. Instead of being 
sold as cheap as the foreign, the domestic salt is 
from four to twelve times the price of alum salt. 
The last inquiry is as to the quality of the 
domestic article. Is it as good as the foreign ? 
This is the most essential application of the test: 
and here again the failure is decisive. The do- 
mestic salt will not cure provisions for exporta- 
tion (the little excepted which is made, in the 
Northeast, bj' solar evaporation), nor for con- 
sumption in the South, nor for long keeping at 
the army posts, nor for voyages with the navy. 
For all these purposes it is worthless, and use- 
less, and the provisions which are put up in it 
are lost, or have to be repacked, at a great ex- 
pense, in alum salt. This fact is well known 
throughout the West, where too many citizens 
have paid the penalty of trusting to domestic 
salt, to be duped or injured i)y it any longer. 

" And here he submitted to the Senate, that 
the American system, without a gro.ss departure 
from its original principles, could not cover tliis 
duty any longer. It has had the full benefit of 
that system in high duties, imposed for a long 
time, on foreign salt ; it had not produced an 
adequate supply for the country, noi- half a sup- 
ply ; nor at as cheap a rate, by throe hundred or 
one thousand per cent. ; and what it did supply 



ANNO 1830. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



147 



so far from being equal in quantity, could not 
even be used as a substitute for the great and 
important business of the provision trade. The 
amount of so much of that trade as went to for- 
eign countries, JMr. B. showed to be sixty-six 
thousand barrels of beef fifty-four thousand 
barrels of pork, two millions of pounds of bacon, 
two millions of pounds of butter, and one milhon 
of pounds of cheese ; and he considered the sup- 
ply for the army and navy, and for consumption 
in the Soirth, to exceed the quantity exported. 

" It cannot be necessary here to dilate upon 
the uses of salt. But, in repealing that duty in 
England, it was thought worthy of notice that 
salt was necessary to the health, growth, and 
fattening of hogs, cattle, sheep, and horses ; that 
it was a preservative of hay and clover, and re- 
stored moulded and flooded hay to its good and 
wholesome state, and made even straw and chaff 
available as food for cattle. The domestic salt 
makers need not speak of protection against alum 
salt. ISTo quantity of duty will keep it out. The 
people must have it for the provision trade ; and 
the duty upon that kind of salt is a grievous 
burthen upon them, without being of the least 
advantage to the salt makers. 

"Mr. B. said, there was no argument which 
could be used here, in favor of continuing this 
duty, which was not used, and used in vain, in 
England ; and many were used there, of much 
real force, which cannot be used here. The 
American system, by name, was not impressed 
into the service of the tax there, but its doctrines 
were ; and he read a part of the report of the 
committee on salt duties, in 1817, to prove it. 
It was the statement of the agent of the British 
salt manufivcturers, Mr. "William Home, who 
was sworn and examined as a witness. lie said : 
' I will commence by referring to the evidence I 
gave upon the subject of rock .salt, in order to 
establish the presumption of the national im- 
portance of the salt trade, arising from the large 
extent of British capital emploj^ed in the trade, 
and the considerable number of persons depend- 
ant upon it for support. I, at the same time, 
stated that the salt trade was in a very depressed 
state, and that it continued to fall off. I think 
it cannot be doubted that the salt trade, in com- 
mon with all staple British manufactures, is en- 
titled to the protection of government ; and the 
British manufacturers of salt consider that in 
common with other manufacturers of this coun- 
try, they are entitled to such protection, in par- 
ticular from a competition at home with foreign 
manufacturers ; and. in consequence, they hope 
to see a prohibitory (uity on foreign salt.' ' 

" Such was the petition of the British manu- 
facturers. They urged the amount of their cap- 
ital, the depressed state of their business the 
number of persons dei)endent upon it for sup- 
port, the duty of the government to protect it 
the necessity for a prohibitory duty on foreio-n 
salt, and the fact that they were making more 
than the country could consume. The mmistry 
backed them with a call for the continuance of 



the revenue, one million five htmdred thousand 
pounds sterling, derived from the salt tax ; and 
with a threat to lay that amount upon some- 
thing else, if it was taken off of salt. All would 
not do. _ Mr. Calcraft, and his friends, appealed 
to the rights and interests of the people, as over- 
ruling considerations in questions of taxation. 
They denounced the tax itself as little less than 
impiety, and an attack upon the goodness and 
wisdom of God, who had filled the bowels of the 
earth, and the waves of the sea, with salt for the 
use and blessing of man, and to whom it was de- 
nied, its use clogged and fettered, by odious and 
abominable taxes. They demanded the whole 
repeal ; and when the ministry and the manu- 
f^icturers, overpowered by the voice of the peo- 
ple, offered to give up three fourths of the tax, 
they bravely resistecl the proposition, stood out 
for total repeal, and carried it. 

"Mr. B. could not doubt a like result here, and 
he looked forward, with infinite satisfaction, to 
the era of a free trade in salt. The first effect 
of such a trade would be, to reduce the price of 
alum salt, at the import cities, to eight or nine 
cents a bushel. The second effect would be, a 
return to the measured bu.shel, by getting rid 
of the tarifT regulation, which substituted weight 
for measure, and reduced eighty-four pounds to 
fifty. The third effect would be, to establish a 
great trade, carried on by barter, between the 
inhabitants of the United States and the people 
of the countries which produce alum salt, to the 
infinite advantage and comfort of both paities. 
He examined the operation of this barter at 
New Orleans. He said, this pure and superior 



salt, made 



entirely by solar evaporation, came 



from countries which were deficient in the 
articles of food, in which the West abounded. 
It came fiom the West Indies, from the coasts 
of Spain and Portugal, and from places in the 
jNIediterranean ; all of which are at this time 
consumers of American provisions, and take 
from us beef, pork, bacon, rice, corn, corn meal, 
flour, potatoes, &c. Their salt costs them almost 
nothing. It is made on the sea beach by the 
power of the sun, with little care and aid from 
man. It is brought to the United States as 
ballast, costing nothing for the transportation 
across the sea. The duty alone prevents it from 
coming to the United States in the most un- 
bounded quantity. Ilemove the duty, and the 
trade would be prodigious. A bushel of corn is 
worth more than a sack of salt to tlie half- 
starved people to Mdiom the sea and the sun 
give as much of tliis salt as they will rake up 
and paek away. The levee at New Orleans 
would be covered — the warehouses M'ould be 
crammed witli .salt ; the barter trade would be- 
come extensive and universal, a Bushel of corn, 
or of potatoes, a few pounds of butter, or a few 
pounds of beef or pork, would purchase a sack 
of .salt; the steamboats would bring it up for a 
trifle; and all the upper States of the Great 
Valley, where salt is so scarce, so dear, and f^o 
indispensable for rearing stock and curing pn- 



148 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW, 



visions, in addition to p.ll its obvious uses, would 
be cheaply and abundantly supplied with that 
article. Mr. B. concluded with saying, that, 
next to the reduction of the price of public lands, 
and the free use of the earth for labor and culti- 
vation, he considered the abolition of the salt tax, 
and a free trade in foreign salt, as the greatest 
blessing which the federal government could 
now bestow upon the people of the West." 



CHAPTER XLVI. 

BIRTHDAY OF MR. JEFFERSON, AND THE DOC- 
TRINE OP NULLIFICATION. 

The anniversary of the birthday of ^Nlr. Jeffer- 
son (April 13th) was celebrated this year by a 
numerous company at Washington City. Among 
the invited guests present were the President and 
Vice-President of the United States, three of the 
Secretaries of departments— Messrs. Van Bureu, 
Eaton and Branch — and the Postmaster-General, 
Mr. Barry — and numerously attended by mem- 
bers of both Houses of Congress, and by citizens. 
It was a subscription dinner ; and as the paper 
imported, to do honor to the memory of Mr Jef- 
ferson as the founder of the political school to 
which the subscribers belonged. In that sense 
I was a subscriber to the dinner and attended 
it ; and have no doubt that the mass of the sub- 
scribers acted under the same feeling. There 
was a full assemblage when I arrived, and I ob- 
served gentlemen standing about in clusters in 
the ante-rooms, and talking with animation on 
something apparently serious, and which seemed 
to engross their thoughts. I soon discovered 
what it was— that it came from the promulgation 
of the twenty-four regular toasts, which savor- 
ed of the new doctrine of nullification ; and which, 
acting on some previous misgivings, began to 
spi-ead the feeling, that the dinner was got up 
to inaugurate that doctrine, and to make Mr. 
Jefferson its father. Many persons broke off, 
and refused to attend further ; but the company 
was still numerous, and ardent, as was proved 
by the number of volunteer votes given — above 
eight}- — in addition to the twenty-four i-egulars; 
and the numerous and animated speeches deliver- 
ed — the report of the whole proceedings fdling 
eleven newspaper columns. When the regular 
toasts were over, the President was called upon 



for a volunteer, and gave it — the one which eleo- 
trifled the country, and has become historical : 
'• Our Federal Union : It must be preserved." 
This brief and simple sentiment, receiving em- 
phasis and interpretation from all the attendant 
circumstances, and from the feeling which had 
been spreading since the time of Mr. Webster's 
speech, was received by the public as a procla- 
mation from the President, to announce a plot 
against the Union, and to summon the people to 
its defence. Mr. Calhoun gave the next toast ; 
and it did not at all alla}^ the suspicions which 
were crowding every bosom. It was this : " The 
Union : next to our Liberty the most dear : may 
we all remember that it can only be preserved by 
respecting the rights of the States, and distribut- 
ing equally the benefit and burthen of the Union." 
This toast touched all the tender parts of the 
new question — liberty before union — only to be 
preserved — State rights — inequalit}^ oihuTthens 
and benefits. These phrases, connecting them- 
selves with Mr. Ilayne's speech, and with pro- 
ceedings and publications in South Carolina, un- 
veiled NULLIFICATION, as a ucw and distinct doc- 
trine in the United States, with IMr. Calhoun for 
its apostle, and a new party in the field of which 
he was the leader. The proceedings of the day 
put an end to all doubt about the justice of Mr. 
Webster's grand peroration, and revealed to the 
public mind the fact of an actual design tending to 
dissolve the Union. 

Mr Jefferson was dead at that time, and could 
not defend himself from the use which the new 
party made of his name — endeavoring to make 
him its founder ; — and putting words in his mouth 
for that purpose which he never spoke. He 
happened to have Avritten in his lifetime, and 
without the least suspicion of its future great 
materiality, the fi\cts in relation to his concern in 
the famous resolutions of Virginia and Kentucky, 
and which absolve him from the accusation 
brought against him since his death. He counsel- 
led the resolutions of the Virginia General Assem- 
bly ; and the word nullify, or nullification, is not 
in them, or any equivalent word: he drew the 
Kentucky resolutions of 1798 : and they are equal- 
ly destitute of the same phrases. He had no- 
thing to do with the Kentucky resolutions of 
1799, in which the word " nullification,'^ and as 
the '• rightful remedy," is found ; and upon which 
the South Carolina school relied as their main ar- 
gument — and from which their doctrine took its 



ANNO 1830. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



149 



name. Well, he had nothing to do with it I and 
so wrote (as a mere matter of information, and 
without foreseeing its future use), in a letter to 
William C. Cabell shortly before his death. This 
letter is in Volume III., page 429, of his publish- 
ed correspondence. Thus, he left enough to vindi- 
cate himself, without knowing that a vindication 
would be necessary, and without recurring to the 
argumentative demonstration of the peaceful and 
constitutional remedies which the resolutions 
which he did write, alone contemplated. But 
he left a friend to stand up for him when he 
was laid low in his grave — one qualified by his 
long and intimate association to be his compur- 
gator, and entitled from his character to the ab- 
solute credence of all mankind. I speak of Mr. 
Madison, who, in various letters published in a 
quarto volume by Mr. J. 0. MoGuire, of Wash- 
ington City, has given the proofs which I have 
already used, and added others equally conclu- 
sive. He full}' overthrows and justly resents the 
attempt " of the nullifiers to make the name of 
Mr. Jefferson the pedestal of their colossal here- 
sy.'' (Page 286 : letter to Mr. N. P. Trist.) And 
he left behind him a State also to come to the 
rescue of his assailed integrity — his own na- 
tive State of Virginia — whose legislature almost 
unanimously, immediately after the attempt 
to make ]Mr. Jefferson "tlie pedestal of this 
colossal heresy,^' passed resolves repulsing the 
imputation, and declaring that there was no- 
thing in the Virginia resolutions '98 '99, to sup- 
port South Carolina in her doctrine of nullifica- 
tion. These testimonies absolve Mr. Jefferson : 
but the nuUifiers killed his birthday celebrations ! 
Instead of being renewed annually, in all time, 
as his sincere disciples then intended, they have 
never been heard of since ! and the memory of a 
great man— benefactor of his species— has lost an 
honor which grateful posterity intended to pay 
it, and which the preservation and dissemination 
of his principles require to be paid. 



CHAPTER XLVII. 

EEGULATION OF COMMERCE. 

The constitution of the United States gives to 
Congress the power to regulate commerce with 
foreign nations. That power has not yet been 



executed, in the sense intended by the constitu- 
tion : for the commercial treaties made by the 
President and the Senate are not the legislative 
regulation intended in that grant of power ; nor 
are the tariff laws, whether for revenue or pro- 
tection, any the more so. They all miss the ob- 
ject, and the mode of operating, intended by the 
constitution in that grant — the true nature of 
which was explained early in the life of the new 
federal government by those most competent to 
do it— Mr. Jefferson, Mr. Madison, and Mr. Wm. 
Smith of South Carolina,— and in the form most 
considerate and responsible. Mr. Jefferson, as 
Secretary of State, in his memorable report " On 
the restrictions and privileges of the commerce 
of the United States in foreign countries ; " Mr. 
Madison in liis resolutions as a member of the 
House of Representatives in the year 1793, "For 
the regulation of our foreign commerce ; " and 
in his speeches in support of his resolutions ; 
and the speeches in reply, chiefly by Mr. Wil- 
liam Smith, of South Carolina, speaking (as it was 
held), the sense of General Hamilton ; so that in 
the speeches and writing of these three early 
members of our government (not to speak of 
many other able men then in the House of Rep- 
resentatives), we have the authentic exposition 
of the meaning of the clause in question, and of 
its intended mode of operation: for they all 
agreed in that view of the subject, though differ- 
ing about the adoption of a system which would 
then have borne most heavily upon Great Brit- 
ain. The plan was defeated at that time, and 
only by a very small majority (52 to 47),— the 
defeat effected by the mercantile influence, which 
favored the British trade, and was averse to any 
discrimination to her disadvantage, though only 
intended to coerce her into a commercial treaty — 
of which we then had none with her. After- 
wards the system of treaties was followed up, 
and protection to our own industry extended in- 
cidentally through the clause in the constitution 
authorizing Congress to " Lay and collect taxes, 
duties, imports and excises," &c. So that the 
power granted in the clause, " To regulate com- 
merce with foreign nations," has never yet been 
exercised by Congress : — a neglect or omission, the 
more remarkable as, besides the plain and obvious 
fairness and benefit of the regulation intended, 
the power conferred by that clause was the po- 
tential moving cause of forming the present con- 
stitution, and creating the present Union. 



150 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



The principle of the regulation was to be that 
of reciprocity — that is, that trade was not to be 
free on one side, and fettered on the other — that 
goods were not to be taken from a foreign coun- 
try, free of duty, or at a low rate, unless that 
country should take something from us, also 
free, or at a low rate. And the mode of acting 
was by discrhninating in the imposition of duties 
between those which had, and had not, commer- 
cial treaties with us — the object to be accom- 
plished by an act of Congress to that effect ; 
which foreign nations might meet either by leg- 
islation in their imposition of duties ; or, and 
which is preferable, by treaties of specified and 
limited duration. My early study of the theory, 
and the working of our government — so often 
different, and sometimes opposite — led me to 
understand the regulation clause in the constitu- 
tion, and to admire and approve it : and as in 
the beginning of General Jackson's administra- 
tion, I foresaw the speedy extinction of the pub- 
lic debt, and the consequent release of great part 
of our foreign imports from duty, I wished to 
be ready to derive all the benefit from the event 
which would result fi^om the double process of 
receiving many articles free which were then 
taxed, and of sending abroad many articles free 
which were now met by hea\y taxation. With 
this view, I brought a bill into the Senate in the 
session 1829-'30, to revive the policy of Mr. 
jMadLson's resolutions of 1793 — without effect 
then, but without despair of eventual success. 
And still wishing to see that policy revived, and 
seeing near at hand a favorable opportunity for 
it in the approaching extinction of our present 
public debt — (and I wish I could add, a return 
to economy in the administration of the govern- 
ment) — and consequent large room for the reduc- 
tion and abolition of duties, I here produce some 
passages from the speech I delivered on my bill 
of 1830, preceded by some passages from Mr. 
Madison's speech of 1793, in support of his res- 
olutions, and showing his view of their policv 
and operation — not of their constitutionality, for 
of that there was no question : and his com- 
plaint was that the identical clause in the consti- 
tution which caused the constitution to be 
framed, had then remained four years without 
execution. He said : 

" Mr. Madison, after some general observa- 
tions on the report, entered into a more particu- 
lar consideration of the subject. He remai-ked 



that the commerce of the United States is not, 
at this day, on that respectable footing to which, 
from its nature and importance, it is entitled. 
He recurred to its situation previous to the adop- 
tion of the constitution, when confhcting sys- 
tems prevailed in the dillerent States. The then 
existing state of things gave rise to that conven- 
tion of delegates from the different parts of the 
Union, who met to deliberate on some general 
principles for the regulation of commerce, which 
might be conducive, in their operation, to the 
general welfare, and that such measures should 
be adopted as would conciliate the friendship 
and good faith of those countries who were dis- 
posed to enter into the nearest commercial con- 
nections with us. But what has been the result 
of the system which has been pursued ever 
since? What is the present situation of our 
commerce 1 From the situation in which we find 
ourselves after four years' experiment, he ob- 
served, that it appeared incumbent on the Uni- 
ted States to see whether they could not now 
take measures promotive of those objects, for 
which the government was in a great degree in- 
stituted. Measures of moderation, firmness and 
decision, he was persuaded, were now necessary 
to be adopted, in order to narrow the sphere of 
our commerce with those nations who see proper 
not to meet us on terms of reciprocity. 

" Mr. M. took a genei'al view of the probable 
effects which the adoption of something like the 
resolutions he had proposed, would produce. 
They would produce, respecting many articles 
imported, a competition which would enable 
countries who did not now supply us with those 
articles, to do it, and would increase the encou- 
ragement ou such as we can produce within our- 
selves. We should also obtain an equitable 
share in carrying our own produce ; we should 
enter into the field of competition on equal terras, 
and enjo}^ the actual benefit of advantages which 
nature and the spirit of our people entitle us to. 

" He adverted to the advantageous situation 
this countr_y is entitled to stand in, considering 
the nature- of our exports and returns. Our ex- 
ports are bulky, and therefore must employ 
much shipping, which might be nearly all our 
own : our exports are chiefly necessaries of life, 
or raw materials, the food for the manufacturers 
of other nations. On the contrary, the chief of 
what we receive from other countries, we can 
either do without, or produce substitutes. 

" It is in the power of the United States, he 
conceived, b}' exerting her natural rights, with- 
out violating the rights, or even the equitable 
pretensions of other nations — bj' doing no more 
than most nations do for the protection of their 
interests, and much less than some, to mak^ her 
interests respected ; for, what we receive from 
other nations are but luxuries to us, which, if 
we choose to throw aside, we could deprire part 
of tlie manufacturers of those luxuries, of even 
bread, if we are forced to the contest of self- 
denial. This being the case, our countiy may 
make her enemies feel the extent of her power 



A.NNO 1830. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



151 



We stand, with respect to the nation exporting 
those luxuries, in the relation of an opulent in- 
dividual to the laborer, in producing the super- 
fluities for his accommodation ; the former can 
do without those luxuries, the consumption of 
which gives bread to the latter. 

" He did not propose, or wish that the United 
States should, at present, go so far in the line 
which his resolutions point to, as they might go. 
The extent to which the principles involved in 
those resolutions should be carried, will depend 
upon filling up the blanks. To go the very ex- 
tent of the principle immediately, might be in- 
convenient. He wished, only, that the Legisla- 
ture should mark out the ground on which we 
think we can stand ; perhaps it may produce 
the effect wished for, without unnecessary irrita- 
tion ; we need not at first, go every length. 

" Another consideration would induce him, he 
said, to be moderate in filling up the blanks — 
not to wound public credit. He did not wish to 
risk any sensible diminution of the public revenue. 
He believed that if the blanks were filled with 
judgment, the diminution of the revenue, from a 
diminution in the quantity of imports, would be 
counterbalanced by the increase in the duties. 

" The last resolution he had proposed, he said, 
is, in a manner, distinct from the rest. The 
nation is bound by the most sacred obligation, 
he conceived, to protect the rights of its citizens 
against a violation of them from any quarter ; or. 
if they cannot protect, they are bound to repay 
the damage. 

" It is a fact authenticated to this House by 
communications from the Executive, that there 
are regulations established by some European 
nations, contrary to the law of nations, by which 
our property is seized and disposed of in such a 
way that damages have accrued. We are bound 
either to obtain reparation for the injustice, or 
compensate the damage. It is only in the first 
instance, no doubt, that the burden is to bo 
thrown upon the United States. The proper de- 
partment of govsi'nraent will, no doubt, take pro- 
per steps to obtain redress. The justice of foreign 
nations will certainly not permit them to deny 
reparation when the breach of the law of nations 
evidently appears ; at any rate, it is just that the 
individual should not suffer. He believed the 
amount of the damages that would come within 
the meaning of this resolution, would not be very 
considerable." 

Reproducing these views of ]Mr. Madison, and 
with a desire to fortify myself with his authority, 
the better to produce a future practical effect, I 
now give the extract from my own speech of 
1830: 

'' Mr. Benton said he rose to ask the leave for 
which he gave notice on Friday last ; and in do- 
ing so, he meant to avail himself of the parlia- 
mentary rule, seldom followed here, but familiar 

in the place from whence we drew our rules 

the British Parliament — and strictly right and 



proper, when any thing new or unusual is to be 
proposed, to state the claiises, and make an ex- 
position of the principles of his bill, before he 
submitted the formal motion for leave to bring 
it in. 

'' The tenor of it is. not to abolish, but to pro- 
vide for the abolition of duties. This phrase- 
ology announces, that something in addition to 
the statute — «' xue power in addition to that of 
the legislature, is to be concerned in accom- 
plishing the abolition. Then the duties for 
abolition are described as unnecessary ones ; 
and under tliis idea is included the twofold con- 
ception, that they are useless, either for the pro- 
tection of domestic industry, or for supplying 
the treasury with revenue. The relief of the 
people from sixteen millions of taxes is based 
upon the idea of an abolition of twelve millions 
of duties ; the additional four millions being the 
merchant's profit upon the duty ho advances ; 
which profit the people pay as a part of the tax, 
though the government never receives it. It is 
the merchant's compensation for advancing the 
duty, and is the same as his profit upon the 
goods. Tiie improved condition of the four great 
branches of national industry is presented as the 
third object of the bill ; and their relative im- 
portance, in mjr estimation, classes itself accord- 
ing to the order of my arrangement. Agricul- 
ture, as furnishing the means of subsistence to 
man, and as the foundation of every thing else, 
is put foremost; manufactures, as preparing 
and fitting things for our use, stands second , 
commerce, as exchanging the superfluities of 
different countries, comes next ; and navigation, 
as fui-nishing the chief means of carrying on 
commerce, closes the list of the four great 
branches of national industry. Though classed 
according to their respective importance, neither 
branch is disparaged. They are all great inter- 
ests — all connected — all dependent upon each 
other — friends in their nature — for a long time 
friends in fact, under the operations of our go- 
vernment : and only made enemies to each other, 
as they now are by a course of legislation, which 
the approaching extinguishment of the public 
debt presents a fit opportunity for reforming 
and ameliorating. The title of my bill declares 
the intention of the bill to imjn'ovc the condition 
of each of them. The abolition of sixteen mil- 
lions of taxes would itself operate a great im- 
provement in the condition of each ; but the in- 
tention of the bill is not limited to that inciden- 
tal and consequential improvement, great as it 
may be ; it proposes a positive, direct, visible, 
tangible, and countable benefit to each ; and 
this I shall prove and demonstrate, not in this 
brief illustration of tlie title of my bill, but at 
the proper places, in the course of the examina- 
tion into its provisions and exposition of its 
principles. 

"I will now proceed with the bill, rcathng each 
section in it.s order, and making the remarks 
upon it which are necessary to explain its object 
and to illustrate its operation. 



152 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



The First Section. 

" That, for the term of ten years, from and af- 
ter the first day of January, in the year 1832, 
or, as soon tlioroaftcr as may be agreed upon 
between tlie United States and any foreign pow- 
er, the duties now payable on the importation of 
the following articles, or such of them as may be 
agreed upon, shall cease and dr+ennine, or be 
reduced, in favor of such countries as shall, by 
treaty, grant equivalent advantages to the agri- 
culture, manufactures, commerce, and navigation, 
of the United States. 

'• This section contains the principle of abolish- 
ing duties by the joint act of the legislative and 
executive departments. The idea of equiva- 
lents, which the section also presents, is not 
new, but has for its sanction liigh and venerated 
authority, of which I shall not fail to avail my- 
self. That we ought to have equivalents for 
abolishing ten or twelve millions of duties on 
foreign merchandise is most clear. Such an 
abolition will be an advantage to foreign powers, 
for which they ought to compensate us, by ro- 
ducing duties to an equal amount upon our pro- 
ductions. This is what no law, or separate act 
of our own, can command. Amicable arrange- 
ments alone, with foreign owers, can effect it ; 
and to free such arrangements from serious, per- 
haps insuperable difficulties, it would be neces- 
sary first to lay a foundation for them in an act 
of Congress. This is what my bill proposes to 
do. It proposes that Congress shall select the 
articles for abolition of duty, and then leave it to 
the Executive to extend the provisions of the act 
to such powers as will grant us equivalent ad- 
vantages. The articles enumerated for abolition 
of duty are of kinds not made in the United 
States, so that my bill presents no groimd of 
alarm or uneasiness to any branch of domestic 
industry. 

"The acquisition of equivalents is a striking 
feature in the plan which I propose, and for that 
I have the authority of him whose opinions will 
never be invoked in vain, while republican prin- 
ciples have root in our soil. I speak of Mr. Jef- 
ferson, and of his report on the commerce and 
navigation of the United States, in the year '93, 
an extract from which I will read." 

The Extract. 

" Such being the restrictions on the commerce 
and navigation of the United States, the question 
is. in Avhat way they may best be removed, mod- 
ified, or counteracted 1 

"As to commerce, two methods occur 1. 
By friendly arrangements with the several na- 
tions with whom these restrictions exist : or, 2. 
By the separate act of our own legislatures, for 
countervailing their effects. 

■"Tlicre can be no doubt, but that, of these 
two. iriendly arrangements is the most eligible. 
Instead of embarrassing commerce under piles 
of regulating laws, duties, and prohibitions, could 
it be relieved from all its shackles, in all parts 



of the world — could every country be employ ed 
in producing that which nature has best fitted it 
to produce, and each be free to exchange with 
others mutual surplusses, for mutual wants 
the greatest mass possible would then be pro^ 
duced, of those things which contribute to hu' 
man life and human happiness, the numbers of 
mankind would be increased, and their condition 
bettered. 

" Would even a single nation begin with the 
United States this system of free commerce, it 
would be advisable to begin it with that nation ; 
since it is one hy one only that it can be extend- 
ed to all. AVhere the circumstances of either 
party render it expedient to levy a revenue, by 
way of impost on commerce, its freedom might 
be modified m that particular, by mutual and 
equivalent measures, preserving it entire in all 
others. 

" Some nations, not yet ripe for free com- 
merce, in all its extent, might be willing to mol- 
lify its restrictions and regulations, for us, in 
proportion to the advantages whicli an inter- 
course with us might offer. Particularly they 
may concur Avith us in reciprocating the duties 
to be levied on each side, or in compensating any 
excess of duty, by equivalent advantages of 
another nature. Our commerce is certainly of 
a character to entitle it to favor in most coun- 
tries. The commodities we offer are either ne- 
cessaries of life, or materials for manufacture, or 
convenient subjects of revenue ; and we take in 
exchange either manufactures, when they have 
received the last finish of art and industry, or 
mere luxuries. Such customers may reasonably 
expect welcome and iriendly treatment at every 
market — customers, too, whose demands, increas- 
ing with their wealth and population, must very 
shortly give full employment to the whole indus- 
try of any nation whatever, in any line of supply 
they may get into the habit of calling for from it. 

" But, should any nation, contrary to our 
wishes, suppose it may better find its ad~antage 
by continuing its system of prohibitions, duties, 
and regulations, it behooves us to protect our 
citizens, their commerce and navigation, by 
counter prohibitions, duties, and regulations, 
also. Free commerce and navigation are not to 
be given in exchange for restrictions and vexa- 
tions ; nor are they likely to produce a relaxa- 
tion of them." 

" The plan which I now propose adopts the 
idea of equivalents and retaliation to the whole 
extent recommended by Mr. Jefferson. It dif- 
fers from his plan in two features : first, in the 
mode of proceeding, by founding the treaties 
abroad upon a legislative act at home ; secondly, 
in combining protection with revenue, in select- 
ing articles of exception to the sj'stem of free 
trade. This degree of protection he admitted 
himself, at a later period of his life. It corres- 
ponds with the recommendation of President 
Wa.shington to Congress, in the year '90, and 
with that of our present Chief Magistrate, to 



ANNO 1830. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



153 



ourselves, at the commencement of the present 
session of Congress. 

" I will not now stop to dilate upon the bene- 
fit which will result to every family from an 
abolition of duties which will enable them to get 
all the articles enumerated m my bill for about 
one third, or one half less, than is now paid for 
them. Let any one read over the list of articles, 
and then look to the sum total which he now 
pays out annually for them, and from that sum 
deduct near fifty per cent., which is about the 
average of the duties and merchant's profit in- 
cluded, with which they now come charged to 
him. This deduction will be his saving under 
one branch of my plan — the abolition clause. 
To this must be added the gain under the clause 
to secure equivalents in foreign markets, and 
the two being added together, the saving in pur- 
chases at home being added to the gain in .sales 
abroad, will give the true measure of the advan- 
tages which my plan presents. 

" Let us now see whether the agriculture and 
manufactures of the United States do not require 
better markets abroad than they possess at this 
time. What is the state of these markets ? Let 
facts reply. England imposes a duty of three 
shillings sterling a pound upon our tobacco, 
which is ten times its value. She imposes duties 
equivalent to prohibition on our grain and pro- 
visions ; and either totally excludes, or enormous- 
ly taxes, every article, except cotton, that we 
send to her ports. In France, our tobacco is 
subject to a royal monopolj^, which makes the 
king the sole purchaser, and subjects the seller 
to the necessity of taking the price which his 
agents will give. In Germany, our tobacco, and 
other articles, are heavily dutied, and liable to 
a transit duty, in addition, when they have to 
ascend the Rhine, or other rivers, to penetrate 
the interior. In the West Indies, which is our 
great provision market, our beef, pork, and flour, 
usually pay from eight to ten dollars a barrel : 
our bacon, from ten to twenty-five cents a 
poimd ; live hogs, eight dollars each ; corn, corn- 
meaL, lumber, whiskey, fruit, vegetables, and 
every thinj, fise, in proportion; the duties in 
the different islands, on an average, equalling 
or exceeding the value of the articles in the 
United States. We export about forty-five 
millions of domestic productions, exclusive of 
manufactures, annually ; and it may be safely 
assumed that we have to pay near that sum in 
the shape of duties, for the privilege of selling 
these exports in foreign markets. So much for 
agriculture. Our manufactures are in the same 
condition. In many branches they have met the 
home Icniand, and are going abroad in search of 
foreign maikets. They meet with vexatious re- 
strictions, peremptory exclusions, or oppressive 
duties, wherever they go. The quantity already 
exported entitles them to national consideration, 
in the list of exports. Their aggregate value for 
1828 was about five millions of dollars, compris- 
ing domestic cottons, to the amount of a million 
of dollars ; soap and candles, to the value of nine 



hundred thousand dollars; boots, shoes, and 
saddlery, five hundred thousand dollars ; hats, 
three hundred thousand dollars ; cabinet, coach, 
and other wooden work, six hundred thousand 
dollars ; glass and iron, three hundred thousand 
dollars ; and numerous smaller items. This 
large amount of manufactures pays their value, 
in some instances more, for the privilege of being 
sold abroad ; and, what is worse, they are totally 
excluded from several countries from which we 
buy largely. Such restrictions and impositions 
are highly injurious to our manufactures ; and 
it is incontestably true, the amount of exports 
prove it, that what most of them now need is not 
more protection at home, but a better market 
abroad ; and it is one of the objects of this bill to 
obtain such a market for them. 

" It appears to me [said Mr. B.] to be a fair 
and practicable plan, combining the advantages 
of legislation and negotiation, and avoiding the 
objections to each. It consults the sense of the 
people, in leaving it to their Representatives to 
say on what articles duties shall be abolished for 
their relief; on what they shall be retained for 
protection and revenue ; it then secures the ad- 
vantage of obtaining equivalents, by referring it 
to the Executive to extend the benefit of the ab- 
olition to such nations as shall reciprocate the 
favor. To such as will not reciprocate, it leaves 
every thing as it now stands. The success of 
tliis plan can hardly be doubted. It addresses 
itself to the two most powerful passions of the 
human heart — interest and fear ; it applies itself 
to the strongest principles of human action — 
profit and loss. For, there is no nation with 
whom we trade but will be benefited by the in- 
creased trade of her staple productions, wliich 
will result from a free trade in such productions ; 
none that would not be crippled by the loss of 
such a trade, which loss would be the immediate 
effect of rejecting our system. Our position en- 
ables us to command the commercial system of 
the globe ; to mould it to our own plan, for the 
benefit of the world and ourselves. The ap- 
proaching extinction of the public debt puts it in- 
to our power to abolish twelve millions of duties, 
and to set free more than one-half of our entire 
commerce. We should not forego, nor lose the 
advantages of such a position. It occurs but sel- 
dom in the life of a nation, and once missed, is 
irretrievably gone, to the generation, at least, that 
saw and neglected the golden opportunity. We 
have complained, and justly, of the burthens 
upon our exports in foreign countries ; a part of 
our tariff system rests upon the piiucipleof rcta- 
Hation for the injury thus done us. Retahation, 
heretofore, has been our only resource : but re- 
ciprocity of injuries is not the way to enrich na- 
tions any more than individuals. It is an ■ un- 
profitable contest,' under every aspect. But 
the present conjuncture, payment of the public 
debt, in itself a" rare and almost unprecedented 
occurrence in the history of nations, enables us 
to enlai'ge our system ; to present a choice of al- 
ternatives : one fraught with relief, the other 



154 



THIRTY TEARS' VIEW. 



presenting a burthen to foreign nations. The 
participation, or exclusion, from forty millions of 
free trade, annually increasing, would not admit 
of a second thought, in the head of any nation 
with which we trade. To say nothing of her 
gains in the participation in such a commerce, 
what would be her loss in the exclusion from it ? 
How would England, France, or German)-, bear 
the loss of their linen, silk, or wine trade, with 
the United States ? How could Cuba, St. Do- 
mingo, or Brazil, bear the loss of their coffee trade 
with us ? They could not bear it at all. Deep 
and essential injury, ruin of industry seditions, 
and bloodshed, and the overthrow of administra- 
tions, would be the consequence of such loss. 
Yet such loss would be inevitable (and not to 
the few nations, or in the articles only which I 
have mentioned, for I have put a few instances 
only by way of example), but to every nation 
with whom we trade, that would not fall into 
our system, and throughout the whole list of es- 
sential articles to which our abolition extends. 
Our present heavy duties would continue in force 
against such nations ; they would be abolished 
in favor of their rivals. We would say to them, 
in the language of Mr. Jefferson, free trade and 
navigation is not to be given in exchange for re- 
strictions and vexations ! But I feel entire 
confidence that it would not be necessary to use 
the language of menace or coercion. Amicable 
representations, addressed to their sense of self- 
interest, would be more agreeable, and not less 
effectual. The plan cannot fail ! It is scarcely 
within the limits of possibility that it should 
fail ! And if it did, what then ? We have lost 
nothing. We remain as we were. Our present 
duties are still in force, and Congress can act 
upon them one or two years hence, in any way 
they please. 

•• Here, then, is the peculiar recommendation 
to my plan, that, while it secures a chance, little 
short of absolute certainty, of procuring an abo- 
lition of twelve millions of duties upon our ex- 
ports in foreign countries, in return for an aboli- 
tion of twelve millions of duties upon imports 
from them, it exposes nothing to risk , the abo- 
lition of duty upon the foreign article here being 
contingent upon the acquisition of the equivalent 
advantage abroad. 

"I clo.se this exposition of the principles of 
my bill with the single remark, that these treaties 
for the mutual abolition of duties should be for 
limited terras, say for seven or ten years, to give 
room for the modifications which time, and the 
varying pursuits of industry, may show to be 
necessary. Upon this idea, the bill is framed, 
and the period of ten years inserted by wa}^ of 
suggestion and exemplification of the jilan. Ano- 
ther feature is too obvious to need a remark, that 
the time for the commencement of the abolition 
of duties is left to the Executive, who can ac- 
commodate it to the state of the revenue and the 
extinction of the public debt." 

The plan which I proposed in this speech adopt- 



ed the principle of !Mr. Madison's resolutions 
but reversed their action. The discrimination 
which he proposed was a levy of five or ten per 
cent, more on the imports from countries which 
did not enter into our propositions for reciprocity : 
my plan, as being the same thing in substance, 
and less invidious in form, was a levy of five or 
ten per cent, less on the commerce of the recip- 
rocating nations — thereby holding out , an in- 
ducement and a benefit, instead of a threat and 
a penalty. 



CHAPTER XL VIII . 

ALUM SALT. THE ABOLITION OF THE DUTY UPON 
IT, AND REPEAL OF THE FISHING BOUNTY AND 
ALLOWANCES FOUNDED ON IT. 

I LOOK upon a salt tax as a curse — as some- 
thing worse than a political blunder, great as 
that is — as an impiety, in stinting the use, and 
enhancing the cost by taxation, of an article 
which God has made necessary to the health and 
comfort, and almost to the life, of every animat- 
ed being — the poor dumb animal which can only 
manifest its wants in mute signs and frantic ac- 
tions, as well as the rational and speaking man 
who can thank the Creator for his goodness, and 
curse the legislator that mars its enjoyment. 
There is a mystery in salt. It was used in holy 
sacrifice from the earliest day ; and to this time, 
in the Oriental countries, the stranger lodging in 
the house, cannot kill or rob while in it, after he 
has tasted the master's salt. The di.sciples of 
Christ were called by their master the salt of the 
earth. Sacred and profane history abound in in- 
stances of people refusing to fight against the 
kings who had given them salt : and this myste- 
rious deference for an article so essential to man 
and beast takes it out of the class of ordinary 
productions, and carries it up close to those vi- 
tal elements — bread, water, fire, air — which Pro- 
vidence has made essential to life, and spread 
every where, that craving nature may find its 
supply without stint, and without tax The 
venerable Mr. Macon considei-ed a salt tax in a 
sacrilegious point of view — as breaking a sacred 
law — and fought against ours as long as his 
pul)lic life lasted ; and I. his disciple, not di.ses- 
tccmed by him, commenced fighting by his side 
against the odious imposition j and have contin- 



ANNO 1830. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



155 



ued it since his death, and shall continue it un- 
til the tax ceases, or my political life terminates. 
Many are my speeches, and reports, against it 
in my senatorial life of thirty years ; and among 
other speeches, one limited to a particular kind 
of salt not made in the United States, and indis- 
pensable to dried or pickled provisions. This is 
the alum salt, made by solar evaporation out of 
sea water ; and being a kind not produced at 
home, indispensable and incapable of substitute, 
it had a legitimate claim to exemption from the 
canons of the American system. That system 
protected homemade fire-boiled common salt, 
because it had a foreign rival : we had no sun- 
made crystallized salt at home ; and therefore had 
nothing to protect in taxing the foreign article. 
I had failed — we had all failed — in our attempts 
to abolish the salt tax generally : I determined 
to attempt the abolition of the alum salt duty se- 
parately ; and with it. the fishing bounties and 
allowances founded upon it: and brought a 
bill into the Senate to accomplish that object. 
The fishing bounties and allowances being claim- 
ed by some, as a bounty to navigation (in which 
point of view they would be as unconstitutional 
as unjust), I was under the necessity of tracing 
their origin, as being founded on the idea of a 
drawback of the duty paid on the salt put upon 
the exported '^'•'ed or pickled fish — commencing 
with the salt tax, and adjusted to the amount of 
the tax — rising with its increase and falling with 
its fall — and that, in the beginning allowed to the 
exportation of pickled beef and pork, to the 
same degree, and upon the same principle that 
the bounties and allowances were extended to 
the fisheries. In the bill introduced for this 
purpose, I spoke as follows : 

" To spare any senator the supposed necessity 
of rehearsing me a lecture upon the importance 
of the fisheries, I wnll premise that I have some 
acquaintance with the subject — that I know the 
fisheries to be valuable, for the food they pro- 
duce, the commerce they create, the mariners 
they perfect, the employment they give to arti- 
sans in the building of vessels; and the consump- 
tion they make of wood, hemp and iron. I also 
know that the fishermen applied for the boun- 
ties, at the commencement of our present form 
of government, wliich the British give to their 
fisheries, lor the encouragement of navigation ; 
and tliat they were denied tlicm upon the re- 
port of the then Secretary of State (Mr. Jef- 
ferson). I also know that our fishing boun- 
ties and allowances go, in no part, to that 
branch of fishing to which the British give 



most bounty — whaling — because it is the best 
school for mariners ; and the interests of nav- 
igation are their principal object in promoting 
fishing. No part of our bounties and allow- 
ances go to our whale ships, because they do 
not consume foreign salt on which they have 
paid duty, and reclaim it as drawback. I have 
also read the six dozen acts of Congress, genera) 
and particular, passed in the last forty years — 
from 1789 to 1829 inclusively — giving the boun- 
ties and allowances which it is my present pur- 
pose to abolish, with the alum salt duty on 
which all this superstructure of legislative en- 
actment is built up. I say the salt tax, and es- 
pecially the tax on alum salt ^which is the kind 
required for the fisheries), is tne foundation of 
all these bounties and allowances ; and that, as 
they grew up together, it is fair and regular that 
they should sink and fall together. I recite a 
dozen of the acts : thus : 

" 1. Act of Congress, 1789, grants five cents 
a barrel on pickled fish and salted provisions, 
and five cents a quintal on dried fish, exported 
from the United States, in lieu of a drawback of 
the duties imposed on the importation of the salt 
used in curing such fish and provisions. 

" N. B. Duty on salt, at that time, six cents a 
bushel. 

" 2. Act of 1790 increases the bounty in lieu of 
drawback to ten cents a barrel on pickled fish 
and salted provisions, and ten cents a quintal on 
dried fish. The duty on salt being then raised 
to twelve cents a bushel. 

" 3. Act of 1792 repeals the bounty in lieu of 
drawback on dried fish, and in lieu of that, and 
as a commutation and equivalent therefor, au- 
thorizes an allowance to be paid to vessels in the 
cod fishery (dried fish) at the rate of one dollar 
and fifty cents a ton on vessels of twenty to 
thirty tons ; with a limitation of one hundred 
and seventy dollars for the highest allowance to 
any vessel. 

" 4. A supplementary act, of the same year, 
adds twenty per cent, to each head of these al- 
lowances. 

" 5. Act of 1797 increases the bounty on salt- 
ed provisions to eighteen cents a barrel ; on 
pickled fish to twenty-two cents a barrel ; and 
adds tliirty- three and a third per cent, to the al- 
lowance in favor of the cod-fisliing vessels. Du- 
ty on salt, at the same time, being raised to twen- 
ty cents a bushel. 

" 6. Act of 1799 increases the bounty on 
pickled fish to thirty cents a barrel, on salted 
provisions to twenty-five. 

" 7. Act of 1800 continues all previous acts 
(for bounties and allowances) for ten years, and 
makes this proviso : That these allowances shall 
not be understood to be continued for a longer 
time than the correspondent duties on salt, re- 
spectively, for which the said additional allow- 
ances were granted, shall be payable. 

'• 8. Act of 1807 repeals all laws laying a du- 
ty on imported salt, and for paying bounties on 
the exportation of pickled fish and salted pro- 



156 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



visions, and making allowances to fishing vessels 
— Mr. Jefferson being then President. 

"9. Act of 1813 gives a bounty of twenty 
cents a barrel on pickled fish exported, and al- 
lows to the cod-fishing vessels at the rate of 
two dollars and forty cents the ton for vessels 
between twenty and thirty tons, four dollars a 
ton for vessels above thirty, with a limitation of 
two hundred and seventy-two dollars for the 
highest allowance ; and a proviso, that no boun- 
ty or allowance should be paid unless it was 
proved to the satisfaction of the collector that 
the fish was wholly cured with foreign salt, and 
the duty on it secured or paid. The salt duty, 
at the rate of twenty cents a bushel, was re- 
vived as a war tax at the same time. Bounties 
on salted provisions were omitted. 

" 10. Act of 1816 continued the act of 1813 
in force, which, being for the war only, would 
otherwise have expired. 

"11. Act of 1819 increases the allowance to 
vessels in the cod fishery to three dollars and 
fifty cents a ton on vessels from five to thirty ; 
to four dollars a ton on vessels above thirty tons ; 
with a limitation of three hundred and sixty dol- 
lars for the maximum allowance. 

" 12. Act of 1828 authorizes the mackerel 
fishing vessels to take out licenses like the cod- 
fishing vessels, under which it is reported by 
the vigilant Secretary of the Treasury that mo- 
ney is illegally drawn by the mackerel vessels — 
the newspapers say to the amount of thirty to 
fifty thousand dollars per annum. 

" These recitals of legislative enactments arc 
sufficient to prove that the fishing bounties and 
allowances are bottomed upon the salt duty, and 
must stand or fall with that duty. I will now 
give my reasons for proposing to abolish the du- 
ty on alum salt, and will do it in the simplest 
form of narrative statement ; the reasons them- 
selves being of a nature too weighty and obvi- 
ous to need, or even to admit, of coloring or ex- 
aggeration from arts of speech. 

" 1. Because it is an article of indispensable 
necessity in the provision trade of the United 
States. No beef or pork for the army or navy, 
or for consumption in the South, or for exporta- 
tion abroad, can be put up except in this kind of 
salt. If put up in common salt it is rejected 
absolutely by the commissaries of the army and 
navy, and if taken to the South must be repacked 
in alum salt, at an expense of one dollar and 
twelve and a half cents a barrel, before it is ex- 
ported, or sold for domestic consumption. The 
quantity of provisions which require tiiis salt, and 
must have it, is prodigious, and annually increas- 
ing. The exports of 1828 were, of beef sixtj^-six 
thousand barrels, of pork fifty-four thousand 
barrels, of bacon one million nine hundred thou- 
sand jKJunds weight, butter and cheese two mil- 
lion pounds weight. The value of these articles 
was two millions and a quarter of dollars. To 
this amount must be added the supply for the 
army and naw, and all that was sent to the 
South for home consumption, every pound of 



which had to be cured in this kind of salt, for 
common salt will not cure it. The Western 
country is the great producer of provisions ; and 
there is scarcely a farmer in the whole extent of 
that vast region whose interes-t does not require 
a prompt repeal of the duty on this description 
of salt. 

'• 2. Because no salt of this kind is made in, the 
United States, nor any rival to it, or substitute 
for it. It is a foreign importation, brought from 
various islands in the "West Indies, belonging to 
England. France, Spain, and Denmark : and from 
Lisbon, St. Ubes, Gibraltar, the Bay of Biscay, 
and Liverpool. The principles of tlie protecting 
system do not extend to it : for no quantity of 
protection can produce a home supply. The 
present duty, which is far beyond the rational 
limit of protection, has been in force near thirty 
years, and has not produced a pound. We are 
still thrown exclusively upon the foreign supply. 
The principles of the protecting sj'stem can only 
apply to common salt, the product of which is 
considerable in the United States ; and upon that 
kind, the present duty is proposed to be left in 
fiiU force. 

'■ 3. Because the duty is enormous, and quad- 
ruples the price of the salt to the farmer. The 
original value of salt is about fifteen cents the 
measured bushel of eighty-four pounds. But 
the tariff substitutes weight for measure, and 
fixes that weight at fifty-six pounds, instead of 
eighty-four. Upon that fifty-six pounds, a duty 
of twenty cents is laid. Upon this duty, the re- 
tail merchant has his profit of eight or ten cents, 
and then reduces his bushel from fifty-six to fifty 
pounds. The consequence of all ...jse operations 
is, that the farmer pays about three times as 
much for a weighed bushel of fifty pounds, as 
he would have paid for a measured bushel of 
eighty-four pounds, if this duty had never been 
imposed. 

'• 4. Because the duty is unequal in its opera- 
tion, and falls heavily on some parts of the com- 
munity, and produces profit to others. It is a 
heavy tax on the farmers of the West, who ex- 
port provisions ; and no tax at all, but rather a 
source of profit, to that branch of the fisheries to 
which the allowances of the vessels apply. Ex- 
porters of provisions have the same claim to these 
allowances that exporters of fish have. Both 
claims rest upon the same principle, and upon 
the principle of all drawbacks, that of refundmg 
the duty paid on the imported salt, which is re- 
exported on salted fish and provisions. The same 
principle covers the beef and pork of the farmer 
which covers the fish of the fisherman ; and such 
was the law, as I have shown, for the first eigh- 
teen years that these bounties and allowances 
were authorized. Fish and provisions fared alike 
from 1789 to 1807. Bounties and allowances 
began upon them together, and fell together, on 
the repeal of the salt tax, in the second term of 
Mr. Jotferson's administration. At the renewal 
of the salt tax. in 1813, at the commencement of 
the late war, they parted company, and the law, 



ANNO 1830. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



157 



in the exact sense of the proverb, has made fish 
of one and flesh of the other ever since. The 
fishing interest is now drawing about two hun- 
dred and fift}'- thousand dollars annually from 
the treasury ; the provision raisers draw not a 
cent, while they export more than double as 
much, and ought, upon the same principle, to 
draw more than double as much money from the 
treasury. 

"5. Because it is the means of drawing an un- 
due amount of money from the public treasury, 
under the idea of an equivalent for the drawback 
of duty on the salt used in the curing of fish. 
The amount of money actually drawn in that 
way is about four millions seven hundred 
and fifty thousand dollars, and is now going 
on at the rate of twqi hundred and fifty 
thousand dollars per annum, and constantly 
augmenting. That this amount is more than 
the legal idea recognizes, or contemplates, is 
proved in various ways. 1. By comparing the 
quantity of salt supposed to have been used, 
with the quantity of fish known to have been 
exported, within a given year. This test, for 
the year 1828, would exhibit about seventy 
millions of pounds weight of salt on about forty 
millions of pounds weight of fish. This would 
suppose about a pound and three quarters of 
salt upon each pound of fish. 2. By comparing 
the value of the salt supposed to have been used, 
with the value of the fish known to have been 
exported. This test would give two hundred 
and forty-eight thousand dollars for the salt 
duty on about one million of dollars' worth of 
fish ; making the duty one fourth of its value. 
On this basis, the amount of the duty on the salt 
used on exported provisions would be near six 
hundred thousand dollars. 3. By comparing 
the increasing allowances for salt with the de- 
creasing exportation of fish. This test, for two 
given periods, the rate of allowance being the 
same, would produce this result: In the year 
1820, three hundred and twenty-one thousand 
four hundred and nineteen quintals of dried fish 
exported, and one hundred and ninety-eight 
thousand seven hundred and twenty-four dollars 
paid for the commutation of the salt drawback : 
in 1828, two hundred and sixty-five thousand 
two hundred and seventeen quintals of dried fish 
exported, and two hundred and thirty-nine thou- 
sand one hundred and forty-five dollars paid for 
the commutation. These comparisons establish 
the fact that money is unlawfullj- drawn from 
the treasury by means of these fishing allow- 
ances, bottomed on the salt duty, and that fact 
is expressly stated by the Secretary of the 
Treasury (Mr. Ingham), in his report upon the 
finances, at the commencement of the present 
session of Congress. [See page eight of the re- 
port.] 

'■ G. Because it has become a practical viola- 
tion of one of the most equitable clauses in the 
constitution of the United States — the clause 



which declares that duties, taxes, and excises, 
shall be uniform throughout the Union. There 
is no uniformity in the operation of this tax. 
Far from it. It empties the pockets of some, 
and fills the pockets of others. It returns to 
some five times as much as they pay, and to 
others it returns not a cent. It gives to the 
fishing interest two hundred and fifty thousand 
dollars per annum, and not a cent to the farm- 
ing interest, which, upon the same principle, 
would be entitled to six hundred thousand dol- 
lars per annum. 

" 7. Because this duty now rests upon a false 
basis — a basis which makes it the interest of 
one part of the Union to keep it up, while it is 
the interest of other parts to get rid of it. It is 
the interest of the West to abolish this duty : it 
is the interest of the Northeast to perpetuate it. 
The former loses money by it ; the latter makes 
money by it ; and a tax that becomes a money- 
making business is a solecism of the highest 
order of absurdity. Yet such is the fact. The 
treasury records prove it, and it will afford the 
Northeast a brilliant opportunity to manifest 
their disinterested affection to the West, by giv- 
ing up their own profit in this tax, to relieve the 
West from the burthen it imposes upon her. 

" 8. Because the repeal of the duty will not 
materially diminish the revenue, nor delay the 
extinguishment of the public debt. It is a tax 
carrying money out of the treasury, as well as 
bringing it in. The issue is two hundred and 
fifty thousand dollars, perhaps the full amount 
which accrues on the kind of salt to which the 
abolition extends. The duty, and the fishing 
allowances bottomed upon it, falling together as 
they did when ]Mr. Jefferson was President, 
would probably leave the amount of revenue 
unaffected. 

" 9. Because it belongs to an unhappy period 
in the history of our government, and came to 
us, in its present magnitude, in company with 
an odious and repudiated set of measures. The 
maximum of twenty cents a bushel on salt was 
fixed in the year '98, and was the fruit of the 
same system which produced the alien and sedi- 
tion laws, the eight per cent, loans, the stamp 
act, the black cockade, and the standing army in 
time of peace. It was one of the contrivances 
of that disastrous period for extorting money 
from the people, for the support of that strong 
and splendid government which was then the 
cherished vision of so many exalted heads. The 
reforming hand of Jefferson overthrew it, and all 
the superstructure of fishing allowances which 
was erected upon it. The exigencies of the late 
war caused it to be revived for the term of the 
war, and the interest of some, and the neglect of 
others, have permitted it to continue ever since. 
It is now our duty to sink it a second time. We 
profess to be disciples of the Jeffersonian school ; 
let us act up to our profession, and complete the 
task which our master set us." 



158 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



CHAPTER XLIX. 

BANK OP THE UNITED STATES. " 

It has been already .shown that General Jack- 
son in his first annual message to Congress, call- 
ed in question both the constitutionality and 
expediency of the national bank, in a way to 
show him averse to the institution, and dis- 
posed to see the federal government carried on 
without the aid of such an assistant. In the 
same message he submitted the question to Con- 
gress, that, if such an institution is deemed es- 
sential to the fiscal operations of the govern- 
ment, whether a national one, founded upon the 
credit of the government, and its revenues, might 
not be devised, wliich would avoid all constitu- 
tional difficulties, and at the same time secure all 
the advantages to the government and countrj^ 
that were expected to result from the present 
bank. I was not in Washington when this mes- 
sage was prepared, and had had no conversation 
with the President in relation to a substitute for 
the national bank, or for the currency which it fur- 
nished, and which having a general circulation 
was better entitled to the character of " nation- 
al " than the issues of the local or State banks. 
We knew each other's opinions on the question of 
a bank itself: but had gone no further. I had 
never mentioned to him the idea of reviving the 
gold currency — then, and for twenty years — ex- 
tinct ill the United States : nor had I mentioned 
to him the idea of an independent or sub-trea- 
sury — that is to say, a government treasury un- 
connected with any bank — and which was to 
have the receiving and disbursing of the public 
moneys. When these ideas were mentioned to 
him, he took them at once ; but it was not until 
the Bank of the United States should be disposed 
of that any thing could be done on these two 
subjects ; and on the latter a process had to be 
gone through in the use of local banks as depos- 
itories of the public moneys which required sev- 
eral years to show its issue and inculcate its les- 
son. Though strong in the confidence of the 
people, the President was not deemed strong 
enough to encounter all the banks of all the 
States at once. Temporizing was indispensable 
— and even the conciliation of a part of them. 
Hence the deposit system — or some years' use 



of local banks as fiscal agents of the govern- 
ment — which gave to the institutions so selected, 
the invidious appellation of ^^ pel banks ; " mean- 
ing that they were government favorites. 

In the mean time the question which the Presi 
dent had submitted to Congress in relation to a 
government fiscal agent, was seized upon as an 
admitted design to establish a government bank 
— stigmatized at once as a " thousand times more 
dangerous " than an incorporated national bank — 
and held up to alarm the country. Committees in 
each House of Congress, and all the public press 
in the interest of the existing Bank of the 
United States, took it tip in that sense, and vehe- 
mently inveighed against it. Under an instruc- 
tion to the Finance Committee of the Senate, to 
report upon a plan for a uniform currency, and 
under a reference to the Committee of Ways and 
Means of the House, of that part of the Presi- 
dent's message which related to the bank and its 
currency, most ample, elaborate and argumenta- 
tive reports were made — wholly repudiating all 
the suggestions of the President, and sustaining 
the actual Bank of the United States under every 
aspect of constitutionality and of expediency: 
and strongly presenting it for a renewal of its 
charter. These reports were multiplied without 
regard to. expense, or numbers, in all the varie- 
ties of newspaper and pamphlet publication ; 
and lauded to the skies for their power and ex- 
cellence, and triumphant refutation of all the 
President's opinions. Thus was the " war of the 
bank " commenced at once, in both Houses of 
Congress, and in the public press ; and openly at 
the instance of the bank itself, which, forgetting 
its position as an institution of the government, 
for the convenience of the government, set itself 
up for a power, and struggled for a continued 
existence — in the shape of a new charter — as a 
question of its own, and almost as a right. It 
allied itself at the same time to the political par- 
ty opposed to the President, joined in all their 
schemes of protective tariif, and national inter- 
nal improvement : and became the head of the 
American system. With its moneyed and politi- 
cal power, and numerous interested affiliations, 
and its control over other banks, brokers and 
money dealers, it was truly a power, and a great 
one : and, in answer to a question put by Gene- 
ral Smith, of Maryland, chairman of the Finance 
Committee of the Senate already mentioned (and 
appended with other questions and answers to 



ANNO 1830. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



159 



that report), Mr. Biddle, the president, showed 
a power in the national bank to save, relieve or 
destroy the local banks, which exliibited it as 
their absolute master ; and, of course able to 
control them at will. The question was put in 
a spirit of friendship to the bank, and ■with a 
view to enable its president to exhibit the insti- 
tution as great, just and beneficent. The ques- 
tion was i " Has the bank at anij time oppressed 
any of the State banks?'''' and the answer: 
" Neve?:" And, as if that was not enough, Mr. 
Biddle went on to say: " There are very few 
banks which might not have been destroyed by 
an exertion of the power of the bank. None 
have been injured. Many have been saved. 
And more have been., and are constardly re- 
lieved^ when it is found that they are solvent 
but are suffering under temporary difficidty. 
This was proving entirely too much. A power 
to injure and destroy — to relieve and to save the 
thousand banks of all the States and Territories 
was a power over the business and fortunes of 
nearly all the people of those States and Terri- 
tories : and might be used for evil as well as for 
good ; and was a power entirely too large to be 
trusted to any man, with a heart in his bosom — 
or to any government, lesponsible to the people ; 
much less to a corporation without a soul, and 
irresponsible to heaven or earth. • This was a 
view of the case which the parties to the ques- 
tion had not foreseen ; but which was noted at 
the time ; and which, in the progress of the gov- 
ernment struggle with the bank, received exem- 
plifications which will be remembered by the 
generation of that day while memory lasts ; 
and afterwards known as long as history has 
power to transmit to posterity the knowledge 
of national calamities. 



CHAPTER L. 

KEMOVALS FEOM OFFICE. 

I AM led to give a particular examination of 
this head, from the great error into which Tocque- 
ville has fallen in relation to it, and which he has 
propagated throughout Europe to the prejudice of 
republican government ; and also, because the 
power itself is not generally understood among 



ourselves as laid down by Mr. Jefferson ; and 
has been sometimes abused, and by each party, 
but never to the degree supposed by Mons. de 
Tocqueville. He says, in his chapter 8 on Amer- 
ican democracy : " IMr. Quincy Adams, on his 
entry into ofiice, chscharged the majority of the 
individuals who had been appointed by his pre- 
decessor ; and I am not aware that General 
Jackson allowed a single removable functionary 
employed in the pubhc service to retain his place 
beyond the first year which succeeded his elec- 
tion." Of course, all these imputed sweeping re- 
movals were intended to be imderstood to have 
been made on account of party politics — for dif- 
ference of political opinion — and not for miscon- 
duct, or unfitness for office. To these classes of 
removal (unfitness and misconduct), there could 
be no objection : on the contrary, it would have 
been misconduct in the President not to have re- 
moved in such cases. Of political removals, for 
difference of opinion, then, it only remains to 
speak ; and of those officials appointed by his 
predecessor, it is probable that Mr. Adams did 
not remove one for political cause ; and that M. 
de Tocqueville, with respect to him, is wrong to 
the whole amount of his assertion. 

I was a close observer of Mr. Adams's admin- 
istration, and belonged to the opposition, which 
was then keen and powerful, and permitted no- 
thing to escape which could be rightfully (some- 
times wrongfully) employed against him ; yet I 
never heard of this accusation, and have no 
knowledge or recollection at this time of a sin- 
gle instance on which it could be founded. Mr. 
Adams's administration was not a case, in fact, in 
which such removals — for diflCTcnce of political 
opinion — could occur. They only take place 
when the presidential election is a revolution of 
parties ; and that was not the case when ]\Ir. 
Adams succeeded Mr. IMonroe. He belonged to 
the Monroe administration, had occupied the 
first place in the cabinet during its whole double 
term of eight years ; and of course, stood in con- 
currence with, and not in opposition to, JMr. Mon- 
roe's appointments. Besides, party lines were 
confused, and nearly obliterated at that time. It 
was called " the era of good feeling." Mr. Ad- 
ams was himself an illustration of that feeling. 
He had been of the federal party — brought ear- 
ly into public life as such — a minister abroad and 
a senator at home -as such j but having divided 
from his party in giving support to several prom- 



160 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



incnt measures of Jlr. Jefferson's administration, 
he was afterwards several times nominated by 
Mr. Madison as minister abroad ; and on the 
election of Mr. JNIonroe he was invited from 
London to be made his Secretary of State — where 
he remained till his own election to the Presiden- 
cy. There was, then, no case presented to him 
for political removals ; and in fact none such 
were made by him ; so that the accusation of M. 
de Tocqueville, so for as it applied to Mr. Adams, is 
wholly erroneous, and inexcusably careless. 

With respect to General Jackson, it is about 
equally so in the main assertion — the assertion 
that he did not allow a single removable func- 
tionary to remain in office beyond the first year 
after his election. On the contrary, there were 
entu-e classes — all those whose functions partook 
of the judicial — which he never touched. Boards 
of commissioners for adjudicating land titles; 
commissioners for adjudicating claims imder 
indemnity treaties; judges of the territorial 
courts; justices of the District of Columbia; 
none of these were touched, either in the first or 
in any subsequent year of his administration, 
except a solitary judge in one of the territories ; 
and he not for political cause, but on specific 
complaint, and after taking the written and re- 
sponsible opinion of the then Attorney General, 
Mr. Grundy. Of the seventeen diplomatic func- 
tionaries abroad, only four (three ministers and 
one charge des affaires) were recalled in the first 
year of his administration. In the departments 
at Washington, a majority of the incumbents re- 
mained opposed to him during his administration. 
Of the near eight thousand deputy postmasters 
in the United States, precisely four hundred and 
tinety-one v;ern removed in the time mentioned 
oy Mons. dc Tocqueville, and they for all causes 
— for every variety of causes. Of the whole 
number of removable oflBcials, amounting to 
many thousands, the totality of removals was 
about six hundred and ninety and they for all 
causes. Thus the government archives contra- 
dict Mons. dc Tocqueville, and vindicate General 
Jackson's administration from the reproach cast 
upon it. Yet he came into office under circum- 
stances well calculated to excite him to make re- 
movals. In the first place, none of his political 
friends, though constituting a great majority of 
the people of the United States, had been ap- 
pointed to office during the preceding administra- 
tion ; and such an exclusion could not be justified 



on any consideration. His election was, in some 
degree, a revolution of parties, or rather a re-estab- 
lishment of parties on the old line of federal and 
democratic. It was a change of administration, 
in which a change of government functionaries, 
to some extent, became a right and a duty ; but 
still the removals actually made, when political, 
were not merely for opinions, but for conduct 
under these opinions ; and, unhappily, there was 
conduct enough in too many officials to justify 
their removal. A large proportion of them, in- 
cluding all the new appointments, were inimical 
to General Jackson, and divided against him on 
the re-establishment of the old party lines ; and 
many of them actively. ]\Ir. Clay, holding the 
first place in Mr. Adams's cabinet, took the field 
against him, travelled into different States, de- 
claimed against him at public meetings ; and de- 
precated his election as the greatest of calam- 
ities. The subordinates of the government, to a 
great degree, followed his example, if not in 
pubhc speeches, at least in public talk and news- 
paper articles ; and it was notorious that these 
subordinates were active in the presidental elec- 
tion. It was a great error in them. It chang- 
ed their position. By their position all admin- 
istrations were the same to them. Their duties 
were ministerial, and the same under all Presi- 
dents. They were noncombatants. By engag- 
ing in the election they became combatant, and 
subjected themselves to the law of victory and 
defeat — reward and promotion in one case, loss 
of place in the other. General Jackson, then, 
on his accession to the Presidency, was in a new 
situation with respect to parties, different from 
that of any President since the time of Mr. Jef- 
ferson, whom he took for his model, and whose 
rule he followed. lie made many removals, and 
for cause, but not so many as not to leave a ma- 
jority in office against him — even in the execu- 
tive departments in Washington City. 

Mr. Jefferson had early and anxiously studied 
the question of removals. He was the first 
President that had occasion to make them, and 
with him the occasion was urgent. His election 
was a complete revolution of parties, and when 
elected, he found himself to be almost the only 
man of liis party in office. The democracy had 
been totally excluded from federal appointment 



during the administration of his predecessor; al- 
most all offices were in the hands of his politi- 
cal foes. I recollect to have heard an officer of 



ANNO 1830. ANDREW JACKSON, PRKSIDENT. 



161 



the army say that there was but one field officer 
in the service favorable to him. This was the 
type of the civil service. Justice to himself and 
his party required this state of things to be al- 
tered ; required his friends to have a share pro- 
portionate to their numbers in the distribution of 
office ; and required him to have the assistance 
of his friends in the administration of the govern- 
ment. The four years' limitation law — the law 
which now vacates within the cycle of every 
presidential term the great mass of the offices 
— was not then in force. Resignations then, as 
now, were few. Removals were indispensable, 
and the only question was the principle upon 
which they should be made. This question, 
Mr. Jefferson studied anxiously, and under all 
its aspects of principle and policy, of national 
and of party duty ; and upon consultation with 
his friends, settled it to his and their satisfaction. 
The fundamental principle was, that each party 
was to have a share in the ministerial offices, 
the control of each branch of the service being 
in the hands of the administration ; that removals 
were only to be made for cause ; and, of course, 
that there should be inquiry into the truth of 
imputed delinquencies. "OflBcial misconduct," 
" personal misconduct, " " negligence, " " inca- 
pacity, " " inherent vice in the appointment, " 
" partisan electioneering beyond the fair exercise 
of the elective franchise ; " and where " the heads 
of some branches of the service were politically 
opposed to his administration " — these, with Mr. 
Jefferson, constituted the law of removals, and 
was so written down by him immediately after 
his inauguration. Thus, March 7th, 1801 — only 
four days after his induction into office — he 
wrote to Mr. Monroe : 

"Some removals, I know, must be made. 
They must be as few as possible, done gradual- 
ly, and bottomed on some malversation, or in- 
herent disqualification. Where we should draw 
the line between retaining all and none, is not 
yet settled, and will not be until we get our ad- 
ministration together; and, perhaps, even then 
we shall proceed a tatons, balancing our measures 
according to the impression we perceive them to 
make. " 

On the 23d of March, 1801, being still in the 
first month of his administration, Mr. Jefferson 
wrote thus to Gov. Giles, of Virginia : 

" Good men, to whom there is no objection but 
a difference of political ojMnion, practised on only 
eo far as the right of a private citizen will justi- 

Vol. I.~11 



fy, are not proper subjects of removal, except in 
the case of attorneys and marshals. The courts 
being so decidedly federal and in-emovable, it is 
believed that republican attorneys and marshals, 
being the doors of entrance into the courts, are 
indispensably necessary as a shield to the repub- 
lican part of our fellow-citizens ; which, I believe, 
is the main body of the people. " 

Six days after, he wrote to Elbridge Gerry, 
afterwards Vice-President, thus : 

" Mr. Adams's last appointments, when he knew 
he was appointing counsellors and aids for me, not 
for himself, I set aside as fast as depends on me. 
Officers who have been guilty of gross abuse of 
office, such as marshals packing juries, &c., I 
shall now remove, as my predecessors ought in 
justice to have done. The instances will be few, 
and governed by strict rule, and not party pas- 
sion. The right of opinion shall suffer no inva- 
sion from me. Those who have acted well have 
nothing to fear, however they may have differed 
from me in opinion : those who have done ill, 
however, have nothing to hope ; nor shall I fail 
to do justice, lest it should be ascribed to that 
difference of opinion. " 

To Mr. Lincoln, his Attorney- General, still 
writing in the first year of liis administration, he 
says: 

" I still think our original idea as to office is 
best ; that is, to depend, for obtaining a just par- 
ticipation, on deaths, resignations and delinquen- 
cies. This will least affect the tranquillity of the 
people, and prevent their giving into the sugges- 
tion of our enemies — that ours has been a contest 
for office, not for principle. This is rather a slow 
operation, but it is sure, if we pursue it steadily, 
which, however, has not been done with the un- 
deviating resolution I could have wished. To 
these means of obtaining a just share in the 
transaction of the public business, shall be added 
one more, to wit, removal for electioneering ac- 
tivity, or open and industrious opposition to the 
principles of the present government, legislative 
and executive. Every officer of the government 
may vote at elections according to his conscience ; 
but we should betray the cause committed to our 
care, were we to permit the influence of official 
patronage to be used to overthrow that cause. 
Your present situation will enable you to judge 
of prominent offenders in your State in the case 
of the present election. I pray you to seek them, 
to mark them, to be quite sure of your ground, 
that we may conuuit no errors or wrongs ; and 
leave the rest to me. 1 have been urged to remove 
Mr. Whittemore, the surveyor of Gloucester, on 
grounds of neglect of duty and industrious oppo- 
sition ; yet no facts are so distinctly charged a<: 
to make" the step sure which we should take in 
this. Will you take the trouble to satisfy your- 
self on the point ? " 

This was the law of removals as laid down by 



162 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



Mr. Jefferson, and practised upon by him, but 
not to the extent that his principle required, or 
that public outcry indicated. He told me him- 
self, not long before his death (Christmas, 1824), 
that he had never done justice to his own party 
— had never given them the share of office to 
which there numbers entitled them — had failed 
to remove many who deserved it. but who 
were spared through the intercession of friends 
and concern for their distressed families. Gene- 
ral Jackson acted upon the rule of i\Ir. Jefferson, 
but no doubt was often misled into departures 
from the rule ; but never to the extent of giving 
to the party more than their due proportion of 
office, according to their numbers. Great cla- 
mor was raised against Mm, and the number of 
so-called " removals " was swelled by an abuse 
of the term, every case being proclaimed a " re- 
moval, " where he refused to reappoint an ex- 
incumbent whose term had expired under the 
four years' limitation act. Far from universal 
removals for opinion's sake, General Jackson, as 
I have already said, left the majority of his op- 
ponents in office, and re-appointed many such 
whose terms had expired, and who had approved 
themselves faithful officers. 

Having vindicated General Jackson and Mr. 
Adams from the reproach of Mons. de Tocque- 
ville. and having shown that it was neither a 
principle nor a practice of the Jefferson school 
to remove officers for political opinions, I now 
feel bound to make the declaration, that the doc- 
trine of that school has been too much departed 
from of late, and by both parties, and to the great 
detriment of the right and proper working of the 
government. 

The practice of removals for opinion's sake is 
Dccoming too common, and is reducing our pre- 
sidential elections to what Mr. Jefferson depre- 
cated, " a contest of office instead of principle, " 
and converting the victories of each party, so far 
as office is concerned, into the political extermi- 
nation of the other ; as it was in Great Britain 
between the whigs and tories in the bitter con- 
tests of one hundred years ago, and when the 
victor made a " clean sweep " of the vanquished, 
leaving not a wreck behind. JNIr. ^Macaulay thus 
describes one of those " sweepings: " 

" A persecution, such as had never been known 
before, and has never been known since, raged in 
every public department. Great numbers of 
huuible and laborious clerks were deprived of 



their bread, not because they had neglected their 
duties, not because they had taken an active part 
against the ministry, but merely because thej 
had owed they situations to some (whig) noble- 
man who was against the peace. The proscrip- 
tion extended to tidewaiters, to doorkeepers. 
One poor man, to whom a pension had been given 
for his gallantry in a fight with smugglers, was 
deprived of it because he had been befriended by 
the (whig) Duke of Grafton. An aged widow, 
who, on account of her husband's services in the 
navy, had, many years before, been made house- 
keeper in a public office, was dismissed from her 
situation because she was distantly connected 
by marriage with the (whig) Cavendish family. " 

This, to be sure, was a tory proscription of 
whigs, and therefore the less recommcndable as 
an example to either party in the United States, 
but too much followed by both — to the injury 
of individuals, the damage of the public service, 
the corruption of elections, and the degradation 
of government. De Tocqueville quotes removals 
as a reproach to our government, and although 
untrue to the extent he represented, the evil has 
become worse since, and is true to a sufficient 
extent to demand reform. The remedy is found 
in Mr. Jefferson's rule, and in the four years' 
limitation act which has since been passed ; and 
under which, with removals for cause, and some 
deaths, and a few resignations, an ample field 
would be found for new appointments, without 
the harshness of general and sweeping removals. 

I consider " sweeping" removals, as now prac- 
tised by both parties, a great political evil in our 
country', injurious to individuals, to the public 
service, to the purity of elections, and to the 
harmony and union of the people. Certainly, 
no individual has a right to an office : no one 
has an estate or property in a public employ- 
ment ; but when a mere ministerial worker in a 
subordinate station has learned its duties by ex- 
perience, and approved his fidelity by Iiis con- 
duct, it is an injurj^ to the public service to ex- 
change him for a novice, whose only title to the 
place may be a political badge or a partisan 
service. It is exchanging experience for inexpe- 
rience, tried ability for untried, and destroying 
incentive to good conduct by destroying its re- 
ward. To the party displaced it is an injury, 
having become a proficient in that business, ex- 
pecting to remain in it during good behavior, and 
finding it difficult, at an advanced age. and with 
fixed habits, to begin a new career in some new 
walk of life. It converts elections into scram- 



ANKO 1830. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



163 



bles for office, and degrades the government into 
an office for rewards and punishments ; and di- 
vides the people of the Union into two adverse 
parties — each in its turn, and as it becomes dom- 
inant, to strip and proscribe the other. 

Our government is a Union. We want a 
united people, as well as united States — united 
for benefits as well as for burdens, and in feeling 
as well as in compact ; and this cannot be while 
one half (each in its turn) excludes the other 
from all share in the administration of the gov- 
ernment. ]Mr. Jefferson's principle is perfect, 
and reconciled public and private interest with 
party rights and duties. The party in power is 
responsible for the well-working of the govern- 
ment, and has a right, and is bound by duty to 
itself, to place its friends at the head of the dif- 
ferent branches of the public service. After 
that, and in the subordinate places, the opposite 
party should have its share of employment ; and 
this !Mr. Jefferson's principle gives to it. But 
as there are offices too subordinate for party 
proscription, so there are others too elevated and 
national for it. This is now acknowledged in 
the army and navy, and formerly was acknow- 
ledged in the diplomatic department ; and should 
be again. To foreign nations we should, at least, 
be one people — an undivided people, and that in 
peace as well as in war. Mr. Jefferson's prin- 
ciple reached this case, and he acted upon it. 
His election was not a signal gun, fired for the 
recall of all the ministers abroad, to be succeeded 
incontinently by partisans of its own. Mr. Ru- 
fus King, the most eminent of the federal minis- 
ters abroad, and at the most eminent court of 
Europe, that of St. James, remained at his post 
for two years after the revolution of parties in 
1800 ; and until he requested his own recall, 
treated all the while with respect and confidence, 
and intrusted with a negotiation which he con- 
ducted to its conclusion. Our early diplomatic 
policy, eschewing all foreign entanglement, re- 
jected the office of "minister resident." That 
early republican policy Avould have no perma- 
nent representation at foreign courts. Thc^ " en- 
voy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary," 
called out on an emergent occasion, and to return 
home as soon as the emergency was over, was 
the only minister known to our early history ; and 
then the mission was usually a mixed one, com- 
posed of both parties. And so it should be 
again. The present permanent supply and per- 



petual succession of " envoys extraordinary and 
ministers plenipotentiary " is a fraud upon the 
name, and a breach of the old policy of the gov 
ernment, and a hitching on American diplomacy 
to the tail of the diplomacy of Europe. It is the 
actual keeping up of "ministers resident" under 
a false name, and contrary to a wise and vener 
able policy ; and requires the reform hand of 
the House of Representatives. But this point 
will require a chapter of its own, and its elucida- 
tion must be adjourned to another and a separate 
place. 

Mons. de Tocqueville was right in the princi- 
ple of his reproach, wrong in the extent of his 
application, but would have been less wrong if 
he had written of events a dozen years later. I 
deprecate the effect of such sweeping removals 
at each revolution of parties, and believe it is 
having a deplorable effect both upon the purity 
of elections and the distribution of office, and 
taking both out of the hands of the people, and 
throwing the management of one and the en- 
joyment of the other into most unfit hands. I 
consider it as working a deleterious change in 
the government, making it what Mr. Jeflerson 
feared : and being a disciple of his school, and 
believing in the soundness and nationality of the 
rule which he laid down, I deem it good to re- 
call it solemnly to public recollection — for the 
profit, and hope, of present and of future times 



CHAPTER LI. 

INDIAN SOVEREIGNTIES WITHIN THE STATES 

A POLITICAL movement on the part of some oi 
the southern tribes of Indians, brought up a new 
question between the States and those Indians, 
which called for the interposition of the federal 
government. Though still called Indians, their 
primitive and equal government had lost its 
form, and had become an oligarchy, governed 
chiefly by a few wliite men, called half-breeds, 
because there was a tincture of Indian blood in 
their veins. These, in some instances, sat up 
governments within the States, and claimed sov- 
ereignty and dominion within their limits. The 
States resisted this claim and extended their laws 
and jurisdiction over them. The federal govern- 



1G4 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



mcnt was apiicalcJ to ; and at the commence- 
ment of the Session of l829-'30, m his first an- 
nual message, President Jackson brought the 
subject before the two Houses of Congress, 
thus : 

'• The condition and ulterior destiny of the 
Indian tribes within the limits of some of our 
States, have become objects of much interest and 
importance. It has long been the policy of gov- 
ernment to introduce among them the arts of 
civilization, in the hope of gradually reclaiming 
them from a wand<'ring life. This policy has, 
however, been coupled with another, wholly in- 
compatible with its success. Professing a de- 
sire to civilize and settle them, we have, at the 
same time, lost no opportunity to purchase their 
lands and thrust them further into the wilder- 
ness. By this means they have not only been 
kept in a wandering state, but been led to look 
upon us as unjust, and indifferent to their fate. 
Thus, though lavish in its expenditures upon the 
subject, government has constantly defeated its 
own policy, and the Indians, in general, reced- 
ing further and further to the West, have re- 
tained their savage habits. A portion, however, 
of the southern tribes, having mingled much 
with the whites, and made some progress in the 
arts of civilize<l life, have lately attempted to 
erect an independent government within the lim- 
its of Georgia and Alabama. These States, 
claiming to be the only .sovereigns within their 
territories, extended their laws over the Indians ; 
which induced the latter to call upon the United 
States for protection. 

'' Under these circumstances, the question pre- 
sented was, whether the general government had 
a right to sustain those people in their preten- 
sions ? The constitution declares, that " no 
new States shall be formed or erected within the 
jurisdiction of any other State," without the 
consent of its legislature. If the general gov- 
ernment is not permitted to tolerate the erection 
of a confcflerate State within the territoiy of 
one of the members of this Union, against her 
consent, much less could it allow a foreign and 
independent government to establish itself there. 
Georgia l^ecarae a member of the confederacy 
which eventuated in our federal union, as a sov- 
ereign State, always asserting her claim to cer- 
tain limits ; which, having been originally de- 
fined in her colonial charter, and subsequently 
recognized in the treaty of peace, she has ever 
.since continued to enjoy, except as they have 
l>cen circiunscrilK;d by her own voluntary trans- 
ftr of a portion of her territory to the" United 
States, in the articles of cession "of 1S02. Ala- 
bama was admitted into the Union on the same 
footing with the original States, with bounda- 
ries which were prescribed by Congress. There 
is no constitutional, conventional, or legal pro- 
vision, which allows them Ics^i power over the 
Indians within their borders, than is j>os,sessed 
l>y Maine or New- York. Would the people of 



Elaine permit the Penobscot tribe to erect an 
I independent government within their State 1 
I and, unless they did. would it not be the duty 
, of the general government to support them in 
j resisting such a measure ? Would the people of 
I Xew-York permit each remnant of the Six Na- 
I tions within her borders, to declare itself an in- 
I dependent people, under the protection of the 
United States ? Could the Indians establish a 
I separate republic on each of their reservatiom; 
, in Ohio 1 And if thuy were so disposed, would 
it be the duty of this government to protect 
I them in the attempt ? If the principle involved 
in the obvious answer to these questions be 
abandoned, it will follow that the objects of this 
government are reversed ; and that it has be- 
come a part of its duty to aid in destroying the 
States which it was established to protect. 

" Actuated by this view of the subject, I in- 
formed the Indians inhabiting parts of Georgia 
and Alabama, that their attempt to establi.sh an 
independent government would not be counte- 
nanced by the Executive of the United States ; 
and advised them to emigrate beyond the Missis- 
sippi, or submit to the laws of those States." 

Having thus refused to sustain these southern 
tribes in their attempt to set up independent 
governments within the States of Alabama and 
Georgia, and foreseeing an unequal and disagree- 
able contest between the Indians and the States, 
the President recommended the passage of an 
act to enable him to provide for their removal to 
the west of the Mississippi. It was an old poli- 
cy, but party spirit now took hold of it, and 
strenuously resisted the passage of the act. It 
was one of the closest, and most earnestly con- 
tested questions of the session ; and finally car- 
ried by an inconsiderable majority. The sum of 
§500,000 was appi.^nated to defray the expen- 
ses of treating with them for an exchange, or sale 
; of territory ; and under this act, and with the 
ample means which it placed at the disposal of 
the President, the removals were eventually ef- 
fected ; but with great difficulty, chiefly on ac 
count of a foreign, or outside infliience from pol- 
iticians and intrusive philanthropists. Georgia 
was the State where this question took its most 
serious form. The legislature of the State laid 
off the Cherokee country into counties, and pro- 
pared to exercise her laws within them. The 
Indians, besides resisting through their political 
friends in Congress, took counsel and legal ad- 
vice, with a view to get the question into the Su 
preme Court of the United States. Mr. Wirt, 
the late Attorney Gener^ of the United States, 
was retained in their cause, and addressed a com 



ANXO 1830. A^'DREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



165 



munication to the Governor of the State, ap- 
pri.sing him of the fact ; and proposing that an 
" agreed case " should be made up for the decis- 
ion of the court. Gov. Gilmer declined this 
proposal, and in his answer gave as the reason 
why the State had taken the decided step of ex- 
tending her jurisdiction, that the Cherokee tribe 
had become merged in its management in the 
" half breeds." or de.«cendants of white men, 
who possessed wealth and intelUgence. and act- 
ing under political and fanatical instigations from 
without, were disposed to perpetuate their resi- 
dence within the State, — (the part of them still 
remaining and refusing to join their half tribe 
beyond the Mississippi). The governor said : 
•• So long as the Cherokees retained their primi- 
tive habits, no disposition was shown by the 
States under the protection of whose govern- 
ment they resided, to make them subject to their 
laws. Such policy would have been cruel ; be- 
eause it would have interfered with then* habits 
of life, the enjoyments pecuhar to Indian people, 
and the kind of government which accorded 
with those habits and enjoyments. It was the 
power of the whites, and of their children 
among the Cherokees. that destroyed the ancient 
laws, customs and authority of the tribe, and 
subjected the nation to the rule of that most op- 
pressive of governments — an oligarchy. There 
is nothing surprising in this result. From the 
character of the people, and the causes operating 
upon them, it could not have been otherwise. It 
was this state of things that rendered it obliga- 
tory upon Georgia to vindicate the rights of her 
sovereignty by abolishing all Cherokee govern- 
ment withiD its limits. Whether of the intelli- 
gent, or ignorant class, the State of Georgia has 
passed no laws violative of the liberty, personal 
security, or private property of any Indian. It 
has been the object of humanity, and wisdom, 
to separate the two classes (the ignorant, and the 
informed Indians) among them, giving the rights 
of citizenship to those who are capable of per- 
forming its duties and properly estimating its 
privileges ; and increasing the enjoyment and the 
probability of future improvement to the ignor- 
ant and idle, by removing them to a situation 
where the inducements to action will be more in 
accordance with the character of the Cherokee 
people." 

"With respect to the foreign interference with 
fhis question, by pohticians of other States and 



pseudo philanthropists, the only effect of which 
was to bring uponsubal tern agents the pnni-hment 
which the laws inflicted upon its violatois the 
governor said ; " It is well known that the ex- 
tent of the jurisdiction of Georgia, and the pol- 
icy of removing the Cherokees and other Indians 
to the west of the Mississippi, have become party 
questions. It is believed that the Cherokees in 
Georgia, had determined to unite with that por- 
tion of the tribe who had removed to the west of 
the Mississippi, if the policy of the President 
was sustained by Congress. To prevent this re- 
sult, as soon as it became highly probable that 
the Indian bill would pass, the Cherokees were 
persuaded that the right of self-government could 
be secured to them by the power of the Supreme 
Court of the United States, in defiance of the leg- 
islation of the general and State governments. 
It was not known, however, until the receipt of 
your letter, that the spirit of resistance to the 
laws of the State, and views of the United States, 
which has of late been evident among the Indi- 
ans, had in any manner been occasioned by your 
advice." Mr. Wirt had been professionally em- 
ployed by the Cherokees to bring their case be- 
fore the Supreme Court ; but as he classed polit- 
ically with the party, which took sides with the 
Indians against Georgia, the governor was the 
less ceremonious, or reserved in his reply to him, 
•Judge Clayton, in whose circuit the Indian 
coimties fell, at his first charge to the grand jury 
assured the Indians of protection, warned the in- 
termeddlers of the mischief they were were do- 
ing, and of the inutility of applying to the Su- 
preme Court. He said : " "My other purpose is 
to apprise the Indians that they are not to be oppres- 
.sed, as has been sagely foretold : that the same 
justice which will be meted to the citizen shall be 
meted to them." With respect to intermeddlers 
he said : " Meetings have been held in all direc- 
tions, to express opinions on the conduct of 
Georgia, and Georgia alone — when her adjoining 
sister States had lately done precisely the same 
thing; and which she and they had done, in 
the rightful exercise of their State sovereignty." 
The judge even showed that one of these intru- 
sive philanthropists had endeavored to interest 
European sympathy, in behalf of the Cherokees; 
and quoted from the address of the reverend Mr. 
Milner, of New-York, to the Foreign Missionary 
Society in London: "That if the cause of the 
negroes in the West Indias was interesting to 



166 



THIRTY YEARS* VIEW. 



Uut auditor)— and deeply interesting it ought 
to be— if the population in Ireland, groaning be- 
Death the degradation of superstition — excited 
their sympathies, he trusted the Indians of North 
America would also be considered as the objects ^ 
of their Christian regard. He was grieved, how- 
ever, to state that there were those in America, 
who acted towards them in a different .spirit ; and 
he lamented to say that, at this very moment, the 
State of Georgia was seeking to subjugate and 
destroy the Uberties both of the Creeks and the 
Cherokees; the former of whom possessed in 
Georgia, ten millions of acres of land, and the 
latter three millions." In this manner European I 
sympathies were sought to be brought to bear ■ 
upon the question of removal of the Indians — a 
political and domestic question, long .since resolv- 
ed upon by wise and humane American states- , 
men — and for the benefit of the Indians them- j 
selves, as well as of the States in which they ' 
were. If all that the reverend missionary utter- 
ed had been true, it would still have been a very 
improper invocation of European sympathies in 
an American domestic question, and against a set- 
tled governmental policy : but it was not true. 
The Creeks, with their imputed ten millions of 
acres, owned not one acre in the State ; and had 
not in five years — not since the treaty of cessior. 
1S2.5 : which shows the recklessnes* with 



m 

which the reverend suppliant for foreign sympia- ] 
thy, spoke of the people and States of his own j 
country. The few Cherokees who were there, | 
instead of subjugation and destruction of their 
liberties, were to be paid a high price for their i 
land, if they chose to join their tribe beyond the 
Mississippi ; and if not they were to be protect- | 
ed like the white inhabitants of " 
livod in. Withre>pwt to the .^ ..;.... ; ..;. 
the judge declared that he should pay no atten- 
tion to its mandate — holding no writ of error to , 
lie from the Supreme Court of the United States 
to his State Court — but would execute the sen- ' 
tence of the law. whatever it might be. in defiance ' 
of the Supreme Court ; and such was the lact. I 
Instigated by foreign interference, and relying 
upon its protection, one Ge- -• "^^ ' *" '•-- 
dian descent committed a i . 

the laws of Georgia — was tried for murder —con- j 
TJcted — condemned — and sentenced to be hanged 
•n a given day. A writ of error, to bring the case 
before itself was obtained from the Supreme Court i 



of the United States ; and it was proposed by the 
counsel, Mr. Wirt, to trj- the v" 'jstion ci 

the right of Georgia, to exercL-^^^ j .; .- ..jtion orei 
the Indians and Indian country within her lim- 
its, by the trial of this writ of error at Wash- 
ington ; and for that purpose, and to save the te- 
dious forms of judicial proceedings, he requested 
the governor to consent to make up an ~ agreed 
case" for the consideration and decision of that 
high court. This proposition Governor Gilmer 
declined, in firm but civil terms, saying : " Your 
L, . .f.^tion that it would be convenient and sat- 
.-y if yourselfl the Indians, and the gov- 
ernor would make np a law case to be submit- 
ted to ths Supreme Court for the determination 
of the question, whether the legislature of Geor- 
gia has competent authority to pa^s laws for the 
government of the Indians r -athin its 

limits, however courteous the mann- "-dJiar 

tory the phras- ' - - - i -e<j 33 

exceedingly d:-: , ,- fthe 

State. Xoone knows better than your^l£ that 
the governor would grossly violate his duty, and 
exceed his authority, by complying with such a 
suggestion ; and that both the letter and the spirit 
of the powers conferred by the constitution upon 
the Supreme Court forbid its adjudging such a 

It is hoped that the efforts of the g 
^ ..iiiment to execute its contract -^^'•''^ '' 
(the compact of 18'^»2). to secure t: 
and advance the happiness of the ' -, 

and to give quiet to the country. : >:■ <J- 

fectually successful as to prevent t": ::y of 

any further intercourse upon the s ^ ^d 

there was no further intercoorse. The day for 
the execution of Tassels came r: wis 

1 : and the writ of t' ^ ms 

.. ;...reheardof. The rc:^-.. . _ f- 

terwards made their treaty, and removed : 
west of the Mississippi ; and that was the end of 
the political, and intrusive inter- 

ference in the dom ^ •' " .J. One 

Indian hanged, =0: -oned. the 

writ of the Supreme Court d: - \. the In- 

dians removed : and the poUtic&l ar, - 

philanthropic intermeddlers left to the ivu^.-.-jd 
of having done much mischief in assmniog to 
become the defenders and guardians of a TKt 
which the humanity of our laws and people wer« 
treating with parental Idndness 



AVVO l?tl A5I>REW J±rs^OS, PSE5IDE?X 



167 



:a_-=. 






. ^rSTs t»r 



15 b-rMr. 






lie tc 



i ~sr" 






- ' t r — 



DesE. 



It. Can: 



and £ pir 



T- 



OQci^gaal TitaSlj r:^" ~ 
tferee T&Ees. ssad i_t ._• 
'Vi. aad t&e aetkn «f C 
= BD TTgTanrr &: 7: 
joted pass tt^ ~ ' 
tioa to tiieTc' 
CK an ISk 



•OES 



~Jn: 



to be 



C. 






\ JC&-- 



CHAPTEE LIII 



SXJ?nrSE BETWTZS ?22gXDS5T JACi3.:«5L A5D 

Wrrs 



s ■«is. 



IGS 



THIirn' YEARS' VIEW. 



the pmofs. His words were : '• In your and Mr. 
Crawford's dispute I have no interest whatever ; 
but it may become necessary for me hereafter, 
when I shall have more leisure, and the docu- 
ments at hand, to place the subject in its proper 
light — to notice the historical facts and refer- 
ences in your communication — which will give 

a very diU'ercnt view to the subject 

Understanding you now, no further communi- 
ration with you on this subject is necessarj*." 
And none further appears from Gen- 
eral Jackson. 

But the general did what he had intimated he 
would — drew up a sustained reply, showing the 
subject in a diderent light from that in which 
^Ir. Calhoun's letters had presented it ; and 
quoting vouchers for all that he said. The case, 
as made out in the published pamphlet, stood 
before the public as that of an intrigue on the 
part of Mr. A"an Burcn to supplant a rival — of 
which the President was the dupe — Mr. Calhoun 
the victim — and the country the sufferer : and 
the modus operandi of the intrigue was, to dig 
up the buried proceedings in Mr. ^Monroe's cabi- 
net, in relation to a proposed court of inquiry on 
the general (at the instance of ]Mr. Calhoun), 
for his alleged, unauthorized, and illegal opera- 
tions in Florida during the Seminole war. It 
wa-s this case which the general felt himself 
bound to confront — and did ; and in confronting 
which he showed that Mr. Calhoun himself was 
the sole cause of breaking their friendship ; and, 
consequently, the sole cause of all the conse- 
quences which resulted from that breach. Up 
to that time — up to the date of the discovery of 
Mr. Calhoun's now admitted part in the proposed 
measun- of the court of inquiry — that gentleman 
had been the general's beau ideal of a states- 
man and a man — " the noblest work of God," as 
he publicly expressed it in a toast: against 
whom he would believe nothing, to whose friends 
he gave an equal voice in the cabinet, whom he 
consulted as if a member of his administration; 
and whom he actually preferred for his successor. 
This rejily to the pamj)hlet, enfitled " An e.vpo- 
silion nf Mr. CalhnurCs cnurse tnu-nrdu Gene- 
ral Jf/c/i-fOH," though written aljove twenty 
years ago, and intended for publication, has 
never before been given to the public. Its pub- 
lication becomes essential now. It Ix'longs to a 
dissension between chit-fs which has disturbed 
the harmony, and loosened the foundations of the 



Union ; and of which the view, on one side, waa 
published in pamphlet at the time, registered in 
the weeklies and annuals, printed in many pa- 
pers;, carried into the Congress debates, espe- 
cially on the nomination of Mr. Van Buren ; and 
so made a part of the public history of the times 
— to be used as historical material in after time. 
The introductory paragraph to the " Exposition' 
shows that it was intended for immediate publi- 
cation, but with a feeling of repugnance to tho 
exhibition of the chief magistrate as a newspa- 
per writer: which feeling in the end predomi- 
nated, and delayed the publication until the ex- 
piration of his office — and afterwards, until his 
death. But it was preserved to fulfil its origi- 
nal purpose, and went in its manuscript form to 
Jlr. Francis P. Blair, the literary legatee of Gen- 
eral Jackson ; and by him was turned over to 
me (with trunks full of other papers) to be used 
in this Thirty Years' View. It had been previ- 
ouslj- in the hands of Mr. Amos Kendall, as ma- 
terial for a life of Jackson, which he had begun 
to write, and was by him made known to Mr. 
Calhoun, who declined ^'•furnishing any fur- 
ther information on the subject^ * It is in the 
foir round-hand writing of a clerk, slightly in- 
terlined in the general's hand, the narrative 
sometimes in the first and sometimes in the 
third person; vouchers referred id and shown 
for every allegation ; and signed by the gen- 
eral in his own well-known hand. Its mat- 
ter consists of three parts : 1. The justification 
of himself, under the law of nations and the 
treaty with Spain of 1795, for taking military 
possession of Florida in 1818. 2. The same jus- 
tification, under the orders of Mr. Monroe and 
his Secretary at War (Mr. Calhoun). 3. The 

* Mr. Kendall's letter to the author is in these words: 
"December 29, 1853.— In reply to your note just received, 
I have to state that, wishing to do e.xact justice to all men in 
my Life of General Jackson, I addressed a note to Mr. Cal- 
houn stating to him in substance, that I was in possession of 
tho evidences on which the general based liis imputation of 
duplicity touching his course in Mr. Monroe's cabinet upon 
the Florida war question, and inquiring whether it was his 
desire to furnish any further information on th« subject, or rest 
upon that which was already before the public (in las publica- 
tion). A few days afterwards, tho Hon. Di.xon 11. Lewis told 
me that Mr. CiJIioun had received my letter, and had rrqucsted 
I hiin to ask me what was tho nature of tho evidences among 
i Qeneral Jackson's papers to which I alluded. I stated them to 
\ him, as embodied in General Jackson's 'F.xposition,' to which 
you refer. Mr. Lewis afterwards informed mo that Mr. Calhoun 
I had concluded to let the matter rest as it was. This is all the 
answer I ever received from Mr. Calhoun. ' 



AlfNO 1831. AKDREW JACKSOK PRESIDENT. 



169 



statement of Mr. Calhoun's conduct towards 
him (the general) in all that affair of the Sem- 
inole war, and in the movements in the cabinet, 
and in the two Houses of Congress, to which it 
gave rise. All these parts belong to a life of 
Jackson, or a history of the Seminole war ; but 
only the two latter come within the scope of tliis 
View. To these two parts, then, this pubhca- 
tion of the Exposition is confined — omitting the 
references to the vouchers in the appendix — 
which having been examined (the essential ones) 
are found in every particular to sustain the 
text ; and also omitting a separate head of com- 
plaint against Mr. Calhoun on account of his 
representations in relation to South Carolina 
claims. 

" EXPOSITION. 

" It will be recollected that m my correspond- 
ence with ]\Ir. Calhoun which he has published, 
I engaged, when the documents should be at 
hand, to give a statement of facts respecting my 
conduct in the Seminole campaign, which would 
present it in a very different light from the one 
m which that gentleman has placed it. 

" Although the time I am able to devote to the 
subject; engrossed as I am in the discharge of 
my public duties, is entirely inadequate to do it 
justice, yet from the course pursued by Mr. Cal- 
houn, from the frequent misrepresentations of 
my conduct on that occasion, from the misappre- 
hension of my motives for entering upon that 
correspondence, from the solicitations of numer- 
ous friends in different parts of the country, and 
ill compliance with that engagement, I present 
to my fellow-citizens the following statement, 
with the documents on which it rests. 

" I am aware that there are some among us 
who deem it unfit that the chief magistrate of 
this nation should, under any circumstances, ap- 
pear before the public in this manner, to vindi- 
cate his conduct. These opinions or feelings may 
result from too great fastidiousness, or from a 
supposed analogy between his station and that 
of the first magistrate of other countries, of 
whom it is said they can do no wrong, or they 
may be well founded. I, however, entertain dif- 
ferent opinions on this subject. It seems to me 
that the course I now take of appealing to the 
judgment of my fellow-citizens, if not in exact 
conformity with past usage, at least springs from 
the spirit of our popular institutions, which re- 
quires that the conduct and character of every 
man, how elevated soever may be his station 
should be fairly and freely submitted to the dis- 
russion and decision of the people. Under this [ 
conviction I have acted heretofore, and now act, ! 
not wishing this or any other part of my public 
life to be concealed. I present my whole con- i 
duct in connection with the subject of that cor- i 
respondence in this form, to the indulgent but { 



firm and enlightened consideration of my fellow 
citizens. 

[Here follows a justification of Gen. Jackson's 
conduct under the law of nations, and under the 
orders to Gen. Gaines, his predecessor in the 
command.] 

" Such was the gradation of orders issued by 
the government. At first they instructed their 
general ' not topass the line.' He is next in- 
structed to ' exercise a sound discretion as to 
the necessity of crossing the line.'' He is then 
directed to consider himself ^ at liberty to march 
across the Florida line.^ but to halt, and re- 
port to the department in case the Indians 
^should shelter themselves under a Spanish 
fort.'' Finally, after being informed of the atro- 
cious massacre of the men, women and cliildren 
constituting the party of Lieutenant Scott, they 
order a new general into the field, and direct 
him to ' adopt the necessary measures to put 
an end to the conflict, without regard to territo- 
rial ^^ lines,'' or '■•Spanish forts.'"' Mr. Cal- 
houn's own understanding of the order issued 
by him, is forcibly and clearly explained in a let- 
ter written by him in reply to the inquiries of 
Governor Bibb, of Alabama, dated the 13th of 
May, 1818, in which he says : — ' GeneralJack- 
son IS vested with full power to conduct the 
war as he may think best.'' 

" These orders were received by General Jack- 
son at Nashville, on the night of the 12th Janu- 
ary, 1818, and he instantly took measures to 
cany them into effect. 

" In the mean time, however, he had received 
copies of the orders to General Gaines, to take 
possession of Amelia Island, and to enter Flori- 
da, but halt and report to the department, in 
case the Indians sheltered themselves under a 
Spanish fort. Approving the policy of the for- 
mer, and perceiving in the latter, dangers to the 
armj', and injurj' to the country, on the Gth of 
January he addressed a confidential letter to the 
President, frankly disclosing his views on both 
subjects. The following is a copy of that let- 
ter, viz.: — 

"Nashville, Gth Jan., 1818. 
"Sir : — A few days since, I received a letter 
from the Secretary of War, of the 17th ult., 
with inclosures. Your order of the 19th ult. 
through him to Brevet Major General Gaines to 
enter the territory of Spain, and chastise the 
ruthless savages who have been depredating on 
the property and lives of our citizens, will meet 
not only the approbation of your country, but the 
approbation of Heaven. Will you however permit 
me to suggest the catastrophe that might arise by 
General Gaines's compliance with the last clause 
of your order ? Suppose the case that the In- 
dians are beaten : thej' take refuge either in 
Pensacola or St. Augustine, which open their 
gates to them: to prolit b}^ liis victory. General 
Gaines pursues the fugitives, and has to halt be- 



170 



TniRTY YEARS' VIEW 



fore the garrison until ho can communicate with 
his povernnunt. In the mean time the militia 
prow restless, and he is left to defend himself 
by the rejiulurs. The enemy, with tlic aid of 
their fc>j)ani.>h I'liends, and \\'oodbinc's British 
partisans, or, if you i)loasc with Aurey's force, 
attacks him. What may not be the result ? 
Defeat and massacre. Permit me to remark 
that the arms of the United States must be 
carried to any point witliin the limits of East 
Florida, where an enemy is permitted and pro- 
tected, or disgrace attends. 

"The Executive Government have ordered, 
and, as I conceive, very properly. Amelia Island 
to be taken possession of. This order ought to 
be carried into execution at all hazards, and si- 
multaneousl}- the whole of East Florida seized, 
and held as an indemnity for the outrages of 
Spain upon the property of our citizens. This 
done, it puts all opposition down, secures our cit- 
izens a complete indemnity, and .saves us from a 
war with Great Britain, or some of the conti- 
nental jiowers combined with Spain. This can 
be done without implicating the government. 
Let it be signified to me through any channel 
{say Mr. J. liheu), that the possession of' the 
Jloridas -woidd be desirable to the United 
States, and in sixty days it mil be accom- 
plishfd. 

'" The order being given for the possession of 
Amelia island, it ought to be executed, or our 
enemies, internal and external, will use it to the 
disadvantage of the government. If our troops 
enter the territory of Spain in pursuit of our 
Indian enemy, all opposition that they meet 
with must be put down, or we will be involved 
ill danger and disgrace. 

" I have the honor, &c. 

"ANDREW JACKSON. 
" Jamks Monroe, President U. S. 

" The course recommended by General Jack- 
son in this letter relative to the occupation of the 
Floridas accords with the policy which dictated 
the secret act of Congress. lie recommended 
no more than the President had a right to do. 
In consequence of the occupation of Amelia Isl- 
and by the otBcers of the Colombian and Mexican 
governmi-nts, an<l the attempt to occupy the 
whole province, the President had a right, under 
the act of Congress, to order General Jackson to 
take jxjssession of it in the name of the United 
States, lie would liave been the more justi liable 
in doing so, because the inhabitants of the pro- 
vince, the Indian subjects of the King of Spain 
■whom he was bouncl not only by the laws of na- 
tions, but l)y treaty to restrain, were in open war 
with the United Slates. 

''.Mr. Calhoun, the Secretary of War, was the 
first man who read this letter after its reception 
at Washington. In a letter from Mr. Monroe 
to General Jack.son, dated 2Ist December, 1818, 
publi>hed in the Calhoun corespondeuce, page 
•U, is the following account of the reception, 
opening and peru.sal of this letter viz. : ' Your let- 



ter of Januar}' 6th, was received while I was se- 
riously indisposed. Observing that it was from 
you, I handed it to Mr. Calhoun to read, aftei 
reatling one or two lines only mj-self. The order 
to you to take command in that quarter had be- 
fore been issued. lie remarked after perusing 
the letter, that it was a confidential one relating 
to Florida, which I must answer. ' 

" In accordance with the advice of Mr. Calhoun, 
and availing himself of the suggestion contained 
in the letter, Mr. Monroe sent for !Mr. John 
Rhea (then a member of Congress), showed him 
the confidential letter, and requested him to 
answer it. In conformity with this request !Mr. 
Rhea did answer the letter, and informed General 
Jackson that the President had shown him the 
confidential letter, and requested him to state that 
he approved of its suggestions. This answer was 
received by the general on the second night be 
remained at Big Creek, which is four miles in 
advance of Hartford, Georgia^ and before his 
arrival at Fort Scott, to take command of the 
troops in that quarter. 

" General Jackson had already received or- 
ders, vesting him with discretionary powers in 
relation to the measures necessary to put an 
end to the war. He had informed the President 
in his confidential letter, that in his judgment it 
was necessary to seize and occupy the whole of 
Florida. This suggestion had been considered 
by Mr. Calhoun and the President, and approv- 
ed. From this confidential correspondence before 
he entered Florida, it was understood on both 
sides, that under the order received by him he 
would occupy the whole province, if an occasion 
to do .'^0 should present itself; as Mr. Calhoun 
wrote to Governor Bibb, he was ' authorized to 
conduct the war as he thought best ; ' and hoAV 
he ' thought best ' to cenduct it was then made 
known to the Executive, and ap[)roved, before 
he struck a blow. 

•■ In the approval given by Mr. Monroe upon 
the advice of Mr. Calhoun to the suggestions of 
General Jackson, he acted in strict obedience to 
the laws of his coimtr}'. By the secret act of 
Congress, the President was authorized, under 
circumstances then existing, to seize and occupy 
all Florida. Orders had been given which were 
sufficiently general in their terms to cover that 
object. The confidential correspondence, and 
private understanding, made them, so far as re- 
gsirded the paities, as eliectually orders to take and 
occupy the I'rovince of Florida as if that ob- 
ject had been declared on their face. 

" Under these circumstances General Jackson 
entered Florida with a perfect right, according 
to international law, and the constitution and 
laws of liis country, to take possession of the 
whole territorj'. He was clothed with all the 
power of the President, and authorized ' to con- 
duct the war as he thought best.' He had or- 
ders as general and comprehensive as words 
could make them: he had the conlidential appro- 
bation of the President to his cofidontial recom- 
mendation to seize Florida : and he entered tho 



ANNO 1830. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



171 



province with the full knowledge that not only- 
justice and policy but the laws of his country, 
and the orders of the President as publicly and 
privately explained and understood, would justi- 
fy him in expelling every Spanish garrison, and 
extending the jurisdiction of the United States 
over every inch of its territory. 

"'Nevertheless, General Jackson, from his 
knowledge of the situation of affairs in Florida, 
expected to find a justification for himself in the 
conduct of the Spanish authorities. On the con- 
trary, had he found on entering the province 
that the agents and officers of Spain, instead of 
instigating, encouraging and supplying the Indi- 
ans, had used all the means in their power to 
prevent and put an end to hostilities, he would not 
have incurred the responsibility of seizing their 
fortresses and expelling them from the country. 
But he wrote to the President, and entered upon 
the campaign with other expectations, and in 
these he was not disappointed. 

" As he approached St. Marks it was ascer- 
tained that it was a place of rendezvous and a 
source of supply for the Indians. Their councils 
had been held within its walls : its storehouses 
were appropriated to their use : they had there 
obtained supplies of ammunition : there they had 
foimd a maket for their plunder : and in the com- 
mandant's family resided Alexander Arbuthnot, 
the chief instigator of the war. ]\Ioreover, the 
negroes and Indians under Ambrister threatened 
to drive out the feeble Spanish garrison and take 
entire possession of the fort, as a means of protec- 
tion for themselves and annoyance to the United 
States. In these circumstances General Jackson 
found enough to justify him in assuming the re- 
sponsibility of seizing and occupying that post 
with an American garrison. 

"The Indians had been dispersed, and St. 
Marks occupied. No facts had as yet appeared 
which would justify General Jackson in assum- 
ing the responsibility of occupying the other 
Spanish posts in Florida. He considered the 
war as at an end, and was about to discharge a 
considerable portion of his force, when he was in- 
formed that a portion of the hostile Indians had 
been received, fed and supplied by the Spanish 
authorities in Pensacola. He therefore directed 
his march upon that point. On his advance he 
received a letter from the governor, denouncing 
his entry into Florida as a violent outrage on 
the rights of Spain, requiring his immediate re- 
treat from the Territory, and threatening in case 
of refusal to use force to expel him. This dec- 
laration of hostilities on the part of the Spanish 
authorities, instead of removing, tended to in- 
crease the necessity for the General's advance, 
because it was manifest to both parties that if 
the American army then loft Florida, the Indians, 
under the belief that there they would always 
find a safe retreat, would commence their bloody 
incursions upon our frontiers with redoubled 
Pary ; and General Jackson was warned that if 
he left any portion of his army to restrain the 
Indians, and retired with his main force, the 



Spaniards would be openly united with the In- 
dians to expel the whole, and thus it became aa 
necessary in order to terminate the war to de- 
stroy or capture the Spanish force at Pensacola 
as the Indians themselves. In this attitude of 
the Spanish governor, and in the fact that tho 
hostile Indians were received, fed, clothed, fur- 
nished with munitions of war, and that their 
plunder was purchased in Pensacola, General 
Jackson found a justification for seizing that 
post also, and holding it in the n&me of the Uni- 
ted States. 

" St. Augustine was still in the hands of the 
Spaniards, and no act of the authorities or peo- 
ple of that place was known to General Jackson 
previous to his return to Tennessee, which would 
sustain him in assuming the responsibility of 
occupying that city. However, about the 7th 
of August, 1818, he received information that the 
Indians were there also received and supplied. 
On that day, therefore, he issued an order to 
General Gaines, directing him to collect the evi- 
dences of these facts, and if they were well found- 
ed, to take possession of that place. The fol- 
lowing is an extract from that order : 

'• ' I have noted with attention jNIajor Twiggs' 
letter marked No. 5. I contemplated that the 
agents of Spain or the officers of Fort St. Augus- 
tine would excite the Indians to hostility and 
furnish them with the means. It will be neces- 
sar}" to obtain evidence substantiating this fact, 
and that the hostile Indians have been fed and 
furnished from the garrison of St. Augustine. 
This being obtained, should you deem your force 
suflBcient; you will' proceed to take and garrison 
with American troops. Fort St. Augustine, and 
hold the garrison prisoners until you hear from 
the President of the United States, or transport 
them to Cuba, as in your judgment under exist- 
ing circumstances you may think best.' 

" An order had some time before been given to 
the oflBcer of ordnance at Charleston, to have in 
readiness a battery train, and to him General 
Gaines was referred. 

" The order to take St. Augustine has often 
been adduced as evidence of General Jackson's 
determination to do as he pleased, without re- 
gard to the orders or wishes of his government. 
Though justifiable on the ground of self-defence, 
it would never have been issued but for the con- 
fidential orders given to General Gaines and 
Colonel Bankhead. to take possession of Amelia 
Island forcibly, if not yielded peaceably, and 
when possessed, to retain and fortify it ; and the 
secret understanding which existed between him 
and the government, in consequence of which he 
never doubted that he was acting in compliance 
with the wishes, and in accordance witli tho 
orders and expectations of the President and Sec- 
retary of War. 

" To show more conclusively the impressions 
under which General Jackson acted, reference 
should be had to the fact that, after the capturt 
of the Spanish forts, he instructed Captain Gads- 
den to prepare and report a plan for the permar 



172 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



nent defence of Florida, which was agreeable to 
the confidential orders to General Gaines and 
Col. Kaiikliead before referred to. Of this lie 
informed the Secretary of AVar in a dispatch 
dated '2d June, 1818. of which the following is 
an extract : — 

•' • Captain Gadsden is instructed to prepare 
and report on the necessary defences as far as 
the military rcconnoissances he has taken will 
j)erinit, accompanied with plans of existing 
works ; what additions or improvements are 
necessar}', and what new works should, in his 
opinion, be erected to give permanent securiiij 
to this important territorial addition to our 
republic. As .soon as the rejiort is prei)ared. 
Captain Gadsden will leceive orders to i-ei>air to 
"Washington City with some other documents 
which I may wish to confide to his charge.' 

•• This plan was conijileted and forwarded to 
Mr. Calhoun on the Idlh of the succeeding Au- 
gust, by Captain Gadsden himself, with a letter 
from General Jackson, urging the necessity not 
only of retaining possession of St. Marks, but 
Pensacola. The following is a part of that let- 
ter : 

" ' Captain Gadsden will also deliver you his 
report made in pursuance of my order, accompa- 
nied with the jilans of the fortifications thought 
necessary for the defence of the Floridas. in con- 
nection with the line of defence on our Southern 
frontier. 

'• • This was done under the belief that the 
government will never jeopardize the safety of 
the Union, or the security of our frontier, by sur- 
rendering those posts, and the po.ssession of the 
Florida.s, unless uixm a sure guaranty agreeable 
to the stipulations of the articles of capitulation, 
that will insure permanent peace, tranquillity and 
security to our Southern frontier. It is believed 
that Spain can never furnish this gnarantv. As 
long as there are Indians in Florida, and it is 
possessed by Spain, they will be excited to war, 
and the indiscriminate murder of our citizens, bv 
foreign agents combined with the ollicers of 
Spain. The duplicity and conduct of Spain for 
the last six years fully prove this. It was on a 
belief that the Floridas would be iiehl 'liat my 
order was given to Captain Gadsden to make the 
report he has done.' 

"Again: 'By Captain Gad.sden you will re- 
ceive some letters lately inclcsed to me, detailing 
the information that the Spanianls at Fort St. 
Augustine are again exciting the Indians to war 
against us, and a C(^py of my order to General 
Gaines on this subject. It is what I expected, 
and proves the justice and .sounil jiolicy of not 
only holding the jwsts we are now in possession 
of, but of iios.sessing our.selves of St. Augustine. 
This, and this alone can give us peace iind secu- 
rity on ''our Southern frontier."' 

"It is thus clearly shown that in taking pos- 
session of .'St. Marks and I'ensacol.x and giving 
orders to take St. Augustine. I was acting within 
the letter as well as spirit of my ()rders, .and in 
accordance with the secret understanding be- 



tween the government and myself, and under a 
full persuasion that these fortresses would never 
again be permitted by our government to pas? 
under the dominion of Spain. From the time of 
writing my confidential letter of the Cth of Jan- 
uarj^ to the date of this dispatch, the 10th of 
August, 1818, 1 never had an intimation that the 
wishes of the government had changed, or that 
less was expected of me, if the occasion should 
prove favorable, than the occupation of the whole 
of Florida. On the contrary, either hy their 
direct approval of my measures, or their silence, 
the President and Mr. Calhoun gave me reason 
to suppose that I was to be sustained, and that 
the Floridas after being occupied were to be held 
for the benefit of the United States. Upon re- 
ceiving my orders on the 11th of January, I took 
instant measures to bring into the field a suffi- 
cient force to accomplish all the objects suggestetl 
in my confidential letter of the 6th, of which I 
informed the War Department, and I\Ir. Calhoun 
in his reply dated 29th January, 1818, after the 
receipt of my confidential letter, and a full know- 
ledge and approbation of my views says : — 

" 'The measures you haA-e taken to bring an 
efficient force into the field are approbated, and 
a confident hope is entertained that a speedy 
and successful termination of the Indian war will 
follow 3'our exertions.' 

" Having received further details of my pre- 
parations, not only to terminate the Seminole 
war, but, as the President and his Secretarj'^ well 
knew, to occupy Florida also. Mr. Calhoun on 
the Cth February, writes as follows: — 

" ' I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt 
of your letter of the 20th ult., and to acquaint 
you with the entire approbation of the President 
of all the measures you have adopted to termi- 
nate the rupture with the Indians.' 

'•On the 13th of May following, with a full 
knowledge that I intended if a favorable occasion 
presented itself to occupy Florida, and that the 
design had the approbation of the President. Mr. 
Calhoun -wrote to Governor Bibb, of Alabama, the 
letter already alluded to, concluding as follows : — 

"'General Jackson is vested with full powers 
to conduct the war in the manner he may deem 
best.' 

'• On the 25th of March, 1818, I informed Mr. 
Calhoun that I intended to occupy St. Mark.s, 
and on the 8th of April I informed 'him that it 
was done. 

" Not a whisper of disapprobation or of doubt 
reached me from the government. 

" On the 5th May I wrote to Air. Calhoun 
that I was about to move upon Pensacola with 
a view of occupying that place. 

" Again, no reply was ever given disapptoving 
or di.scountenancing this movement. 

"On the 2d of June 1 informed Mr. Calhoun 
that 1 had on the 24th !May entered Pensacola, 
and on the 28th had received the surrender of the 
Barranca.s. 

" Again no reply was given to this letter ox 
pressing any disapproval of these acts. 



ANNO 1829. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



173 



" In fine, from the receipt of the President's 
reply to my confidential letter of 6th January, 
1818, through Mr. Rhea, until the receipt of the 
President's private letter, dated 19 th July, 
1818, I received no instructions or intimations 
from the government public or private that my 
operations in Florida were other than such as 
the President and Secretary of War expected 
and approved. I had not a doubt that I had 
acted in every respect in strict accordance with 
their views, and that without publicly avowing 
that they had authorized my measures they were 
ready at all times and under all circumstances 
to sustain me ; and that as there were sound 
reasons and justifiable cause for taking possession 
of Florida, they would in pursuance of their 
private understanding with me retain it as in- 
demnity for the spoliations committed by Span- 
ish subjects on our citizens, and as securitj^ for 
the peace of our Southern frontier. I was will- 
ing to rest my vindication for taking the posts 
on the hostile conduct of their officers and garri- 
sons, bearing all the responsibility myself : but I 
expected my government would find in their 
claims upon Spain, and the danger to which our 
frontier would again be exposed, sufficient rea- 
sons for not again delivering them into the pos- 
session of Spain. 

'• It was late in August before I received official 
information of the decision of the government to 
restore the posts, and about the same time I saw 
it stated in the Georgia Journal that the cabinet 
had been divided in relation to the course pur- 
sued by me in Florida ; and also an extract of a 
letter in a Nashville paper, alleging that a move- 
ment had been made in the cabinet against me 
which was attributed to Mr. Crawford, in which 
extract it is expressly stated that I had been 
triumphantly vindicated by Mr. Calhoun and 
Mr. Adams. Being convinced that the course I 
had pursued was justified by considerations of 
public policy, by the laws of nations, by the 
state of things to which I have referred, and by 
the instructions, intimations, and acquiescence 
of the government, and believing that the latter 
had been communicated to all the members of 
the cabinet, I considered that such a movement 
by Mr. Crawford was founded on considerations 
foreign to the public interests, and personally 
inimical to me ; and therefore, after these pub- 
lic and explicit intimations of what had occurred 
m the cabinet, I was prepared to, and did believe 
that Mr. Crawford was bent on my destruction, 
and was the author of the movement in the cab- 
inet to which they referred. I the more readily 
entertained this belief in relation to him (in 
which I am rejoiced to avail myself of this public 
occasion to say I did him injustice) because it 
was impossible that I should suspect that any 
proposition to punish or censure me could come 
from either the President or Mr. Calhoun, as I 
well knew that I had expressed to the Presi- 
dent my opinion that Florida ought to be 
taken, and had offered to take it if he would 
give me an intimation through Mr. Rhea that it 



was desirable to do so, which intimation was 
given ; that they had given me orders broad 
enough to sanction all that was done ; that Mr. 
Calhoun had expressly interpreted those orders 
as vesting me ' with full power to conduct the 
war as he (I) might think best ; ' that they had 
expressly approved of all my preparations, and 
in silence witnessed all my operations. Undei 
these circumstances it was impossible for me to 
believe, whatever change might have taken 
place in their views of public policy, that either 
the President or Mr. Calhoun could have origi- 
nated or countenanced any proposition tending 
to cast censure upon me, much less to produce 
my arrest, trial, and punishment. 

"If these facts and statements could have 
left room for a doubt in relation to Mr. Calhoun's 
approval of my conduct and of his friendship for 
me, I had other evidence of a nature perfectly 
conclusive. In August, 1818, Colonel A. P. Hayne. 
Inspector General of the Southern Division, who 
had served in this campaign, came to Washing- 
ton to settle his accounts, and resign his staff ap- 
pointment in the army. He was the fellow-citi- 
zen and friend of Mr. Calhoun, and held constant 
personal interviews with him for some weeks in 
settling his accounts. On the 24th September ho 
addressed a letter to me, stating that he had 
closed his public accounts entirely to his satisfac- 
tion, and in relation to public affairs among othei 
things remarks : — 

" ' The course the administration has thoughl 
proper to adopt is to me inexplicable. They 
retain St. Marks, and in the same breath givh 
up Pensacola. Who can comprehend this 1 Th« 
American nation possesses discernment, and will 
judge for themselves. Indeed, sir, I fear that 
Mr. iMonroe has on the present occasion jnelded 
to the opinion of those about him. I cannot be- 
lieve that it is the result of his own honest con- 
victions. Mr. Calhoun certainly thinks with you 
altogether, although after the decision of the 
cabinet, he must of course nominally support 
what has been done.' And in another letter, 
dated 21st January, 1819, he says : ' Since I last 
saw you I have travelled through West and East 
Tennessee, through Kentucky, through Ohio, 
through the western and eastern part of Penn- 
sylvania, and the whole of Virginia — have been 
much in Baltimore and Philadelphia, and the 
united voice of the people of those States and 
towns (and I have taken great pains to inform 
myself) approve of your conduct in every respect. 
And the people of the United States at large en- 
tertain precisely the same opinion with the peo- 
ple of those States. So does the administration, 
to wit: Mr. Monroe, Mr. Calhoun, and Mr. 
Adams. Mr. IMonroe is your friend. He has 
identified you with himself After the most ma- 
ture reflection and deliberation upon all of your 
operations, he has covered your conduct. But I 
am candid to confess that he did not adopt this 
line of conduct (in my mind) as soon as he ought 
to have done. Mr. Adams has done honor to 
his country and himself.' 



174 



THIRTY YEAES' VIEW. 



" Colonel Ilayne is a man of honor, and did 
not intend to deceive ; I had no doubt, and have 
none now. that he derived his impressions from 
conversations with Mr. Calhoun himself; nor 
have I any doiiht that Mr. Calhoun purpose!}' 
conveyed those impressions that they might be 
communicated to me. Without other evidence 
than this letter, how could I have understood 
Mr. Calhoun otherwise than as approving my 
whole conduct, and as having defended me in 
the cabinet ? IIow could I have understood any 
.<eeniing dissent in his official communications 
otherwise than as arising from his obligation to 
give a 'nominal support' to the decision of the 
cabinet which in reality he disapproved ? 

■' The reply to my confidential letter, the ap- 
proval of my preparations, the silence of Mr. 
< 'alhoun during the campaign, the enmity of Mr. 
Crawford, the language of the newspapers, the 
letters of Colonel Hayne. and other letters of 
similar import from other gentlemen who were 
on familiar terras with the Secretary of AVar, 
left no doubt on my mind that Mr. Calhoun 
approved of my conduct in the Seminole war 

• altogether ; ' had defended Tne against an attack 
of Mr. Crawford in the cabinet, and was, through- 
out the struggle in Congress so deeplj- involving 
my character and fame, my devoted and zealous 
friend. This impression was confirmed by the 
personal kindness of Mr. Calhoun towards me 
during my visit to this city, pending the proceed- 
ings of Congress relative to the Seminole war, 
and on every after occasion. Nor was such con- 
duct confined to me alone, for however incon- 
sistent with his proposition in the cabinet, that 
I should • be punished in some form,' or in the 
language of !Mr. Adams, as to what passed there 

• that General Jackson should be brought to 
trial.' in .several conversations with Colonel Rich- 
ard M. John.son. while he was preparing the 
counter report of the Military Committee ol" the 
House of Representatives. ^Ir. Calhoun always 
spoke of me with respect and kindness, arid ap- 
proved of my course. 

'•So strong was my faith in Mr. Calhoun's 
friendship that the appointment of Mr. Lacock, 
.shortly after he had made his report upon the Se- 
minole war in the Senate, to an important office 
although inexplicable to me, diil not shake it. 

'■ I was informed by Mr. Rankin (member of 
the House of Representatives from .Mississippi), 
and others in lK23and l.S'24. once in the presence 
of Colonel Thomas II. Williams (of Mississippi) 
of the Senate, that I had blamed Mr. Crawford 
unjustly and that Mr. Calhoun was the instigator 
of the attacks made upon me : yet in consequence 
vf the facts and circumstances already recapitu- 
lated tending to prove .Mr. Calhoun's a[)proval of 
my course. I could not give the assertion the least 
cre<lit. 

•Again in 182,5 Mr. Cobb told me that I 
blamefl .Mr. Crawford wrongfully, both for the 
attempt to injure me in the cabinet, and for bav- 
in? an agency in framing the resolutions which 
b (Mr. Cobb) offered in Congress censuring 



my conduct in the Seminole war. He stated on 
the contrary that Mr. Crawford was opposed to 
those resolutions and always asserted that 
' General Jackson had a sufficient defance 
whenever he chose to make it, and that the at- 
tempt to censure him would do him good, and 
recoil upon its authors ;' yet it was impossible 
for me to believe that !Mr. Calhoun had been my 
enemy ; on the contrary I did not doubt that 
he had been my devoted friend, not only through 
all those difficulties, but in the contest for the 
Presidency which ended in the election of ISIr. 
Adams. 

•'In the Spring of 1828 the impression of Mr. 
Calhoun's rectitude and fidelity towards mo 
was confirmed by an incident which occurred 
during the progress of an effort to reconcile all 
misunderstanding between him and Mr. Craw- 
ford and myself. Colonel James A. Hamilton 
of New- York inquired of Mr. Calhoun himself, 
at Washington, ' whether at any meeting of Mr. 
Monroe's cabinet the propriety of arresting Gen- 
eral Jack.son for any thing done during the Sem- 
inole war had been at any time discussed ? ' Mr. 
Calhoun replied, 'Never: such a measure was 
not thought of, much less discussed. The only 
point before the cabinet was the answer to be 
given to the Spanish government.' In conse- 
quence of this conversation Colonel Hamilton 
WTote to Major Lewis, a member of the Nashville 
committee, that 'the Vice-President, who you 
know was the member of the cabinet best ac- 
quainted with the subject, told me General Jack- 
son's arrest was never thought of, much less 
discussed. ' Information of this statement re- 
newed and strengthened the impression relative 
to the friendship of Mr. Calhoun, which I had 
entertained from the time of the Seminole war. 

"In a private letter to Mr. Calhoun dated 
25th ll&j, 1828, written after the conversation 
with Colonel Hamilton had been communicated 
to me, I say in relation to the Seminole war: 

" ' I can have no wi.sh at this day to obtain an ex- 
planation of the orders under wh'ich 1 acted whilst 
charged with the campaign against the Seminole 
Indians in Florida. 1 viewed them when received 
as plain and explicit, and called for by the .situation 
of the country. I executed them faithfully, and 
was hajipy in reply to my reports to the Depart- 
ment of War to receive your approbation for it. ' 

'• Again : ' The fact is, I never had the least 
ground to believe (previous to the reception of 
.Mr. Monroe's letter of 10th Juh", 1818) that 
any difference of opinion between the government 
and myself existed on the subject of my powers. 
So far from this, to the communications which I 
made showing the construction which I placed 
upon them, there was not only no difference of 
opinion indicated in the replies of the Executive 
but as far a.s I received replies, an entire approval 
of the measures which I had adopted. ' 

'• This was addressed directly from me to Mr. 
Calhoun, in May, 1828. In his reply Mr. Cal- 
houn does not inform me that I was in error 
Ue does not tell me that he disapproved my con 



ANNO 1830. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



175 



duct, and thought I ought to have been punished 
for a violation of orders. He does not inform 
me that he or any other had proposed in the 
cabinet council a court of inquiry, or any other 
court. He says nothing inconsistent with the 
impression already made upon my mind — noth- 
ing which might not have been expected from one 
who had been obliged to give a ' nominal sup- 
port ' to a decision which he disapproved. His 
replj', dated 10th July, 1828, is in these words : 

" ' Any discussion of them' (the orders) 'now, 
I agree with j'ou, would be unnecessary. They 
are matters of history, and must be left to the 
historian as they stand. In fact I never did sup- 
pose that the justification of yourself or the gov- 
ernment depended on a critical construction of 
them. It is sufficient for both that they were 
honestly issued, and honestly executed, without 
involving the question whether they were execu- 
ted strictly in accordance with the intention that 
they were issued. Honest and patriotic motives 
are all that can be required, and I never doubted 
that they existed on both sides. ' 

" It was certainly impossible for me to conceive 
that jMr. Calhoun had urged in cabinet council a 
court of inquiry with a view to my ultimate 
punishment for violation of orders which he ad- 
mitted were ' honestly executed, ' especially as 
he never doubted that my 'motives' were 
' honest and patriotic. ' After this letter I 
could not have doubted, if I had before, that 
Mr. Calhoun had zealously vindicated my ' hon- 
est and patriotic ' acts in Mr. Monroe's cabinet 
against the supposed attacks of Mr. Crawford, 
as had long before been announced. I could 
not have doubted that Mr. Calhoun ' thought 
with me altogether,' as I had been informed by 
Colonel Hayne. I could not have conceived 
that Mr. Calhoun had ever called in question 
my compliance with my orders, when he says 
he ' never did suppose ' that my ^justification 
depended on a critical construction of them, ' 
and ' that it w^as sufficient thftt they were 
honestly executed.' 

"By the unlimited authority conferred on 
me bj my orders ; by the writing and reception 
of my confidential letter and the answer thereto 
advised by IMr. Calhoun ; by the positive ap- 
proval of all my preparatory measures and the 
silence of the government during my operations ; 
by uncontradicted publications in the newsi^a- 
pers ; by positive assurances received through the 
friends of Mr. Calhoun ; by Mr. Calhoun's dec- 
laration to Colonel Hamilton ; and finally by 
his own assurance that he never doubted the 
honesty or patriotism with which I executed 
my orders, which he ' deemed sufficient ' with- 
out_ inquiring '■■whether they were executed 
strictly in accordance with the intention that 
they were issued, ' I was authorised to believe 
and did believe that Mr. Calhoun had been my 
devoted friend, defending on all occasions, public 
and private, my whole conduct in the Seminole 
war. With these impressions I entered upon the 
discharge of the duties of President,in March,1829. 



" Recent disclosures prove that these impre* 
sions were entirely erroneous, and that Mr. Cal- 
houn himself was the author of the proposition 
made in the cabinet to subject me to a court of 
inquiry, with a view to my ultimate punishment 
for a violation of orders. 

" My feelings towards Mr. Calhoun continued 
of the most friendly character until my suspi- 
cions of his fairness were awakened by the fol- 
lowing incident. The late Marshal of the District 
of Columbia (Mr. Tench Ringold), conversing 
with a friend of mine in relation to the Seminole 
war, spoke in strong terms of Mr. Monroe's 
support of me ; and upon being informed that I 
had always regarded Mr. Calhoun" as my firm 
and undeviating friend and supporter, and par- 
ticularly on that occasion, ^Nlr. Ringold replied 
that Ah: Calhoun v-as the first man to move in 
the cabinet for my punishment, and that he 
was against me on that subject. Informed of 
this conversation, and recurring to the repeated 
declarations that had been made to me by dif- 
ferent persons and at different times, that Mr. 
Calhoun, and not Mr. Crawford, was the person 
who had made that movement against me in the 
cabinet, and observing the mysterious opposition 
that had shown itself, particularly among those 
who were known to be the friends and partisans of 
Mr. Calhoun, and that the measures which I had 
recommended to the consideration of Congress, 
and which appeared to have received the appro- 
bation of the people, were neglected or opposed 
in that quarter whence I had a right to believe 
they would have been brought forward and sus- 
tained, I felt a desire to see the written state- 
ment which I had been informed INIr. Ci'awford 
had made, in relation to the proceedings of the 
cabinet, that I might ascertain its true charac- 
ter. I sought and obtained it, in the manner 
heretofore stated, and immediately sent it to Mr. 
Calhoun, and asked him frankly whether it was 
possible that the information given in it was 
correct ? His answer, which he has giveo to 
the world, indeed, as I have before stated, sur- 
prised, nay, astonished me. I had always re- 
fused to believe, notwithstanding the various as- 
surances I had received, that Mr. Calhoun could 
be so far regardless of that duty which the plain- 
est principles of justice and honor imposed upon 
him, as to propose the punishment of a subordi- 
nate officer for the violation of orders which 
were so evidently discretionary as to permit me 
as he (]\lr. Calhoun) informed Governor Bibb, 
' to conduct the war as he may think best.' But 
the fact that he so acted has been affirmed by 
all who were present on the occasion, and admit- 
ted by himself.* 

* Mr. Calhonn in his conversation with Colonel Hamilton, 
substantially denied tliatsuch a proposition astliat which be 
now admits lie made, was ever submitted to tlio cabinet. He 
is asked " wlietlicr at any meeting of Mr. Monroe's cabinet tho 
propriety of arresting General Jackson for any thing done du- 
ring the Seminole war had been at any time discussed." He 
replies " Never ; such a measure was not thought of, much less 
discussed : t/ieonlt/ point be/ore the cabinet was the an»wet 



176 



THIRTY YEAES' VIEW. 



" That Mr. Calhoun, with his knowledge of 
facts and circumstances, should have dared to 
make such a proposition, can only be accounted 
lor from the sacredly confidential character 
wiiii'h he attaches to the proceedings of a cabinet 
council. Ilis views of this subject are strongly 
expressed in his printed correspondence, page 15. 
' I am not at all surprised,' says lie, ' that Mr. 
Crawford shouKl feel that lie stands in need of 
an apology for bctra3ing the deliberations of the 
cabinet. It is, 1 believe, not only the first in- 
stance in our country, but one of a very few 
instances in any countiy, or any age, that an in- 
dividual has felt himself absolved from the high 
obligations which honor and duty impose on one 
situated as he was.' It was under this veil, 
which he sujiposed to be for ever impenetrable, 
that Mr. Calhoun came forward and denounced 
those measures which he knew were not only 
impliedly, but positively authorized by the Presi- 
dent himself. lie proposed to take preparatory 
steps for the punishment of General Jackson, 
whose • honest and 'patriotic motives he never 
doubted,^ for the violation of orders which he 
admits were ' honestly executed.'' That he cx- 

to he given to t/ie Spanish government.'''' By the last branch 
of the answer the denial is made to embrace the whole subject 
In any form it misht have assumed, and therefore de"[)rivesMr. 
Calhoun of all grounds of cavil or escape by alleging that ho on- 
ly proposed a military Inquiry, and not an arrest, and that he 
did not therefore answer the inquiry in the negative. But 
aji^in when Colonel Hamilton submitted to Mr. Calhoun his re- 
collection of the conversation that Mr. Calhoun might correct 
it If erroneous, and informed him that he did so bccmse he in- 
tended to communicate in to Major Lewis, Mr. Calhoun did not 
question the correctness of Colonel Hamilton's recollection of 
the conversation ; he does not qualify or alter it; he does not 
eay, as in ft-anknes.s he was bound to do—" It is true, the propo- 
sition to arre>t General Jackson was not discusi-cd, but an inqui- 
ry Into his conduct in that war was discussed on a proposition 
to that end made by me." He does not say that the answer to 
the Spanish government was not the only point before the cab- 
inet, but he ondeavors, without denying as was alleged by Colo- 
nel Hamilton that this part of the conversation was understood 
between them to be confidential, to prevent him from making 
It public, and to that end and that alone he writes a letter of t<;n 
pages on the sacredness of cabinet deliberations. Why, let us 
ask, did Mr. Calhoun upon reflection feel so much solicitude to 
prevent a disclosure of his an.swer to Colonel Hamilton, which if 
true could not Injure him? At first, although put upon his guard 
he admits that this part of the conversation was not confidential, 
although it referred to what was, as well as what was not done 
In cabinet council. The reason Is to be found in his former in- 
volution.s and in the fact that the answer was not true, and in 
his apprehension that if that answer was made public, Mr. 
Crawford, who entertained the worst opinion? of Mr. Calhoun, 
and who had suffered in Oencral Jackson's opinion on this sub- 
ject, would iumiedlatcly disclose the whole truth, as he has since 
done ; and that thus the veil worn out, of the sacredness of cabi- 
net dclibcraUons under which Mr. Calhoun upon second thought 
had endeavored to conceal himself, would be raised, and he 
would be exposed to public indiirnation and scorn. Tliis could 
alone bo the niollvo for his extreme anxiety to prevent Colonel 
Hamilton from coHimunlcating the result of an inquiry made 
by him from the best and purest motive.'*, to the persons who 
luul prompted that inquiry fl-om like motives. 



pectcd to succeed with his proposition so long aa 
there was a particle of honor, honesty, or pru- 
dence left to President Monroe, is not to be ima- 
gined. The movement was intended for some 
future contingency, which perhaps Mr. Calhoun 
himself only can certainly explain. 

" The shape in which this proposition was made 
is variously stated. Mr. Calhoun, in the printed 
correspondence, page 15, says : ' I was of the 
impression that you had exceeded jour orders, 
and acted on your own responsibility, but I 
neither questioned your patriotism nor your mo 
fives. Believing that where orders were trans- 
cended, investigation as a matter of course ought 
to follow, as due in justice to the government 
and the officer, unless there be strong reasons 
to the contrary, I came to the | cabinet] meet- 
ing under the impression that the usual course 
ought to be pursued in this case, which I sup- 
ported by presenting fully and freely all the 
arguments that occurred to me.' 

" Mr. Crawford, in his letter to Mr. Forsyth, 
published in the same correspondence, page 9, 
says : ' Mr. Calhoun's proposition in the cabinet 
was, that General Jackson should be punished 
in some form, or reprehended in some form, I am 
not positively certain which.' 

" Mr. Adams, in a letter to Mr. Crawford, 
dated 30th July, 1830, says : ' The main point 
upon which it was urged that General Jackson 
should be brought to trial, was, that he had 
violated his orders by taking St. Marks and 
Pensacola.' 

" Mr. Crowninshield, in a letter to Mr. Craw- 
ford, dated 25th July, 1830, says: "I remem- 
ber too, that Mr. Calhoun was severe upon the 
conduct of General Jackson, but the words par 
ticularly spoken have slipped my memory.' 

'• From the united testimony it appears that 
Mr. Calhoun made a proposition for a court of 
in(iuiry upon the conduct of General Jackson, 
upon the charge of having violated his orders in 
taking St. ^larks and Pensacola, with a view to 
his ultimate trial and punishment, and that he 
was severe in his remarks upon that conduct. 
But the President would listen to no such pro- 
position. Mr. Crawford, in his letter to Mr. 
Calhoun, dated 2d October, 1830, says: 'You 
remembered the excitement which your propo- 
sition produced in the mind and on the feelings 
of the President, and did not dare to ask him 
any question tending to revive his recollection 
of that proposition.' This excitement was very 
natural. Hearing the very member of his cabi- 
net whom he had consulted upon the subject of 
General Jackson's confidential letter, and who 
had advised the answer which had approved be- 
forehand the capture of St. Marks and Pensacola, 
and who on the 8th September. 1818, wrote to 
General Jack.son, that ' St. Marks will be re- 
tained till Spain shall be ready to garrison it 
with a sufficient force, and Fort Gadsden, and 
any otlior position in East or "West Florida with- 
in the Indian country, which may be deemed 
eligible, will be retained so long as ihejc is anj 



ANNO 1830. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



177 



danger, which, it is hoped, will afford the desired 
security,' make a proposition which went to 
stamp his character with treachery, bj^ the pun- 
ishment of General Jackson for those very acts, 
it was impossible that Mr. Monroe should not 
be excited. He must have been more than hu- 
man, or less, to have beheld Mr. Calhoun utter- 
ing violent philippics against General Jackson 
for those acts, without the strongest emotion. 

'• Mr. Calhoun's proposition was rejected, as 
he knew it would be, and he came from behind 
the veil of cabinet secrecy all smiles and profes- 
sions of regard and friendship for General Jack- 
son ! It was then that by his deceitful conver- 
sations he induced Colonel Ilaj^ne and others to 
inform General Jackson, that so far from think- 
ing that he had violated his orders and ought to 
be punished, he disapproved and only nominally 
supported the more friendly decision of the cabi- 
net, and thought with him altogether ! There 
was no half-way feeling in his friendship ! So 
complete and entire was the deception, that while 
General Jackson was passing through Virginia 
the next winter on his way to Washington, he 
toasted 'John C. Calhoun,^ as 'an honest 
man, the noblest work of GocV Who can 
paint the workings of the guilty Calhoun's soul 
when he read that toast ! ! 

'• But Mr. Calhoun was not content with the 
attack made by him upon General Jackson's 
character and fame in the dark recesses of Mr. 
Monroe's cabinet. At the next session of Con- 
gress the same s-ubject was taken in hand in 
both houses. Mr. Cobb came forward with his 
resolutions of censure in the House of Represen- 
tatives, where, after a long discussion, the assail- 
ants were signally defeated. Mr. Lacock headed 
a committee in the Senate which was engaged in 
the affair from the 18th December, 1818, to the 
24:th February, 1819, when they made a report 
full of bitterness against General Jackson. It 
charged him with a violation of the laws and 
constitution of his country ; disobedience of 
orders ; disregard of the principles of humanity, 
and almost every crime which a military man 
can commit. 

" It was not suspected at the time that this 
report owed any of its bitterness to Mr. Calhoun, 
yet that such was the fact is now susceptible of 
the strongest proof! 

"While the attacks upon General Jackson 
were in progress in Congress his presence in the 
city was thought to be necessary by his friends. 
Colonel Robert Butler, then in Washington, 
wrote to him to that effect. A few days after- 
wards Mr. Calhoun accosted him, and asked him 
in an abrupt manner why he had written to 
General Jackson to come to the city. Colonel 
Butler answered, 'that he might see th it jus- 
tice was done him in person.' Mr. C/alhoun 
turned from him without speaking another word 
with an air of anger and vexation whijh made 
an indelible impression on the colonc/'s mind. 
It was obvious enough that he did riOt desire 
out rather feared General Jackson's jresence in 
Vol. I.— 12 



the city. Colonel Butler's letter to Genera] 
Jackson, dated the 9th June, 1831, is in these 
words : 

'• ' When in Washington in the winter of 1818 
-'19, finding the course which Congress appeared 
to be taking on the Seminole question, I wrote 
you that I esteemed it necessary that you should 
be present at Washington. Having done so, I 
communicated this fact to our friend Bronaugh, 
who held the then Secretary of War in high esti- 
mation. The succeeding evening, while at the 
French Minister's, he came to me and inquired 
in a tone somewhat abrupt, what could induce 
me to write for General Jackson to come to the 
city — (Bronaugh having informed him that I had 
done so) — to which I replied, perhaps as sternlj-, 
'• that he may in person have justice donehivi." 
The Secretary turned on his heel, and so ended 
the conversation ; but there was a something in- 
explicable in the countenance that subsequent 
events have given meaning to. After your arri- 
val at Washington, we were on a visit at the 
Secretary's, and examining a map^(the Yellow 
Stone expedition of the Secretary's being the 
subject of conversation) — Mr. Lacock, of the 
Senate, was announced to the Secretary, who re- 
marked — '-Do not let him come in now, General 
Jackson is here, but will soon be gone, when I 
can see him." There was nothing strange in all 
this ; but the whispered manner and apparent 
agitation fastened on my mind the idea that Mr. 
Calhoun and Lacock understood each other ou 
the Seminole matter. Such were my impres- 
sions at the time.' 

" On ray arrival, however, in January, 1819, 
Mr. Calhoun treated me with marked kindness. 
The latter part of Colonel Butler's letter, as to 
Mr. Lacock, is confirmed by my own recollection 
that one day when Mr. Calhoun and myself 
were together in the War Department, the mes- 
senger announced Mr. Lacock at the door : Mr. 
Calhoun, in a hurried manner, pronounced the 
name of General Jackson, and Mr. Lacock did 
not come in. This circumstance indicated an 
intimacy between them, but I inferred nothing 
from it unfavorable to Mr. Calhoun. 

" In speaking of my confidential letter to Mr. 
Monroe (printed correspondence, page 19). Mr. 
Calhoun states, that after reading it when re- 
ceived, 'I thought no more of it. Long after, I 
think it was at the commencement of tlie next 
session of Congress, I heard some allusion which 
brought that letter to my recollection. It was 
from a quarter wdiich induced me to believe that 
it came from Mr. Crawford. I called and men- 
tioned it to Mr. Monroe, and found that lie had 
entirely forgotten the letter. After searching 
some time he found it among some other pa- 
pers, and read it, as he told me, for the first 
time.' 

" The particular ' quart rr ' whence the ' allu- 
sio7i ' which called up the recollection of this 
confidential letter came, Mv. Calhoun has U'-t 
thought proper to state. Probably it was Mr. 
Lacock, who was the friend of JNIr. Crawford. 



178 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



Probably he applied to Mr. Calhoun for infor- 
mation, and Mr. Calhoun wont to the President, 
and requested a sight '.f that letter that he 
niifrht communicate its (ontcnts to Mr. Lacock. 
ilr. Lacock was appoir'-cd ujion the committee 
on the Seminole wai, on the l.Slh December. 
On the 21st of that '/.onth the recollection of 
the confidential Ictlrr was first in the mind of 
Mr. Monroe, for on vhat day, in a letter to Gen- 
eral Jackson, he y:U'QS an account of its recep- 
tion, and the disposition made of it. Probably, 
therefore, it was about the time that Mr. Lacock 
undertook the rnrestigation of this affair in the 
Senate, and that it was for his information that 
Mr. Calhoun called on Mr. Monroe to inquire 
about this letter. 

" Nay, it is certain that the existence and 
contents of this letter icere about that time 
communicated to Mr. Lacock : that he con- 
versed freely and repeatedly with Mr. Calhoun 
upon the whole subject: that he was informed 
of all that had passed: the views of the Presi- 
dent^ of Mr. Calhoun, and the cabinet, and 
that Air. Calhoun coincided with Mi: Lacock 
in all his views. 

" These facts are stated upon the authority 
of Mr. Lacock himself 

" The motives of these secret communications 
to ^Ir. Lacock by Mr. Calhoun cannot be mis- 
taken. By communicating the contents of the 
confidential letter, and withholding the fact 
that an approving answer had been returned, 
he wished to impress Mr. Lacock with the be- 
lief that General Jackson had predetermined 
before he entered Florida, to seize the Spanish 
posts, right or wrong, with orders or without. 
Acting under this impression, he would be pre- 
pared to discredit and disbelieve all General 
Jackson's explanations and defences, and put 
the worst construction upon every circumstance 
disclosed in the investigation. Hy this perfidy 
General Jackson was deprived of all opportu- 
nity to make an effectual defence. To him Mr. 
Calhoun was all smiles and kindness. He be- 
lieved him bis friend, seeking by all proper 
means, in public and private, to shield him from 
the attacks of his enemies. Having implicit 
confidence in ^Ir. Calhoun and the President, 
he would sooner have endured the tortures of 
the inquisition than have disclosed theiranswer 
to his letter tlirougii Mr. Khea. The tie which 
he felt, Mr. Calhoun felt not. He did not 
scruple to use one side of a correspondence to 
destroy a man, his friend, who confided in him 
with the faith, and atfection of a brother — when 
he knew that man felt bound b}' obligations 
from which no considerations short of a know- 
ledge of his own perfiily could absolve him, to 
hold the other side in eternal silence. General 
•Jackson had no oljjection to a disclosure of the 
whole correspondence. There was nothing in it 
of which he was ashamed, or which on his own 
account he wished to "-onceal. INiblic policv 
mad.' it inexpedient that the world should 
know at that time how fhr the government had 



approved beforehand of his proceedings. But 
had he known that Mr. Calhoun was attempt- 
ing to destroy him b}'^ secretly using one sido 
of the correspondence, he w^ould have been jus- 
tified by the laws of self-defence in making 
known the other. He saw not, heard not, ima- 
gined not, that means so perfidious and dishon- 
orable were in use to destroy him. It never 
entered his confiding heart that the hand he 
shook with the cordiality of a warm friend was 
secretly pointing out to his enemies the path by 
which they might ambuscade and destroy him. 
He was incapable of conceiving that the honeyed 
tong-ue, which to him spake nothing but kind- 
ness, w^as secretly conveying poison into the 
ears of Mr. Lacock, and other members of Con- 
gress. It could not enter his mind that his 
confidential letters, the secrets of the cabinet, 
and the opinions of its members, were all se- 
cretly arrayed against him by the friend in 
whom he implicitly confided, misinterpreted 
and distorted, without giving him an opportu- 
nity for self defence or explanation. 

" Mr. Calhoun's object was accomplished. Mr. 
Lacock made a report far transcending in bit- 
terness any thing which even in the opinion of 
General Jackson's enemies the evidence seemed 
to justify. This extraordinary and unaccount- 
able severity is now explained. It proceeded 
from the secret and perfidious representations 
of I\Ir. Calhoun, based on General Jackson's con- 
fidential letter. Mr. Lacock ought to be par- 
tially excused, and stand before the world com- 
paratively justified. For most of the injustice 
done by his report to the soldier who had 
risked all for his country, Mr. Calhoun is the 
responsible man. 

" As dark as this transaction is, a shade is 
yet to be added. It was not enough that Gen- 
eral Jackson had been deceived and betrayed 
by a professing friend ; that the contents of his 
conficlential correspondence had been secretly 
communicated to his open enemies, while all in- 
formation of the reply was withheld: it was 
not enough that an ofiicial report overflowing 
with bitterness had gone out to the world 
to blast his fame, which must stand for ever 
recorded in the history of his country. Lest 
some accident might expose the evidences of 
the understanding under which he acted, and 
the duplicity of his secret accuser, means must 
be taken to procure the destruction of the an- 
swer to the confidential letter through jNIr. 
Rhea. They were these. About the time Mr. 
Lacock made his report General Jackson and 
Mr. Rhea were both in the city of Washington. 
Mr. Rhea called on General Jackson, as he said, 
at the re(piest of Mr. ^Monroe, and begged him 
on his return home to burn his reply. He said 
the President feared that by the death of Gen- 
eral Jackson, or some other accident, it might 
fall into the hands of those who would make an 
improper use of it. He therefore conjured him 
by the friendship which had always existed be- 
tween them (and by his obligations as a brother 



AXXO ISSn. A^T>REV JACESOX, PRESIDZN-T. 



179 



mason) to destroy it on his return to Xashrille. 
Believing Mr. Monroe and Mr. Calhoun to be 
his devoted friends, and not deeming it possible 
that £Lny incident could occur which wbuld re- 
quire or justify its use, he gave Mr. Rhea the 
promise he soUcited, and accordingly after his re- 
turn to XashviUe he burnt ^Mr. Rhea's letter, and 
on his letter-book opposite the copy of his confi- 
dential letter to Mr. Monroe made this entry : — 

'"Mr. Rhf:a^s Utter in ansirer is burnt this 
12th April 1819.' 

"Mr. Calhoun's management was thus far 
completely triumphant. He had secretly as- 
sailed General Jackson in cabinet council, and 
caused it to be pubhcly announced that he was 
his friend. While the confiding soldier was 
toasting him as ' an honest man. the noblest 
work of God,' he was betraying his confiden- 
tial correspondence to his enemy, and laying 
the basis of a document which was intended to 
blast his fame and ruin his character in the es- 
timation of his countrymen. Lest accident 
should bring the truth to light, and expose his 
duplicity, he procures through the President 
and ^Ir. Rhea the destruction of the approving 
answer to the confidential letter. Mr. Rhea 
was an old man and General Jackson's health 
feeble. In a few years all who were supposed 
to have any knowledge of the reply would be in 
their graves. Every trace of the approval given 
beforehand by the government to the opera- 
tions of General Jackson would soon be obliter- 
ated, and the undivided responsibihty would 
forever rest on his head. At least, should acci- 
dent or pohcy bring to light the duplicity of 
Mr. Calhoun, he might deny aU knowledge of 
this reply, and challenge its production. He 
might defend his course in the cabinet and ex- 
tenuate his disclosures to 3ilr. Lacock. by main- | 
taining before the pubhc that he had "always 
believed General Jackson violated his orders 
and ought to have been punished. At the worst ' 
the writ ten reply if once destroyed could never ' 
be recalled from the flames : and should Gen- ' 
eral Jackson still be hving. his assertion might ' 
not be considered more^ conclusive than Mr. ' 
Calhoun's denial In any view it was desirable ' 
to him that this letter should be destroyed, and ' 
through his management, as is verily beheved. ' 
it was destroyed. ' j 

'• Happily however for the trath of history I 
and the cause of pubUc justice, the writer of the ' 
reply is still alive; and from'a journal kept at 
the time, is able to give an accurate account of ; 
this transaction. He testifies directly to the ' 
writing of the letter, to its contents.' and the 
means taken to secure its destruction. .Judire 
Overton, to whom the letter was confidentially 
shown, testifies directly to the existence of the 
letter, and to the feet that General Jackson af- 
terwards told him it was destroyed. i 
" These, with the statement of General Jack- 
son himself and the entry in his letter-book 
which was seen by several persons many years 
ago, fix these fects beyond a doubt 



I " Certainly the history of the world scarcely 
presents a parallel to this transaction. It has 
been seen with what severity ilr. Calhoun de- 
noimced Mr. Crawford for revealing the secret 
proceedings of the cabinet : with what justice 
may a retort of tenfold severity be made upon 
him. when he not only reveals to Mr. La- 
cock the proceedings of the cabinet, but the 
confidential letter of a confiding friend, not for 
j the ]:^nefit of that friend, but through misrep- 
1 resentation of the transaction and concealment 
; of the reply, to aid his enemies in accomplish- 
I ing his destruction. It was doubtless expected 
I that !Mr. Lacock would produce a document 
which would overwhelm General Jackson and 
j destroy him in pubhc estimation. In that event 
j the proceedings of the cabinet would no longer 
I have been held sacred. The erroneous impres- 
sion made on the public mind would have been 
corrected, and the world have been informed 
that Mr. Calhoun not only disapproved the acts 
of General Jackson, but had in the cabinet at- 
tempted in vain to procure his punishment As 
the matter stood, the responsibility of attacking 
the General rested on Mr. Crawford and had the 
decision of the people been different, the responsi- 
bility of defending- him would have been thrown 
exclusively upon [Mr. Adams, and Mr. Calhoun 
would have claimed the merit of the attack. But 
until the public should decide, it was not pru- 
dent to lose the friendship of General -Jackson, 
which might be of more service to ^Mr. Calhoun 
than the truth. It was thus at the sacrifice of 
every principle of honor and friendship that 
Mr. Calhoun managed to throw all responsibil- 
ity on his poHtical rivals, and profit by the re 
suit of these movements whatever it might be. 
It cannot be doubted, however, that Mr. Cal- 
houn expected the entire prostration of Gene- 
ral Jackson, and managed to procure the destruc- 
tion of Mr. Rhea's letter, for the purpose of 
disarming the friend he had betrayed, that he 
might with impunity when the public should 
have pronounced a sentence of condemnation, 
have come forward and claimed the merit of 
having been the first to denounce him. 

"The people however sustained General Jack- 
son against the attacks of aU his enemies, pub- 
lic and private, open and secret, and therefore it 
became convenient for Mr. Calhoun to retain 
his mask, to appear as the friend of one whom 
the people had pronounced their friend, and to 
let Mr. Cra^vford bear the unjust imputation of 
having assailed him in the cabinet. 

"It must be confessed that the mask was 
worn with consummate skUl. Mr. Calhoun wa& 
understood by all of General Jackson's friends 
to be his warm and able defender. When, in 
1824, Mr. Calhoun was withdrawn from the 
fists as a candidate for the Presidency, the im- 
pression made on the friends of General Jack- 
son was that he did it to favor the election of 
their favorite, when it is believed to be suscep- 
tible of proof that he secretly flattered the 
friends of Mr. Adams with the idea that he was 



180 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



with tlKiii. It is certain that for the Vice- 
Pri'sidoncy lie continued to secure nearly all 
the Adams votes, most of the Jackson votes, 
and even half of the Clay votes in Kentucky. 
But never did the friends of General Jackson 
doubt his devotion to their cause in that con- 
test, until the publication of his correspondence 
with General Jackson. In a note, page 7, he 
undeceives them hj saying : 

'•'When my name was withdrawn from the 
list of presidential candidates, 1 assumed aper- 
fectl}' neutral position between General Jack- 
son and Mr. Adams. I was decidedly opposed 
to a congressional caucus, as both those gentle- 
men were also, and as I bore very friendly per- 
sonal and political relations to both, I would 
have been well satisfied with the election of 
either.' 

" I have now given a faithful detail of the cir- 
cumstances and facts which transpired touching 
my movements in Florida, during the Seminole 
campaign. 

" When Mr. Calhoun Avas secretly misinter- 
preting my views and conduct through Mr. 
Speer to the citizens of South Carolina, I had 
extended to him my fullest confidence, inas- 
much as I consulted him as if he were one 
of my cabinet, showed him the written rules 
by which my administration was to be gov- 
erned, which he apparently approved, received 
from him the strongest professions of friend- 
ship, so much so that I would have scorned 
even a suggestion that he was capable of such 
unworthy conduct. 

« ANDREW JACKSON." 

Such is the paper which General Jackson 
left behind him for publication, and which is so 
essential to the understanding of the events of 
the time. From the rupture between General 
Jack.son and Mr. Calhoun (beginning to open 
in 1830, and breaking out in 1831), dates ca- 
lamitous events to this country, upon which 
history camiot shut her eyes, and which would 
be a barren relation without the revelation of 
their cause. Justice to Mr. Monroe (who seemed 
to hesitate in the cabinet about the proposition 
to censure or puni.-li (Jen. Jackson), requires it 
to be distinctly brought out that he had either 
never read, or had entirely forgotten General 
Jackson's confidential letter, to be answered 
through the venerable rej)rescntative from Ten- 
nessee (Mr. John Rhea), and the production of 
which in the cabinet had such a decided influ- 
ence on Mr. Calhoun's proposition — and against 
it. This is well told in the letter of Mr. Craw- 
ford to Mr. Forsyth — is enforced in the "Expo- 
sition," and referred to in the " correspondence," 
but deserves to be reproduced in Mr. Crawford's 



own words. He says : " Indeed, my own views 
on the subject had undergone a material change 
after the cabinet had been convened. IMr. Calhoun 
made some allusion to a letter the General had 
written to the President, who had forgotten 
that he had received such a letter, but said if 
he had received such an one, he could find it ; 
and went directly to his cabinet and brought the 
letter out. In it General Jackson approved of 
the determination of the government to break up 
Amelia Island and Galveston ; and gave it also 
as his opinion that the Floridas should be taken 
by the United States. He added it might be a 
delicate matter for the Executive to decide ; but 
if the President approved of it, he had only to 
give a hint to some confidential member of Con- 
gress, say Mr. Johnny Ray (Rhea), and he would 
do it, and take the responsibility of it on him- 
self I asked the President if the letter had 
been answered. He replied, No ; for that he 
had no recollection of having received it. I 
then said that I had no doubt that General Jack- 
son, in taking Pensacola, believed he was doing 
what the Executive wished. After that letter 
was produced unanswered I should have opposed 
the infliction of punishment upon the General, 
who had considered the silence of the President 
as a tacit consent. Yet it was after this letter 
was produced and read that Mr. Calhoun made 
his proposition to the cabinet for punishing the 
General. Y'ou may show this letter to Mr. Cal- 
houn, if you please." It was shown to him by 
General Jackson, as shown in the "correspond- 
ence," and in the " Exposition ;" and is only re- 
produced here for the sake of doing justice tc 
Mr. Monroe. 



CHAPTER LIV. 

BREAKING UP OF THE CABINET, AND APPOIN'l 
MENT OF ANOTHER. 

The publication of Mr. Calhoun's pamphlet was 
quickly followed by an event which seemed to 
be its natural consequence — that of a breaking 
up, and reconstructing the President's cabinet. 
Several of its members classed as the political 
friends of Mr. Calhoun, and could hardly expect 
to remain as ministers to General Jackson 
while adhering to that gentleman. The Secre- 



ANNO 1831. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



181 



tary of State, ]\Ir. Van Buren, was in the cate- 
gory of future presidential aspirants; and in 
that character obnoxious to Mr. Calhoun, and 
became the cause of attacks upon the Presi- 
dent. He determined to resign ; and that de- 
termination carried with it the voluntary, or 
obligatory resignations of all the others — each 
one of whom published his reasons for his act. 
Mr. Eaton, Secretary at "War, placed his upon 
the ground of original disinclination to take the 
place, and a design to quit it at the first suita- 
ble moment — which he believed had now arriv- 
ed. Mr. Ingham, Secretary of the Treasury, 
Mr. Branch, of the Navy, and Mr. Berrien, At- 
torney General, placed theirs upon the ground 
of compliance with the President's wishes. Of 
the three latter, the two first classed as the 
friends of Mr. Calhoun ; the Attorney General, 
on this occasion, was considered as favoring 
him, but not of his political party. The unplea- 
sant business was courteously conducted — 
transacted in writing as well as in personal 
•sonversations, and all in terms of the utmost 
iecorum. Far from attempting to find an ex- 
euse for his conduct in the imputed misconduct 
of the retiring Secretaries, the President gave 
them letters of respect, in which he bore testi- 
cnony to their acceptable deportment while 
associated with him, and placed the required 
resignations exclusively on the ground of a de- 
termination to reoi'ganize his cabinet. And, 
in fact, that determination became unavoidable 
after the appearance of IMr. Calhoun's pam- 
phlet. After that Mr. Van Buren could not re- 
main, as being viewed under the aspect of 
'• Mordecai, the Jew, sitting at the king's gate." 
Mr. Eaton, as his supporter, found a reason to 
do what he wished, in following his example. 
The supporters of Mr. Calhoun, howsoever unex- 
ceptionable their conduct had been, and might 
be, could neither expect, nor desire, to remain 
among the Presidents confidential advisers 
after the broad rupture with that gentleman. 
Mr. Barry, Postmaster General, and the first 
of that office who had been called to the 
cabinet councils, and classing as friendly to 
Mr. Van Buren, did not resign, but soon had 
his place vacated by the appointment of min- 
ister to Spain. Mr. Van Buren's resignation 
was soon followed by the appointment of min- 
ister to London ; and Mr. Eaton was made 
Governor of Florida ; and, on the early death 



of Mr. Barry, became his successor at Ma- 
drid. 

The new cabinet was composed of Edward 
Livingston of Louisiana, Secretary of State ; 
Louis McLaue of Delaware (recalled from the 
London mission for that purpose), Secretary of 
the Treasury ; Lewis Cass of Ohio, Secretary 
at "War ; Levi Woodbury of New Hampshire, 
Secretary of the Navy ; Amos Kendall of Ken- 
tucky, Postmaster General; Roger Brooke 
Taney of IMaryland, Attorney General. This 
change in the cabinet made a great figure in the 
party politics of the day, and filled all the oppo- 
sition newspapers, and had many sinister rea- 
sons assigned for it — all to the prejudice of 
General Jackson, and Mr. Van Buren — to 
which neither of them replied, though having 
the easy means of vindication in their hands — 
the former in the then prepared " Exposition " 
which is now first given to the public — the lat- 
ter in the testimony of General Jackson, also 
first published in this Thirty Years' View, 
and in the history of the real cause of the breach 
between General Jackson and Mr. Calhoun, 
which the " Exposition " contains. Mr. Craw- 
ford was also sought to be injured in the pub- 
lished " correspondence," chiefly as the alleged 
divulger, and for a wicked purpose, of the pro- 
ceedings in ]Mr. Monroe's cabinet in relation to 
the proposed military court on General Jackson. 
Mr. Calhoun arraigned him as the divulger of 
that cabinet secret, to the faithful keeping of 
which, as well as of all the cabinet proceedings, 
every member of that council is most strictly 
enjoined. Mr. Crawford's answer to this ar- 
raignment was brief and pointed. He denied 
the divulgation — affirmed that the disclosure 
had been made immediately after the cabinet 
consultation, in a letter sent to Nashville, Ten- 
nessee, and published in a paper of that city, in 
which the facts were reversed — Jlr. Crawford 
being made the mover of the court of inquiry 
proposition, and Mr. Calhoun the defender of 
the General ; and he expresed his belief that 
INIr. Calhoun procured that letter to be written 
and published, for the purpose of exciting Gen- 
eral Jackson against him ; (which belief the 
Exposition seems to confirm) — and declaring 
that he only spoke of the cabinet proposition 
after the publication of that letter, and for the 
purpose of contradicting it, and telling the fact, 
that Mr. Calhoun made the proposition for the 



182 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



court, and that Mr. Adams and himself resisted, 
and dcftatea it. His words were : " My apol- 
ogy for having disclosed what passed in a cabi- 
net meeting, is this : In the summer after that 
meeting, an extract of a letter from Washing- 
ton was published in a Nashville paper, in which 
it was stilted that I had proposed to arrest 
General Jackson, but that he was triumphantly 
defended by Mr. Calhoun and ^Ir. Adams. 
This letter 1 have always believed was written 
by Mr. Calhoun, or by his direction. It had 
the desired effect. General Jackson became 
extremely inimiciil to me, and friendly to Mr. 
Calhoun. In stating the arguments of Mr. 
Adams to induce Mr. Monroe to support Gen- 
eral Jackson's conduct throughout, adverting 
to Mr. Monroe's apparent admission, that if a 
young officer had acted so, he might be safely 
punished, Mr. Adams said — that if General 
Jackson had acted so, that if he had been a 
subaltern officer, shooting was too good for 
him. This, however, was said with a view of 
driving Mr. Monroe to an unlimited support of 
what General Jackson had done, and not with 
an unfriendly view to the General. Mr. Cal- 
houn's proposition in the cabinet was, that 
General Jackson should be punished in some 
form, I am not positive ■which. As Mr. Cal- 
houn did not propose to arrest General Jack- 
.-on, I feel confident that I could not have made 
use of that word in my relation to you of the 
circumstances which transpired in the cabinet." 
This was in the letter to Mr. Forsyth, of April 
30th, 1830, and which was shown to General 
Jackson, and by him communicated to Mr. Cal- 
houn ; and which was the second thing that 
brought him to suspect Mr. Calhoun, having 
repulsfd all previous intimations of his hostility 
to the General, or been quieted by Mr. Cal- 
houn's answers. The Nashville letter is strong- 
ly presented in the " Exposition " as having 
come from Mr. Calhoun, as believed by Mr. 
Crawford. 

Upon the pubhcation of the "correspond- 
ence," the Telegraph, formerly the Jackson 
organ, changed its course, as had been revealed 
to Mr. Duncauson— <^me out for Mr. Calhoun, 
and against General Jackson and Mr. Van Bu- 
ren, fullowed by all the afliliated pR'sses whicli 
awaitt'd its lead. The Globe took the stand 
for which it was established ; and became the 
ikithful, fearless, incorruptible, and powerful 



supporter of General Jackson and his adminis* 
tration, in the long, vehement, and eventfii. 
contests in which he became engaged 



CHAPTER LV. 

MILITARY ACADEMY. 

The small military establishment of the United 
States seemed to be almost in a state of dissolu- 
tion about this time, from the frequency of de- 
sertion ; and the wasdom of Congress was taxed 
to find a remedy for the evil. It could devise 
no other than an increase of pay to the rank 
and file and non-commissioned officers ; which 
upon trial, was found to answer but little pur- 
pose. In an army of GOOO the desertions wen 
1450 in the year ; and increasing. Mr. Macon 
from his home in North Carolina, having his 
attention directed to the subject by the debates 
in Congress, wrote me a letter, in which he laid 
his finger upon the true cause of these deser 
tions, and consequently showed what should hi 
the true remedy. He wrote thus : 

"TVhy does the army, of late years, deser* 
more than formerly 1 Because the officers have 
been brought up at West Point, and not among 
the people. Soldiers desert because not attach- 
ed to the service, or not attached to the officers. 
West Point cadets prevent the promotion of 
good sergeants, and men cannot like a service 
which denies them promotion, nor like officers 
who get all the commissions. The increase of 
pay will not cure the evil, and nothing but pro- 
motion will. In the Revolutionary army, we 
had many distinguished officers, who entered 
the army as privates. " 

This is wisdom, and besides carrying convic- 
tion for the truth of all it says, it leads to re- 
flections upon the nature and effects of our na- 
tional military school, which extend bej'ond 
the evil which was the cause of writing it. Since 
the act of 1812, which placed this institution 
upon its present footing, giving its students a 
legal right to appointment (as constructed and 
practised), it may be assumed that there is not 
a government in Europe, and has been none 
since the commencement of the French revolu- 
tion (when the nobles had pretty nearly a mo- 
nopoly of army appointments), so unfriendly 
to the rights of the people, and giving such un* 



ANNO 1831. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



183 



due advantages to some parts of the commu 
nity over the rest. OfBcers can now rise from 
the ranl's in all the countries of Europe — in 
Austria, Russia, Prussia, as well as in Great 
Britain, of which there are constant and illus- 
trious examples. Twenty-three marshals of 
the empiri rose from the ranks — among them 
Ney, Mass ^na, Oudinot, Murat, Soult, Berna- 
dotte. In Great Britain, notwithstanding her 
Royal ]\Iilitary College, the largest part of the 
commissions are now given to citizens in civil 
life, and to non-commissioned officers. A re- 
turn lately made to parliament shows that in 
eighteen years — from 1830 to 1847 — the number 
of citizens who received commissions, was 1,266 ; 
the number of non-commissioned officers pro- 
moted, was 446 ; and the number of cadets ap- 
pointed from the Royal JMilitary College was 
473. These citizen appointments were exclusive 
of those who purchased commissions — another 
mode for citizens to get into the British army, 
and which largely increases the number in that 
class of appointments — sales of commissions, 
with the approbation of the government, being 
there valid. But exclusive of purchased commis- 
sions during the same period of eighteen years, 
the number of citizens appointed, and of non- 
commissioned officers promoted, were, together, 
nearly four times the number of government 
cadets appointed. Now, how has it been in our 
Bei\ice during any equal number of years, or all 
■ he years, since the Military Academy got into 
full operation under the act of 1812 ? I confine 
the inquiry to the period subsequent to the war of 
1812, for during that war there were field and 
general officers in service who came from civil 
life, and who procured the promotion of many 
meritorious non-commissioned officers ; the act 
flot having at first been construed to exclude 
them. How many ? Few or none, of citizens ap- 
pointed, or non-commisioned officers promoted 
— only in new or temporary corps — the others 
being held to belong to the government cadets. 
I will mention two instances coming within 
my own knowledge, to illustrate the difficulty 
of obtaining a commission for a citizen in the 
regular regiments — one the case of the late Capt. 
Hermann Thorn, son of Col. Thorn, of New- 
York. The young man had applied for the place 
of cadet at West Point ; wnd not being able to 
obtain it, and having a strong military turn, he 
Bought service in Europe, and found it in Aus- j 



tria ; and was admitted into a hussar regiment 
on the confines of Turkey, without commission, 
but with the pay, clothing, and ration of a cor- 
poral; with the privilege of associating with 
officers, and a right to expect a commission if 
he proved himself worthy. These are the exact 
terms, substituting sergeant for corporal, on 
which cadets were received into the army, and 
attached to companies, in "Washington's time. 
Young Thorn proved himself to be worthy ; re- 
ceived the commission ; rose in five years to the 
rank of first lieutenant; when, the war breaking 
out between the United States and Mexico, he 
asked leave to resign, was permitted to do so, 
and came home to ask service in the regular ar- 
my of the United States. His application was 
made through Senator Cass and othen-, he only 
asking for the lowest place in the gradation of 
officers, so as not to interfere with the right of 
promotion in any one. The application was re- 
fused on the ground of illegality, he not having 
graduated at West Point. Afterwards I took 
up the case of the young man, got President Polk 
to nominate him, sustained the nomination be- 
fore the Senate ; and thus got a start for a young 
officer who soon advanced himself, receiving two 
brevets for gallant conduct and several wounds 
in the great battles of Mexico ; and was after- 
wards drowned, conducting a detachment to 
Cahfornia, in crossing his men over the great 
Colorado of the West. 

Thus Thorn was with difficulty saved. The 
other case was that of the famous Kit Carson 
also nominated by President Polk. I was not 
present to argue his case when he was rejected, 
and might have done no good if I had been, the 
place being held to belong to a cadet that was 
waiting for it. Carson was rejected because he 
did not come through the West Point gate. Be- 
ing a patriotic man, he has since led many ex- 
peditions of his countrymen, and acted as guide 
to the United States officers, in New Mexico, 
where he lives. He was a guide to the detach- 
ment that undertook to rescue the unfortunate 
Mrs. White, whose fate excited so much com- 
miseration at the time ; and I have the evidence 
that if he had been commander, the rescue would 
have been eflected, and the imhappy woman 
saved from massacre. 

This rule of appointment (the graduates of 
the academy to take all) may now be considered 
the law of the land, so settled by construction 



tS4 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



and senatorial acquiescence ; and consequently 
that no American citizen is to enter the regular 
anny except through the gate of the United 
States Military Academy; and few can reach 
that p:ite except tlirough the weight of a family 
connect ion. a political influence, or the instru- 
mentality of a friend at court. Genius in ob- 
scurity lias no chance ; and the whole tendency 
of the institution is to make a governmental, and 
not a national army. Appointed cadet by the 
President, nominated officer by him, promoted 
upon his nomination, holding commission at his 
pleasure, receiving his orders as law, looking to 
him as the fountain of honor, the source of pre- 
ferment, and the dispenser of agreeable and pro- 
fitable employment — these cadet officers must 
nafui-ally feel themselves independent of the 
people, and dependent upon the President ; and 
be irresistibly led to acquire the habits and fel- 
ings which, in all ages, have rendered regular ar- 
mies obnoxious to popular governments. 

The instinctive sagacity of the people has 
long since comprehended all this, and conceived 
an aversion to the institution which has mani- 
fested itself in many demonstrations against it 
— sometimes in Congress, sometimes in the 
State legislatures, always to be met, and trium- 
phantly met, by adducing "Washington as the 
father and founder of the institution. — No ad- 
duction could be more fallacious. Washington 
is no more the father of the present West Point 
than he i& of the present Mount Vernon. The 
West Point of his day was a school of engineer- 
ing and artillery, and nothing more ; the cadet of 
his day was a young soldier, attached to a com- 
pany, and serving with it in the field and in the 
•;imp, " with the pay, clothing, and ration of ser- 
•eant" (act of 1704) ; and in the intervals of ac- 
i vc service, if he had shown an inclination for the 
profession, and a capacity for its higher branch- 
es, then he was sent, in the "discretion" of the 
President, to West Point, to take instruction in 
Ihoso higher branches, namely, artiller}- and engi- 
neering, and nothing more. All the drills both of 
olficer and pi^vate — all the camp dutj- — all the 
trainings in the infantr}', the cavalry, and the rifle 
— were then left to be taught in the field and 
tiif camp — a better school than an}- academy ; 
an<l undtr officers who were to lead them into 
action — better teachers than any school-room 
rofessors. And all without any additional 

.ponsc to the United States. 



All was right in the time of Washington, and 
afterwards, up to the act of 1812. None became 
cadets then but those who had a stomach for 
the hardships, as well as taste for the pleasures 
of a soldier's life — who, like the Young Norval 
on the Grampian Hills, had felt the soldier's 
blood stir in their veins, and longed to be off to 
the scene of war's alarms, instead of standing 
guard over flocks and herds. Cadets wero not 
then sent to a superb school, with the emtilu- 
ments of officers, to remain four years at public 
expense, receiving educations for civil as well as 
military life, with the right to have commis- 
sions and be provided for ' by the government ; 
or with the secret intent to quit the service as 
soon as they could do better — which most of 
them soon do. The act of 1812 did the mis- 
chief; and that insidiously and by construction, 
while ostensibly keeping up the old idea of ca- 
dets serving with their companies, and only de- 
tached when the President pleased, to get in- 
struction at the academy. It runs thus : " The 
cadets heretofore appointed in the service of the 
United States, whether of artillery, cavalry, rifle- 
men, or infantry, or may be in future appointed 
or hereinafter provided, shall at no time exceed 
250 ; that they may be attached, at the discre- 
tion of the President of the United States as 
students to the INIilitary Academy ; and be sub- 
ject to the established regulations thereof." 

The deception of this clause is in keeping up 
the old idea of these cadets being with their 
companies, and by the judgment of the Presi- 
dent detached from their companies, and attach- 
ed, as students, to the Military Academy. The 
President is to exercise a " discretion," by 
which the cadet is transferred for a while from 
his company to the school, to be there as a stu- 
dent ; that is to say, like a student, but std] 
retaining his original character of quasi officer 
in his company. This change from camp to 
school, upon the face of the act, was to be, as 
formerly, a question for the President to decide, 
dependent for its solution upon the military 
indications of the young man's character, and 
his capacity for the higher branches of the ser- 
vice; and this only permissive in the President. 
He "may" attach, &c. Xow, all this is illu- 
sion. Cadets are not sent to companies, whe- 
ther of artillerj', infantry, cavalry, or riflemen. 
The President exercises no " discretion " about 
detaching them from their company and attach- 



ANNO 1831. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



185 



'ng them as students. They are appointed as 
students, and go right off to school, and get 
four years' education at the public expense. 
whether they have any taste for military life, or 
not. That is the first large deception under 
the act : others follow, until it is all deception. 
Another clause says, the cadet shall " sign arti- 
cles, with the consent of his parent or guardian, 
to serve five years, unless sooner discharged." 
This is deceptive, suggesting a service which has 
no existence, and taking a bond for what is not 
to be performed. It is the language of a sol- 
dier's enlistment, where there is no enlistment ; 
and was a fiction invented to constitutionalize 
the act. The language makes the cadet an en- 
listed soldier, bound to serve the United States 
the usual soldier's term, when this paper sol- 
dier — this apparent private in the ranks — is in 
reality a gentleman student, with the emolu- 
ments of an ofBcer, obtaining education at pub- 
lic expense, instead of carrying a musket in the 
ranks. The whole clause is an illusion, to use 
no stronger term, and put in for a purpose 
which the legislative history of the day well 
explains ; and that was, to make the act consti- 
tutional on its face, and enable it to get through 
the forms, and become a law. There were mem- 
bers who denied the constitutional right of 
Congress to establish this national eleemosy- 
nary university ; and others who doubted the 
policy and expediency of officering the army in 
this manner. To get over these objections, the 
selection of the students took the form, in the 
statute, of a soldier's enlistment; and in fact 
they sign articles of enlistment, like recruits, 
but only to appease the constitution and satisfy 
scruples ; and I have myself, in the early pe- 
riods of my service in the Senate, S€en the ori- 
ginal articles brought into secret session and 
exhibited, to prove that the student was an 
enlisted soldier, and not a student, and there- 
fore constitutionally in service. The term of 
five years being found to be no term of service 
at all, as the student might quit the service 
within a year after his education, which many 
of them did, it was extended to eight ; but still 
without eifect, except in procuring a few years 
of unwilling service from those who mean to 
quit ; as the greater part do. I was told by an 
officer in the time of the Mexican war that, of 
thirty-six cadets who had graduated and been 
commissioned at the same time with himself, 



there were only about half a dozen then in ser- 
vice ; so that this great national establishment 
is mainly a school for the gratuitous education 
of those who have influence to get there. The 
act provides that these students are to be in- 
structed in the lower as well as the higher 
branches of the military art; they are to be 
" trained and taught all the duties incident to 
a regular camp." Now, all this training and 
teaching, and regular camp duty, was done in 
Washington's time in the regular camp itself, 
and about as much better done as substance is 
better than form, and reality better than imita- 
tion, with the advantage of training each officer 
to the particular arm of the service to which he 
was to belong, and in which he would be ex- 
pected to excel. 

Gratuitous mstruction to the childi'en of the 
living is a vicious principle, which has no foun- 
dation in reason or precedent. Such instruc- 
tion, to the children of those who have died 
for their country, is as old as the first ages of 
the Grecian republics, as we learn from the 
oration which Thucydides puts into the mouth 
of Pericles at the funeral of the first slain of 
the Peloponnesian war : and as modern as the 
present British Military Royal Academy ; which, 
although royal, makes the sons of the living 
nobility and gentry pay ; and only gives gratu- 
itous instruction and support to the sons of 
those who have died in the public service. And 
so, I believe, of other European military schools. 

These are vital objections to the institution; 
but they do not include the high practical evil 
which the wisdom of INIr. Macon discerned, and 
with which this chapter opened — namely, a mo- 
nopoly of the appointments. That is effected 
in the fourth section, not openly and in direct 
terms (for that would have rendered the act un- 
constitutional on its fjice), but b}^ the use of 
words which admit the construction and the 
practice, and therefore make the law, which now 
is, the legal right of the cadet to receive a com 
mission who has received the academical diplo 
ma for going through all the classes. This gives 
to these cadets a monopoly of the offices, to the 
exclusion of citizens and non-commissioned offi- 
cers ; and it deprives the Senate of its constitu- 
tional share in making these appointments. By 
a " regulation," the academic professors are to 
recommend at each annual examination, five 
cadets in each class, on account of their particu- 



186 



TUIUTY Yi: Alls' VIEW 



lar merit, whom the rrosideut is to attach to 
compmiies. Tliis cxpungL-s the Senate, opens 
the door to that favoritism which natural pa- 
rents find it hard to repress among their own 
children, and which is proverbial among teach- 
ers. By the constitution, and for a great pub- 
lic purpose, and not as a privilege of the body, 
the Senate is to have an advising and consenting 
power over the army appointments : by practice 
and construction it is not the President and Sen- 
ate, but the President and the academy who 
appoint the officers. The President sends the 
student to the academy: the academy gives a 
diploma, and that gives him a right to the com- 
mission—the Senate's consent being an obliga- 
tory form. The President and the academy 
are the real appointing power, and the Senate 
nothing but an office for the registration of their 
appointments. And thus the Senate, by con- 
struction of a statute and its own acquiescence, 
has ceased to have control over these appoint- 
ments : and the whole body of army officers is 
fast becoming the mere creation of the Presi- 
dent and of the military academy. The eflect 
of this mode of appointment will be to create a 
governmental, instead of a national army ; and 
the eU'ect of this exclusion of non-commissioned 
officers and privates from promotion, will be to 
degrade the regular soldier into a mercenary, 
serving for p.ay without affection for a country 
which dishonors him. Hence the desertions 
and the correlative evil of diminished enlistments 
on the part of native-born Americans. 

Courts of law have invented many fictions to 
facilitate trials, but none to give jurisdiction. 
The jurisdiction must rest upon fact, and so 
should the constitutionality of an act of Con- 
gress; but this act of 1812 rests its constitu- 
tionality upon fictions. It is a fiction to sup- 
pose tlvat the cadet is an enlisted soldier — a 
fiction to suppose that he is attached to a com- 
pany and thence transferred, in the " discretion " 
of tlie Pre?ident. to the academy — a fiction to 
suppose that he is constitutionally appointed in 
the army by the President and Senate. The 
vcrj- title of the act is fictitious, giving not the 
lea-ist hint, not oven in the convenient formula 
of " other purpose*: " of the great school it was 
about to create. 

It ia entitled, "An act making further pro- 
vision for the corps of engintxTS ; " when five 
outoftliesix .sections which it contains goto 



make further provision for two hundred and fif 
ty students at a national military and civil uni- 
versity. As now constituted, our academy is 
an imitation of the European military schools, 
which create governmental and not national of- 
ficers — which make routine officers, but cannot 
create military genius — and which block up the 
wa}' against genius — especially barefooted ge- 
nius — such as this country abounds in, and 
which the field alone can develope. " My chil- 
dren, " — the French generals were accustomed 
to say to the young conscripts during the Rev- 
olution — " My children, there are some captains 
among you, and the first campaign will show 
who they are, and they shall have their places. " 
And such expressions, and the system in which 
they are founded, have brought out the milita- 
ry genius of the country in every age and na- 
tion, and produced such officers as the schools 
can never make. 

The adequate remedy for these evils is to re- 
peal the act of 1S12. and remit the academy to 
its condition in "Washington's time, and as en- 
larged by several acts up to 1812. Then no 
one would wish to become a cadet but he that 
had the soldier in him, and meant to stick to 
his profession, and work his way up from the 
" pay, ration, and clothing of a sergeant," to the 
rank of field-officer or general. Struggles for 
AYest Point appointments would then cease, 
and the boys on the "Grampian Hills" would 
have their chance. This is the adequate reme- 
dy. If that repeal cannot be had, then a sub- 
ordinate and half-way remedy may be found in 
giving to citizens and non-commissioned officers 
a share of the commissions, equal to what they 
get in the British service, and restoring the 
Senate to its constitutional right of rejecting as 
well as confirming cadet nominations. 

These are no new views with me. I have 
kept aloof from the institution. During the 
almost twenty years that I w.as at the head of 
the Senate's Committee on Military Afiairs, 
and would have been appropriately a " visitor" 
at TYest Point at some of the annual examina- 
tions, I never accepted the function, and have 
never even seen the place. T have been always 
against the institution as now established, and 
have long intended to bring my views of it be- 
fore the country ; and now fulfil that inteiv 
tion. 



■ C ? - • ■•— ^ T 



-. *■ w , A ' K 'v I > . - 



1» 



Ed I t:>?w it -wTis liot 
l: wen? -palso 



CHAPTEE LTI 



OF CHaETZZ. 



"- ■ • - T •' . - Jr. ihert bid besn a cease- 



r "I _ V - ' _^ 



^iase ^- 



pe- 



■=-s-r r: 



—. I 



-1 "STSS i__ >: 



"B"iT. J. cttr 



irvi; 



UTt ne^ 



- -. as 


avoKkngm 
as of kL- 









- 


— 




— 


-- 


— ~k 


— 


_--: 


•-- 










'^~-'L- 




^:- 


-: 












: 




■ 




cT 


























le 














St£- 








-_ 












i. 
























--- 
























-- - — 












"•' 
























- 






















-T 








- 




















-? 


-. - 






^ 


-_ 


'^ 


. _ , 




- 


7 


. - : 














- 



even- iths- 



? Tarrr.n .- 






188 



THIRry YEARS' VIEW, 



business men, to whom countries are usually in- 
debted for all beneficial legislation : the Sir Hen- 
ry Parnells, the Mr. Joseph Humes, the Mr. 
Edward P^lliccs, the Sir William Pulteneys; and 
men of that class, legislating for the practical 
concerns of life, and merging the orator in the 
man of business. 

THE SPEECH — EXTRACTS. 

" Mr. Benton commenced his speech in sup- 
port of the application for the leave he was about 
to ask, with a justification of himself for bringing 
forward the question of renewal at this time, 
when the charter had still five years to run ; 
and bottomed his vindication chiefly on the 
right he possessed, and the necessity he was un- 
der to answer certain reports of one of the com- 
mittee of the Senate, made in opposition to cer- 
tain resolutions relative to the bank, which he 
had submitted to the Senate at former sessions, 
and which reports he had not had an opportunity 
of answering. He said it had been his fortune, 
or chance, some three j-oars ago, to submit a re- 
solution in relation to the undrawn balances of 
public money in the hands of the bank, and to 
accompany it with some poor remarks of unfa- 
vorable implication to the future existence of 
that institution. My resolution [said Mr. B.] 
was referred to the Committee on Finance, who 
made a report decidedly adverse to all my views, 
and eminenth' favorable to the bank, both as a 
present and future institution. This report came 
on the 13th of May, just fourteen days before 
the conclusion of a six months' session, when all 
was hurry and precipitation to terminate the 
biieiness on hand, and when there was not the 
least chance to engage the attention of the Sen- 
ate in the consideration of any new subject. 
The report was, therefore, laid upon the table 
unanswered, but was ]irintcd V)y order of the 
Senate, and that in extra numbers, and widely 
diffused over the countrj' by means of the news- 
pajx'r press. At the commencement of the next 
session, it being irregular to call for the consid- 
eration of the past report, I was midor the ne- 
cessity to begin anew, and accordingly submitted 
my resolution a second time, and that quite 
early in the session ; .-ay on the first day of 
January. It was my wish and request that this 
resolution might Ije discussed in the Senate, but 
the sentiment of the majority was different, and 
a second reference of it was made to the Finance 
Committee. A .second rej^ort <jf the .same pvirport 
wilh the first was a matter of cour.<e ; but what 
did not seem to me to be a matter of course was 
this ; that this second report shoidd not come 
in until the 20th day of February, just fourteen 
days again before the end of the session, for it 
wxs then tlie short session, and the Senate a.s 
nuicli i)inched as before for time to finish the 
business on hand. No answer could bo made to 
it, but the report was printed, with the former 
rejjort appen led to it; and thus, united like the 



Siamese twins, and with the apparent, but noi 
real sanction of the Senate, they went forth to- 
gether to make the tour of the Union in the co- 
lumns of the newspaper press. Thus. I was a 
second time out of court ; a second time non- 
suited for want of a replication, when there 
was no time to file one. I had intended to be- 
gin de novo, and for the third time, at the open- 
ing of the ensuing .session ; but, happily, was an- 
ticipated and prevented by the annual message 
of the new President [General Jackson], which 
brought this question of renewing the bank 
cliarter directly before Congress. A reference 
of this part of the message was made, of course, 
to the Finance Committee : the committee, of 
course, again reported, and with increased ardor, 
in favor of the bank. Unhappilj' this third re- 
port, which was an amplification and reiteration 
of the two former, did not come in until the ses- 
sion was four months advanced, and when the 
time of the Senate had become engrossed, and its 
attention absorbed, by the numerous and impor- 
tant subjects which had accumulated upon the 
calendar. Printing in extra numbers, general 
circulation through the newspaper press, and no 
answer, was the catastrophe of tliis third refer- 
ence to the Finance Committee. Thus was I 
nonsuited for the third time. The fourth ses- 
sion has now come round ; the same subject is 
again before the same committee on the refer- 
ence of the part of the President's second annual 
message which relates to the bank ; and, doubt- 
less, a fourth report of the same import with the 
three preceding ones, may be expected. But 
when ? is the question. And, as 1 cannot answer 
that question, and the session is now two thirds 
advanced, and as I have no disposition to be cut 
off for the fourth time, I have thought proper to 
create an occasion to deliver ray own sentiments, 
bj' asking leave to introduce a joint resolution, 
adverse to the tenor of all the reports, and to 
give my reasons against them, while supporting 
my application for the leave demanded; a course 
of proceeding Avhich is just to myself and unjust 
to no one, since all are at liberty to answer me. 
These are my personal reasons for this step, and 
a part of my answer to the objection that I have 
begun too soon. The conduct of the bank, and 
its friends, constitutes the second branch of my 
justification. It is certainly not ' too soon ' for 
them, judging by their conduct, to engage in the 
question of renewing the bank charter. In and 
out of Congress, they all seem to be of one ac- 
cord on this point. Three reports of commit- 
tees in the Senate, and one from a committee of 
the House of Representatives, have been made 
in fixvor of the renewal ; and all these rrports, 
instead of being laid away for future .se — in- 
I stead of being stuck in pigeon holes, anu labelled 
for future attention, as things coming forth pre- 
I maturel}-, and not wanted for present service — 
have, on the contrary, been universally received 
by tile Ijank and its friends, in one great tempest 
j of applause ; greeted with every species of ac- 
I clamatiou ; reprinted in most of the papers, and 



ANNO 1831. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



189 



every effort made to give the widest diffusion, 
and the highest effect, to the arguments they 
contain. In addition to this, and at the present 
sess-ion, within a few days past, three thousand 
copies of the exposition of the affairs of the Bank 
have been printed by order of the two Houses, a 
thing never before done, and now intended to bla- 
zon the merits of the bank. [Mr. Smith, of Mary- 
land, here expressed some dissent to this state- 
ment ; but Mr. B. affirmed its correctness in sub- 
stance if not to the letter, and continued.] This 
does not look as if the bank advocates thought 
it was too soon to discuss the question of renew- 
ing_ the charter ; and, upon this exhibition of 
their sentiments, I shall rest the assertion and 
the proof, that they do not think so. The third 
branch of my justification rests upon a sense of 
public duty ; upon a sense of what is just and 
advantageous to the people in general, and to the 
debtors and stockholders of the bank in particu- 
lar. The renewal of the charter is a question 
which concerns the people at large ; and if they 
are to have any hand in the decision of this ques- 
tion — if they are even to know what is done be- 
fore it is done, it is high time that they and their 
representatives in Congress should understand 
each other's mind upon it. The charter has but 
five years to run ; and if renewed at all, will 
probably be at some short period, say two or 
three years, before the time is out, and at any 
time sooner that a chance can be seen to gallop 
the renewal through Congress. The people, 
therefore, have no^time to lose, if they mean to 
have any hand iathe decision of this great ques- 
tion. To the bank itself, it must be advantage- 
ous, at least, if not desirable, to know its fate at 
once, that it may avoid (if there is to be no re- 
newal) the trouble and expense of multiplying 
branches iipon the eve of dissolution, and the 
risk and inconvenience of extending loans be- 
yond the term of its existence. To the debtors 
upon mortgages, and indefinite accommodations, 
it must be also advantageous, if not desirable, to 
be notified in advance of the end of their in- 
dulgences: so that, to every interest, public 
and private, political and pecuniary, general 
and particular, full discussion, and seasonable 
decision, is just and proper. 

"I hold myself justified, Mr. President, upon 
the reasons given, for proceeding in my present 
application ; but, as example is sometimes more 
authoritative than reason, I will take the liberty 
to produce one, which is as high in point of au- 
thority as it is appropriate in point of applica- 
tion, and which happens to fit the case before 
the Senate as completely as if it had been made 
for it. I speak of what has lately been done in 
the Parliament of Great Britain. It so happens 
that the charter of the Bank of England is to 
expire, upon its own limitation, nearly about 
the same time with the charter of the Bank of 
the United States, namely, in the year 1833 ; 
and as far back as 1824, no less than nine years 
before its expiration, the question of its renewal 
was debated, and that with great freedom, in 



the British House of Commons. I will read 
some extracts from that debate, as the fairest 
way of presenting the example to the Senate, 
and the most effectual mode of securing to my- 
self the advantage of the sentiments expressed 
by British statesman. 

Tlie Extracts. 

" ' Sir Henry Parnell.— The House should no 
longer delay to turn its attention to the expe- 
diency of renewing the charter of the Bank of 
England. Heretofore, it had been the regular 
custom to renew the charter several years before 
the existing charter had expired. The last re- 
newal was made when the existing charter had 
eleven years to run : the present charter had 
nine j^ears only to continue, and he felt very 
anxious to prevent the making of any agreement 
between the government and the bank°for a re- 
newal, without a full examination of the policy 
of again conferring upon the Bank of England 
any exclusive privilege. The practice had^been 
for government to make a secret arrangement 
with the bank; to submit it immediately to 
the proprietors of the bank for their approba- 
tion, and to call upon the House the next day 
to confirm it, without affording any opportunity 
of fair deliberation. So much information had 
been obtained upon the banking trade, and upon 
the nature of currency in the last fifteen years, 
that it was particularly necessary to enter upon 
a full investigation of the policy of renewing the 
bank charter before any negotiation should be 
entered upon between the government and the 
bank ; and he trusted the government would not 
commence any such negotiation until the sense 
of Parliament had been taken on this important 
subject.' 

" ' Mr. Hume said it was of verj^ great impor- 
tance that his majesty's ministers should take 
immediate steps to free themselves from the 
trammels in which they had long been held by 
the bank. As the interest of money was now 
nearly on a level with what it was when the 
bank lent a large sum to government, he hoped 
the Chancellor of the Exchequer would not lis- 
ten to any application for a renewal of the bank 
chai-ter, but would pay off every shilling that 
had been borrowed from the bank. ***** 
Let the country gentlemen recollect that the 
bank was now acting as pawn-broker on a largo 
scale, and lending money on estates, a system 
entirely contrary to the original intention of 
that institution. ******* "jje hoped, before 
the expiration of the charter, that a regular in 
quiry would be made into the whole subject. ' 

'"Mr. Edward Ellice. It (the Bank of Eng- 
land) is a great monopolizing body, enjoying 
privileges which belonged to no other corpora- 
tion, and no other class of his majesty's sub- 
jects. ******* He hoped that the exclu- 
sive charter would never again be granted ; and 
that the conduct of the bank during th'^ last ten 
or twelve years would make governm >t very 



190 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



cautious how they entertained any such propo- 
eitions. The ri;rht honorable Chancellor of the 
Exchequer [Mr. Robinson] had protested against 
the idea of straining any point to the prejudice 
of the bank ; he thought, however, that the bank 
had very little to complain of, when their stock, 
ifter all their past profits, was at 238.' 

"'The Chancellor of the Exchequer depre- 
cated the discussion, as leading to no practical 
result.' 

'• ' ^fr. Alexander Baring objected to it as 
premature and unnecessary.' 

'•Sir "William Pulteney (in another debate). 
The prejudices in favor of the present bank 
have proceeded from the long hal)it of consider- 
ing it as a sort of pillar which nothing can 
shake. * ****** The bank has 
been supported, and is still supported, by the 
fear and ten-or which, by means of its mono- 
poly, it has had the power to inspire. It is 
well known, that there is hardly an extensive 
trader, a manufacturer, or a banker, cither in 
London, or at a distance from it, to whom the 
bank could not do a serious injury, and could 
often bring on even insolvency. ***** 
I consider the power given by the monopoly to 
be of the nature of all other despotic power, 
which corrupts the despot as much as it cor- 
rupts the slave. * * * * * * It is in 
the nature of man, that a monopoly must neces- 
saril}' be ill-conducted. ******* 
Whatever language the [private] bankers may 
feel themselves obliged to hold, yet no one can 
believe that they have any satisfaction in being, 
and continuing, under a dominion which has 
proved so grievous and so disastrous. * * * 
* * * I can never believe that the mer- 
chants and bankers of this country will prove 
unwilling to emancipate themselves, if they can 
do it without risking the resentment of the 
bank. No man in France was heard to com- 
plain, openly, of the Bastile while it existed. 
The merchants and bankers of this country 
have the blood of Englishmen, and will be hap- 
py to relieve themselves from a situation of 
perpetual terror, if they could do it consistently 
with a due regard to their own interest.' 

" Here is authority added to reason — the force 
of a great example added to the weight of un- 
answerable reasons, in favor of early discussion ; 
60 that. I trust, I have cll'ectually put aside that 
old and convenient objection to the ' time,' 
that most flexible and acconunodating objection, 
which applies to all seasons, and all subjects, 
and is just as available for cutting off a late de- 
bate, because it is too late, as it is for stitling an 
early one, I3ecau.se it is too early. 

" But, it is said that the debate will injure 
the stockholders ; that it depreciates the value 
of their property, and that it is wrong to sport 
with the vested rights of individual.s. This 
complaint, supposing it to come from the stock- 
holders themselves, is both absurd and ungrate- 
ful. It > absurd, because the stockholders, at 
ieast P' many of them as are not foreigners, 



must have known when they accepted a chartei 
of limited duration, that the approach of its 
expiration would renew the debate upon the 
propriety of its existence; that every citizen 
had a right, and every public man was under 
an obligation, to declare his sentiments freel}'' ; 
that there was nothing in the charter, nume- 
rous as its peculiar privileges were, to exempt 
the bank from that freedom of speech and writ- 
ing, which extends to all our public affairs ; 
and that the charter was not to be renewed 
here, as the Bank of England charter had for- 
merly been renewed, by a private arrangement 
among its friends, suddenly produced in Con- 
gress, and galloped through without the know- 
ledge of the country. The American part of 
the stockholders (for I would not reply to the 
complaints of the foreigners) must have known 
all this ; and known it when they accepted the 
charter. They accepted it, subject to this known 
consequence; and, therefore, the complaint 
about injuring their property is absurd. That 
it is ungrateful, must be apparent to all who 
will reflect upon the great privileges which 
these stockholders will have enjoyed for twenty 
years, and the large profits they have already 
derived from their charter. They have been 
dividing seven per cent, per annum, unless when 
prevented by their own mismanagement ; and 
have laid up a real estate of three millions of 
dollars for future division ; and the monej' 
which has done these handsome things, instead 
of being diminished or impaired in the process, 
is still worth largely upwarde of one hundred 
cents to the dollar : say, one hundred and twen- 
ty-five cents. For the peculiar privileges which 
enabled them to make these profits, the stock- 
holders ought to be grateful: but, like all per- 
sons who have been highly favored with undue 
benefits, they mistake a privilege for a right — a 
favor for a duty — and resent, as an attack upon 
their property, a refusal to prolong their undue 
advantages. There is no ground for these com- 
plaints, but for thanks and benedictions rather, 
for permitting the bank to live out its number- 
ed days ! That institution has forfeited its 
charter. It may be shut up at any hour. It 
lives from day to day by the indulgence of those 
whom it daily attacks ; and, if any one is igno- 
rant of this fact, let him look at the case of the 
Bank of the United States against Owens and 
others, decided in the Supreme Court, and re- 
ported in the 2d Peters. 

" [Here Mr. B. read a part of this case, show- 
ing that it was a case of usury at the rate of 
forty-six per cent, and that ISIi". Sergeant, coun- 
sel for the bank, resisted the decision of the 
Supreme Court, upon the ground that it would 
expose the charter of the bank to forfeiture ; 
and that the decision was, nevertheless, given 
upon that ground ; so that the bank, being con- 
victed of taking usury, in violation of its char- 
ter, was liable to be deprived of its charter, at 
any time that a scire facias should issue againsi 



any 

it-i 



ANNO 1831. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



191 



" Mr. B. resumed. Before I proceed to the 
consideration of the resolution, I wish to be in- 
dulged in adverting to a rule or principle of 
parliamentary practice, which it is only neces- 
sary to read now in order to avoid the possi- 
bility of any necessity for recurring to it here- 
after. It is the rule which forbids any member 
to be present — which, in fact, requires him to 
withdraw — during the discussion of any ques- 
tion in which his private interest may be con- 
cerned ; and authorizes the expurgation from 
the Journal of any vote which may have been 
given under the predicament of an interested 
motive. I demand that the Secretary of the 
Senate may read the rule to which I allude. 

" [The Secretary read the following rule :] 

" ' Where the private interests of a member 
are concerned in a bill or question, he is to 
withdraw. And where such an interest has 
appeared, his voice has been disallowed, even 
after a division. In a case so contrary, not onlj'' 
to the laws of decency, but to the fundamental 
principles of the social compact, which denies 
to any man to be a judge in his own cause, it is 
for the honor of the House that this rule, of 
immemorial observance, should be strictly ad- 
hered to.' 

" First : Mr. President, I object to the renewal 
. of the charter of the Bank of the United States, 
r because I look upon the bank as an institution 
too great and powerful to be tolei'ated in a gov- 
ernment of free and equal laws. Its power is 
that of the purse ; a power more potent than 
that of the sword ; and this power it possesses 
to a degree and extent that will enable this 
bank to draw to itself too much of the political 
power of this Union ; and too much of the in- 
dividual property of the citizens of these States. 
The money power of the bank is both direct 
and indirect. 

" [The Vice-President here intimated to Mr. 
Benton that he was out of order, and had not a 
right to go into the merits of the bank upon 
the motion which he had made. Mr. Benton 
begged pardon of the Vice-President, and re- 
spectfully insisted that he was in order, and had 
a right to proceed. He said he was proceeding 
upon the parliamentary rule of asking leave to 
bring in a joint resolution, and, in doing which, 
he had a right to state his reasons, which rea- 
sons constituted his speech ; that the motion 
was debatable, and the whole Senate might 
answer him. The Vice-President then directed 
Mr. Benton to proceed.] 

"Mr. B. resumed. The direct power of the 
bank is now prodigious, and in the event of the 
renewal of the charter, must speedily become 
boundless and uncontrollable. The bank is now 
authorized to own eflects, lands inclusive, to the 
(/ amount of fifty-five millions of dollars, and 
^' to issue notes to the amount of thirty-five 
millions more. This makes ninety millions ; 
and, in addition to this vast sum, there is an 
opening for an unlimited increase : for there is 
a dispensation in the charter to issue as many 



more notes as Congress, by law, may permit. 
This opens the door to boundless emissions ; for 
what can be more unbounded than the will and 
pleasure of successive Congi'esses ? The indi- 
rect power of the bank cannot be stated in fig- 
ures ; but it can be shown to be immense. In 
the first place, it has the keeping of the public 
moneys, now amounting to twenty-six millions 
per annum (the Post Office Department in- 
cluded), and the gratuitous use of the undrawn 
balances, large enough to constitute, in them- 
selves, the capital of a great State bank. In 
the next place, its promissory notes are receiv- 
able, by law, in purchase of all property owned 
by the United States, and in paj^ment of all 
debts due them ; and this may increase its 
power to the amount of the annual revenue, by 
creating a demand for its notes to that amount. 
In the third place, it wears the name of the 
United States, and has the federal government 
for a partner ; and this name, and this partner- 
shiiJ, identifies the credit of the bank with the 
credit of the Union. In the fourth place, it is 
armed with authority to disparage and discred- 
it the notes of other banks, by excluding them 
from all payments to the United States ; and 
this, added to all its other powers, direct and 
indirect, makes this institution the uncontroll- 
able monarch of the moneyed system of the 
Union. To whom is all this power granted ? To 
a company of private individuals, many of them 
foreigners, and the mass of them residing in a 
remote and narrow corner of the Union, uncon- 
nected by any sympathy with the fertile regions 
of the Great Valley, in which the natural power 
of this Union — the power of numbers — will be 
found to reside long before the renewed term 
of a second charter would expire. By whom 
is all this power to be exercised ? By a direc- 
ioYj of seven (it may be), governed by a major- 
ity, of four (it may be) ; and none of these 
elected by the people, or responsible to them. 
Where is it to be exercised ? At a single city, 
distant a thousand miles from some of the 
States, receiving the produce of none of them 
(except one) ; no interest in the welfare of any 
of them (except one) ; no commerce with the 
people ; with branches in every State ; and every 
branch subject to the secret and absolute orders 
of the supreme central head : thus constituting 
a system of centralism, hostile to the federative 
principle of our Union, encroaching upon the 
wealth and power of the States, and oi'ganized 
upon a principle to give the highest effect to the 
greatest power. This mass of power, thus con- 
centrated, thus ramified, and thus directed, must 
necessaril}^ become, under a prolonged existence, 
the absolute monopolist of American money, the 
sole manufacturer of paper currency, and the 
sole authority (for authority it will bo) to which 
the federal government, the State governments, 
the great cities, corporate bodies, merchants, 
traders, and every private citizen, must, of ne- 
cessity appl}^, for every loan \\'hich their exigen- 
cies may demand. ' The rich ruleth the poor, 



192 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



and the borrower is the servant of the lender.' 
Such are the words of Holy Writ ; and if the 
authority of the Bible admitted of corroboration, 
the liistory of the world is at hand to give it. 
But I will not cite the history of the world, but 
one eniinoiit e.xaniplo only, and that of a nature 
Bo high and coninianding, as to include all others ; 
and so near and recent, as to be directly appli- 
cable to our own situation. I speak of what 
happened in Great Britain, in the year 1795, 
when the Bank of England, by a brief and un- 
ceremonious letter to Mr. Pitt, such as a miser 
would write to a prodigal in a pinch, gave the 
proof of what a great moneyed power could do, 
and would do, to promote its own interest, in a 
crisis of national alarm and difficulty. 1 will 
read the letter. It is exceedingly short; for 
after the compliments are omitted, there are but 
three lines of it. It is, in fact, about as long as 
a sentence of execution, leaving out the prayer 
of the judge. It runs thus : 

" ' It is the wish of the Court of Directors that 
the Chancellor of the Exchequer would settle 
his arrangements of finances for the present 
year, in such manner as not to depend upon any 
further assistance from them, beyond what is 
already agreed for.' 

"Such were the words of this memorable 
note, sufficiently explicit and intelligible ; but 
to appreciate it fully, we must know what was 
the condition of Great Britain at that time? 
Remember it was the year 1795, and the begin- 
ning of that j'ear, than which a more porten- 
tous one never opened upon the British em- 
pire. The war with the French republic had 
been raging for two years ; Spain had just de- 
clared war against (!rcat Britain; Ireland was 
bursting into rebellion ; the Heet in the Nore 
was in open mutiny ; and a crj' for the reform 
of abuses, and the reduction of taxes, resounded 
through the land. It was a season of alarm 
and consternation, and of imminent actual danger 
to Great Britain ; and this was the moment 
which the Bank selected to notify the minister 
that no more loans were to be expected ! What 
was the effect of this notification? It was to 
paralyze the government, and to subdue the 
minister to the purposes of the bank. From 
that day forth Mr. Pitt became the minister of 
the bank ; and, before two years were out, he 
had succeeded in Ijringing all the departments 
of government. King, Lords, and Commons, and 
the Privy Council, to his own slavish condition. 
lie stopped the specie payments of the bank, 
and Tiiade its notes the lawful currency of the 
land. In 1797 he obtained an order in council 
for this purpose ; in the same year an act of 
parliament to confinn the order for a month, 
an<l afterwards a series of acts to continue it for 
twenty years. This was the reign of the bank. 
For twent}' years it was a dominant power in 
England ; and, during that dis.T.strous period, the 
public debt was increased about £4n0,00(),000 
sterling, equal nearly to two thousand millions 
of dollars, and that by paper loans from a 



bank which, according to its ovra declarations, 
had not a shilling to lend at the commencement 
of the period ! 1 omit the rest. I say nothing 
of the general subjugation of the country banks, 
the rise in the price of food, the decline in wages. 
the increase of crimes and taxes, the multipli- 
cation of lords and beggars, and the frightful de- 
moralization of society. I omit all this. I only 
seize the prominent figure in the picture, that 
of a government arrested in the midst of war 
and danger by the veto of a moneyed corpora- 
tion ; and only permitted to go on upon condi- 
tion of assuming the odium of stopping specie 
payments, and sustaining the promissory notes 
of an insolvent bank, as the lawful currency 
of the land. This single feature suffices to fix 
the character of the times ; for when the gov- 
ernment becomes the ' servant of the lender,' 
the people themselves become its slaves. Cannot 
the Bank of the United States, if re-chartered, 
act in the same way? It certainly can, and 
just as certainly will, when time and opportu- 
nity shall serve, and interest may prompt. It 
is to no purpose that gentlemen may come for- 
ward, and vaunt the character of the United 
States Bank, and proclaim it too just and mer- 
ciful to oppress the state. I must be permit- 
ted to repudiate both the pledge and the praise. 
The security is insufficient, and the encomium 
belongs to Constantinople. There were enough 
such in the British Parliament the j'ear before, 
nay, the day before the bank stopped ; yet their 
pledges and praises neither prevented the stop- 
page, nor made good the damage that ensued. 
There were gentlemen in our Congress to pledge 
themselves in 1810 for the then expiring bank, 
of which the one now existing is a second and 
deteriorated edition ; and if their security ship 
had been accepted, and the old bank re-charter- 
ed, we should have seen this government greet- 
ed with a note, about August, 1814 — about the 
time the British were burning this capitol — of 
the same tenor with the one received by the 
younger Pitt in the j'ear 1795 ; for, it is incon- 
testable, that that bank was owned by men who 
would have glorified in arresting the govern- 
ment, and the war itself, for want of money. 
Happily, the wisdom and patriotism of JelVer- 
son, under the providence of God, prevented 
that infamy and ruin, by preventing the re- 
newal of the old bank charter. , 

ySecondly. I object to the continuance of tins' 
batik, because its tendencies are dangerous and 
^rnicious to the government and the people. 

"What are the tendencies of Ji great moneyed 
power, connected with the government, and 
controlling its fiscal operations ? Are they not 
dangerous to every interest, public and private 
— political as well as pecuniary ? I say they 
are ; and briefly enumerate the heads of eact 
mischief. 

"1. Such a bank tends to subjugate the gov 
ernment, as I have already shown in the histo- 
ry of what happened to the British minister ir 
the year 1795. 



ANNO 1831. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



193 



" 2. It tends to collusions between the gov- 
ernment and the bank in the terms of the loans, 
as has been fully experienced in England in those 
frauds upon the people, and insults upon the 
understarding, called three per cent, loans, in 
which the government, for about £50 borrow 
ed, became liable to pay £100. 

" 3. It tends to create public debt, by facilitat- 
ing public loans, and substituting unlimited 
supplies of paper, for limited supplies of coin. 
The British debt is born of the Bank of Eng- 
land. That bank was chartered in 1694, and 
was nothing more nor less in the beginning, 
than an act of Parliament for the incorpo- 
ration of a company of subscribers to a gov- 
ernment loan. The loan was £1,200,000 ; 
the interest £80,000 ; and the expenses of, 
management £4,000. And this is the birth 
and origin, the germ and nucleus of that 
debt, which is now £900,000,000 (the un- 
funded items included), which bears an in- 
terest of £30,000,000, and costs £260,000 for 
annual management. 

"4. It tends to beget and prolong unnecessary 
wars, by furnishing the means of carrying them 
on without recurrence to the people. England 
is the ready example for this calamity. Her 
wars for the restoration of the Capet Bourbons 
were kept up by loans and subsidies created out 
of bank paper. The people of England had no 
interest in these wars, which cost them about 
£600,000,000 of debt in twenty-five years, in 
addition to the supplies raised within the year. 
The kings she put back upon the French throne 
were not able to sit on it. Twice she put them 
on ; twice they tumbled off in the mud ; and 
all that now remains of so much sacrifice of life 
and money is, the debt, which is eternal, the 
taxes, which are intolerable, the pensions and 
titles of some warriors, and the keeping of the 
Capet Bourbons, who are returned upon their 
hands. 

'• 5. It tends to aggravate the inequality of for- 
tunes ; to make the rich richer, and the poor 
poorer ; to multiply nabobs and paupers ; and 
to deepen and widen the gulf which separates 
Dives from Lazarus. A great moneyed power 
is favorable to great capitalists ; for it is the 
principle of money to favor money. It is unfa- 
vorable to small capitalists ; for it is the princi- 
ple of money to eschew the needy and unfortu- 
nate. It is injurious to the laboring class 
because they receive no favors, and have th' 
price of the property they wish to acquire 
raised to the paper maximum, while wages re- 
main at the silver minimum. 

" 6. It tends to make and to break fortunes, by 
the flux and reflux of paper. Profuse issues, 
and sudden contractions, perform this opera- 
tion, which can be repeated, like planetary and 
pestilential visitations, in every cycle of so 
many years ; at every periodical return, trans- 
ferring millions from the actual possessors of 
property to the Neptunes who preside over the 
flux and reflux of paper. The last operation of 

Vol. I.— 13 



this kind performed by the Bank orEngland, 
about five years ago, was described Ijy Mr. 
Alexander Baring, in the House of Commons, 
in terms which are entitled to the knowledge 
and remembrance of American citizens. I will 
read his description, which is brief, but impres- 
sive. After describing the profuse issues of 
1823-24, he painted the reaction in the follovv-- 
ing terms : 

" ' Thej^, therefore, all at once, gave a sudden 
jerk to the horse on whose neck they had be- 
fore suffered the reins to hang loose. They 
contracted their issues to a considerable extent. 
The change was at once felt throughout the 
countrj". A few days before that, no one knew 
what to do with his money ; now, no one knew 
where to get it. * * * * The London bankers 
found it necessary to follow the same course 
towards their country correspondents, and these 
agam towards their customers, and each indi- 
vidual towards his debtor. The consequence 
was obvious in the late panic. Every one, 
desirous to obtain what was due to him, ran to 
his banker, or to any other on whom he had a 
claim ; and even those who had no immediate 
use for their money, took it back, and let it lie 
unemployed in their pockets, thinking it unsafe 
in others' hands. The effect of this alarm was, 
that houses which were weak went immediately. 
Then went second rate houses; and, lastly, 
houses which were solvent went, because their 
secui'ities were unavailable. The daily calls to 
which each individual was subject put it out of 
his power to assist his neighbor. Men were 
known to seek for assistance, and that, too, 



without finding it, who, on examination of their 
affairs, were proved to be worth 200,000 pounds, 
— men, too, who held themselves so secure, that, 
if asked six months before whether they could 
contemplate such an event, they would have said 
it would be impossible, unless the sky should 
fall, or some other event equally improbable 
should occur.' 

" This is what was done in England five years 
ago, it is what may be done here in every five 
years to come, if the bank charter is renewed. 
Sole dispenser of money, it cannot omit the 
oldest and most obvious means of amassing 
wealth by the flux and reflux of paper. The 
game will be in its own hands, and the only 
answer to be given is that to which I have al- 
luded : ' The Sultan is too just and merciful to 
abuse his power.' 

^^ Thirdly. I object to the renewal of the char- 
ter, on account of the exclusive privileges, and 
anti-republican monopoly, which it gives to the 
stockholders. It gives, and that by an act of 
Congress, to a company of individuals, the ex- 
clusive legal privileges : 

" 1. To carry on the trade of banking upon 
the revenue and credit, and in tlie name, of the 
United States of America. 

" 2. To pay the revenues of the Union in their 
own promissory notes. 

" 3. To hold "the moneys of the United States 



194 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



in deposit, without making compensation for the 
undniwn balances. 

"4. To discredit and disparage the notes of 
other banks, by excluding them from the col- 
lection of the federal revenue. 

''5. To liold real estate, receive rents, and 
retain a body of tenantry. 

" 6. To deal in pawns, merchandise, and bills 
of exchange. 

'■ 7. To establish branches in the States with- 
out their consent. 

" 8. To be exempt from liability on the failure 
of the bank. 

' 9. To have the United States for a partner. 

" 10. To have foreigners for partners. 

" 11. To be exempt from the regular adminis- 
tration of justice for the violations of their charter. 

" 12. To have all these exclusive privileges 
secured to them as a monopol}-, in a pledge of 
the public faith not to grant the like privileges 
to any other company. 

" These are the privileges, and this the mo- 
nopoly of the bank. Now, let us examine them, 
and ascertain their efiect and bearing. Let us 
contemplate the magnitude of the power which 
they create ; and ascertain the compatibility of 
this power with the safet}' of this republican 
government, and the rights and interests of its 
free and equal constituents. 

'• 1. The name, the credit, and the revenues 
of the United States are given up to the use of 
this compan}-, and constitute in themselves an 
immense capital to bank upon. The name of 
the United States, like that of the King, is a 
tower of strength ; and this strong tower is now 
an outwork to defend the citadel of a moneyed 
corporation. The credit of the Union is incal- 
culable ; and, of this credit, as going with the 
name, and being in partnership with the United 
States, the same corporation now has possession. 
The revenues of the Union are twenty-six mil- 
lions of dollars,' including the post-office ; and all 
this is so much capital in the hands of the bank, 
because the revenue is received by it, and is 
payable in its promissory notes. 

•• 2. To pay the revenues of the United States 
in their own notes, until Congress, by law, shall 
otherwise direct. This is a part of the charter, 
incredible and extraordinary as it may appear! 
The promissory notes of the bank are to be 
received in payment of every thing the United 
States may have to sell — in discharge of every 
debt due to her, until Congress, b}- law, shall 
otherwise direct ; so that, if this bank, like its 
prototype in England, should stop payment, its 
promissory notes would still be receivable at 
every custom-house, land-office, post-office, and 
by every collector of' public moneys, throughout 
the Union, until Congress shall meet, pass a 
repealing law, and promulgate the repeal. Other 
banks- depend upon their credit for the rccciva- 
bility of their notes ; but this favored institution 
has law on its side, and a chartered right to 
compel the reception of its paper by the federal 
government. The immediate consequence of 



this extraordinary privilege is, that the United 
States becomes virtually bound to stand security 
for the bank, as much so as if she had signed a 
bond to that efl'ect ; and must stand forward to 
sustain the institution in all emergencies, in 
order to save her own revenue. This is what 
has already happened, some ten j-ears ago, in 
the early progress of the bank, and when the 
immense aid given it by the federal government 
enabled it to survive the crisis of its own over- 
whelming mismanagement. 

3. To hold the moneys of the United States 
in deposit, without making compensation for 
the use of the undrawn balances. — This is a 
right which I deny ; but, as the bank claims it, 
and, what is more material, enjoys it; and as 
the people of the United States have sufllered 
to a vast extent in consequence of this claim 
and enjoyment, I shall not hesitate to set it 
down to the account of the bank. Let us then 
examine the value of this privilege, and its ef- 
fect upon the interest of the community ; and, 
in the first place, let us have a full and accurate 
view of the amount of these undrawn balances, 
from the establishment of the bank to the pre- 
sent day. Here it is ! Look ! Read ! 

" See, Mr. President, what masses of monej-, 
and always on hand. The paper is covered all 
over with millions : and yet, for all these vast 
sums, no interest is allowed ; no compensation 
is made to the United States. The Bank of 
England, for the undrawn balances of the pub- 
lic money, has made an equitable compensation 
to the British government ; namely, a perma- 
nent loan of half a million sterling, and a tem- 
porary loan of three millions for twent}' years, 
without interest. Yet, when I moved for a 
like compensation to the Untied States, the 
proposition was utterly rejected by the Finance 
Committee, and treated as an attempt to vio- 
late the charter of the bank. At the same 
time it is incontestable, tliat the United States 
have been borrowing these undrawn balances 
from t^e bank, and paying an interest upon 
their own nione}'. I think we can identify one 
of these loans. Let us try. In I\Iay, 1824, Con- 
gress authorized a loan of five millions of dollars 
to pay the awards under the treaty with Spain, 
conunonlj- called the Florida treat3^ The bank 
of the United States took that loan, and paid 
the mone}' for the United States in January and 
March, 1825. In looking over the statement of 
undrawn balances, it will be seen that they 
amounted to near four millions at the end of the 
first, and six millions at the end of the second 
quarter of that year. The inference is irresist- 
ible, and I leave ever}^ senator to make it ; only 
adding, that we have paid §1,409,375 in interest 
upon that loan, either to the bank or its trans- 
ferrees. This is a strong case ; but I have a 
stronger one. It is known to every body, tliat 
the United States subscribed seven millions to 
the capital stock of the bank, for which she 
gave her stock note, bearing an interest of five 
per cent, per annum. 1 have a statement from 



ANNO 1S31. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



195 



the Register of the Treasury, from which it ap- 
pears that, up to the 30th day of June last, the 
United States had paid four millions seven hun- 
dred and twenty-five thousand dollars in inter- 
est upon that note ; when it is proved by the 
statement of balances exhibited, that the United 
States, for the whole period in which that inter- 
est was accruing, had the half, or the whole, and 
once the double, of these seven millions in the 
hands of the bank. This is a stronger case than 
that of the five million loan, but it is not the 
strongest. The strongest case is this: in the 
year 1817, when the bank went into operation, 
the United States owed, among other debts, a 
sum of about fourteen millions and three-quar- 
ters, bearing an intei-est of three per cent. In 
the same year, the commissioners of the sink- 
ing fund were authorized by an act of Congress 
to purchase that stock at sixty-five per cent., 
which was then its market price. Under this 
authority, the amount of about one million and 
a half was purchased ; the remainder, amount- 
ing to about thirteen millions and a quarter, 
has continued unpurchased to this day ; and, 
after costing the United States about six mil- 
lions in interest since 1817, the stock has risen 
about four millions in value; that is to say, 
from sixty-five to nearly ninety-five. NowJ 
here is a clear loss of ten millions of dollars to 
the United States. In 1817 she could have paid 
off thirteen millions and a quarter of debt, with 
eight millions and a half of dollars : now, after 
paying six millions of interest, it would require 
twelve millions and a half to pay off" the same 
debt. By referring to the statement of undrawn 
balances, it will be seen that the United States 
had, during the whole year 1817. an average 
sum of above ten millions of dollars in the 
hands of the bank, being a million and a half 
more than enough to have bought in the whole 
of the three per ceut. stock. The question, 
therefore, naturally comes up, why was it not 
applied to the redemption of these thirteen mil- 
lions and a quarter, accordmg to the authority 
contained in the act of Congress of that year? 
Certainly the bank needed the money ; for it 
was just getting into operation, and was as hard 
run to escape bankruptcy about that time, as 
any bank that ever was saved from the brink of 
destruction. This is the largest injury which 
we have sustained, on account of accommodat- 
ing the bank with the gratuitous use of these 
vast deposits. But, to show myself impartial, 
I will now state the smallest case of injury 
that has come within my knowledoe : it is the 
case of the boiius of fifteen hundred thousand 
dollars which the bank was to pay to the United 
States, in three equal instalments, for the pur- 
chase of its charter. Nominally, this bonus has 
been paid, but out of what moneys ? Certainly 
out of our own ; for the statement shows our 
money was there, and furtlier, shows that it is 
still there ; for, on the 30th day of -June last, 
which is the latest return, there was still 
^2,550,664 in the hands of the bank, which 



is above $750,000 more than the amount of 
the bonus. 

" One word more upon the subject of these 
balances. It is now t\\-o years since I made an 
effort to repeal the 4th section of the Sinking 
Fund act of 1817 ; a section which was intended 
to limit the amount of surplus money which 
might be kept in the treasurj', to two millions 
of dollars ; but, by the power of construction, 
was made to authorize the keeping of two mil- 
lions in addition to the surplus. I wished to 
repeal this section, which had thus been con- 
strued into the reverse of its intention, and to 
revive the first section of the Sinking Fund act 
of 1790, which directed the whole of the surplus 
on hand to be applied, at the end of each year, 
to the payment of the public debt. My argument 
was this : that there was no necessity to keep 
any surplus ; that the revenue, coming in as fast 
as it went out, was like a perennial fountain, 
which you might drain to the last drop, and not 
exhaust; for the place of the last drop would be 
supplied the instant it was out. And I sup- 
ported this reasoning by a reference to the 
annual treasury reports, which always exhibit 
a surplus of four or five millions ; and which 
were equally in the treasur}^ the whole year 
round, as on the last day of every year. This 
was the argument, which in fact availed nothing ; 
but now I have mathematical proof of the truth 
of my position. Look at this statement of 
balances ; look for the year 1819, and you will 
find but three hundred thousand dollars on hand 
for that year; look still lower for 1821, and you 
will find this balance but one hundred and eighty- 
two thousand dollars. And what was the con- 
sequence ? Did the Government stop ? Did 
the wheels of the State chariot cease to turn 
round in those years for want of treasury oil ? 
Not at all. Every thing went on as well as 
before ; the operations of the treasury were as 
perfect and regular in those two years of insig- 
nificant balances, as in 1817 and 1818, when five 
and ten millions were on hand. This is proof; 
this is demonstration ; it is the indubitable 
evidence of the senses which concludes argu- 
ment, and dispels uncertainty; and, as raj 
proposal for the repeal of the 4th Section of the 
Sinking Fund act of 1817 was enacted into a 
law at the last session of Congress, upon the 
recommendation of the Secretary of the Trea- 
suxj, a vigilant and exemplary officer, I tiiist 
that the repeal will be acted upon, and (hat the 
bank platter will be wiped as clean of federal 
money in 1831, as it was in 1821. Such clean- 
taking from that dish will allow two or three 
millions more to go to the reduction of the public 
debt ; and there can be no danger in taking the 
last dollar, as reason and experience both prove. 
But, to quiet every apprehension on this point, 
to silence the last suggestion of a possibility of 
any tempoi'ary deficit, I recur to a provision 
contained in two different clauses in the bank 
charter, copied from an amendment in the charter 
of the Bank of England, and expressly made, at 



196 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



the instance of the ministry, to meet the con- 
tingency of a tenipt)rary di-liciency in the annual 
revenue. The Enj^lish provision is this: that 
the •government may borrow of the bank half 
a million sterling, atany time, without a special 
act of parliament to authorize it. The provision 
in our charter is the same, with the smgle sub- 
stitution of dollars for pounds. It is, in words 
and intention, a standing aulhority to borrow 
that limited sum, for the obvious purpose of 
preventing a const:\nt keeping of a sum of 
money in hand as a reserve, to meet contingen- 
cies which hardly ever occur. This contingent 
authority to effect a small loan has often been 
used in England — in the United States, never; 
possibly, because there has been no occasion for 
it; probably, because tlie clause was copied 
mechanically from the English charter, and 
without the perception of its practical bearing. 
Be this as it may, it is certainly a wise and 
prudent provision, such as all goverinnents 
should, at all times, be clotlied with. 

" If any senator thinks that I have exagge- 
rated the injury suffered b}- the United States, 
on account of the uncompensated masses of 
public money in the hands of the bank, I am 
now going to convince him that he is wrong. 
I am going to prove to him that I have under- 
stated the case ; that I have purposely kept 
back a large part of it; and that justice requires 
a further development. The ftict is, that there 
are two different deposits of public money in the 
bank ; one in the name of the Treasurer of the 
United States, the other in the name of disbursing 
officers. The annual average of the former has 
been about three and a half millions of dollars, 
and of this I have said not a word. But the 
essential character of both deposits is the same ; 
they are both the property of the United States ; 
both permanent ; both available as so much 
capital to the bank ; and both uncompensated. 

•• I have not ascertained the average of these 
deposits since 1817, but presume it maj' equal 
the amount of that bonus of one million five 
hundred thousand dollars for which we sold the 
charter, and which the Finance Conmiittee of 
the Senate compliments the bank for paying in 
three, instead of seventeen, annual instalments ; 
and shows how much interest they lost by doing 
so. Certainly, this was a disadvantage to the 
bank. 

" Mr. President, it does seem to me that there 
is .something ominous to the bank in this contest 
for compensation on the imdrawn balances. It 
is the very way in which the struggle began m 
the British Parliament which has ended in the 
overthrow of the Bank of England. It is the 
way in which the struggle is beginning here. 
My resolutions of two and three years ago are 
the causes of the speech which you now hear ; 
and, as I have reason to believe, some others 
more worthy of your hearing, which will come 
at the proi)er lime. The question of compensa- 
tion for balances is now mi.xing itself up here, 
ia in England, with the question of renewing 



the charter ; and the two, acting together, will 
fall with combined weight upon the public mind, 
and certainly eventuate here as they did there. 

" 4. To discredit and disparage the notes of all 
other banks, by excluding them from the collec- 
tion of the federal revenue. This results from 
the collection — no, not the collection, but the 
receipt of the revenue having been communicated 
to the bank, and along with it the virtual exe- 
cution of the joint resolution of 181G, to regulate 
the collection of the federal revenue. The exe- 
cution of that resolution was intended to be 
vested in the Secretary of the Treasury — a 
disinterested arbiter between rival banks ; but 
it may be considered as virtually devolved 
upon the Bank of the United States, and power- 
fully increases the capacity of that institution to 
destroy, or subjugate, all other banks. This 
power to disparage the notes of all other banks, 
is a power to injui-e them ; and, added to all the 
other privileges of the Bank of the United States, 
is a power to destroy them ! If any one doubts 
this assertion, let him read the answers of the 
president of the bank to the questions put to 
him by the chairman of the Finance Committee. 
These answers are appended to the committee's 
report of the last session in flvvor of the bank, 
and expressly declare the capacity of the federal 
bank to destroy the State banks. The worthy 
chairman [Mr. Smith, of Md.] puts this ques- 
tion ; ' Has the bank at an}' time oppressed any 
of the State banks.' The president [Mr. 
Biddle], answers, as the whole world would 
answer to a question of oppression, that it never 
had ; and this response was as much as the 
interrogatory required. But it did not content 
the president of the bank ; he chose to go further, 
and to do honor to the instituticm over Avhich 
he presided, by showing that it was as just and 
generous as it Avas rich and powerful. He, 
therefore, adds the following words, for which, 
as a seeker after evidence, to show the alarming 
and dangerous character of the bank, I return 
him my unfeigned thanks : ' There are very few 
banks which might not h.ave been destroyed by 
an exertion of the power of the bank.' 

" This is enough ! proof enough ! not for 
me alone, but for all who are vuiwilling to see a 
moneyed domination set up — a moneyed oli- 
garchy established in this land, and the entire 
Union subjected to its sovereign will. The 
power to destroy all other banks is admitted 
and declared ; the inclination to do so is known 
to all rational beings to reside with the power! 
Polic}' may restrain the destroying faculties for 
the present; but they exist; and will come 
forth when interest prompts and polic}' permits. 
They have been exercised ; and the general 
prostration of the Southern and Western banks 
attest the fact. They will be exercised (the 
charter bemg renewed), and the remaining State 
banks will be swept with the besom of destruc- 
tion. Not that all will have their signs knocked 
dijwn, and their doors closed up. Far worse than 
that to many of them. Subjugation, in prefer- 



ANNO 1831. 4NDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



197 



ence to destruction, will be the fate of many. 
Every planet must have its satellites; every 
tyranny must have its instruments ; every 
Imight is followed by his squire ; even the king 
of beasts, the royal quadruped, whose roar sub- 
dues *he forest, must have a small, subservient 
animal to spring his prey. Just so of this 
imperial bank, when installed anew in its for- 
midable and lasting power. The State banks, 
spared by the sword, will be passed under the 
yoke. They will become subordinate parts in 
the great machine. Their place in the scale of 
subordination will be one degree below the rank 
of the legitimate branches ; their business, to 
perform the work which it would be too disre- 
putable for the legitimate branches to perform. 
This will be the fate of the State banks which 
are allowed to keep up their signs, and to set 
open their doors ; and thus the entire moneyed 
power of the Union would fall into the hands of 
one single institution, whose inexorable and 
invisible mandates, emanating from a centre, 
would i^ervade the Union, giving or withholding 
money according to its own sovereign will and 
absolute pleasure. To a favored State, to an 
individual, or a class of individuals, favored by 
the central power, the golden stream of Pactolus 
would flow direct. To all such the munificent 
mandates of the High Directory would come, 
as the fabled god made his terrestrial visit of love 
and desire, enveloped in a shower of gold. But 
to others — to those not favored — and to those 
hated — the mandates of this same directory 
would be as ' the planetary plague which hangs 
its poison in the sick air ; ' death to them ! 
death to all who minister to their wants ! What 
a state of things '. What a condition for a con- 
federacy of States! What grounds for alarm 
and terrible apprehension, when in a confede- 
racy of such vast extent, so many independent 
States, so many rival commercial cities, so much 
sectional jealousy, such violent political parties, 
such fierce contests for power, there should be 
but one moneyed tribunal, before which all the 
rival and contending elements must appear ! but 
one single dispenser of money, to which every 
citizen, every trader, every merchant, every 
manufacturer, every planter, every corporation, 
every city, every State, and the federal govern- 
ment itself, must apply, in every emergency, for 
the most indispensable loan ! and this, in the 
face of the fiict, that, in every contest for hu- 
man rights, the great moneyed institutions of 
the world have uniformly been found on the side 
of kings and nobles, against the lives and liberties 
of the people; 

_" 5. To hold real estate, receive rents, and re- 
tain a body of tenantry. This privilege is hos- 
tile to the nature of our republican government 
and inconsistent with the nature and design of 
a banking institution. Eopublics want free- 
holders, not landlords and tenants ; and, except 
the corporators in this bank, and in the British 
East India Compau}-, there is not an incorpora- 
ted body of landlords in any country upon the 



face of the earth whose laws emanate from a 
legislative body. Banks are instituted to pro- 
mote trade and industry, and to aid the govern- 
ment and its citizens with loans of money. The 
whole argument in favor of banking — every ar- 
gument in favor of this bank — rests upon that 
idea. No one, when this charter was granted, 
presumed to speak in favor of incorporating a 
society of landlords, especially foreign landlords, 
to buy lands, build houses, rent tenements, and 
retain tenantry. Loans of money was the ob- 
ject in view, and the purchase of real estate is 
incompatible with that object. Instead of re- 
maining bankers, the corporators may turn land 
speculators: instead of having money to lend, 
they may turn you out tenants to vote. To an ap- 
plication for a loan, they may answer, and answer 
truly, that they have no money on hand; and the 
reason may be, that they have laid it out in land. 
This seems to be the case at present. A com 
mittee of the legislature of Pennsylvania has 
just applied for a loan ; the president of the 
bank, nothing loth to make a loan to that great 
State, for twenty years longer than the charter 
has to exist, expresses his regret that he can- 
not lend but a limited and inadequate sum. The 
funds of the institution, he says, will not permit 
it to advance more than eight millions of dollars. 
And why ? because it has invested three millions 
in real estate ! To this power to hold real estate, 
is superadded the means to acquire it. The bank 
is now the greatest moneyed power in the 
Union ; in the event of the renewal of its char- 
ter, it will soon be the sole one. Sole dispenser 
of money, it will soon be the chief owner of pro- 
perty. To unlimited means of acquisition, would 
be united periDetuity of tenure ; for a corporation 
never dies, and is free from the operation of the 
laws which govern the descent and distribution of 
real estate in the hands of individuals. The lim- 
itations in the charter are vain and illusory, 
Thejr insult the understanding, and mock the 
credulity of foolish believers. The bank is first 
limited to such acquisitions of real estate as are 
necessary to its own accommodation ; then comes 
a proviso to undo the limitation, so far as it con- 
cerns purchases upon its own mortgages and 
executions! This is the limitation upon the 
capacity of such an institution to acquire real 
estate. As if it had any thing to do but to make 
loans upon mortgages, and push executions upon 
judgments ! Having all the money, it would be 
the sole lender ; mortgages being the road to 
loans, all borrowers must travel that road. 
When birds enough arc in the net, the fowler 
draws hi.s string, and the heads are wrung off. 
So when mortgages enough arc taken, the loans 
are called in ; discounts cease ; curtailments are 
made; failures to pay ensue; writs issue; 
judgments and executions follow; all the mort- 
gaged premises are for sale at once ; and the at- 
torney of the bank ajipears at the elbow of the 
marshal, sole bidder and sole purchaser. 

" What is tlie legal effect of this vast capacity 
to acquire, and this legal power to retain, real 



198 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



estate? Is it not the creation of a new species 
of mortmain? And of a l<infl more odious and 
dancerons than tliat mortmain of the church 
■which it batlli'd the English Parliament so many 
ages to abdli.-h. The mortmain of the church 
was a power in an ecclesiastical corporation to 
hold real estate, independent of the laws of dis- 
tribution and descent: the mortmain of the bank 
is a power in a lay corporation to do the same 
thing. The evil of the two tenures is identical ; 
the dillerencc between the two corporations is 
no more than the difference between parsons and 
money-changers ; the capacity to do mischief 
inconiparably the greatest on the part of the lay 
corporators. The church could only operate 
upon the few who were thinking of the other 
world ; the bank, upon all who are immersed in 
the business or the pleasures of this. The means 
of the church were nothing but prayers ; the 
means of the bank is monej- ! The church re- 
ceived what it could beg from dying sinners ; the 
bank may extort what it pleases from the whole 
living generation of the just and unjust. Such 
is the parallel between the mortmain of the two 
corporations. They both end in monopoly of 
estates and perpetuity of succession ; and the 
bank is the greatest monopolizer of the two. 
Monopolies and perpetual succession are the bane 
of republics. Our ancestors took care to provide 
against them, by abolishing entails and primo- 
geniture. Even the glebes of the church, lean 
and few as they were in most of the States, fell 
under the republican principle of limited tenures. 
All the States abolished the anti-republican ten- 
ures ; but Congress re-establishes them, and in 
a manner more dangerous and olfensive than be- 
fore the Revolution. They are now given, not 
generally, but to few; not to natives only, but 
to foreigners also ; for foreigners are large own- 
ers of this bank. And thus, the principles of 
the Revolution sink before the privileges of an 
incorporated company. The laws of the States 
fall l)efure the mandates of a central director}' 
in Philadelj)hia. Foreigners become the land- 
lords of free-born Americans •, and the young 
and flourishing towns of the United States are 
verging to the fate of the family boroughs which 
belong to the great aristocracy of England. 

" Let no one say the bank will not avail itself 
of its capacity to amass real estate. The fact is, 
it has already done so. I know towns, jea, 
cities, and could name them, if it might not seem 
invidious from this elevated theatre to make a 
pubUc reference to their misfortunes, in which 
this bank alread}' appears as a dominant and 
eiigros-ing proprietor. I have been in places 
where the answers to inquiries for the owners 
of the most valuable tenements, would remind 
you of the answers given by the Egyptians to 
similar questions fi-om the French ullicers, on 
their march to Cairo. You recollect, no doubt, 
sir, the dialogue to which I allude: 'AVho 



owns that palace ? ' ' The Mamelukt 



AVho 



this country house?' 'The Mameluke;' 'These 
gardens?' 'The Mameluke;' ''That tield covered 



with rice ? ' ' The ISIamelulve.' — And thus hav« 
I been answered, in the towns and cities referred 
to with the single exception of the name of the 
Bank of the United States substituted for that 
of the military scourge of Egypt. If this is done 
under the first charter, what may not be expect- 
ed imder the second? If this is done while 
the bank is on its best behavior, what may she 
not do when freed from all restraint and deliver- 
ed up to the boundless cupidity and remorseless 
exactions of a. moneyed corpoi-ation ? 

"6. To deal in pawns, merchandise, and bills 
of exchange. I hope the Senate will not require 
me to read dry passages from the charter to 
prove what I say. I know I speak a thing near- 
ly incredible when I allege that this bank, in 
addition to all its other atti'ibutes, is an incorpo- 
rated company of pawnbrokers ! The allegation 
.staggers belief, but a reference to the charter will 
dispel incredulity. The charter, in the first part, 
forbids a traffic in merchandise; in the after 
part, permits it. For truly this instrument 
seems to have been framed upon the principles 
of contraries; one principle making limitations, 
and the other following after with provisos to 
undo them. Thus is it with lands, as I have 
just shown ; thus is it Avith merchandise, as I 
now show. The bank is forbidden to deal in 
merchandise — proviso, imless in the case of 
goods pledged for money lent, and not redeemed 
to the day ; and, proviso, again, unless for goods 
which shall be the proceeds of its lands. With 
the help of these two provisos, it is clear that 
the limitation is undone ; it is clear that the 
bank is at liberty to act the pawnbroker and 
merchant, to any extent that it pleases. It may 
say to all the merchants who want loans. Pledge 
your stores, gentlemen 1 They must do it, or 
do worse; and, if any accident prevents redemp- 
tion on the day, the pawn is forfeited, and the 
bank takes possession. On the other hand, it 
may la}^ out its rents for goods ; it ma}' sell its 
I'eal estate, now worth three millii)ns of dollars, 
for goods. Thus the bank is an incorporated 
company of pawnbrokers and merchants, as well 
as an incorporation of landlords and land-specu- 
lators ; and this derogatory privilege, like the 
others, is copied from the old Rank of England 
charter of 1G94. Bills of exchange are also sub- 
jected to the traffic of this bank. It is a traffic 
unconnected with the trade of banking, danger- 
ous for a great bank to hold, and now operating 
most injuriously in the South and AVest. It is 
the process which drains these quarters of the 
Union of their gold and silver, and stifles tho 
growth of a fair commerce in the products of the 
country. The merchants, to make remittances, 
buy bills of exchange from the branch banks, 
instead of bu}ing produce from the formers. 
The bills are paid for in gold and silver; and, 
eventually, the gold and silver are sent to the 
I mother bank, or to the branches in the Eastern 
cities, either to meet these bills, or to riplenish 
I their coll'ers, and to furnish vast loans to liavorite 
I States or individuals. The bills sell cheap, saj 



ANNO 1831. ANDREW JACKSON, PllESlDENT. 



199 



a fraction of one per cent. ; they are, therefore, 
a good remittance to the merchant. To the bank 
the operation is doubly good ; for even the half 
of one per cent, on bills of exchange is a great 
profit to the institution which monopolizes that 
business, while the collection and delivery to 
the branches of all the hard money in the coun- 
try is a still more considerable advantage. Under 
this system, the best of the Western banks — I 
do not speak of those which had no foundations, 
and sunk under the weight of neighborhood 
opinion, but those which deserved favor and 
confidence — sunk ten years ago. Under this sys- 
tem, the entire West is now undergoing a silent, 
general, and invisible drain of its hard money ; 
and, if not quickly arrested, these States will 
soon be. so far as the precious metals are con- 
cerned, no more than the empty skin of an im- 
molated victim. 

" 7. To establish branches in the different 
States without their consent, and in defiance of 
their resistance. No one can deny the degrad- 
ing and injurious tendency of this privilege. It 
derogates from the sovereignty of a State ; 
tramples upon her laws ; injures her revenue 
and commerce ; lays open her government to 
the attacks of centralism; impairs the property 
of her citizens ; and fostens a vampire on her 
bosom to suck out her gold and silver. 1. 
It derogates from her sovereignty, because the 
central institution may impose its intrusive 
bi'anches upon the State without her consent, 
and in defiance of her resistance. This has al- 
ready been done. The State of Alabama, but 
fouB 3'ears ago, by a resolve of her legislature, 
remonstrated against the intrusion of a branch 
upon her. She protested against the favor. 
Was the will of the State respected ? On the 
contrary, was not a branch instantaneously 
forced upon her, as if, by the suddenness of the 
action, to make a striking and conspicuous dis- 
play of the omnipotence of the bank, and the 
nullity of the State ? 2. It tramples upon her 
laws ; because, according to the decision of the 
Supreme Court, the bank and all its branches are 
wholly independent of State legislation ; and it 
tramples on them again, because it authorizes 
foreigners to hold lands and tenements in every 
State, contrary to the laws of many of them ; 
and because it admits of the inortmaiii tenure, 
which is condemned by all the republican States 
in the Union. 3. It injures her revenue, because 
the bank stock, under the decision of the Su- 
preme Court, is not liable to taxation. And 
thus, foreigners, and non-resident Americans, 
who monopolize the money of the State, who 
hold its best lands and town lots, who med- 
dle in its elections, and suck out its gold 
and silver, and perform no military duty, 
are exempted from paying taxes, in proportion 
to their wealth, for the support of the State 
whose laws they trample upon, and whose 
benefits they usurp. 4. It subjects the State 
to the dangerous manoeuvres and intrigues of 
centralism, by means of the tenants, debtors, 



bank officers, and bank money, which the cen- 
tral dii-ectory retain in the State, and may 
embody and direct against it in its elections, 
and in its legislative and judicial proceedings. 
5. It tends to impair the property of the citizens, 
and, in some instances, that of the States, by 
destroying the State banks in which they have 
invested their money. G. It is injurious to the 
commerce of the States (I speak of the West- 
ern States), by substituting a trade in bills 
of exchange, for a trade in the products of 
the country. 7. It fastens a vampire on the 
bosom of the State, to suck away its gold and 
silver, and to co-operate with the course of 
trade, of federal legislation, and of exchange, in 
di-aining the South and West of all their hard 
money. The Southern States, with their thirty 
millions of annual exports in cotton, rice, and 
tobacco, and the Western States, with their 
twelve millions of provisions and tobacco ex- 
ported from Kew Orleans, and five millions 
consumed in the South, and on the lower Mis- 
sissippi, — that is to say, with three fifths of the 
marketable productions of the Union, are not 
able to sustain thirty specie paying banks ; while 
the minority of the States north of the Potomac, 
without any of the great staples for export, have 
above four hundred of such banks. These States, 
without rice, without cotton, without tobacco, 
without sugar, and with less flour and provisions, 
to export, are saturated with gold and silver ; 
while the Southern and Western States, with 
all the real sources of wealth, are in a state of 
the utmost destitution. For this calamitous 
reversal of the natural order of things, the Bank 
of the United States stands forth pre-eminently 
culpable. Yes, it is pi'e-emiuentl}' culpable ! 
and a statement in the ' National Intelligencer ' 
of this morning (a paper which would overstate 
no fact to the prejudice of the bank), cites and 
proclaims the fact which proves this culpability. 
It dwells, and exults, on the qiiantity of gold 
and silver in the vaults of the United States 
Bank. It declares that institution to be ' over- 
burdened' with gold and silver ; and well may it 
be so overburdened, since it has lifted the load 
entirely from the South and West. It calls these 
metals ' a drug ' in the hands of the bank ; that 
is to say, an article for which no purchaser can 
be found. Let this ' drug,' like the treasures of 
the dethroned Dey of Algiers, be released from 
the dominion of its keeper ; let a part go back 
to the South and West, and the bank will no 
longer complain of repletion, nor they of de- 
pletion. 

"8. Exemption of the stockholders from indi- 
viduax liability on the failure of the bank. Tliis 
privilege derogates fiom the common law, is con- 
trary to the principle of partnerships, and inju- 
rious to the rights of the community. It is a 
jjeculiar privilege granted by law to these corpo- 
rators, and exempting them from liability, except 
in their corporate capacity, and to the amount of 
the assets of the corporation. Unhappily these 
assets are never a^sez, that is to say, enough. 



200 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



when occasion comes for recurring to them. 
When a hank fails, its assets arc always less 
than ils dohts; so that rcsponsihility fails the 
instant tliat Jiahility accrues. Let no one say 
that the liank of the United States is too great 
to fail. One gi-cater than it, and its prototype, 
has failed, aud that in our own day, and for 
twenty years at a time : the Bank of England 
failed in 1707, and the Bank of the United States 
was on the point of failing in 1819. The same 
cause, namelj', stockjobbing and overtrading, 
carried both to the brink of destruction ; the 
.same means saved both, namcl}-, the name, the 
credit, aud the helping hand of the governments 
which protected them. Yes, the Bank of the 
United States may fail ; and its stockholders 
live in splendor upon the priucely estates ac- 
quired with its notes, while the industrious classes, 
who bold these notes, will be unable to receive a 
shilling for them. This is unjust. It is a vice 
in the charter. The true principle in banking 
lequires each stockholder to be liable to the 
amount of his shares ; and subjects him to the 
summary action of every holder on the failure of 
the institution, till he has paid up the amount of 
his subscription. This is the true principle. It 
has prevailed in Scotland Ibr the last century, 
and no such thing as a broken bank has been 
known there in all that time. 

" 9. To have the United States for a partner. 
Sir, there is one consequence, one result of all 
partnerships between a government aud indi- 
viduals, which should of itself, and in a mere 
mercantile point of view, condemn this associa- 
tion on the part of the federal government. It 
is the principle which puts the strong partner 
forward to bear the burden whenever the con- 
cern is in danger. The weaker members flock 
to the strong partner at the approach of the 
storm, and the necessity of venturing more to 
save wliat he has alrcad}- staked, leaves him no 
alternative. He becomes the Atlas of the firm, 
and bears all upon his own shoulders. This is 
the principle : what is the fact ? Why, that the 
United States has already been compelled to 
sustain the federal bank ; to prop it with her 
revenues and its credit in the trials and crisis of 
its early administration. I jiass over other in- 
stances of the damage suffered by the United 
States on account of^ this partnership ; the im- 
mense standing deposits for which we receive no 
compensation ; the loan of five millions of our 
own money, for which we have paid a million 
and a half in mterest ; the five per cent, stock 
note, on which we liave paid our partners four 
million seven hundred and twint^-Hve thousand 
dollars in interest ; the lo.ss of ten millions on 
tile three jier cent, stock, and the ridiculous ca- 
tasiroplie of the miserable bunus. which has ' 
been jiaid to us witli a fraction of our own 
money : I p:Lss over all tliis, and come to the [ 
point of a direct lo.ss, as a partner, in the divi- 
dends upon the stock it.self. Upon tin's naked 
point of prolit and los.s, to be decided b}' a rule 
in arithmetic, we have sustained a duect and 



helivy loss. The stock held by the United States, 
as every body knows, was subscribed, not paid. 
It was a stock note, deposited for seven millions 
of dollars, bearing an interest of five percent. 
The inducement to this subscription was the se- 
ductive conception that, by paying five per cent, 
on its note, the United States would clear four 
or five per cent, in getting a dividend of eight or 
ten. This was the inducement ; now for the re- 
alization of this fine conception. Let us sec it. 
Here it is ; an official return from tlie llcgister 
of the Treasury of interest paid, and of dividends 
received. The account stands thus : 

Interest paid by the United States, $4,725,000 
Dividends received by the United States, 4,029,426 



Loss to the United States, 



$95,574 



" Disadvantageous as this partnership must be 
to the United States in a moneyed point of view, 
there is a far more grave and serious aspect 
under which to view it. It is the political aspect, 
resulting from the union between the bank and 
the government. This nnion has been tried in 
England, and has been found there to be ju.st as 
disastrous a conjunction as the union between 
chui-ch and state. It is the conjunction of the 
lender and the borrower, and Holy Writ has told 
us which of these categories will be master oi 
the other. But suppose they agree to drop rival- 
ry, and unite their resouixes. Suppose they 
combme, and make a push for political power : 
how great is the mischief which they may not 
accomplish ! But, on this head, I wish to use 
the language of one of the brightest patriots oi 
Great Britain ; one who has shown himself, in 
these modern days, to be the worthy successor 
of those old iron barons whose patriotism com- 
manded the unpurchasable eulogium of the elder 
Pitt. I .speak of Sir William Pulteney, and his 
speech against the Bank of England, in 1797. 



'THE SPEECH 



-EXTRACT. 



" • I have said enough to show that govern- 
ment has been rendered dependent on the bank, 
and more particularly so in the time of war ; and 
though the bank has not yet fiillcn into the hands 
of ambitious men, yet it is evident that it might, 
in such hands, assume a power sufficient to con- 
trol and overawe, not only the ministers, but 
k " " 



mg, lords, and commons 



As the bank has thus become dangerous to gov- 
ernment, it might, on the other hand, bj- uniting 
with an ambitious minister, become the means 
of establishing a fourth estate, sufficient to in- 
volve tliis nation in irretiievable slavery, and 
ought, therefore, to be dreaded as much as a cer- 
tain East India bill was justly dreaded, at a pe- 
riod not veiy remote. I will not say that the 
present minister (the younger Pitt), by en- 
deavoring, at this crisis, to take the Bank ot 
England under his protection, can have any 
view to make use. hereafter, of that engine to 
perpetuate his own power, and to enable Mm to 



ANNO 1831. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



201 



domineer over our constitution : if that could be 
supposed, it would only show that men can en- 
tertain a very different train of ideas, when en- 
deavoring to overset a rival, from what occurs to 
them when intending to support and fix them- 
selves. My object is to secure the country 
against all risk either from the bank as opposed 



to government, or as the 



of ambitious 



men.' 

" And this is my object also. T wish to secure 
the Union from all chance of narm from this 
bank. I wish to provide against its friendship, 
as well as its enmity — against all danger from 
its hug, as well as from its blow. I wish to 
provide against all risk, and every hazard ; for, 
if this risk and hazard were too great to be en- 
countered by King, Lords, and Commons, in 
Great Britain, they must certainly be too great 
to be encountered by the people of the United 
States, who are but commons alone. 

" 10. To have foreigners for partners. This, 
Mr. President, will be a strange storj^ to be told 
in the West. The downright and upright people 
of that unsophisticated region believe that words 
mean what they signify, and that ' the Bank of 
the United States ' is the Bank of the United 
States. How great then must be their astonish- 
ment to learn that this belief is a false concep- 
tion, and that this bank (its whole name to the 
contrary notwithstanding) is just as much the 
bank of foreigners as it is of the federal govern- 
ment. Here I would like to have the proof — a 
list of the names and nations, to establish this 
almost incredible fact. But I have no access 
except to public documents, and from one of 
these I learn as much as will answer the present 
pinch. It is the report of the Committee of 
Ways and Means, in the House of Representa- 
tives, for the last session of Congress. That re- 
port admits that foreigners own seven millions 
of the stock of this bank ; and every body 
knows that the federal government owns seven 
millions also. 

"Thus it is proved that foreigners are as 
deeply interested in this bank as the United 
States itself. In the event of a renewal of the 
charter they will be much more deeply interest- 
ed than at present ; for a prospect of a rise in 
the stock to two hundred and fifty, and the un- 
settled state of things in Europe, will induce 
them to make great investments. It is to no 
purpose to say that the foreign stockholders 
cannot be voters or directors. The answer to 
that suggestion is this : the foreigners have the 
money ; they pay down the cash, and want no 
accommodations ; they are lenders, not borrow- 
ers ; and in a great mone)'ed institution, such 
stockholders must have the greatest influence. 
The name of this bank is a deception upon the 
public. It is not the bank of the federal gov- 
ernment, as its name would import, nor of the 
States which compose this Union ; but chiefly 
of private individuals, foreigners as well as na- 
tives, denizens, and naturalized subjects. They 
own twenty-eight millions of the stock, the fed- 



eral government but seven millions, and these 
seven are precisely balanced by the stock of the 
aliens. The federal government and the aliens 
are equal, owning one fifth each; and there 
would be as much truth in calling it the Eng- 
lish Bank as the Bank of the United States. 
Now mark a few of the privileges Avhich this 
charter gives to these foreigners. To be land- 
holders, in defiance of the State laws, which 
forbid aliens to hold land ; to be landlords by 
incorporation, and to hold American citizens 
for tenants ; to hold lands in mortmain ; to be 
pawnbrokers and merchants by incorporation ; to 
pay the revenue of the United States in their own 
notes ; in short, to do every thing which I have 
endeavored to point out in the long and hideous 
list of exclusive privileges granted to this bank. 
If I have shown it to be dangerous for the United 
States to be in partnership with its own citi- 
zens, how much stronger is not the argument 
against a partnership with foreigners ? What 
a prospect for loans when at war with a foreign 
power, and the subjects of that power large 
owners of the bank here, from which alone, or 
fi-om banks liable to be destroyed by it, we can 
obtain money to carry on the war ! What a 
state of things, if, in the division of political 
parties, one of these parties and the foreigners, 
coalescing, should have the exclusive control of 
all the money in the Union, and, in addition to 
the money, should have bodies of debtors, ten- 
ants, and bank officers stationed in all the States, 
with a supreme and irresponsible system of 
centralism to direct the whole ! Dangers from 
such contingencies are too great and obvious to 
be insisted upon. They strike the common 
sense of all mankind, and were powerful consid- 
erations with the old whig republicans for the 
non-renewal of the charter of 1791. IMr. Jeffer- 
son and the whig republicans staked their po- 
litical existence on the non-renewal of that 
charter. They succeeded ; and, by succeeding, 
prevented the country from being laid at the 
mei-cy of British and ultra-federalists for funds 
to carry on the last war. It is said the United 
States lost forty millions by using depreciated 
currency during the last war. That, probably, 
is a mistake of one half But be it so ! For 
what are forty millions compared to the loss of 
the war itself — compared to the ruin and infix- 
my of having the government arrested for want 
of money — stopped and paralj'zed by the recep- 
tion of such a note as the younger Pitt received 
from the Bank of England in 1795 ? 

"11. Exemption from duo course of law for 
violations of its charter. — This is a privilege 
which affects the administration of justice, and 
stands without example in the annals of repub- 
lican legislation. In the case of all other delin- 
quents, whether persons or corporations, the 
laws take their course against those who oilend 
them. It is the right of every citizen to set the 
laws in motion against every offender ; and it is 
the constitution of the law, when set in motion 
to work through, like a machine, regardless of 



202 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



powers and principalities, and cutting down the 
guilty which may stand in its way. Not so in 
the case of this "bank. In its behalf, there are 
barriers erected between the citizen and his op- 
pressor, between the wrong and the remedy, be- 
tween the law and the offender. Instead of a 
right to sue out a scire fdcias or a qiin ^car- 
roiito, the injured citiz-en, with an humble peti- 
tion in his hand, must repair to the President 
of the United States, or to Congress, and crave 
their leave to do so. If leave is denied (and 
denied it will be whenever the bank has a 
peculiar friend in the President, or a majority 
of such friends in Congress, the convenient pre- 
text being always at hand that the general wel- 
fare requires the bank to be gustained), he can 
proceed no further. The machinery of the law 
cannot be set in motion, and the great offender 
laughs from behind his barrier at the impotent 
resentment of its helpless victim. Thus the 
bank, for the plainest violations of its charter, 
and the greatest oppressions of the citizen, 
may escape the pursuit of justice. Thus the 
administration of justice is subject to be stran- 
gled in its birth for the shelter and protection 
of this bank. But this is not all. Another and 
most alarming mischief results from the same 
extraordinary privilege. It gives the bank a 
direct interest in the presidential and congres- 
sional elections : it gives it need for friends in 
Congress and in the presidential chair. Its fate, 
its very existence, may often depend upon the 
friendship of the President and Congress ; and, 
in such cases, it is not in human nature to avoid 
using the immense means in the hands of the 
bank to influence the elections of these officers. 
Take the existing fiict — the case to which I al- 
luded at the commencement of this speech. 
There is a case made out, ripe with judicial 
evidence, and big with the fate of the bank. It 
is a case of usury at the rate of forty-six per 
cent., in violation of the charter, which only 
admits an interest of six. The facts were ad- 
mitted, in the court below, b}- the bank's de- 
murrer; the law was decided, in the court 
above, by the supreme judges. The admission 
concludes the facts ; the decision concludes the 
law. The forfeiture of the charter is estab- 
lished; the forfeiture is incurred; the applica- 
tion of the forfeiture alone is wanting to put an 
end to the institution. An impartial President 
or Congress might let the laws take their 
course; those of a dill'erent temper might inter- 

fose their veto. What a crisis for the bank! 
t beholds the sword of Damocles suspended 
over its head! AV'hat an interest in keeping 
those away who might suUer the hair to be 
cut! 

" 12. To have all these unjust privileges secured 
to the corporators as a monoi)o!y, by a pledge of 
the i)ublic faith to charier no other bank. — This 
is the most hideous feature in the whole mass of 
deformity. If these banks are beneticial institu- 
tions, why not several ? one. at least, and each 



inde])endent of the other, to each great section of 
the Union? If malignant, wh}^ create one? 
The restriction constitutes the monopoly, and 
renders more invidious what was sufiiciently 
hateful in itself. It is, indeed, a double monop- 
oly, legislative as well as banking ; for the Con- 
gress of 181 G monopolized the i)Ower to grant 
these monopolies. It has tied up the hands of 
its successors ; and if this can be done on one 
subject, and for twenty years, why not upon all 
subjects, and for all time ? Here is the form of 
words which operate this double engrossment of 
our rights : ' No other bank shall be establishec' 
by any future law of Congress, during the con- 
tinuance of the corporation hereby enacted, for 
which the faith of Congress is hereby pledged ;■■ 
with a proviso for the District of Columbia. 
And that no incident might be wanting to com- 
plete the title of this charter, to the utter repro- 
bation of whig republicans, this comiiound mo- 
nopoly, and the very form of words in which it 
is conceived, is copied from the charter of the 
Bank of England ! — not the charter of William 
and jNIarj', as granted in 1 094 (for the Bill of 
Rights was then fresh in the memories of Eng- 
lishmen), but the charter as amended, and 
that for money, in the memorable reign of 
Queen Anne, when a tory queen, a tory minis- 
try, and a tory parliament, and the apostle of 
toryism, in the person of Dr. Sacheverell, with 
his sermons of divine right, passive obedience, 
and non-resistance, were riding and ruling over 
the prostrate liberties of England ! This is the 
precious period, and these the noble authors, 
from which the idea Avas borrowed, and the very 
form of words copied, which now ligure in the 
charter of the Bank of the United States, consti- 
tuting that double monopoly, which restricts at 
once the powers of Congress and the rights of 
the citizens. 

" These, Mr. President, are the chief of the 
exclusive privileges which constitute the monop- 
oly of the Bank of the United States. I have 
si)oken of them, not as they deserved, but as my 
abilities have permitted. I have shown you that 
they are not only evil in themselves, but copied 
from an evil example. I now wish to show you 
that the government from which we have made 
this copy has condemned the original ; and, af- 
ter showing this fact, I think I shall be able to 
appeal, with .sensible effect, to all liberal minds, 
to follow the enlightened example of CJreat Bri- 
tain, in getting rid of a dangerous and invidious 
institution, after having followed her pei-nicious 
example iu assuming it. For this purpose, I will 
have recourse to proof, and will read from Brit- 
ish state papers of 1826. I will read extiacts 
from the correspondence between Earl l^iver- 
pool, first Lord of the Treasurj', and ]Mr. Rob- 
inson. Chancellor of the Exchequer, on the one 
side, and the (Jovernor and Deputy Governor 

' of the Bank of England on the other ; the sub- 
ject being the renewal, or rather non-renewal, 

I of the charter of the Bank of England. 



ANNO 1831. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT, 



203 



Communications from the First Lord of tJie 
Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer to 
the Governor and Deputy Governor of the 
BanTc of England. — Extracts. 

" ' The failures which have occurred in Eng- 
land, unaccompanied as they have been by the 
same occuiTences in Scotland, tend to prove that 
there must have been an unsolid and delusive 
system of banking in one part of Great Britain, 
and a solid and substantial one in the other. * 
* * * In Scotland, thei'e are not more than 
thirty banks (three chartered), and these banks 
have stood firm amidst all the convulsions of the 
money market in England, and amidst all the dis- 
tresses to which the manufacturing and agricultu- 
ral interests in Scotland, as well as in England, 
have occasionally been subject. Banks of this de- 
scription must necessarily be conducted upon the 
generally understood and approved principles of 
banking. * * * * "Ji^c Bank of England 
may, perhaps, propose, as they did upon a for- 
mer occasion, the extension of the teinn of their 
exclusive privilege, as to the metropolis and its 
neighborhood, beyond the year 1833, as the 
price of this concession [immediate surrender of 
exclusive privileges]. It would be very much 
to be regretted that they should require any 
such condition. * * * * It is obvious, from 
what passed before, that Parliament will never 
agree to it. * * * * Such privileges are 
out of fashion ; and what expectation can the 
bank, under present circumstances, entertain 
that theirs will be renewed?' — Jan. 13. 

Answer of the Court of Directors. — Extract. 

" ' Under the uncertainty in which the Court 
of Directors find themselves with respect to the 
death of the bank, and the eflect which they 
may have on the interests of the bank, this 
court cannot feel themselves justified in recom- 
mending to the proprietors to give up the privi- 
lege which they now enjoy, sanctioned and con- 
firmed as it is by the solemn acts of the legis- 
lature.' — Jan. 20. 

Second communication from the Ministers. — 
Extract. 

" ' The First Lord of the Treasury and Chan- 
cellor of the Exchequer have considered the an- 
swer of the bank of the 20th instant. They 
cannot but regret that the Court of Directors 
should have declined to recommend to the Court 
of Proprietors the consideration of the paper de- 
livered by the First Lord of the Treasury and the 
Chancellor of the Exchequer to the Governor 
and Deputy Governor on the 13th instant. The 
statement contained in that paper appears to 
the First Lord of the Treasury and the Chan- 
cellor of the Exchequer so full and explicit on 
all the points to which it related, that they 
have nothing further to add, although they 
would have been, and still are, ready to answer, 



as h.r as possible, any specific questions which 
might be put, for the purpose of removing the 
uncertainty in which the court of dii'ectors state 
themselves to be with respect to the details of 
the plan suggested in that paper.' — Jan. 23. 

Second answer of the Bank. — Extract. 

" ' The Committee of Treasury [bank] having 
taken into consideration the paper received from 
the First Lord of the Treasury and the Chan- 
cellor of the Exchequer, dated January 23d, and 
finding that His Majesty's ministers persevere in 
their desire to propose to restrict immediately 
the exclusive privilege of the bank, as to the 
number of partners engaged in banking to a 
certain distance from the metropolis, and also 
continue to be of opinion that Parliament would 
not consent to renew the privilege at the expira- 
tion of the period of their present charter; 
finding, also, that the proposal by the bank' of 
establishing branch banks is deemed by His 
Majesty's ministers inadequate to the wants of 
the country, are of opinion that it would be 
desirable for this corporation to propose, as a 
basis, the act of Gth of George the Fourth, which 
states, the conditions on which the Bank of 
Ireland relinquished its exclusive privileges ; this 
corporation waiving the question of a prolonga- 
tion of time, although the committee [of the 
bank] cannot agree in the opinion of the First 
Lord of the Treasury and the Chancellor of the 
Exchequer, that they are not making a consider- 
able sacrifice, adverting especially to the Bank 
of Ireland remaining in possession of that privi- 
lege five years longer than the Bank of England.' 
— January 25. 

" Here, Mr. President, is the end of all the 
exclusive privileges and odious monopoly of the 
Bank of England. That ancient and powerful 
institution, so long the haughty tyrant of the 
moneyed world — so long the subsidizer of kings 
and ministers — so long the fruitful mother of 
national debt and useless wars — so long the 
prolific manufactory of nabobs and paupers — so 
long the dread dictator of its own terms to 
parliament — now droops the conquered wing, 
lowers its proud crest, and quails under the 
blows of its late despised assailants. It first 
puts on a courageous air, and takes a stand upon 
privileges sanctioned by time, and confirmed hj 
solemn acts. Seeing that the ministers could 
have no more to say to men who would talk of 
privileges in the nineteenth century, and being 
reminded that parliament was inexorable, the, 
bull}' suddenlj' degenerates into the craven, and, 
from showing light, calls for quarter. The di- 
rectors condescend to beg for the smallest rem- 
nant of their former power, for five j^ears onl}^ ; 
for the city of London even ; and offer to send 
branches into all quarters. Denied at every 
point, the subdued tyrant acquiesces in his fate ; 
announces his submission to the spirit and intel- 
hgence of the age ; and quietly sinks down into 



204 



THIRTY YEAUS' VIEW. 



the humble, but safe and useful condition of a 
Scottish provincial bank. 

'' And here it is profitable to pause ; to look 
back, and see by what means this ancient 
and powerful institution — this Babylon of the 
bankinii- world — was so suddeidy and so totally 
prostrated. Who did it ? AtrI with what wcap- 
on^ ? Sir, it was done by that power which is 
now regulating; the affairs of the civilized world. 
It was done by the power of public opinion, 
invoked by the working members of the British 
parliament. It was done by Sir Henry Parnell, 
who led the attack upon the Wellington minis- 
try, on the night of the 15th of November; by 
Sir A\'ilHam Pulteney, Mr. Grenfell, Mr. Hume, 
Mr. Edward EUice, and others, the working 
members of the House of Commons, such as had, 
a few years before, overthrown the gigantic op- 
pressions of the salt tax. These are the men 
who have overthrown the Bank of England. 
'I'hey began the attack in 1824, under the dis- 
couraging cry of too soon, too soon — for the 
charter had then nine years to run ! and ended 
with showing that they had began just soon 
enough. They began ^vith the ministers in their 
front, on the side of the bank, and ended with 
having them on their own side, and making 
them co-operators in the attack, and the instru- 
ments and inflicters of the fatal and final blow. 
I hit let us do justice to these ministers. Though 
wrong in the beginning, the}- were right in the 
end ; though monarchists, they behaved like 
republicans. They were not Polignacs. They 
yielded to the intelligence of the age ; they 
yielded to the spirit which proscribes monopolies 
and privileges, and in their correspondence with 
the bank directors, spoke trutli and reason and 
asserted liberal principles, with a point and 
power which quickly put an end to dangerous 
and obsolete pretensions. The}- told the bank 
the mortifying truths, that its system was 
imsolid and delusive — that its privileges and 
iiKinniioly were out of fashion — that they could 
not Ix; prolonged for five years even — nor suf- 
fered to exist in London alone ; and, what was 
still more cutting, that the banks of Scotland, 
which had no monopoly, no privilege, no con- 
nection with the government, which paid interest 
on deposits, and whose stockholders were re- 
sponsible to the amoimt of their shares — were 
the solid and substantial banks, which alone the 
public interest could hereafter recognize. They 
did their business, when they undertook it, like 
true men ; and, in the single phrase, ' out of 
fdshiou,'' achieved the most powerful combina- 
tion of solid argument and contemptuous sar- 
casm, that ever was compressed into three words. 
It is a phrase of electrical power over the senses 
and passions. It throws back the mind to the 
reigns of the- Tudors and Stuarts — the termagant 
Elizabeth and the jH-'dagogue James — and rouses 
within us all the shame and rage we have been 
accustomed to feel at the view of the scandalous 
sales of privileges and monojiolies which were 
the disgrace and oppression of these wretched 



times. Out of fashion ! Yes ; even in England^ 
the land of their early birth, and late protection. 
And shall the} remain in fashion here ? Shall 
republicanism continue to wear, in America, the 
antique costume which the doughty champions 
of antiquated feshion have been compelled to 
doff in England ? Shall English lords and ladies 
continue to find, in the Bank of the United 
States, the unjust and odious privileges which 
they can no longer find in the Bank of England ? 
Shall the cop}^ survive here, after the original 
has been destroyed there ? Shall the young 
whelp triumph in America, after the old lion 
has been throttled and strangled in England ? 
No ! never ! The thing is impossible ! The 
Bank of the United States dies, as the Bank of 
England dies, in all its odious points, upon the 
limitation of its charter ; and the only circum- 
stance of regret is, that the generous deliverance 
is to take effect two years earlier in the British 
monarchy than in the American republic. It 
came to us of war — it will go away with peace. 
It was born of the war of 1812 — it will die in 
the long peace with which the world is blessed. 
The arguments on which it was created will no 
longer apply. Times have changed ; and the 
policy of the republic changes with the times. 
The war made the bank ; peace will unmake it. 
The baleful planet of tire, and blood, and every 
human woe, did bring that pestilence upon us ; 
the benignant star of peace shall chase it away." 

This speech was not answered. Confident in 
its strength, and insolent in its nature, the great 
moneyed power had adopted a system in which 
she persevered, until haixl knocks drove her out 
of it : it was to have an anti-bank speech treated 
with the contempt of silence in the House, and 
caricatured and belittled in the newspapers ; and 
according to this sj'^stem my speech was treated. 
The instant it was delivered, Mr. Webster called 
for the vote, and to be taken by yeas and nays, 
which was done ; and resulted differently from 
what was expected — a strong vote against the 
bank — 20 to 23 ; enough to excite uneasiness, 
but not enough to pass the resolution and le- 
gitimate a debate on the subject. The debate 
stopped with the single speech ; but it was a 
speech to be read by the people — the masses — 
the millions ; and was conceived and delivered 
for that purpose ; and was read by them ; and 
has been complimented since, as having cripjjled 
the bank, and given it the wound of which it 
afterwards died ; but not within the year and a 
day which would make the slaj'er responsible 
for the homicide. The list of yeas and nays 
was also favorable to the effect of the speech. 
Though not a party vote, it was sufficiently so 
to show how it stood — the mass of the demoo 



ANNO 1831. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



205 



racy against the bank — the mass of the anti- 
democrats against it. The names were : — 

" Yeas. — Messrs. Barnard, Benton. Bibb, 
Brown, Dickerson, Dudley, Firsyth, Grundy, 
Haync, Iredell, King, McKinley, Poindexter, 
Saiiford, Smith of S. C, Tazewell, Troup, Tyler, 
White, Woodbury— 20. 

" Nays. — Messrs. Barton, Bell, Burnet, Chase, 
Clayton, Root, Frclinghuysen, Holmes, Hend- 
ricks, Johnston, Knight, Livingston, Marks, 
Noble, Bobbins, Robinson, Ruggles, Seymour, 
Silsbce, Smith of Md., Sprague, Webster, Willey 
—23." 



CHAPTER LVII. 

ERROR OF DE TOCQUEVILLE, IN RELATION TO 
THE HOUSE OP REPRESENTATIVES. 

I HAVE had occasion several times to notice the 
errors of Monsieur de Tocqueville, in his work 
upon American democracy. That work is au- 
thority in Europe, where it has appeared in 
several languages ; and is sought by some to be 
made authority here, where it has been translated 
into English, and published with notes, and a 
preface to recommend it. It was written with 
a view to enlighten European opinion in relation 
to democratic government, and evidently with a 
candid intent ; but abounds with errors to the 
prejudice of that form of government, which 
must do it great mischief, both at home and 
abroad, if not connected. A fundamental error 
of this kind — one which goes to the root of 
representative government, occurs in chapter 8 
of his work, where he finds a great difference in 
the members comprising the two Houses of 
Congress, attributing an immense superiority 
to the Senate, and discovering the cause of the 
difference in the different modes of electing the 
members — the popular elections of the House, 
and the legislative elections of the Senate. He 
says : — 

" On entering the House of Representatives at 
Washington, one is struck with the vulgar de- 
meanor of that great assembly. The eye fre- 
quently does not discover a man of celebrity 
within its walls. Its members are almost all 
obscure individuals, whose names present no 
associations to the mind ; they are mostly village 
lawyers, men in trade, or even persons belonging 
to the lower classes of society. In a country in 
which education is very general, it is said that 



the representatives of the people do not always 
know how to write correctly. At a few yards' 
distance from this spot is the door of the Senate, 
which contains within a small space a large 
proportion of the celebrated men in America. 
Scarcely an individual is to be found in it, who 
does not recall the idea of an active and illustri- 
ous career. The Senate is composed of eloquent 
advocates, distinguished generals, wise magis- 
trates, and statesmen of note, whose language 
would at all times do honor to the most remark- 
able parliamentary debates of Europe. What, 
then, is the cause of this strange contrast ? and 
why are the most able citizens to be found in 
one assembly rather than in the other ? Why 
is the former body remarkable for its vulgarity, 
and its poverty of talent, whilst the latter seems 
to enjoy a monopoly of intelligence and of soimd 
judgment 1 Both of these assemblies emanate 
from the people. From what cause, then, does 
so startling a difference arise ? The only reason 
which appears to me adequately to account for 
it is, that the House of Representatives is elected 
by the populace directly, and that of the Senate 
is elected by an indirect application of universal 
suffrage ; but this transmission of the popular 
authority through an assembly of chosen men 
operates an important change in it, by refining 
its discretion and improving the forms which it 
adopts. Men who are chosen in this manner, 
accurately represent the majority of the nation 
which governs them ; but they represent the 
elevated thoughts which are current in the com- 
munity, the generous propensities which prompt 
its nobler actions, rather than the petty passions 
which disturb, or the vices which disgrace it. 
The time may be already anticipated at which 
the American republics will be obliged to intro- 
duce the plan of election by an elected body 
more frequently into their system of represen- 
tation, or they will incur no small risk of perish- 
ing miserably among the shoals of democracy." 
— Chapters. 

The whole tenor of these paragraphs is to 
disparage the democracy — to disparage demo- 
cratic government — to attack fundamentally the 
principle of popular election itself. They dis- 
qualify the people for self-government, hold 
them to be incapable of exercising the elective 
franchise, and predict the downfall of our repub- 
lican system, if that franchise is not still further 
restricted, and the popular vote — the vote of 
the people — reduced to the subaltern choice of 
persons to vote for them. These are profound 
errors on the part of Mons. de Tocqueville, 
which require to be exposed and corrected ; and 
the correction of which comes within the scope 
of this work, intended to show the capacity of 
the people for self-government, and the advantage 
of extending — instead of restricting — the privi- 



206 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



lege of the direct vote. He seems to look upon 
the members of the two Houses as different 
orders of beings^— different classes — a higher and 
a lower class ; the former placed in the Senate 
by the wisdom of State legislatures, the latter 
iu the House of Representatives by the folly of 
the people — when the tact is. that they are not 
only of the same order 9iid class, but mainly the 
same individuals. The Senate is almost entirely 
made up out of the House ! and it is quite cer- 
tain that every senator whom jMons. de Tocque- 
ville had in his eye when he bestowed such 
encomium on that body had come from the 
House of Representatives ! placed there by the 
populiu- vote, and afterwards transferred to the 
Senate by the legislature ; not as new men just 
discovered by the superior sagacity of that body, 
but as pul)lic men with national reputations, al- 
ready illustrated l)y the operation of popular 
elections. And if Mons. de Tocqueville had 
chanced to make his visit some years sooner, he 
would have seen almost every one of these sena- 
tors, to wliom his exclusive praise is directed, 
actually sitting in the other House. 

Away, then, with his fact ! and witli it, away 
with all his fanciful theory of wise elections by 
small electoral colleges, and silly ones by the 
people ! and away with all his logical deductions. 
from premises which have no existence, and 
which would have us still further to "refine 
popular discretion," by increasing and extending 
the number of electoral colleges through which 
it is to be filtrated. Not only all vanishes, but 
his praise goes to the other side, and redounds 
to the credit of popular elections; for almost 
every distinguished man in the Senate or in any 
other department of the government, now or 
heretofore — from the Congress of Independence 
down to the present day — has owed Ids first 
elevation and distinction to popular elections — 
to the direct vote of the people, given, without 
the intervention of any intermediate body, to the 
visible object of their choice ; and it is the same 
in otlier countries, now and always. Tlie Eng- 
lish, the Scotch and the Irish have no electoral 
colleges ; they vote direct, and are never without 
their ablest men in the Hou.se of Commons. 
The Romans voted direct ; and for five hundred 
years — until fair elections were detsroyed by 
force and fraud — never failed to elect consuls and 
praetors, who carried the glory of their country 
beyond the point at which they had found it. 



The American people know tliis — know that 
popular election has given them every eminent 
public man that they have ever had — that it is 
the safest and wisest mode of political election — 
most free from intrigue and corruption ; and in- 
stead of further restricting that mode, and re- 
ducing the masses to mere electors of electors, 
they are, in fact, extending it, and altering con- 
stitutions to carry elections to the people, which 
were formerl}^ given to the general assemblies. 
Many States furnish examples of this. Even 
the constitution of the United States has been 
overruled by universal public sentiment in the 
greatest of its elections — that of President and 
Vice-President. The electoral college by that 
instrument, both its words and intent, was to 
have been an independent body, exercising its own 
discretion in the choice of these high officers. 
On the contrary, it has been reduced to a mere 
formality for the registration of the votes which 
the people prepare and exact. The speculations 
of !Monsieurde Tocqueville are, therefore, ground- 
less ; and must be hurtfid to representative gov- 
ernment in Europe, where the facts are un- 
known ; and may be injurious among ourselves, 
where liis book is translated into English, with 
a preface and notes to recommend it. 

Admitting that there might be a difference 
between the appearance of the two Houses, and 
between their talent, at the time that Mons. de 
Tocqueville looked in upon them, yet that dif- 
ference, so far as it might then have existed, 
was accidental and temporar}^, and has already 
vanished. And so far as it may have appeared, 
or may appear in other times, the difference in 
favor of the Senate may be found in causes very 
different from those of more or less judgment 
and virtue in the constituencies which elect the 
two Houses. The Senate is a smaller body, and 
therefore may be more decorous ; it is composed 
of older men, and therefore should bo graver , 
its members have usually served in the highest 
branches of the State governments, and in the 
House of Representatives, and therefere should 
be more experienced ; its terms of service are 
longer, and therefore give more time for talent 
to mature, and for the measures to be carried 
which confer fame. Finally, the Senate is in 
great part composed of the pick of the House, 
and therefore gains double — by brilliant acces- 
sion to itself and abstraction from the other. 
These are causes enough to account for any oo- 



ANNO 1831. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



207 



casional, or general difference which may show 
itself in the decorum or abiUty of the two 
Houses. But there is another cause, which is 
found in the practice of some of the States — the 
caucus system and rotation in office — which 
brings in men unknown to the people, and turns 
them out as they begin to be useful ; to be suc- 
ceeded by other new beginners, who are in turn 
turned out to make room for more new ones ; 
all by virtue of arrangements wliich look to in- 
dividual interests, and not to the public good. 

The injury of these changes to the business 
qualities of the House and the interests of the 
State, is readily conceivable, and very visible in 
the delegations of States where they do, or do 
not prevail — in some Sorthern and some Nouth- 
ern States, for example. To name them might 
seem invidious, and is not necessary, the state- 
ment of the general fact being sufficient to indi- 
cate an evil which requires correction. Short 
terms of service are good on account of their re- 
sponsibility, and two years is a good legal term; 
but every contrivance is vicious, and also incon- 
sistent with the re-eligibility permitted by the 
constitution, which prevents the people from 
continuing a member as long as they deem him 
useful to them. Statesmen are not improvised 
in any country ; and in our own, as well as in 
Great Britain, great political reputations have 
only been acquired after long service — 20, 30, 40 
and even 50 years ; and great measures have 
only been carried by an equal number of years 
of persevering exertion by the same man who 
commenced them. Earl Grey and Major Cart- 
wright— I take the aristocratic and the demo- 
cratic leaders of the movement — only carried 
British parliamentry reform after forty years 
of annual consecutive exertion. They organized 
the Society for Parliamentry Reform in 1T92 
and carried the reform in 1832— disfranchising 
56 burgs, half disfranchising 31 others, enfran- 
chising 41 new towns ; and doubling the number 
of voters by extending the privilege to £10 
householders — extorting, perliaps, the greatest 
concession from power and corruption to popular 
right that was ever obtained by civil and legal 
means. Yet this was only done upon forty 
years' continued annual exertions. Two men 
did it, but it took them forty years. 

The same may be said of other great British 
measures — Catholic emancipation, corn law re- 
peal, abolition of the slave trade, and many 



others : each requiring a lifetime of continued 
exertion from devoted men. Short service, and 
not popular election, is the evil of the House of 
Representatives ; and this becomes more appar- 
ent by contrast — contrast between the North 
and the South — the caucus, or rotary system, 
not prevailing in the South, and useful members 
being usually continued from that quarter as 
long as useful; and thus with fewer members, 
usually showing a greater number of men who 
have attained a distinction. Monsieur de Tocque- 
ville is profoundly wrong, and does great injury 
to democratic government, as his theory coun- 
tenances the monarchial idea of the incapacity 
of the people for self-government. They are 
with us the best and safest depositories of the 
political elective power. They have not only 
furnished to the Senate its ablest members 
through the House of Representatives, but have 
sometimes repaired the injustice of State legis- 
latures, which repulsed or discarded some emi- 
nent men. The late Mr. John Quincy Adams, 
after forty years of illustrious service — after hav- 
ing been minister to half the great courts of Eu- 
rope, a senator in Congress, Secretary of State, 
and President of the United States— in the full 
possession of all his great faculties, was refused 
an election by the Massachusetts legislature to 
the United States Senate, where he had served 
thirty years before. Refused by the legisla- 
ture, he was taken up by the people, sent to the 
House of Representatives, and served there to 
octogenarian age — attentive, vigilant and capa- 
ble — an example to all, and a match for half the 
House to the last. The brilliant, incorruptible, 
sagacious Randolph — friend of the people, of the 
constitution, of economy and hard money — 
scourge and foe to all corruption, plunder and 
jobbing — had nearly the same fate; dropped 
from the Senate by the Virginia general assem- 
bly, restored to the House of Representatives 
by the people of his district, to remain there till, 
following the example of his friend, the wise 
Macon, he voluntarily withdrew. I name no 
more, confining myself toinstances of the illus- 
trious dead. 

I have been the more particular to correct . 
this error of De Tocqueville, because, while dis- 
paraging democratic government generally, it 
especially disparages that branch of our govern- 
ment which was intended to be the controllina: 
part. Two clauses of the constitution— one 



208 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



vesting the IIousc of Representatives with the 
sole power of originating revenue bills, the other 
with the sole pow er of impeachment — sufficient- 
ly attest the higrh function to which that Uouse 
was appointed. They are both borrowed from 
the British constitution, where their effect has 
been seen in controlling the course of the whole 
government, and bringing great criminals to the 
bar. No sovereign, no ministry holds out an 
hour against the decision of the House of Com- 
mons. Though an imperfect representation of 
the people, even with the great ameliorations of 
the reform act of 1832, it is at once the demo- 
cratic branch, and the master-branch of the 
British government. AYellington administra- 
tions have to retire before it. Bengal Gover- 
nors-General have to appear as criminals at its 
bar. It is the theatre wliich attracts the talent, 
the patriotism, the high spirit, and the lofty am- 
bition of the British empire ; and the people look 
to it as the master-power in the working of the 
government, and the one in which their will has 
weight. No rising man, with ability to acquire 
a national reputation, will quit it for a peerage 
and a seat in the House of Lords. Our House 
of Representatives, with its two commanding 
prerogatives and a perfect representation, should 
not fall below the British House of Commons 
in the fulfilment of its mission. It should not 
become second to the Senate, and in the begin- 
ning it did not. For the first thirtj' years it 
was the controlling branch of the government, 
and the one on whose action the public eye was 
fixed. Since then the Senate has been taking 
the first place, and people have looked less to 
the House. This is an injury above what con- 
cerns the House itself. It is an injury to our 
institutions, and to the people. The high func- 
tions of the House were given to it for wise pur- 
poses — for paramount national objects. It is 
the immediate representation of the people, and 
should command their confidence and their 
hopes. As the sole originator of tax bills, it is 
the sole dispenser of burthens on the people, 
and of supplies to the government. As sole au- 
thors of impeachment, it is the grand inquest of 
the nation, and has supervision over all official 
delinquencies. Duty to itself, to its high func- 
tions, to the people, to the constitution, and to 
the character of democratic government, require 
it to resume and maintain its controlling place 
•n the machiner)' and working of our federal 



government : and that is what it has commenc- 
ed doing in the last two or three sessions — and 
with happy results to the economy of the pub- 
lic service — and in preventing an increase of the 
evils of our diplomatic representation abroad. 



CHAPTER LVIII. 

TUE TWENTY-SECOND CONGRESS. 

This body commenced its first session the 
5th of December, 1831, and terminated that ses- 
sion July 17th, 1832 ; and for this session alone 
belongs to the most memorable in the annals of 
our government. It was the one at which the 
great contest for the renewal of the charter of 
the Bank of the United States was brought on, 
and decided — enough of itself to entitle it to last- 
ing remembrance, though replete with other im- 
portant measures. It embraced, in the list of 
members of the two Houses, much shining talent, 
and a great mass of useful ability, and among 
their names will be found many, then most emi- 
nent in the Union, and others destined to be- 
come so. The following are the names : 

SENATE. 

]\Iaine — John Holmes, Peleg Sprague. 

New Hampshire — Samuel Bell, Isaac Hill. 

Massachusetts — Daniel Webster, Nathaniel 
Silsbec. 

Rhode Island — Nehemiah R. Knight, Asher 
Bobbins. 

Connecticut — Samuel A. Foot, Gideon Tom- 
linson. 

Vermont — Horatio Seymour, Samuel Pren- 
tiss. 

New-York — Charles E. Dudley, Wm. Marcy. 

New Jersey — M. Dickerson, Theodore Fre- 
linghuyscn. 

Pennsylvania — Geo. M. Dallas, "VYm. Wil- 
kins. 

Delaware — John M. Clayton, Arnold Nau- 
dain. 

Maryland — E. F. Chambers, Samuel Smith, 

Virginia — Littleton W. Tazewell, John Ty- 
ler. 

North Carolina — B. Brown, W. P. Man- 
gum. 

South Carolina — Robert Y. Hayne, S. D. 
Miller. 

Georgia — George M. Tronp, John Forsyth. 

Kentucky — George M. Bibb, Henry Clay. 

Tennessee — Felix Grundj-, Hugh L. White. 

Ohio — Benjamin Ruggles, Thomas Ewing. 



ANNO 1831. ANDREW JACKSON, TRESIDENT. 



209 



Louisiana — J. S. Johnston, Geo. A. Wagga- 



man. 

Indiana — William Hendricks, Robert Ilanna. 

Mississippi — Powhatan Ellis, Geo. Poindex- 
ter. 

Illinois — Elias K. Kane, John M. Robinson. 

Alabama — William R. King, Gabriel Moore. 

Missouri — Thomas H. Benton, Alex. Buck- 
ner. 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 

From Maink — John Anderson, James Bates, 
George Evans, Cornelius Holland, Leonard Jar- 
vis, Edward Kavanagh, Rufus Mclntire. 

New Hampshire — Jolin Brodhead, Thomas 
Chandler, Joseph Hammons, Henry Hubbard, 
Joseph M. Harper, John W. Weeks. 

Massachusetts — John Quincy Adams, Na- 
than Appleton, Isaac C. Bates, George N. Briggs, 
Rufus Choate, Henry A. S. Dearborn, John 
Davis,. Edward Everett, George Grennell, jun., 
James L. Hodges, Joseph G. Kendall, John 
Reed. ( One vacancy.) 

Rhode Island — Tristam Burgess, Dutee J. 
Pearce. 

Connecticut — Noyes Barber, William W. 
Ellsworth, Jabez W. Huntington, Ralph I. In- 
gersoll, William L. Storrs, Ebenezer Young. 

Vermont — Ileman Allen, William Cahoon, 
Horace Everett, Jonathan Hunt, William Slade. 

New York — William G. Angel, Gideon H. 
Barstow, Joseph Bouck, William Babcock, John 
T. Bergen, John C. Brodhead, Samuel Beards- 
ley, John A. Collier, Bates Cooke, C. C. 0am- 
breleng, John Dickson, Charles Daj^an, Ulysses 
F. Doubleday, William Hogan, Michael Hoff- 
man, Freeborn G. Jewett, John King, Gerrit Y. 
Lansing, James Lent, Job Pierson, Nathaniel 
Pitcher, Edmund H. Pendleton, Edward C. Reed, 
Erastus Root, Nathan Soule, John W. Taylor, 
Phineas L. Tracy, Gulian C. Verplanck, Frede- 
ric Whittlesey, Samuel J. Wilkin, Grattan II. 
Wheeler, Campbell P White, Aaron Ward, Dan- 
iel Wardwell. 

New Jersey — Lewis Condict, Silas Condict, 
Richard M. Cooper, Thomas H. Hughes, James 
Fitz Randolph, Isaac Southard. 

Pennsylvania — Robert Allison. John Banks, 
George Burd, John C. Bucher, Thomas II. 
Crawford, Richard Coulter, Harmar Denny, 
Lewis Dewart, Joshua Evans, James Ford, 
John Gilmore, William Ileister, Henry Horn, 
Peter Ihrie, jun., Adam King, Henry King, Joel 
K. Mann, Robert McCoy, Henry A. Muhlen- 
berg, T. M. McKennan, David Potts, jun., An- 
drew Stewart, Samuel A. Smith, Philander Ste- 
phens, Joel B. Sutherland, John G. Watmough. 

Dela-ware — John J. Milligan. 

Maryland — Benjamin C. Howard, Daniel 
Jenifer, John L. Kerr, George E. Mitchell, 
Benedict I. Semmes, John S. Spence, Francis 
Thomas, George C. Washington, J. T. II. Wor- 
thington. 

Virginia — Mark Alexander, Robert Allen, 
William S. Archer, William Armstrong, John 

Vol. I.— .14 



S. Barbour, Thomas T. Bouldin, Nathaniel H. 
Claiborne, Robert Craig, Joseph W. Chinn, 
Richard Coke, jun., Thomas Davenport, Philip 
Dodd-ldge, Wm. F. Gord' u, Charles C. John- 
ston, John Y. ]\Iason, Lewis Maxwell, Charles 
F. Mercer, William McCoy, Thomas Newton, 
John ]M. Patton, John J. Roane, Andrew Ste- 
venson. 

North Carolina — Dan'lL. Barringei-jLaugh- 
lin Bethune, John Branch, Samuel P. Carson, 
Henry W. Conner, Thomas H. Hall, Micajah T. 
Hawkins, James J. IMcKay, Abraham Rencher, 
William B. Shepard, Augustine II. Shepperd, 
Jesse Speight, Lewis Williams. 

South Carolina — Robert W. Barnwell, Jas. 
Blair, Warren R. Davis, William Drayton, John 
M. Felder, J. R. Griffin, Thomas R. :\Iitchell, 
George McDuffie, Wm. T. Nuckolls. 

Georgia — Thomas F. Foster, Henry G. La- 
mar, Daniel Newnan, Wiley Thompson, Richard 
H. AVilde, James M.Wayne. (One vacancy.) 

Kentucky — John Adair, Chilton Allan, Hen- 
ry Daniel, Nathan Gaither, Albert G. Hawes. 
K. M. Johnson, Joseph Lecompte, Chittenden 
Lyon, Robert P. Letcher, Thomas A. Mar- 
shall, Christopher Tompkins, Charles A. Wick- 
liffe. 

Tennessee — Thomas D. Arnold, John Bell, 
John Blair, William Fitzgerald, William Hall, 
Jacob C. Isacks, Cave Johnson, James K. Polk, 
James Standifer. 

Ohio — Joseph II. Crane, Eleutheros Cooke 
William Creighton, jun., Thomas Corwin, James 
Findlay, William W. Irwin, WiUiam Kennon, 
Humphrey H. Leavitt, William Russel, AVilliam 
Stanberry, John Thomson, Joseph Vance, K^^aai- 
uel F. Vinton, Elisha Whittlesey. 

Louisiana — H. A. BuUard, Philemon Thom- 
as, Edward D. White. 

Indiana — Ratliff Boon, John Carr, Jonathan 
McCarty. 

IMississippi — Franklin E. Plummer. 

Illinois — Joseph Duncan. 

Alabama — Clement C. Clay, Dixon H. Lewis, 
Samuel W. Mardis. 

Missouri — William 11. Ashley. 

DELEGATES. 

Michigan — Austin E. Wing. 
Arkansas — Ambrose H. Sevier. 
Florida — Joseph M. White. 

Andrew Stevenson, Esq., of Virginia, was re- 
elected speaker ; and both branches of the body 
being democratic, they were organized, in a 
party sense, as favorable to the administration, 
although the most essential of the committees, 
when the Bank question unexpectedly sprung 
up, were found to be on the side of that institu- 
tion. In his message to the two Houses, the 
President presented a condensed and general 
view of our relations, political and commercial, 



210 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



with foreign nations, from which the leading 
passages are here given : 

" After our transitu n from the state of cuionics 
to (hat of an independent nation, many points 
were found necessary to be settled between us 
and Great Britain. Among them was the de- 
marcation of boundaiics, not described with suf- 
ticient precision in the treaty of peace. Some of 
the lines that divide the States and territories of 
the United States from the British provinces, 
have been definitively fixed. That, however, 
which separates us from the provinces of Cana- 
da and New Brunswick to the North and the 
East, was still in dispute when I came into 
office. But I found arrangements made for its 
settlement, over which T had no control. The 
commissioners who had been appointed midcr 
the provisions of the treaty of Ghent, having 
been unable to agree, a convention was made 
with Great Britain by my immediate predecessor 
in office, with tlic advice and consent of the 
Senate, by which it was agreed ' that the points 
of difference which have arisen in the settlement 
of the boundary line between the American and 
British dominions, as described in the fifth arti- 
cle of the treaty of Ghent, shall be referred, as 
therein provided, to some friendly sovereign or 
State, who shall be invited to investigate, and 
make a decision upon such points of difference :' 
and the King of the Netherlands having, by the 
late President and his Britannic Majesty, been 
designated as such friendly sovereign, it became 
my duty to carry, with good Hxith, the agree- 
ment, so made, into full effect. To tliis end I 
ca-.>cd all the measures to be taken which were 
necessary to a full exposition of our case to the 
sovereign arbiter ; and nominated as minister 
plcnipotentiar}' to his court, a distinguished 
citizen of the State most interested in the ques- 
tion, and who had been one of the agents previ- 
ously emploj-ed for settling the controversy. On 
the lOth day of .Januar}' last. His Majesty the 
King of the Netherlands delivered to the pleni- 
potentiaries of the United States, and of Great 
Britain, his written opinion on tiie ca.se referred 
to him. The ]iapcrs in relation to the subject 
will be communicated, bj' a special message, to 
the proper branch of the government, with the 
perfect confidence that its wisdom will adopt 
such measures as will secure an amicable settle- 
ment of the controversy, without infringing any 
constitutional right of the States immediately 
interested. 

"In my nies.<:age at the opening of the last 
session of Congress. I expressed a confident hope 
that the justice of our claims upon France, urged 
as they were with perseverance and signal ability 
by our minister there, would final';- be acknowl- 
edged. This hope has been realized. A treaty 
■ has been signed, which will immediately be 
laid before the Senate for its approbation ; and 
which, containing stipulations that reciuire legis- 
lative acts, must have the conciirrence of both 
Houses before it can be carried into effect. 



" Should this treaty receive the proper san>> 
tion, a source of irritation will be stopped, that 
has, for so many years, in some degree alienated 
from each other two nations who, from interest 
as well as the remembrance of early a.ssociations. 
ought to cherish the most friendly relations — an 
encouragement will be given for perseverance in 
the demands of justice, by this new proof, that, 
if steadily pursued, they will be listened to — and 
admonition will be offered to those powers, 
if any, which may be inclined to evade them, 
that they will never be abandoned. Above all, 
a just confidence will be inspired in our fellow- 
citizens, that their government will exert all the 
powers with Avhich they have invested it, in 
support of their just claims upon foreign nations ; 
at the same time that the frank acknowledg- 
ment and provision for the payment of those 
which were addressed to our equity, although 
unsupported by legal proof, affords a practical 
illustration of our submission to the Divine rule 
of doing to others what we desire they should 
do unto us. 

•' Sweden and Denmark having made compen- 
.sation for the irregularities committed by their 
vessels, or in their ports, to the perfect satisfac- 
tion of the parties concerned, and having re- 
newed the treaties of commerce entered into 
with them, our political and commercial rela- 
tions with those powers continue to be on the 
most friendty footing. 

" AVith Spain, our differences up to the 22d of 
Fcbniar}', 1819, were settled by the treaty of 
Washington of that date ; but, at a subsequent 
period, our connuerce with the states formerly 
colonies of Spain, on the continent of America, 
was annoyed and frequently interrupted by her 
public and private armed ships. They captured 
many of our vessels prosecuting a lawful com- 



merce, and sold them and their cargoes ; and at 
one time,- to our demands for restoration and 
indemnity, oppo.scd the allegation, that they were 
taken in the violation of a blockade of all the 
ports of tho.se states. This blockade was de- 
claratory on\jj and the inadequacy of the force 
to maintain it was so manifest, that this allega- 
tion was vaiied to a charge of trade in contraband 
of war. This, in its turn, was also found un- 
tenable ; and the minister whom I sent with 
instructions to press for the reparation that was 
due to our injured fellow-citizens, has transmitted 
an answer to his demand, by which the captures 
are declared to have been lesral, and are justified 
becau.se the independence of the states of America 
never hav'ng been av"kno\^-ledged by Spain, she 
had a right to prohibit trade with them under 
her old colonial laws. This ground of defence 
was contradictory, not only to those which had 
been formerly alleged, but to the uniform prac- 
tice and established laws of nations ; and had 
been abandoned by Spain herself in the conven- 
! tion which granted indemnity to British subjects 
' for captures made at the .same time, \mder the 
same circumstances, and for the same allegations 
i with those of which we complain. 



ANNO 1831. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



211 



" I, however, indulge the hope that further 
reflection will lead to other views, and feel con- 
fident, that when his Catholic JNIajesty shall be 
convinced of the justice of the claim, his desire 
to preserve friendly relations between the two 
countries, which it is my earnest endeavor to 
maintain, will induce him to accede to our de- 
mand. I have therefore dispatched a special 
messenger, with instructions to our minister to 
bring the case once more to his consideration ; 
to the end that if, which I cannot bring myself 
to believe, the same decision, that cannot but 
be deemed an unfriendly denial of justice, should 
be persisted in, the matter may, before j^our 
adjournment, be laid before you, the constitu- 
tional judges of what is proper to be done when 
negotiation for redress of injur^^ fails. 

" The conclusion of a treaty for indemnity 
with France, seemed to present a favorable op- 
portunity to renew our claims of a similar nature 
on other powers, and particularly in the case of 
those upon Naples ; more especially as, in the 
course of foi-mer negotiations with that power, 
our failure to induce France to render us justice 
was used as an argument against us. The 
desires of the merchants who were the principal 
sufferers, have therefore been acceded to, and a 
mission has been instituted for the si)ecial pur- 
pose of obtaining for them a reparation already 
too long delayed. This measure having been 
resolved on, it was put in execution without 
waiting for the meeting of Congress, because the 
state of Europe created an apprehension of 
events that might have rendered our application 
ineffectual. 

"Our demands upon the government of the 
Twp Sicilies are of a peculiar nature. The in- 
juries on which they are founded are not denied, 
nor are the atrocity and perfidy under which 
those injuries were perpetrated attempted to be 
extenuated. The sole ground on which indem- 
nity has been refused is the alleged illegality of 
the tenure by which the monarch who made the 
seizures held his crown. This defence, always 
unfounded in any principle of the law of nations 
— now universally abandoned, even by those 
powers upon whom the responsibility for acts of 
past rulers bore the most heavily, will unques- 
tionably be given up by his Sicilian JMajesty, 
whose counsels will receive an impulse from that 
high sense of honor and regard to justice which 
are said to characterize him ; and I feel the fullest 
confidence that the talents of the citizen com- 
missioned for that purpose will place before him 
the just claims of our injured citizens in such a 
light as will enable me, before your adjournment, 
to announce that they have been adjusted and 
secured. Precise instructions, to the effect of 
bringing the negotiation to a speedy issue, have 
been given, and will be obeyed. 

" In the late blockade of Terceira, some of the 
Portuguese fleet captured several of our vessels, 
and committed other excesses, for which repa- 
ration was demanded ; and I was on the point of 
Jisputching an armed force, to prevent any 



recurrence of a similar violence, and protect our 
citizens in the prosecution of their lawful com- 
merce, when official assurances, on which I relied, 
made the sailing of the ships unnecessary. Since 
that period, frequent promises have been made 
that full indemnity shall be given for the injuries 
inflicted and the losses sustained. In the per- 
formance there has been some, perhaps unavoid- 
able, delay ; but I have the fullest confidence 
that my earnest desire that this business may at 
once be closed, which our minister has been 
instructed strongly to express, will very soon be 
gratified. I have the better grount.' for this 
hope, from the evidence of a friendly d, ^position 
which that government has shown by ai' actual 
reduction in the duty on rice, the produce of our 
Southern States, authorizing the anticipation that 
this important article of our export will soon be 
admitted on the same footing with that produced 
by the most favored nation. 

" With the other powers of Europe, we have 
fortunately had no cause of discussions for the 
redress of injuries. With the Empire of the 
Russia^, our political connection is of the most 
friendly, and our commercial of the most liberal 
kind. We enjoy the advantages of navigation 
and trade, given to the most favored nation ; but 
it has not yet suited their policy, or perhaps has 
not been found convenient from other consider- 
ations, to give stability and reciprocity to those 
privileges, by a commercial treaty. The ill- 
health of the minister last year charged with 
making a proposition for that arrangement, did 
not permit him to remain at St. Petersburg ; 
and the attention of that government, during 
the whole of the period since his departure, 
having been occupied by the war in which it 
was engaged, we have been assured that nothing 
could have been effected by his presence. A 
minister will soon be nominated, as well to effect 
this important object, as to keep up the relations 
of amity and good understanding of which we 
have received so many assurances and proofs 
from his Imperial Majesty and the Emperor his 
predecessor. 

" The treaty with Austria is opening to us an 
important trade with the hereditary dominions 
of the Emperor, the value of which has been 
hitherto little known, and of course not suflS- 
ciently appreciated. While our commerce finds 
an entrance into the south of Germany by means 
of this treaty, those we have formed with the 
Ilanseatic towns and Prussia, and others now in 
negotiation, will open that vast country to the 
enterprising spirit of our merchants on the north ; 
a country abounding in all the materials for a 
mutually beneficial commerce, filled with en- 
lightened and industrious inliabitants, holding 
an important i)lacc in the politics of Europe, and 
to M'hich we owe so many valuable citizens. 
The ratification of the treaty with the Porte was 
sent to be exchanged bj- the gentleman appointed 
our charge d'affaires to that court. Some diflS- 
culties occurred on his arrival ; but at the date 
of his last official dispatch, he supposed they hud 



212 



TUIRTY YEAKS' VIEW. 



been obviated, and that there was every prospect 
of the exchange being speedily cfiected. 

" This finislics tlie connected view I have 
thought it proper to give of our political and 
coniinercial relations in Europe. Every effort 
in my power will be continued to strengthen and 
extend them by treaties founded on principles 
of the most perfect rcciproc-ity of interest, neither 
asking nor conceding any exclusive advantage, 
but liberating, as far as it lies in my power, the 
activity and industry of our fellow-citizens from 
the shackles which foreign restrictions may im- 
pose. 

" To China and the East Indies, our commerce 
continues in its usual extent, and with increased 
Aicilities, which the credit and cajjital of our 
merchants afford, by substituting bills for paj- 
ments in specie. A daring outrage having been 
committed in those seas by the plunder of one 
of our merchantmen engaged in the pepper trade 
at a port in Sumatra, and the piratical perpetra- 
tors belonging to tribes in sucli a state of society 
that the usual cour.se of proceeding between 
civilized nations could not be pursued, I forth- 
with dispatched a frigate with orders to require 
immediate satisfaction for the injury, and in- 
demnity to the sufferers. 

" Few changes have taken place in our con- 
nections with the independent States of America 
since my last communication to Congress. The 
ratification of a commercial treaty with the 
United Republics of Mexico has been for some 
time under deliberation in their Congress, but 
was still undecided at the date of our last dis- 
patches. The unhapp}' civil conunolions that 
have prevailed there, were undoubtedly the 
cause of the delay ; but as the government is 
now said to be tranquillized, we may liope soon 
to receive the ratification of the treaty, and an 
arrangement for the demarcation of the bounda- 
ries between us. In the mean time, an im- 
portant trade has been opened, with mutual 
benefit, fron\ St. Louis, in the State of Missouri, 
by caravans, to the interior provinces of Mexico. 
This commerce is protected in its progress 
through the Indian countries by the troops of 
the United States, which have been permit- 
ted to escort the caravans beyond our boun- 
daries to the settled part of the Mexican ter- 
ritory. 

'■ From Central America I have received assu- 
rances of the most friendly kind, and a grati- 
fj'ing application for our good olliccs to remove 
a supposed indisposition towards that govern- 
ment in a neighl)oring state : this ajjpiication 
was immediately and successfully complied with. 
They gave us also the pleasing intelligence, that 
differences whicli had jucvailcd in their internal 
affairs had becTi peaceably adjusted. Our treaty 
with this republic continues to be faithfully ob- 
served, and promises a great and beneficial com- 
merce between the two countries ; a commerce 
of the greatest importance, if the magnificent 
project of a ship canal through the dominions 
of that state, from the Atlantic to the Pacific 



Ocean, now in serious contemplation, shall hi 
executed. 

"I have great sati-sfaction in communicating 
the success which has attended the exertions of 
our minister in Colombia to procure a very con- 
siderable reduction in the duties on our flour in 
that republic. Indemnity, also, has been stipu- 
lated for injuries received by our merchants from 
illegal seizures ; and renewed assurances are 
given that the ti-eaty between the two countries 
shall be faithfully observed. 

" Chili and Peru seem to be still threatened 
with civil commotions ; and, until they shall be 
settled, disorders may naturally be apprehended, 
requiring the constant presence of a naval force 
in the Pacific Ocean, to protect our fisheries and 
guard our commerce. 

" The disturbances that took place in tlie Em- 
pire of Brazil, previously to, and immediately 
consequent upon, the abdication of the late Em- 
peror, necessarily suspended any effectual appli- 
cation for the redress of some past injuries suf- 
fered by our citizens from that government, 
while they have been the cause of others, in 
which all foreigners seem to have participated. 
Instructions have been given to our minister 
there, to press for indemnity due for losses occa- 
sioned by these irregulai'ities, and to take care 
that our fellow-citizens shall enjoy all the privi- 
leges stipulated in their favor, by the treaty 
lately made between the two powers ; all which, 
the good intelligence that prevails between our 
minister at Rio Janeiro and the regency gives 
us the best reason to expect. 

" I should have placed Buenos Ayres on the 
list of South American powers, in respect to 
which nothing of importance affecting us was to 
be communicated, but for occurrences which have 
lately taken place at the Falkland Islands, in 
which the name of that republic has been used 
to cover with a show of authority acts injurious 
to our commerce, and to the property and liber- 
ty of our fellow-citizens. In the course of the 
present year, one of our vessels engaged in the 
pursuit of a trade which we have always enjoy- 
ed without molestation, lias been captured b\' a 
band acting, as they pretend, under the authority 
of the government of Buenot^ Ayres. I have 
therefore given orders for the dispatch of an arm- 
ed vessel, to join our s(]uadron in those seas, and 
aid in affording all lawful protection to our trade 
which shall be necessary; and shall, without 
delay, send a minister to inquire into the nature 
of the circumstances, and also of the claim, if any, 
that is set up by that government to those isl- 
ands. In the mean time, I submit the case to 
the consideration of Congress, to the end that they 
may clothe the Executive with such authority 
\ and means as they maj- deem necessary for pro- 
viding a force adequate to the complete protec- 
tion of our fellow-citizens fishing and trading in 
those seas. 

" This rapid sketch of our foreign relations, it 

is hoped, fellow-citizens, may be of some use in 

, so much of your legislation as may bear on that 



ANNO 1831. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



213 



important subject ; while it aifords to the coun- 
tr}' at large a source of high gratificaton in the 
contemplation of our political and commercial 
connection with the rest of the world. At peace 
with all— having subjects of future difference 
with few, and those susceptible of easy adjust- 
ment — extending our commerce gradually on all 
sides, and on none by any but the most liberal 
and mutually beneficial means — we may, by the 
blessing of Providence, hope for all that national 
prosperity which can be derived from an inter- 
course with foreign nations, guided by those 
eternal principles of justice and reciprocal good 
will which are binding as well upon States as 
the individuals of whom they are composed. 

"I have great satisfaction in making this 
statement of our affairs, because the course of 
our national policy enables me to do it without 
any indiscreet exposure of what in other govern- 
ments is visually concealed from the people. 
Having none but a straightforward, open course 
to pursue — guided by a single principle that will 
bear the strongest light — we have happily no 
political combinations to form, no alliances to 
entangle us, no complicated interests to consult; 
and in subjecting all we have done to the con- 
sideration of our citizens, and to the inspection 
of the world, we give no advantage to other na- 
tions, and lay ourselves open to no injury." 

This clear and succinct account of the state of 
our foreign relations makes us fully acquainted 
with these affairs as they then stood, and presents 
a view of questions to be settled with several 
powers which were to receive their solution 
from the firm and friendly spirit in which they 
would be urged. Turning to our domestic con- 
cerns, the message thus speaks of the finances ; 
showing a gradual increase, the rapid extinction 
of the public debt, and that a revenue of 27f mil- 
lions was about double the amount of all expen- 
ditures, exclusive of what that extinction absorb- 
ed: 

" The state of the public finances will be fully 
shown by the Secretary of the Treasury, in the 
report which he will presently lay before jon. 
I will here, however, congratulate you upon their 
prosperous condition. The revenue received in 
the present year will not fall short of twenty- 
seven million seven hundred thousand dolhirs ; 
and the expenditures for all objects other than 
the public debt will not exceed fourteen million 
seven hundred thousand. The payment on ac- 
count of the principal and interest of the debt, 
during the year, will exceed sixteen millions and 
a half of dollars : a greater sum than has been 
applied to that object, out of the revenue, in any 
j-ear since the enlargement of the sinking fund, 
except the two jqats following immediately 
thereafter. The amount which will have been 
ai^plied to the public debt from the 4th of JMarch, 



1829, to the 1st of January next, which is less 
than throe j^ears since the administration has 
been placed in my hands, will exceed forty mil- 
lions of dollars." 

On the subject of government insolvent debt- 
ors, the message said : 

" In my annual message of December, 1829, I 
had the honor to recommend the adoption of a 
more liberal policy than that which then prevail- 
ed towards unfortunate debtors to the govern- 
ment ; and I deem it my duty again to invite 
your attention to this subject. Actuated by 
similar views. Congress at their last session pass- 
ed an act for the relief of certain insolvent debt- 
ors of the United States : but the provisions of 
that law have not been deemed such as were 
adequate to that relief to this unfortunate class 
of our fellow-citizens, which may be safely ex- 
tended to them. The points in which the law 
appears to be defective will be particularly com- 
municated by the Secretary of the Treasury : and 
I take pleasure in recommending such an exten- 
sion of its provisions as will unfetter the enter- 
prise of a valuable portion of our citizens, and 
restore to them the means of usefulness to them- 
selves and the community." 

Recurring to his previous recommendation in 
favor of giving the election of President and Vice- 
President to the direct vote of the people, the 
message says : 

" I have heretofore recommended amendments 
of the federal constitution giving the election 
of President and Vice-President to the people, 
and limiting the service of the former to a 
single term. So important do I consider these 
changes in our fundamental law, that I cannot, 
in accordance with m}^ sense of duty, omit to 
press them upon the consideration of a new Con- 
gress. For my views more at large, as well in 
relation to these points as to the disqualification 
of members of Congress to receive an oflBce from 
a President in whose election they have had an 
official agency, which I proposed as a substitute, 
I refer you to my former messages." 

And concludes thus in relation to the Bank of 
the United States ; 

'•Entertaining the opinions heretofore express- 
ed in relation to the Bank of tlie United States, 
as at present organized, I felt it my dutj', in my 
former messages, frankly to disclose them, in or- 
der that the attention of the legislature and the 
people should be seasonably directed to that im- 
portant subject, and tliat it might be considered 
and finally disposed of in a manner best calcula- 
ted to promote the ends of tlie constitution, and 
subserve the public interests. Having thus con- 
scientiously discharged a constitutional duty, I 
deem it proper, on this occasion, without a more 
particular reference to the views of the subject 



214 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



then expressed, to leave it for the present to the 
investigation of an enlightend people and their 
representatives." 



CHAPTER LIX. 

REJECTION OF MR. VAN BUREN, MINISTER TO 
ENGLAND. 

At the period of the election of General Jackson 
to the Presidency, four gentlemen stood prominent 
in the political ranks, each indicated by his friends 
for the succession, and each willing to be the 
General's successor. They were Messrs. Clay 
and Webster, and Messrs. Calhoun and Van 
Buren ; the two former classing politically against 
General Jackson — the two latter with him. But 
an event soon occurred to override all political 
distinction, and to bring discordant and rival 
elements to work together for a common object. 
That event was the appointment of ]Mr. Van 
Buren to be Secretary of State — a post then look- 
ed upon as a stepping-stone to the Presidency — 
and the imputed predilection of General Jackson 
for him. This presented him as an obstacle in 
the path of the other three, and which the inter- 
est of each required to be got out of the way. 
The strife first, and soon, began in the cabinet, 
where ^Mr. Calhoun had several friends ; and Mr. 
Van Buren. seeing that General Jackson's ad- 
ministration was likely to be embarrassed on liis 
account, determined to resign his post — having 
first seen the triumph of the new administration 
in the recovery of the British AVest India trade, 
and the successful commencement of other nego- 
tiations, wliich settled all outstanding difficulties 
with other nations, and shed such lustre upon 
Jackson's diplomacy. lie made kno^ni his de- 
si"-n to the President, and his wish to retire from 
the cabinet — did .so — received tlie appointment 
of minister to London, and immediately left the 
United States ; and the cabinet, having been from 
the beginning without harmony or cohesion, was 
dissolved — some resigning voluntarily, the rest 
under requisition — as already related in the chaiv 
ter on the dissolution of the cabinet. The volun- 
tary resigning members were classed as friends 
to Mr. Van Bur^-n, the involuntary- as opposed 
to him, and two of them (Messrs. Ingliam and 
Branch) as friends to Mr. Calhoun; and be- 
came, of course, alienated from General Jackson. 



I was particularly grieved at this breach between 
Mr. Branch and the President, having known 
him from boyhood — been school-fellows together, 
and being well acquainted with his inviolable 
honor and long and faithful attachment to Gene- 
ral Jackson. It was the complete extinction of 
the cabinet, and a new one was formed. 

!Mr. Van Buren had nothing to do with this 
dissolution, of which General Jackson has borne 
voluntary and written testimony, to be used in 
this chapter ; and also left behind him a written 
account of the true cause, now first published 
in this Thirty Years' View, fully exonerating 
I^Ir. Van Buren from all concern in that event, 
and showing his regret that it had occurred. But 
the whole catastrophe was charged upon him by 
his political opponents, and for the unworthy 
purjiose of ousting the friends of Mr. Calhoun, 
and procuring a new set of members entirely de- 
voted to his interest. This imputation was ne- 
gatived by his immediate departure from the 
country, setting out at once upon his mission, 
without awaiting the action of the Senate on his 
nomination. This w^as in the summer of 1831. 
Early in the ensuing session — at its very com- 
mencement, in fact — his nomination was sent in, 
and it was quickly perceptible that there was to 
be an attack upon liim— a combined one ; the 
three rival statesmen acting in concert, and each 
backed by all his friends. No one outside of the 
combination, myself alone excepted, coidd believe 
it would be successful. I saw thej- were masters 
of the nomination from the first day, and would 
reject it when they were ready to exhibit a caso 
of justification to the country : and so informed 
General Jackson from an early period in the ses- 
sion. The numbers were sufficient : the difficulty 
was to make up a case to satisfy the people ; and 
that was found to be a tedious business. 

Fifty days were consumed in these prelimi- 
naries — to be precise, fift3'-one; and that in 
addition to months of preparation before the 
Senate met. The preparation was long, but the 
attack vigorous; and when commenced, the 
business was finished in two days. There were 
about a dozen set speeches against him, from as 
many different speakers — about double the num- 
ber that spoke against TVarren Hastings— and 
but four oft-hand replies for him ; and it was 
evident that the three chiefs had brought up all 
their friends to the work. It was an unprece- 
dented array of numbers and talent against one 



ANNO 1832. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



215 



individual, and he absent, — and of such amenity 
of manners as usually to disarm political oppo- 
sition of all its \"irulence. The causes of objection 
were supposed to be found in four different heads 
of accusation ; each of which was elaborately 
urged : 

1. The instructions drawn up and signed by 
Mr. Van Buren as Secretary of State, under the 
direction of the President, and furnished to JMr. 
McLane, for his guidance in endeavoring to re- 
open the negotiation for the West India trade. 

2. ]\Iaking a breach of friendship between the 
first and second officers of the government — 
President Jackson anJ Vice-President Calhoun 
— for the purpose of thwarting the latter, and 
helping himself to the Presidency. 

3. Breaking up the cabinet for the same pur- 
pose. 

4. Introducing the system of " proscription" 
(removal from office for opinion's sake), for the 
same purpose. 

A formal motion was made by Mr. Holmes, 
of Maine, to raise a committee with power to 
send for persons and papers, administer oaths, 
receive sworn testimony, and report it, with the 
committee's opinion, to the Senate; but this 
looked so much Uke preferring an impeachment 
as well as trying it, that the procedure was 
dropped ; and all reliance was placed upon the 
numerous and elaborate speeches to be delivered, 
all carefully prepared, and intended for publica- 
tion, though delivered in secret session. Rejection 
of the nomination was not enough — a killing off 
in the pubhc mind was intended ; and therefore 
the unusual process of the elaborate preparation 
and intended publication of the speeches. All 
the speakers went through an excusatory for- 
mula, repeated with equal precision and gravity ; 
abjuring all suiister motives; declaring them- 
selves to be wholly governed by a sense of public 
duty ; describing the pain which they felt at 
arraigning a gentleman whose manners and 
deportment were so urbane ; and protesting that 
nothing but a sense of duty to the country could 
force tliom to the reluctant performance of such 
a painful task. The accomplished Forsyth com- 
plimented, in a way to be perfectly understood, 
this excess of patriotism, which could voluntarily 
inflict so much self-distress for the sake of the 
public good ; and I, most unwittingly, brought 
the misery of one of the gentlemen to a sudden 
and ridiculous conclusion by a chance remark. 



It was Mr. Gabriel Moore, of Alabama, who sat 
near me, and to whom I said, when the vote was 
declared, "You have broken a minister, and 
elected a Vice-President." He asked how ? and 
I told him the people would see nothing in it 
but a combination of rivals against a competitor, 
and would pull them all down, and set him up. 
" Good God ! " said he, " why didn't you tell me 
that before I voted, and I would have voted the 
other way." It was only twenty minutes be- 
fore, for he was the very last speaker, that Mr. 
Moore had delivered himself thus, on this very 
interesting point of public duty against private 
feeling : 

" Under all the circumstances of the case, not- 
withstanding the able views which have been 
presented, and the impatience of the Senate, I 
feel it a duty incumbent upon me, not only in 
justification of myself, and of the motives which 
govern me in the vote which I am about to give, 
but, also, in justice to the free and independent 
people whom I have the honor in part to repre- 
sent, that I should set forth the reasons which 
have reluctantly compelled me to oppose the 
confirmation of the present nominee. Sir, it is 
proper that I should declare that the evidence 
adduced against the character and conduct of 
the late Secretary of State, and the sources from 
which this evidence emanates, have made an 
impression on my mind that will require of me, 
in the conscientious though painful discharge of 
my duty, to record my vote against his nomina- 
tion." 

The famous INIadame Roland, when mounting 
the scaffold, apostrophized the mock statue upon 
it with this exclamation: "Oh Liberty! how 
many crimes are committed in thy name !" 
After what I have seen during my thirty years 
of inside and outside views in the Congress of the 
United States, I feel qualified to paraphrase the 
apostrophe, and exclaim : '• Oh Politics ! how 
much bamboozHng is practised in thy gtime ! " 

The speakers against the nomination were 
Messrs. Clay, Webster, John I\I. Clayton, Ewing 
of Ohio, John Holmes, Frelinghuysen, Poindex- 
ter, Chambers of Maryland, Foot of Connecticut, 
Governor Miller, and Colonel Ilayne of South 
Carolina, and Governor Moore of Alabama— just 
a dozen, and equal to a full jury. Mr. Calhoun, 
as Vice-President, presiding in the Senate, could 
not speak ; but he was understood to be per- 
sonated by his friends, and twice gave the 
casting vote, one interlocutory, against the nomi- 
nee — a tie being contrived for that purpose and 
the combined plan requirmg him to be upon the 



216 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



record. Only four spoke on the side of the 
nomination ; General Smith of Maryland, Mr. 
Forsyth, Mr. Bedford Brown, and Mr. Marcy. 
Messrs. Cla}- and Webster, and their friends, 
chiefl}- confined themselves to the instructions 
on the AYest India trade ; the friends of Mr. 
Calhoun paid most attention to the cabinet rup- 
ture, the separation of old friends, and the sys- 
tem of proscription. Against the instructions it 
was alleged, that they begged as a favor what 
was due as a right ; that they took the side of 
Great Britain against our own country; and 
carried our party contests, and the issue of our 
party elections, into diplomatic negotiations with 
foreign countries ; and the following clause from 
the instructions to Mr. IMcLane was quoted to 
sustain these allegations : 

"Tn reviewing the causes which have preceded 
and more or less contributed to a result so much 
regretted, there will be found three grounds 
upon which Ave are most assailable: 1. In our 
too long and too tenaciously resisting the right 
of Great Britain to impose protecting duties in 
her colonies. 2. In not relieving her vessels 
from the restriction of returning direct from the 
United States to the colonics after permission 
had been given by Great Britain to our vessels 
to clear out from the colonies to any other than 
a British port. And, 3. In omitting to accept 
the terms offered by the act of I'arlianient of 
July, 1825, after the subject had been brought 
before Congress and deliberateh'- acted upon by 
our government. It is, without doubt, to the 
combined operation of the.se (three) causes that 
we are to attribute the British interdict ; you 
will therefore see the propriety of possessing 
yourself fully of all the ex])]anat(>ry and miti- 
gating circumstances connected witii them, that 
you may be able to obviate, as far as practicable, 
the unfavorable impression which they have 
produced.-' 

This was the clause relied upon to sustain the 
allegation of putting his own country in tlie 
wrong, and taking the part of Great Britain, and 
truckling to her to obtain as a fiivor what was 
due as a right, and mixing up our party contests 
witn our foreign negotiations. The Aillacy of 
all these allegations was well shown in the re- 
plies of the four .senators, and especially b}- 
General Smith, of Maryland ; and has been fur- 
ther shown in the course of this work, in the 
chapter on the recovery of the British West In- 
dia trade. But there was a document at that 
time in the Department of State, unknown to 
the 'riends of Mr. Van Buren in the Senate, 
which would not only have exculpated him, but 



turned the attacks of his assailants against them 
selves. The facts were these : Mr. Gallatin, 
while minister at London, on the subject of this 
trade, of course .sent home dispatches, addressed 
to the Secretary of State (Mr. Clay), in which 
he gave an account of his progress, or rather of 
the obstacles which prevented any progiess, in 
the attempted negotiation. There were two of 
these dispatches, one dated September 22, 1826, 
the other November the 14th, 1827. The latter 
had been communicated to Congress in full, and 
printed among the papers of the case ; of the 
former cnlj' an extract had been communicated, 
and that relating to a mere formal point. It so 
happened that the part of this dispatch of Sep- 
tember, 1826, -lot communicated, contained Mr. 
Gallatin's report of the causes which led to the 
refusal of the British to treat — their refusal to 
permit us to accept the terms of their act of 
1825, after the year limited for acceptance had 
expired — and wliich led to the order in council, 
cutting us off from the trade ; and it so happened 
that this report of these causes, so made by Mr. 
Gallatin, was the original from which Mr. Van 
Buren copied his instructions to IMr. 3IcLane ! 
and which were the subject of so mucli censure 
in the Senate. I have been permitted bj^ Mr. 
Everett, Secretary of State under President Fill- 
more — (i\Ir. Webster would have given me the 
same permission if I had applied during his 
time, for he did so in every case that I ever 
asked) — to examine this dispatch in tlie Depart- 
ment of State, and to copy from it whatever I 
wanted ; I accordingly copied the following : 

"On three points we were perhaps vulnerable. 

" 1. The delay of renewing the negotiation. 

" 2. The omission of having revoked the re- 
striction on the indirect intercourse when that 
of Great Britain had ceased. 

" 3. Too long an adherence to the opposition 
to her right of laying protecting duties. This 
might have been given up as soon as the act of 
1825 passed. These are the catises assigned foi 
the late measure adopted towards the United 
States on that subject ; and they have, un- 
doubtedly, had a decisive effect as for as relates 
to the order in council, assisted as they were 
by the belief that our object was to compel this 
country to regulate the trade upon our own 
terms." 

This was a passage in the unpublished part 
of that dispatch, and it shows itself to be the 
original from which !Mr. Van Buren copied, sub- 
stituting the milder term of ' assailable " where 



ANNO 1832. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



217 



Mr. Gallatin had applied that of " vulnerable " 
to Mr. Adams's administration. Doubtless the 
contents of that dispatch, in this particular, 
wei'e entirely forgotten by Mr. Clay at the time 
he spoke against Mr. Van Buren, having been 
received by him above four years before that 
time. They were probably as little known to 
the rest of the opposition senators as to our- 
selves 5 and the omission to communicate and 
print them could not have occurred from any 
design to suppress what was material to the 
debate in the Senate, as the communication and 
printing had taken place long before this occa- 
sion of using the document had occurred. 

The way I came to the knowledge of this 
omitted paragraph was this : When engaged 
upon the chapter of his rejection, I wrote to 
Mr. Van Buren for his view of the case ; and 
he sent me back a manuscript copy of a speech 
which he had drawn up in London, to be de- 
livered in New-York, at some " public dinner," 
which his friends could get up for the occasion ; 
but which he never delivered, or published, 
partly from an indisposition to go into the 
newspapers for character — much from a real 
forbearance of temper — and possibly from see- 
ing, on his return to the United States, that he 
was not at all hurt by his fall. That manu- 
script speech contained this omitted extract, 
and I trust that I have used it fairly and benefi- 
cially for the right, and without invidiousness to 
the wrong. It disposes of one point of attack ; 
but the gentlemen were wrong in their whole 
broad view of this British West India trade 
question. Jackson took the Washington ground, 
and he and Washington were both right. The 
enjoyment of colonial trade is a privilege to be 
solicited, and not a right to be demanded ; and 
the terms of the enjoyment are questions for 
the mother country. The assailing senators 
were wrong again in making the instructions a 
matter of attack upon Mr. Van Buren. They 
were not his instructions, but President Jack- 
son's, By the constitution they were the Presi- 
dent's, and the senators derogated from that 
instrument in treating his secretary as their 
author. The President alone is the conductor 
of our foreign relations, and the dispatches 
signed by the Secretaries of State only have 
force as coming from him, and are usually au- 
thenticated by the formula, " / avi iyistmcted 
by the President to say,'" &c., &c. It was a 



constitutional blunder, then, in the senators to 
treat Mr. Van Buren as the author of these in- 
structions ; it was also an error in point of fact. 
General Jackson himself specially directed 
them ; and so authorized General Smith to 
declare in the Senate — which he did. 

Breaking up the cabinet, and making dissen- 
sion between General Jackson and Mr. Cal- 
houn, was the second of the allegations against 
Mr. Van Buren. Repulsed as this accusation 
has been by the character of Mr. Van Buren, 
and by the narrative of the " Exposition," it has 
yet to receive a further and most authoritative 
contradiction, from a source which admits of 
no cavil — from General Jackson himself — in a 
voluntary declaration made after that event 
had passed away, and when justice alone re- 
mained the sole object to be accomplished. It 
was a statement addressed to " Martin Van Bu- 
ren, President of the United States," dated at 
the Hermitage, July 31st, 1840, and ran in 
these words : 

" It was my intention as soon as I heard that 
Mr. Calhoun had expressed his approbation of 
the leading measures of your administration, 
and had paid you a visit, to place in 3'our pos- 
session the statement which I shall now make ; 
but bad health, and the pressui'e of other busi- 
ness have constantly led me to postpone it. 
What I have reference to is the imputation that 
has been sometimes thrown upon you, that you 
had an agency in producing the controversy 
which took place between Mr. Calhoun and my- 
self, in consequence of Mr. Crawford's disclosure 
of what occurred in the cabinet of jMr. jMonroe 
relative to my military operations in Florida 
during his administration. Mr. Calhoun is 
doubtless <ilready satisfied that he did you in- 
justice in holding you in the slightest degree 
responsible for the course I pursued on that oc- 
casion : but as there may be others who may 
still be disposed to do you injustice, and who 
may hereafter use the circumstance for the pur- 
pose of impairing both your character and his, 
I tliink it my duty to place in your possession 
the following emphatic declaration, viz. : IViat 
f am not aware of your ever saijiiiff a tcord to 
me relative to Mr. Calhoun, ichic/i had a ten- 
dency to create an interruption of my friendly 
relations with him: — that you were not con- 
sulted, in any stage of the correspondence on 
the subject of his conduct in the cabinet of Mr. 
Aloiirue ; — and that, after this carra^pondcnce 
became public, the only sentiment you, ever ex- 
pressed to me aboid it was that of deep regret 
that it should hare occurred. You arc at lib- 
erty to show this letter to ]Mr. Callioun and 
make what other use of it you may tliink 



218 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



proper for the purpose of correcting the erro- 
neous impressions which have prevailed on this 
subject." 

A testimony more honorable tliau this in be- 
half of a public man, was never delivered, nor 
one more completely disproving a dishonorable 
imputation, and showing that praise was due 
where censure had been lavished. Mr, Van 
Bureu was not the cause of breaking up the cabi- 
net, or of making dissension between old friends, 
or of raking up the buried event in Mr. Monroe's 
cabinet, or of injuring Mr. Calhoun in any way. 
Yet this testimony, so honorable to him, was 
never given to the public, though furnished for 
the purpose, and now appears for the first time 
in print. 

Equally erroneous was the assumption, taken 
for granted throughout the debate, and so exten- 
sively and deeply impressed upon the public 
mind, that Mr. Calhoun was the uniform friend 
of General Jackson in the election — his early 
supporter in the canvass, and steadfiist adherent 
to the end. This assumption has been rebutted 
by ^Ir. Calhoun himself, who, in his pamphlet 
against General Jackson, shows that he was for 
himself until withdrawn from the contest by 
Mr. Dallas at a public meeting, in Philadelphia, 
in the winter of 1823 — 4 ; and after that was 
ycrfoctly neutral. Ilis words are : '• When my 
name was withdrawn from Ihe list of presi- 
dential canrUdutes, I assumed a 'perfectly neu- 
tral 'position between Gen. Jackson and Mr. 
Adams?'' This clears Mr. Yan Buren again, as 
he could not make a breach of friendship where 
none existed, or supplant a supporter where 
there was no support : and that there Avas none 
from Mr. Calhoun to Gen. Jackson, is now au- 
thentically declared by ]Mr. Calhoun himself. 
Yet this head of accusation, with a bad motive 
assigned for it, was most perseveringly urged 
by his friends, and in his presence, throughout 
the whole debate. 

Introducing the '' New-York system of pro- 
scription" into the federal government, was the 
last of the accusations on which Mr. Yan Bu- 
ren was arraigned ; and was just as unfounded 
as all the rest. Both hja temper and his judg- 
ment was against the removal of f;\ilhful offi- 
cers because of difference of political opinion, or 
even for political conduct against liimself— as 
the whole tenor of his conduct very soon after, 
and when he became President of the United 



States, abundantly showed. The departments 
at Washington, and some part of every State in 
the Union, gave proofs of his forbearance in this 
particular. 

I have already told that I did not speak 
in the debate on the nomination of Mr. Yan 
Buren ; and this silence on such an occasion may 
require explanation from a man who does not 
desire the character of neglecting a friend in a 
pinch. I had strong reasons for that abstinence, 
and they were obliged to be strong to produce 
it. I was opposed to Mr. Van Buren's going to 
England as minister. He was our intended can- 
didate for the Presidency, and I deemed such a 
mission to be prejudicial to him and the party, 
and apt to leave us with a candidate weakened 
with the people by absence, and by a residence 
at a foreign court. I was in this state of mind 
when I saw the combination formed against 
him, and felt that the success of it would be his 
and our salvation. Bejection was a bitter medi- 
cine, but there was health at the bottom of the 
draught. Besides, I was not the guardian of 
Messrs. Clay, Webster, and Calhoun, and was 
quite willing to see them fall into the pit which 
they were digging for another. I said nothing 
in the debate ; but as soon as the vote was over 
I wrote to Mr. Van Buren a verj- plain letter, 
onlj' intended for himself, and of which I kept 
no copy ; but having applied for the original for 
use in this history, he returned it to me, on the 
condition that I should tell, if I used it, that in 
a letter to General Jackson, he characterized it 
as "honest and sensible." Honest, I knew it 
to be at the time ; sensible, I beheve the event 
has proved it to be ; and that there was no mis- 
take in writing such a letter to Mr. Van Buren, 
has been proved by our subsequent intercourse. 
It was dated Januar}^ 28, 1832, and I subjoin it 
in full, as contemporaneous testimony, and as an 
evidence of the independent manner in which I 
spoke to mj' friends — even those I was endeavor- 
ing to make President, It ran thus : 

" Your faithful correspondents will have in- 
formed you of the event of the 25tli. Nobody 
would believe it here until after it happened, but 
the President can bear me witness that I pre- 
pared him to expect it a month ago. The public 
will only understand it as a political movement 
against a rival ; it is right, however, that you 
should know that without an auxiliar}- cause 
the political movement against you would not 
have succeeded. There were gentlemen voting 



ANNO 1831. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



219 



against you vrho would not have done so except 
for a reason which was strong and ciear in their 
own minds, and which (it would be improper to 
dissemble) has hurt you in the estimation of 
many candid and disinterested people. After 
saying this much, I must also sa}^, that I look 
upon this head of objection as temporary, dying 
out of itself, and to be swallowed up in the 
current and accumulating topics of the day. 
You doubtless know what is best for yourself, 
and it does not become me to make suggestions ; 
but for m)"self, when I find myself on the bridge 
of Lodi. I neither stop to parley, nor turn back 
to start again. Forward, is the word. Some 
say, make you governor of New-York ; I say, 
you have been governor before : that is turning 
back. Some say, come to the Senate in place 
of some of your friends ; I say, that of itself will 
be only parleying with the enemy while on the 
middle of the bridge, and receiving their fire. 
The vice-presidency is the only thing, and if a 
place in the Senate can be coupled with the trial 
for that, then a place in the Senate might be 
desirable. The Baltimore Convention will meet 
in the month of May, and I presume it will be 
in the discretion of your immediate friends in 
New-York, and your leading friends here, to 
have you nominated ; and in all that affair I 
think you ought to be passive. Tor Vice- 
President,' on the Jackson ticket, will identify 
you with him ; a few cardinal principles of the 
old democratic school might make you worth 
contending for on your own account. The dy- 
nasty of '98 (the federalists) has the Bank of 
the United States in its interest ; and the Bank 
of the United States has drawn into its vortex, 
and wields at its pleasure, the whole high tariff 
and federal internal improvement party. To set 
up for yourself, and to raise an interest which 
can unite the scattered elements of a nation, 
you will have to take positions which are visible,' 
and represent principles which are felt and un- 
dei'stood ; you will have to separate yourself 
from the enemy by partition lines which the 
people can see. The dynasty of '98 (federalists), 
the Bank of the United States, the high tariff" 
party, the federal internal improvement party, 
are against you. Now, if you are not against 
them, the people, and myself, as one of the peo- 
ple, can see nothing between you and them 
worth contending for, in a national point of 
view. This is a very plain letter, and if you 
don't like it, you will throw it in the fire ; con- 
sider it as not having been written. For myself, 
I mean to retire upon my profession, while I 
have mind and body to pursue it ; but I wish 
to see the right principles prevail, and friends 
instead of foes in power." 

The prominent idea in this letter was, that 
the people would see the rejection in the same 
light that I did — as a combination to put down 
a rival — as a political blunder — and that it 
would work out the other way. The same idea 



prevailed in England. On the evening of the 
day, on the morning of which all the London 
newspapers heralded the rejection of the Ameri- 
can minister, there was a great partj^ at Prince 
Talleyrand's — then the representative at the 
British court, of the new King of the French, 
Louis Phillippe. Mr. Van Buren, always mas- 
ter of himself, and of all the proprieties of his 
position, was there, as if nothing had happened ; 
and received distinguished attentions, and com- 
plimentary allusions. Lord Aukland, grandson 
to the Mr. Eden who was one of the Commis- 
sioners of Conciliation sent to us at the begin- 
ning of the revolutionary troubles, said to him, 
" It is an advantage to a public man to be the 
subject of an outrage " — a remark, wise in itself, 
and prophetic in its apphcation to the person to 
whom it was addressed. He came home — appa- 
rently gave himself no trouble about what had 
happened — was taken up by the people — elect- 
ed, successively, Vice-President and President — 
while none of those combined against him ever 
attained either position. 

There was, at the time, some doubt among 
their friends as to the policy of the rejection , 
but the three chiefs were positive in their belief 
that a senatorial condemnation would be politi- 
cal death. I heard Mr. Calhoun say to one of 
his doubting friends, " It will kill him, sir, kill 
him dead. He will never kick sir, never kick ; " 
and the alacrity with which he gave the casting 
votes, on the two occasions, both vital, on which 
they were put into his hands, attested the sin- 
cerity of his belief, and his readiness for the 
work. How those tie-votes, for there were two 
of them, came to happen twice, " hand-running," 
and in a case so important, was matter of marvel 
and speculation to the public on the outside of 
the locked-up senatorial door. It was no mar- 
vel to those on the inside, who saw how it was 
done. The combination had a superfluity of 
votes, and, as j\Ir. Van Buren's friends were 
every one known, and would sit fast, it only re- 
quired the superfluous votes on one side to go 
out ; and thus an equilibrium between the two 
lines was established. When all was finished, 
the injunction of secrecy was taken off" the pro- 
ceedings, and the dozen set speeches delivered in 
secret session immediately published — which 
shows that they were delivered for effect, not 
upon the Senate, but upon the public mind. 
The whole proceeding illustrates the impolicy, 



220 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



as well as peril to themselves, of rival public 
men sitting in judsment upon each other, and 
carries a warning along with it which should 
not be lost. 

As an event affecting the most eminent public 
men of the day, and connecting itself with the 
settlement of one of our important foreign com- 
mercial questions — as belonging to history, and 
alread}' carried into it by the senatorial debates 
— as a key to unlock the meaning of other con- 
duct — I deem this account of the rejection of 
Mr. Van Buren a necessary appendage to the 
settlement of the British "West India trade ques- 
tion — as an act of justice to General Jackson's 
administration (the whole of which was involved 
in the censure then cast upon his Secretary of 
State), and as a sunbeam to illuminate the laby- 
rinth of other less palpable concatenations. 



CHAPTER LX. 

BANK OF THE UNITED STATES— ILLEGAL AND 
VICIOUS CUEUENCY. 

In his first annual message, in the year 1829, 
Pjesident Jackson, besides calling in question the 
unconstitutionalit}' and general expediency of the 
Bank, also stated that it had failed in furnish- 
ing a uniform currency. That declaration was 
greatly contested by the Bank and its advocates, 
and I felt myself bound to make an occasion to 
.show it to be well founded, and to a greater ex- 
tent than the President had intimated. It had 
in fact issued an illegal and vicious kind of paper 
— authorized it to be issued at all the branches 
— in the shape of drafts or orders payable in 
Philadelphia, but voluntarily paid where issued, 
and at all the branches ; and so made into a 
local currenc}', and constituting the mass of all 
its paper seen in circulation ; and as the great- 
est quantity was usually issued at the most re- 
mote and inaccessible branches, the payment of 
the drafts were well iirotected by distance and 
difficulty ; and being of small denominations, 
loitered and lingered in the hands of the labor- 
'ng people until the '"wear and tear" became a 
large item of gain to the Bank, and the difficulty 
of presenting them at Philadelphia an effectual 
bar to their pa3-ment there. The origin of this 
kind of currency was thus traced by me : It was 



invented hy a Scotch banker of Aberdeen, whc 
issued notes payable in London, always of 
small denominations, that nobodj^ should take 
them up to London for redemption. The Bank 
of Ireland seeing what a pretty way it was to 
issue notes which the}' could not practically be 
compelled to pay, adopted the same trick. Then 
the English country bankers followed the ex- 
ample. But their career was short. The Brit- 
ish parliament took hold of the fraud, and sup- 
pressed it in the three kingdoms. That parlia- 
ment would tolerate no currency issued at one 
place, and paj^able at another. 

The mode of proceeding to get at the question 
of this vicious currency was the same as that 
pursued to get at the question of the non-re- 
newal of the charter — namely, an application 
for leave to bring in a joint resolution declaring 
it to be illegal, and ordering it to be suppressed ; 
and in asking that leave to give the reasons for 
the motion : which was done, in a speech of 
which the following are some parts : 

" Mr. Benton rose to ask leave to bring in his 
promised resolution on the state of the currency. 
He said he had given his notice for the leave he 
was about to ask. without concerting or consult- 
ing with any member of the Senate. The object 
of ills resolution was judicial, not political ; and 
he had treated the senators not as counsellors, 
but as judges. He had conversed with no one, 
neither friend nor adversary ; not through con- 
tempt of counsel, or fear of opposition, but from 
a just and rigorous regard to decorum and pro- 
priety. His own opinion had been made up 
through the cold, unadulterated process of legal 
research ; and he had done nothing, and would 
do nothing, to prevent, or hinder, any other sena- 
tor from making up his opinion in the same 
way. It was a case in which politics, especially 
partisan politics, could find no place; and in the 
progress of which every senator would feel him- 
self retiring into the judicial office — becoming 
one of the judices selccti — and searching into 
the stores of his own legal knowledge, lor the 
judgment, and the reasons of the judgment, 
which he must give in this great cause, in which 
a nation is the party on one side, and a great 
moneyed corporation on the other. He [Mr. B.l 
believed the cun-ency, against which his resolu- 
tion was diiected, to be illegal and dangerous ; 
and so believing, it had long been his determina- 
tion to bring the question of its legality before 
the Senate and the people ; and that without re- 
gard to the powerful resentment, to the effects 
of which he might be exposing himself. He had 
adopted the furm of a declaratory resolution, be- 
cau.se it was intended to declare the true sense 
of the charter upon a disputed point. lie made 
his resolution joint in its character, that it might 



ANNO 1832. ANDREW JACKSON. PRESIDENT. 



221 



have the action of both Houses of Congress ; and 
single in its object, that the main design might 
not be embarrassed with minor propositions. 
The form of the resolution gave him a right to 
state his reasons for asking leave to bring it in ; 
the importance of it required those reasons to be 
clearly stated. The Senate, also, has its rights 
and its duties. It is the right of the Senate and 
House of Representatives, as the founder of the 
bank corporation, to examine into the regularity 
of its proceedings, and to take cognizance of the 
infractions of its charter ; and this right has be- 
come a duty, since the very tribunal selected by 
the charter to try these infractions had tried this 
very question, and that Avithout the formahty of 
a scire facias or the presence of the adverse 
party, and had given judgment in favor of the cor- 
poration ; a decision which he [Mr. B.] was com- 
pelled,by the strongest convictions of his judgment, 
to consider both as extrajudicial and erroneous. 

'• The resolution, continued Mr. B., which I am 
asking leave to bring in, expresses its own ob- 
ject. It declares against the legality of these 
orders, as a currency. It is the currency which 
I arraign. I make no inquiry, for I will not em- 
barrass my subject with irrelevant and imma- 
terial inquiries — I make no inquiry into the 
modes of contract and payment which are per- 
mitted, or not permitted, to the Bank of the 
United States, in the conduct of its private deal- 
ings and individual transactions. My business 
lies with the currency ; for, between public cur- 
rency and private dealings, the charter of the 
bank has made a distinction, and that founded 
in the nature of things, as broad as lines can 
draw, and as clear as words can express. The 
currency concerns the public ; and the soundness 
of that currency is taken under the particular 
guardianship of the charter ; a special code of law 
is enacted for it : private dealings concern indi- 
viduals : and it is for individuals, in making their 
bargains, to take care of their own interests. 
The charter of the Bank of the United States has 
authorized, but not regulated, certain private 
dealings of the bank ; it is full and explicit upon 
the regulation of currency. Upon this distinc- 
tion I take my stand. I establish myself upon 
the broad and clear distinction which reason 
makes, and the charter sanctions. I arraign the 
currency ! I eschew all inquiry mto the modes 
of making bargains for the sale or purchase of 
bills of exchange, buying and selling gold or sil- 
ver bullion, building houses, hiring officers, clerks. 
and servants, purchasing necessaries, or' laying 
in supplies of fuel and stationery. 

" 1. I object to it because it authorizes an is- 
&\XQ of currency upon construction. The issue 
of currency, sir, was the great and main business 
for which the bank was created, and which it is 
in the twelfth article, expressly authorized to 
perform ; and I cannot pay so poor a compliment 
to the understandings of the eminent men who 
framed that charter, as to suppose that they left 
the main business of the bank to be found, by 
construction, in an independent phrase, and that 



phrase to be found but once in the whole char- 
ter. I cannot compliment their understandings 
with the supposition that, after having author- 
ized and defined a currency, and subjected it to 
numerous restrictions, they had left open the 
door to the issue of another sort of currency, 
upon construction, which should supersede the 
kind they had prescribed, and be free from every 
restriction to which the prescribed currency was 
subject. 

" Let us recapitulate. Let us sum up the points 
of incompatibility between the characteristics of 
this currency, and the requisites of the charter : 
let us group and contrast the frightful features 
of their flagrant illegality. 1. Are they signed 
by the president of the bank and his principal 
cashier'? They are not! 2. Are they under 
the corporate seal ? Not at all ! 3. Are they 
drawn in the name of the corporation ? By no 
means ! 4. Are they subject to the double lim- 
itation of time and amount in case of credit ? 
They are not ; they may exceed sixty days' 
time, and be less than one hundred dollars ! 5. 
Are they limited to the minimum size of five 
dollars ? Not at all \ 6. Are they subject to 
the supervision of the Secretary of the Treasury 1 
Not in the least ! 7. The prohibition against 
suspending specie payments? They are not 
subject to it ! 8. The penalty of double interest 
for delayed payment ? Not subject to it ! 9. 
Are they payable where issued? Not at all, 
neither by their own terms, nor by any law 
applicable to them! 10. Are they payable at 
other branches 1 So far from it, that they were 
invented to avoid such payment ! 11. Are they 
transferable by delivery 1 No ; by indorse- 
ment ! 12. Are they receivable in payment of 
public dues ? So far from it, that they are twice 
excluded from such payments by positive enact- 
ments ! 13. Are the du-ectors liable for exces- 
sive issues ? Not at all ! 14. Has the holder a 
right to sue at the branch which issues the order ? 
No, sir, he has a right to go to Philadelphia, and 
sue the directors there ! a right about equivalent 
to the privilege of going to Mecca to sue the 
successors of Mahomet for the bones of the 
prophet! Fourteen points of contrariety and 
difference. Not a feature of the charter in the 
faces of these orders. Every mark a contrast ; 
every lineament a contradiction ; all announcing, 
or rather denouncing, to the world, the positive 
fact of a spurious progeny; the incontestable 
evidence of an illegitimate and bastard issue. 
• "I have now, Mr. President, brought this 
branch bank currency to the test of several 
provisions in the charter, not all of them, but a 
few wliich are vital and decisive. The currency 
iiiils at every test ; and upon this failure I pre- 
dicate an argument of its total illegalitj'. Thus 
far I have spoken upon the charter, and have 
proved that if this currency can prevail, that 
instrument, with all its restrictions and limita- 
tions, its jealous, picihibitory constitution, and 
multiplied enactments for tlie safety of the public 
is nothing but a blank piece of paper m the hands' 



222 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



of the bank. I will now have recourse to another 
class of ar^iumcnts— aclass extrinsic to the char- 
ter, but close to the subject — inrlii=pensable to 
fair examination, and directly bearing upon the 
illegal character of this currency. 

'•1. In the first place, I must insist that these 
orders cannot possibly serve for currency, be- 
cause they are subject to the law of indorsable 
paper. The law which governs all such paper 
is too universally known to be enlarged upon 
nere. Presentation for acceptance and payment, 
notice of del;xult in either, prompt return of the 
dishonored paper; and all this with rigorous 
punctuality, and a loss of recourse for the slight- 
est delay at any point, are the leading features 
of this law. Now it is too obvious that no paper 
subject to the law of indorsement can answer 
the purposes of circulation. It will die on the 
hands of the holders while passing from one to 
another, instead of going to the place of pay- 
ment. Now it is incontestable that these orders 
arc instruments negotiable by indorsement, and 
by indt)rsement alone. Whether issued under 
the charter, or under the general laws of the 
land, the}- are still subject to the law of indors- 
able paper. They are the same in cither case 
as if drawn by one citizen upon another. And 
this is a point which I mean to make clear : for 
many worthy people believe there is some pe- 
culiar law for bank paper, which takes it out of 
the operation of the general laws of the land. 
Not so the fact. The twelfth fundamental ar- 
ticle of the bank constitution declares that the 
bills or notes to be issued by the bank shall be 
negotiable in the same manner as if issued by a 
p7-ivalc person; that is to say, those payable to 
a named person or his oi^lcr, by indorsement, 
in like manner and with the like effect as foreign 
bills of exchange ; and those made payable to 
bearer shall l)c negotiable by delivery alone ; 
in the same manner, we may add, as a silver 
dollar. So much for these orders, if drawn under 
the charter; if not drawn under it, thtyare then 
issued under the general law of the land, or with- 
out any law at all. Taken either mider the charter 
or out of it, it comes to the same point, namely. 
that these orders arc subject to the same law as if 
drawn by one private person upon another. This 
is enough to fix their character, and to condemn 
them as a circulating medium ; it is enough for 
the people to know ; for every citizen knows 
enough of law to estimate the legal value of an 
unacceptid order, drawn ujion a man five lum- 
dred or one thousand miles olf! But it has the 
word bearer on the back ! Yes, sir, and why 
not on the face as easily as on the Imck ? Oiir 
.school-time acquaintance, Mr. President, the 
gentleman from Cork, with his coat buttoned 
behind, had a scnsil)le, and, I will add. a lawful 
rea-son for arraying liimself in that giotesque 
habiliment ; but what reason can the bank have 
for putting bearer on the back of the order, 
where it has no effect upon its negotiable cha- 
racter, and omitting it on the face, where it 
noiUd have governed the character, and secured 



to the holder all the facilities for the prompt 
and easy recovery of the contents of a paper 
transferable by mere delivery ? The only effect 
of this preposterous or cunning indorsement 
must be to bamboozle the ignorant — pardon the 
low word, sir — to bamboozle the ignorant with 
the belief that they are handling a currency 
which may at any time be collected without 
proof, trouble, or delay ; while in reality it is a 
currency which reserves to the bank all the legal 
defences which can be set up to prevent the re- 
covery of a parcel of old, unaccepted, unpresented, 
unauthorized bills of exchange. 

" 2. I take a second exception to these orders 
as a currency. It is tliis, that being once paid, 
they are done with. A note transferable by 
delivery, may be reissued, and its payment de- 
manded again, and so on for ever. But a bill of 
exchange, or any paper subject to the same law 
with a bill of exchange, is incapable of reissue, and 
is payable but once. The payment once made, 
extinguishes the debt ; the paper which evidenced 
it is dead in law, and cannot be resuscitated by 
any act of the parties. That payment can be 
plead in bar to any future action. This law 
applies to checks and orders as well as to bills 
of exchange ; it applies to bank checks and orders 
as well as to those of private persons, and this 
allegation alone would annihilate ever}' preten- 
sion of these branch bank orders to the character 
of currency. 

" The bank went into operation with the be- 
ginning of the year 1817 ; established eighteen 
branches, half a dozen of which in the South 
and West ; issued its own notes freely, and 
made large issues of notes payable at all these 
branches. The course of trade carried the 
branch notes of the South and West to the 
Northeast ; and nothing in the course of trade 
brought them back to the West. They were 
payable in all demands to the federal govern- 
ment ; merchants in Philadelphia, New-York, 
and Boston received them in payment of goods, 
and gave them — not back again in payment of 
Southern and AVestern produce — but to the 
collectors of the customs. Become the money 
of the government, the bank had to treat them 
as cash. The fourteenth section of the charter 
made them receivable in all payments to the 
government, and another clause reqiiired the 
bank to transfer the moneys of the government 
to any point ordered ; these two clauses (the 
transfer clause being harmless without the re- 
ceiving one contained in the fourteenth section) 
laid the bank under the obligation to cash all 
the notes of all the branches wherever present- 
ed ; for, if she did not do it, she would be or- 
dered to transfer the notes to the place where 
they were payable, and then to transfer the sil- 
ver to the place where it was wanted ; and both 
these operations she had to perform at her own 
expense. The Southern and AVestern branch 
notes flowed to the Northeast ; the gold and 
silver of the South and West were ordered to 
follow them j and, in a little while, the specie 



ANNO 1832. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



223 



of the South and "West was transferred to the 
Northeast ; but the notes went faster on horses 
and in mail stages than the silver could go in 
wagons ; and the parent bank in Philadelphia, 
and the branches in New-York and Boston, ex- 
hausted by the double operation of providing 
for their own, and for Southern and Western 
branch notes besides, were on the point of stop- 
ping payment at the end of two years. Mr. 
Cheves then came into the presidency ; he 
stopped the issue of Southei'n and Western 
branch paper, and saved the bank from insol- 
vency ! Application was then made to Con- 
gress to repeal the fourteenth section of the 
charter, and thus relieve the bank from this 
obligation to cash its notes every where. Con- 
gress refused to do so. Application was made 
at the same time to repeal a part of the twelfth 
fundamental article of the constitution of the 
bank, for the purpose of relieving the president 
and principal cashier of the parent bank from 
the labor of signing the five and ten dollar 
notes. Congress refused that application also. 
And here every thing rested while ]Mr. Cheves 
continued president. The Southern and West- 
ern branches ceased to do business as banks ; 
no bank notes or bills were seen but those 
bearing the signatures of the president and his 
principal cashier, and none of these payable at 
Southern and Western branches. The profits 
of the stockholders became inconsiderable, and 
the prospect of a renewed charter was lost in 
the actual view of the inactivity and uselessness 
of the bank in the South and West. Mr. Cheves 
retired. He withdrew from an institution he 
had saved from bankruptcj'', but 'o-hich he could 
not render useful to the South and West ; and 
then ensued a set of operations for enabling the 
bank to do the things which Congress had re- 
fused to do for it ; that is to say, to avoid the 
operation of the fourteenth section, and so much 
of the twelfth fundamental article as related to 
the signature of the notes and bills of the bank. 
These operations resulted in the invention of 
the branch bank orders. These orders, now 
flooding the country, circulating as notes, and 
considered every where as gold and silver (be- 
cause they are voluntarily cashed at several 
branches, and erroneously received at every 
land office and custom-house), have given to 
the bank its present apparent prosperity, its 
temporary popularity, and its delusive cry of a 
soimd and uniform currency. This is my nar- 
rative ; an appalling one, it must be admitted ; 
but let it stand for nothing if not sustained by 
the proof. 

" I have now established, j\Ir. President, as I 
trust and believe, the truth of the first branch 
of my proposition, namely, that this currency of 
branch bank orders is unauthorized by the 
charter, and illegal. I will now say a few words 
in support of the second branch of the proposi- 
tion, namely, that this currency ought to be 
suppressed. 

" The mere fact of the illegality, sir, I should 



hold to be suflBcient to justify this suppression. 
In a country of laws, the laws should be 
obeyed. No private individual should be al- 
lowed to trample them under foot ; much less 
a public man, or public body ; least of all, a great 
moneyed corporation wielding above one hun- 
dred millions of dollars per annum, and boldly 
contending with the federal government for the 
sceptre of political power — money is power ! 
The Bank of the United States possesses more 
money than the federal government; and the 
question of power is now to be decided between 
them. That question is wrapped up in the 
case before you. It is a case of clear conviction 
of a violation of the laws by this great moneyed 
corporation ; and that not of a single statute, 
and by inadvertence, and in a small matter, 
which concerns but few, but in one general, 
sweeping, studied, and systematic infraction of 
a whole code of laws — of an entire constitution, 
made for its sole government and restraint — and 
the pernicious effects of which enter into the 
revenues of the Union, and extend themselves 
to every moneyed transaction between man and 
man. This is the case of violated law which 
stands before you; and if it goes unpunished, 
then do I say, the question of political power is 
decided between the bank and the government. 
The question of supremacy is at an end. Let 
there be no more talk of restrictions or limita- 
tion in the charter. Grant a new one. Grant 
it upon the spot. Grant it without words ! 
Grant it in blank ! to save the directors from the 
labor of re-examination ! the court from the labor 
of constructions ! and j^ourselves from the 
radation of being publicly trampled under foot. 

"I do insist, Jlr. President, that this currency 
ought to be suppressed for illegality alone, even 
if no pernicious consequences could result from 
its circulation. But pernicious consequences do 
result. The substituted currencj^ is not the 
equivalent of the branch bank notes, whose 
place it has usurped: it is inferior to those 
notes in vital particulars, and to the manifest 
danger and loss of the people. 

" In the first place, these branch bank orders 
are not jjay able in the States in xchich they are 
issued. Look at them ! thej^ are nominally 
payable in Philadelphia ! Look at the law ! 
It gives the holder no right to demand their 
contents at the branch bank, until the order has 
been to Philadelphia, and returned. I lay no 
stress upon the insidious circumstance that these 
orders are now paid at the branch where issued, 
and at other branches. That voluntary, delu- 
sive payment may satisf}^ those who are willing 
to swallow a gilded hook ; it may satisfy those 
who are willing to hold their property at the 
will of the bank. For my part, I want law for 
my rights. I look at the law, to the legal 
rights of the holder, and say that he has no 
right to demand payment at the branch which 
issued the order. The present custom of paying- 
is voluntary, not compulsory ; it depends upon 
the will of the bank, not upon law ; and none 



224 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



but tyrants can require, or slaves submit to, a j 
tenure at will. These orders, even admitting 
them to be legal, are onl}' payable in Philadel- 
phia ; and to demand payment there, is a delu- 
sive and ini practicable right. For the body of • 
the citizens cannot go to Philadelphia to get the j 
change for the small orders ; merchants will not 
remir them ; they would as soon carry up the 
fires of hell to Philadelphia ; for the bank would 
consign them to ruin if they did. These orders 
arc for the frontiers; and it is made the interest 
and the policy of merchants to leave them at 
home, and take a bill of exchange at a nominal 
premium. Brokers alone will ever carry them, 
and that as their own. after buying (hem out of 
the hands of the people at a di-scount fixed by 
themselves. 

'• This contrivance, ]Mr. President, of issuing 
bank paper at one place, payable at another and 
a distant place, is not a new thing luuler the 
sun ; but its success, if it succeeds here, will be 
a new thing in the' history of banking. This 
contrivance, sir, is of European origin. It began 
in Scotland some years ago, with a banker in 
Aberdeen^ who issued promissory notes paya- 
ble in Luudon. Then the Bank of Ireland set 
her branches in Sligo, Cork, and Belfast, at the 
same work ; and they made their branch notes 
payable in Dublin. The English country bankers 
took the hint, and put out their notes payable 
in Lomloii. The mass of these notes were of 
the smaller denominations, one or two pounds 
.sterling, corresponding with our five and ten 
dollar orders; such as were handled by the 
laboring classes, and who could never carry 
them to London and Dublin to demand their 
contents. At this point the British Imperial 
Parliament took cognizance of the matter; 
treated the issue of such notes as a vicious 
practice, violative of the very first idea of a 
sound currency, and particularly dangerous 
to the laboring classes. The parliament sup- 
pressed the practice. This all happened in the 
year 1820 ; and now this practice, thus sup- 
pressed in England, Scotland, and Ireland, is 
in full ojicration in our America! and the di- 
rectors of the Bank of the United States are 
celebrated, as the greatest of financiers, for 
picking up an illegal practice of Scottish origin, 
and putting it into operation in the United 
States, and that, too, in the very year in which 
it was suppressed in Great Britain ! " 

Leave was not given to introduce the joint 
resolution. The friends of the bank being a 
majority in the Senate, refused the motion, but 
felt themselves bound to make defence for a 
currency so illegal and vicious. Further discus- 
sion was stopped for that time ; but afterwards, 
on the question of the rccharter, the illegality 
of this kind of currency was fullj' established, 
and a clause put into the new charter to sup- 



press it. The veto message put an end to the 
charter, and for the necessity of the remedy in 
that quarter ; but the practice has been taken 
up by local institutions and private bankers in 
the States, and become an abuse wdiich requires 
extirpation. 



CHAPTER LXI. 

ErjlOE or MONS. DE TOCQUEVILLE IN RELATION 
TO THE BANK OF THE UNITED STATES, THE 
PEESIDENT, AND THE PEOPLE. 

The first message of President Jackson, de- 
livered at the commencement of the session of 
1829-30, confirmed the hopes which the democ- 
racy had placed in him. It was a message of 
the Jeflfersonian school, and re-established the 
land-marks of party, as parties were when found- 
ed on principle. Its salient point was the Bank 
of the United States, and the non-renewal of its 
charter. He was opposed to the renewal, both 
on grounds of constitutionality and expediency ; 
and took this early opportunity of so declaring, 
both for the information of the people, and of the 
institution, that each might know what they had 
to rely upon -with respect to him. He said : 

" The charter of the Bank of the United States 
expires in 183G, and its stockholders will prob- 
ably apply for a renewal of their privileges. In 
order to avoid the evils resulting from precipi- 
tancy in a measure involving such important 
principles, and such deep pecuniary interests, I 
feel that I cannot, injustice to the parties inter- 
ested, too soon present it to the deliberate con- 
sideration of the legislature and the jjcoplc. Both 
the constitutionality and the expediency of the 
law creating this bank are well questioned by a 
large portion of our fellow-citizens ; and it must 
be admitted by all that it has failed in the gi-eat 
end of establishmg a uniform and sound cur- 
rency." 

This passage was the grand feature of the mes- 
sage, rising above precedent and judicial decisions, 
going back to the constitution and the founda- 
tion of party on principle ; and risking a contest 
at the commencement of his administration, 
wliich a mere politician would have put oif to the 
last. The Supreme Court had decided in favor 
of the constitutionality of the institution ; a de- 
mocratic Congress, in chartering a second bank, 
had yielded the question, both of constitutionality 



ANNO 1832. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



225 



and expediency. ]\Ir. Madison, in signing the 
bank charter in 1816, yielded to the authorities 
without surrendering his convictions. But the 
effect was the same in behalf of the institution, 
and against the constitution, and against the in- 
tegrity of party founded on jJi'inciple. It threw 
down the greatest landmark of party, and yield- 
ed a power of construction which nullified the 
limitations of the constitution, and left Congress 
at liberty to pass any law which it deemed ne- 
cessai-y to carry into effect any gi-anted power. 
The whole argument for the bank turned upon 
the word " necessary " at the end of the enu- 
merated powers granted to Congress ; and gave 
rise to the first great division of parties in 
"Washington's time — the federal party being for 
the construction which would authorize a na- 
tional bank; the democratic party (republican, 
as then called,) being against it. 

It was not merely the bank which the democ- 
racy opposed, but the latitudinarian construc- 
tion which would authorize it, and which would 
enable Congress to substitute its own will in 
other cases for the words of the constitution, and 
do what it pleased under the plea of "necessary" 
— a plea under which they would be left as much 
to their own will as under the '' general welfare" 
clause. It was the turning point between a 
strong and splendid government on one side, do- 
ing what it pleased, and a plain economical 
government on the other, limited by a written 
constititution. The construction was the main 
point, because it made a gap in the constitution 
through which Congress could pass any other 
measures which it deemed to be "necessary:" 
still there were great objections to the bank it- 
self. Experience had shown such an institution 
to be a political machine, adverse to free govern- 
ment, mingling in the elections and legislation of 
the country, corrupting the press; and exerting 
its influence in the only way known to the mo- 
neyed j)0wer — by corruption. General Jack 
son's objections reached both heads of the case 
— the unconstitutionality of the bank, and its in- 
expediency. It was a return to the Jcffersonian 
and Hamiltonian times of the early administra- 
tion of General Washington, and went to the 
words of the constitution, and not to the inter- 
pretations of its administrators, for its meaning. 

Such a message, from such a man — a man not 
apt to look back when he had set his face for- 
ward — electrified the democratic spirit of the 

Vol. I.— 15 



country. The old democracy felt as if they were 
to see the constitution restored before they died 
— the young, as if they were summoned to the re- 
construction of the work of their fathers. It was 
evident that a great contest was coming on, and 
the odds entirely against the President. On the 
one side, the undivided phalanx of the federal 
party (for they had not then taken the name o/ 
whig); a large part of the democratic party, 
yielding to precedent and judicial decision ; the 
bank itself, with its colossal money power — its 
arms in every State by means of branches — its 
power over the State banks — its power over the 
business community — over public men who 
should become its debtors or retainers — its or- 
ganization under a single head, issuing its orders 
in secret, to be obeyed in all places and by all 
subordinates at the same moment. Such was the 
formidable array on one side : on the other side 
a divided democratic party, disheartened by divi- 
sion, with nothing to rely upon but the goodness 
of their cause, the prestige of Jackson's name, 
and the presidential power; — good against any 
thing less than two-thirds of Congress on the final 
question of the re-charter ; bvit the risk to run of 
his non-election before the final question came on. 
Under such circumstances it required a strong 
sense of duty in the new President to commence 
his career by risking such a contest ; but he be- 
lieved the institution to be unconstitutional and 
dangerous, and that it ought to cease to exist; 
and there was a clause in the constitution — that 
constitution which he had sworn to support — 
which pommanded him to recommend to Con- 
gress, for its consideration, such measures as he 
should deem expedient and proper. Under this 
sense of duty, and under the obligation of this 
oath, President Jackson had recommended to 
Congress the non-renewal of the bank charter, 
and the substitution of a different fiscal agent 
for the operations of the government — if any 
such agent was required. And with his accus- 
tomed frankness, and the fairness of a man who 
has nothing but the public good in view, and 
with a disregard of self which permits no 
personal consideration to stand in the way 
of a discharge of a public duty, hq made the re- 
commendation six 3'ears before the expiration 
of the charter, and in the first message of hie 
first term ; thereby taking upon his hands such 
au enemy as the Bank of the United States, at 
the very commencemeat of his administratiou. 



226 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



That 6iicli a recommendation against such an in- 
stitution should bring upon the President and 
his supporters, violent attacks, both personal 
and political, with arraignment of motives as 
well as of reasons, was naturally to be expected ; 
and that expectation was by no means disap- 
pointed. Both he and they, during the seven 
years that the bank contest (in dilferent foi'ms) 
prevailed, received from it — from the newspaper 
and periodical press in its interest, and from the 
public speakers in its favor of every grade — an 
accumulation of obloqu}', and even of accusation, 
onl}^ lavished upon the oppressors and plunder- 
ers of nations — a Yerres, or a Hastings. This 
was natural in such an institution. But Presi- 
dent Jackson and his friends had a right to ex- 
pect fair treatment from liistory — from disinter- 
ested history — which should aspire to truth, and 
which has no right to be ignorant or careless. 
He and they had a right to expect justice from 
such hi.storj^ ; but this is what they have not 
received. A writer, whose book takes him out 
of that class of European travellers who requite 
the hospitality of Americans by disparagement 
of their institutions, their country, and their 
character — one whose general intelligence and 
candor entitle his errors to the honor of correc- 
tion — in brief, M. de Tocqueville — writes thus of 
President Jackson and the Bank of the United 
States : 

" When the President attacked the bank, the 
country was excited and parties were fonned ; 
the well-informed cla.sses rallied round the bank, 
the connnon people round the President. But 
it must not be imagined that the people had 
formed a rational opinion upon a question which 
oO'ers so man\- difficulties to the most experienced 
statesman. The bank is a great establishment, 
which enjoys an independent existence, and the 
people, accustomed to make and unmake what- 
ever it plca,scs, is startled to meet with this 
obstacle to its authority. In. the midst of the 
perpetual fluctuation of soci^.ty, the community 
is irritated by so permanent an institution, and 
is led to attack in order to see whether it can be 
shaken or controlled, I'-ke all other institutions 
of the country."— (Chapter 10.) 

Of this paragraph, so derogatory to President 
Jack.'ion and the people of the United States, 
every word is an error. AVherea fact is alleged, 
it is an error ; where an opinion is expressed, it 
'-B an error j where a theory is invented, it is 
fanciful and visiouary. President Jackson did 
not attack the bank ; the bank attacked him, and 



for political as well as pecuniary motives ; and 
under the lead of politicians. When General 
Jackson, in his first message, of December, 1829 
expressed his opinion to Congress against tho 
renewal of the bank's charter, he attacked no 
right or interest which the bank possessed. It 
was an institution of limited existence, enjoying 
great privileges, — among others a monopoly of 
national banking, and had no right to any pro- 
longation of existence or privilege after the 
termination of its charter — so far from it, if 
there was to be another bank, the doctrine of 
equal rights and no monopolies or perpetuities 
required it to be thrown open to the free compe- 
tition of all the citizens. The reasons given by 
the President were no attack upon the bank. 
He impugned neither tne integrity nor the skill 
of the institution, but repeated the objections of 
the political school to which he belonged, and 
which were as old as Mr. Jefferson's cabinet 
opinion to President Washington, in the year 
1791, and Mr. JMadison's great speech in the 
House of Representatives in the same year. He, 
therefore, made no attack upon the bank, either 
upon its existence, its character, or any one of 
its rights. On the other hand, the bank did 
attack President Jackson, under the lead of 
politicians, and for the purpose of breaking him 
down. The facts were these : President Jackson 
had communicated his opinion to Congress in 
December, 1829, against the renewal of tho 
charter ; near three years afterwards, on the 
9th of January, 1832, while the charter had yet 
above three years to run, and a new Congress 
to be elected before its expiration, and the presi- 
dential election impending — (General Jackson 
and Mr. Clay the candidates) — the memorial of 
tlie president and directors of the bank was 
suddenly presented in the Senate of the United 
States, for the renewal of its charter. 

Now, how came that memorial to be presented 
at a time so inopportune? so premature so 
inevitably mixing itself with the presidential 
election, and so encroaching upon the rights of 
the people, in snatching the question out of their 
hands, and having it decided by a Congress not 
elected for the purpose — and to the usurpation 
of the rights of the Congress elected for the 
purpose? How came all these anomalies? all 
these violationsof right, decency and propriety? 
They came thus . the bank and its leading anti- 
Jackson friends believed that the institution 



ANNO 1832. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



227 



was stronger than the President — that it could 
beat him in the election — that it could beat him 
in Congress (as it then stood), and carry the 
charter, — driving him upon the veto power, and 
rendering him odious if he used it, and disgracing 
him if (after what he had said) he did not. 
This was the opinion of the leading politicians 
friendly to the bank, and inimical to the Presi- 
dent. But the bank had a class of friends in 
Congress also friendly to Gen. Jackson ; and 
between these two classes there was vehement 
opposition of opinion on the point of moving 
for the new charter. It was found impossible, 
in communications between Washington and 
Philadelphia, then slow and uncertain, in stage 
coach conveyances, over miry roads and frozen 
waters, to come to conclusions on the diffi- 
cult point. Mr. Biddle and the directors were 
in doubt, for it would not do to move in the 
matter, unless all the friends of the bank in 
Congi-ess acted together. In this state of un- 
certainty, General Cadwallader, of Philadelphia, 
friend and confidant of Mr. Biddle, and his 
usual envoy in all the delicate bank negotiations 
or troubles, was sent to Washington to obtain a 
'•esult ; and the union of both wings of the 
hank party in favor of the desired movement, 
^le came, and the mode of operation was through 
'he macliinery of caucus — that contrivance by 
•vhich a few govern many. The two wings 
■jeing of different politics, sat separately, one 
headed by Mr. Clay, the other by Gen. Samuel 
Smith, of Marjdand. The two caucuses dis- 
agreed, but the democratic being the smaller, 
and Mr. Clay's strong will dominating the other, 
the resolution was taken to proceed, and all 
bound to go together. 

I had a friend in one of these councils who 
informed me regularly of the progress made, and 
eventually that the point was carried for the 
bank — that General Cadwallader had returned 
with the news, and with injunctions to have the 
memorial immediately at Washington, and by a 
given da3^ The day arrived, but not the me- 
morial, and my friend came to inform me the 
reason why ; which was, that the stage had got 
overturned in the bad roads and crippled Gen. 
Cadwallader in the shoulder, and detained him ; 
but that the delay would only be of two days ; 
and then the memoi-ial would certainly arrive. 
It did so ; and on Monday, the 9th of January 
1832j was .presented in the Senate by jNIr. Dallas, 



a senator from Pennsylvania, and resident of 
Pliiladelphia, where the bank was established. 
Mr. Dallas was democratic, and the friend of 
General Jackson, and on presenting the me- 
morial, as good as told all that I have now 
written, bating only personal particulars. He 
said: 

" That being requested to present this docu- 
ment to the Senate, praying for a renewal of the 
existing charter of the bank, he begged to be 
indulged in making a few explanatory remarks. 
With anhesitating frankness he wished it to be 
understood by the Senate, by the good common- 
wealth which it was alike his duty and his pride 
to represent with fidelity on that floor, and by 
the people generally, that this application, at this 
time, had been discouraged by him. Actuated 
mainly, if not exclusively, by a desire to preserve 
to the nation the practical benefits of the insti- 
tution, the expediency of bringing it forward 
thus early in the term of its incorporation, during 
a popular representation in Congress w'hich must 
cease to exist some years before that term ex- 
pii'es, and on the eve of all the excitement incident 
to a great political movement, struck his mind 
as more than doubtful. He felt deep solicitude 
and apprehension lest, in the progress of inquiry, 
and in the development of views, under present 
cu-cumstances, it might be drawn into real or 
imaginary conflict with some higher, some more 
favorite, some more immediate wish or purpose 
of the American people ; and from such a conflict, 
what sincere friend of this useful establishment 
would not strive to save or rescue it, by at least 
a temporary forbearance or delay ? " 

This was the language of j\Ir. Dallas, and it 
was equivalent to a protest from a well-wisher 
of the bank against the perils and improprieties 
of its open plunge into the presidential canvass, 
for the purpose of defeating General Jackson 
and electing a friend of its own. The prudential 
counsels of such men as IMr. Dallas did not 
prevail ; political counsels governed ; the bank 
charter was pushed — was carried through both 
Houses of Congress — daTed the veto of Jackson 
— received it — roused the people — and the bank 
and all its friends were crushed. Then it affected 
to have been attacked by Jackson ; and ]\Ions. 
de Tocqueville has carried that fiction into his- 
tory, with all the imaginary reasons for a. 
groundless accusation, which the bank had in- 
vented. 

The remainder of this quotation from Mons. 
de Tocqueville is profoundly erroneous, and de- 
serves to be exposed, to prevent the mischiefs 
which liis book might do in Europe, and even iu 



22S 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



Ajnerica, among that class of our people who 
look to European writers for information upon 
their own country. He speaks of the well- 
informed classes who rallied round the bank ; 
and the common people who had formed no ra- 
tional opinion upon the subject, and who joined 
General Jackson. Certainly the great business 
community, with few exceptions, comprising 
wealth, ability and education, went for the bank, 
and the masses for General Jackson ; but which 
had formed the rational opinion is seen by the 
event. The " well-informed " classes have bowed 
not merely to the decision, but to the intelligence 
of the masses. They have adopted their opin- 
ion of the institution — condemned it — repudiated 
it as an " obsolete idea ; " and of all its former 
advocates, not one exists now. All have yield- 
ed to that instinctive sagacity of the people, 
which is au overmatch for book-learning ; and 
which being the , result of common sense, is 
usually right ; and being disinterested, is always 
honest. I adduce this instance — a grand na- 
tional one — of the succumbing of the well-in- 
formed classes to the instinctive sagacity of the 
people, not merely to correct ]\Ions. de Tocque- 
ville, but for the higher purpose of showing the 
capacity of the people for self-government. The 
rest of the quotation, " the independent exist- 
ence — the people accustomed to make and un- 
make — startled at this obstacle — irritated at a 
permanent institution — attack in order to shake 
and control ; " all this is fancy, or as the old 
Enghsh wrote it, fantasy — enlivened bj^ French 
vivacity into witty theor}"^, as fallacious as witty. 
I could wish I were done with quotations 
from Mons. de Tocqueville on this subject ; but 
he forces me to make another extract from his 
book, and it is found in his chapter 18, thus : 

" The slightest observation enables us to ap- 
preciate the advantages which the country de- 
rives from the bank. Its notes are taken on the 
borders of the desert for the same value as in 
Philadelphia. It is nevertheless the object of 
great animosity. Its directors have proclaimed 
their hostility to the President, and arc accused, 
not without some show of probal>ility, of liaving 
abused their influence to tiiwart his election. 
The President, therefore, attacks the establish- 
ment with all the warmth of personal enmity ; 
and he is encouraged in the pursuit of his re- 
venge by the conviction that he is supported by 
the secret propensities of the majority. It al- 
ways holds a great nimiber of the notes issued 
by the provincial banks, which it can at any 
time oblige them to convert into cash. It has 



itself nothing to fear from a similar demand, as 
the extent of its resources enables it to meet all 
claims. But the existence of tlie provincia 
banks is thus threatened, and their operations 
are restricted, since they are only able to issue 
a quantity of notes dul}- proportioned to their 
capital. They submit with impatience to this 
salutary control. The newspapers which they 
have bought over, and the President, whose in- 
terest renders him their instrument, attack the 
bank with the greatest vehemence. They rouse 
the local passions and the blind democratic in- 
stinct of the countr}' to aid in their cause ; and 
they assert that the bank directors form a per- 
manent aristocratic body, whose influence must 
ultiniatel}' be felt in the government, and must 
affect those principles of equality — upon which 
society rests in America." 

Now, while Mons. de Tocqueville was arrang- 
ing all this fine en tmium xqion the bank, and 
all this censure upo its adversaries, the whole 
of which is nothin: , but a French translation of 
the bank publications of the day, for itself and 
against President Jackson — during all this time 
there was a process going on in the Congress of 
the United States, b}^ which it was proved that 
the bank was then insolvent, and living from 
day to day upon expedients ; and getting hold of 
property and money bj^ contrivances which the 
law would qualify as swindling — plundering its 
own stockholders — and bribing individuals, in- 
stitutions, and members of legislative bodies, 
wherever it could be done. Those fine notes, 
of which he speaks, were then without solid 
value. The salutary restraint attributed to its 
control over local banks was soon exemplified in 
its forcing many of them into complicity in its 
crimes, and all into two general suspensions of 
specie payments, headed by itself. Its sohdity 
and its honor were soon shown in open bank- 
ruptcy — in the dishonor of its notes — the vio- 
lation of sacred deposits — the disappearance 
of its capital — the destruction of institutions 
connected with it — the extinction of fifty-six 
millions of capital (its own, and that of others 
drawn into its vortex) ; — and the ruin or 
(lama"-e of families, both forcian and American, 
who had been induced by its name, and b}^ its 
delusive exhibitions of credit, to invest their 
money in its stock. Placing the opposition of 
President Jackson to such an institution to the 
account of base and personal motives — to feelings 
of revenge because he had been unable to seduce 
it into his support — is an error of fact manifested 
by all the history of the case ; to say nothing 



ANNO 1832. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



229 



of his own personal character. He was a senator 
in Congress during the existence of the first 
national bank, and was against it ; and on the 
same grounds of unconstitutionality and of inex- 
pediency. He delivered his opinion against this 
second one before it had manifested any hostility 
to him. His first opposition was abstract — 
against the institution — without reference to its 
conduct ; he knew nothing against it then, and 
neither said, or insinuated any thing against it. 
Subsequently, when misconduct was discovered, 
he charged it ; and openly and responsibly. 
Equally unfounded is the insinuation in another 
place, of subserviency to local banks. He, the 
instrument of local banks ! he who could not be 
made the friend, even, of the great bank itself ; 
who was aU his life a hard money man — an 
opposer of all banks — the denouncer of delin- 
quent banks in his own State ; who, with one 
stroke of his pen, in the recess of Congress, and 
igainst its will, in the summer of 1836, struck 
ill their notes from the list of land-ofBcc pay- 
ments ! and whose last message to Congress, and 
in his farewell address to the people, admonished 
them earnestly and affectionately against the 
whole system of paper money — the evils of 
which he feelingly described as falling heaviest 
upon the most meritorious part of the com- 
munity, and the part least able to bear them — 
the productive classes. 

The object of this chapter is to correct this 
error of ]\Ions. de Tocqueville, and to vindicate 
history, and to do justice to General Jackson 
and the democracy : and my task is easy. Events 
have done it for me — have answered every ques- 
tion on which the bank controversy depended, 
and have nullified every argument in favor of 
the bank— and that both with, and without ref- 
erence to its misconduct. As an institution, it 
has been proved to be " unnecessary," and the 
country is found to do infinitely better without 
it than with it. During the twenty years of its 
existence there was pecuniary distress in the 
country— periodical returns of expansion and 
contraction, deranged currency, ruined exchanges, 
panics and convulsions in the money market. In 
the almost twenty years which have elapsed 
since, these calamitous words have never been 
heard : and the contrast of the two periods will 
make the condemnation of one, and the eulogy 
of the other. There was no gold during the 
existence of the bank : there has been an ample 1 



gold currency ever since, and that before we got, 
California. There were general suspensions o! 
specie payments during its time ; and none since. 
Exchanges were deranged during its existence : 
they have been regular since its death. Labor and 
property lived the life of " up and down" — high 
price one day, no price another day — while 
the bank ruled : both have been " up " all the 
time, since it has been gone. "We have had a 
war since — a foreign war — which tries the 
strength of financial systems in all countries; 
and have gone through this war not only with- 
out a financial crisis, but with a financial tri- 
umph — the public securities remaining above par 
the whole time ; and the government paying to 
its war debt creditors a reward of twenty dol- 
lars upon the hundred to get them to accept 
their pay before it is due ; and in this shining 
side of the contrast, experience has invalidated 
the decision of the Supreme Court, by expunging 
the sole argument upon which the decision 
rested. " Necessity," " necessary to carry into 
effect the granted powers," was the decision of 
the court. Not so, the voice of experience. That 
has proved such an institution to be unnecessary. 
Every granted power, and some not granted, 
have been carried into effect since the extinction 
of the national bank, and since the substitution 
of the gold currency and the independent treasu- 
ry ; and all with triumphant success — the war 
power above all, and most successfully exercised 
of all. And this sole foundation for the court's 
decision in favor of the constitutionality of the 
bank being removed, the decision itself van- 
ishes — disappears — " like the baseless fabric of a 
vision, leaving not a wreck behind." But there 
will be a time hereafter for the celebration of 
this victory of the constitution over the Supreme 
Court — the only object of this chapter being to 
vindicate General Jackson and the people from 
the errors of Mons. de Tocqueville in relation to 
them and the bank : which is done. 



CHAPTER LXII. 

EXPENSES OF THE GOVERNMENT. 

Economy in the government expenditures was 
a cardinal feature in the democratic policy, and 
every increase of expense was closely scrutinized 



230 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



by them, and brought to the test of the cleare&t 
necessity. Some increase was incident to the 
growing condition of the country ; but every 
item beyond the exigencies of that growth was 
subjected to severe investigation and determined 
opposition. In the execution of this policy the 
expenses proper of the govei-nment — those inci- 
dent to working its machinery — were, immedi- 
ately after my entrance into the Senate, and after 
the army and other reductions of 1820 and '21 
had taken effect— just about eight millions of 
dollars. The same expenditure up to the be- 
ginning of the year 1832 — a period of about ten 
years — had risen to thirteen and a half millions : 
and, adverting to this increase in some current 
debate, and with a view to fix attention upon 
the growing evil, I stated to the Senate that 
these expenses had nearly doubled since I had 
been a member of the Senate. This statement 
drew a reply from the veteran chairman of the 
Senate's committee on finance (General Smith, 
of Maryland), in opposition to my statement; 
which, of course, drew further remarks from me. 
Both sets of remarks are valuable at this day — in- 
structive in the picture thej- present between 
1822— 1832— and 1850. Gen. Smith's estimate 
of about ten millions instead of eight — though 
predicated on the wrong basis of beginning to 
count before the expenses of the army reduction 
had taken effect, and coimting in tlie purchase 
of Florida, and some other items of a nature 
foreign to the support of government — even his 
estimate presents a startling point of comparison 
with the same expenditure of the present day ; 
and calls for the revival of that spirit of economy 
which distinguished the democracy in the earlier 
periods of the government. Some passages from 
the speech of each senator (General Smith and 
Mr. Benton) will present this brief, but impor- 
tant inquiry, in its proper point of view. Gen. 
Smith said : 

'• I will now come, Mr. President, t my prin- 
cipal object. It is the assertion, ' thai, since the 
year 1821, the expenses of the government had 
nearly doubled ; ' and I trust I shall be able to 
show that the senator from Missouri [Mr. Ben- 
ton] had been under some misapi)reheiision. The 
Senate are aware of the eftect which siich an asser- 
tion, coming from such high authority, must have 
upon the public mind. It certainly had its effect 
even upon this enlightened body. I mentioned 
to an lionorable senator a few days since, that 
the average ordinary expenditure of the govern- 
ment for the last nine years did not exceed the 
sum of twelve and a half millions. But, said 



the senator, the expenditures have greatly in- 
creased during that period. I told him I thought 
they had not ; and I now proceed to prove, that, 
with the exception of four years, viz., 1821, 1822, 
1823, and 1824, the expenditures of the govern- 
ment have not increased. I shall endeavor to 
show the causes of the reduction of expenses 
during those j'cars, and that they aflbrd no cri- 
teria by which to judge of the necessary expenses 
of government, and tliat they are exceptions to 
the general rate of expenditures, arising from 
particular causes. But even they exhibit an 
expenditure far above the one half of the present 
annual ordinary expenses. 

" In the year 1822, which was the period when 
the senator from Missouri [Mr. Benton] took his 
seat in the Senate, the ordinary expenses of the 
government amounted to the sum of $9,827,643. 
The expenses of the year 1823, amounted to 
$9,784,154. I proceed, Mr. President, to show 
the cause which thus reduced the ordinary ex- 
penses during these years. I speak in the 
presence of gentlemen, some of whom were then 
in the House of Representatives, and will correct 
me if my recollection should lead me into error. 
During the session of the year 1819-'20 the 
President asked a loan, I think, of five millions, 
to defray the expenses of the government, which 
he had deemed necessary, and for which estimates 
had, as usual, been laid before Congress. A 
loan of three millions only was granted ; and, in 
the next session, another loan of, I think, seven 
millions was asked, in order to enable the Exe- 
cutive to meet the amount of expenses estimated 
for, as necessary for the year 1821. A loan of 
five millions was granted, and in the succeeding 
year another loan of five hundred thousand 
dollars was asked, and refused. Congress were 
dis.«atisfied that loans should be required in time 
of profound peace, to meet the common expenses 
of the nation ; and they reftiscd to grant the 
amount a.sked for in the estimates, although this 
amount would have been granted if there had 
been money in the treasiiry to meet them, with- 
out resorting to loans. The Committee of Ways 
and IVIeans (and it was supported by the House) 
lessened some of the items estimated for, and 
refused others. No item, except such as was 
indispensably necessary, was granted. By the 
adoption of this course, the expenditures were 
reduced, in 1821, to $10,723,479, and to the 
sums already mentioned for the two years, 1822 
and 1823, and the current expenses of 1824. 
$10,330,144. The consequence was, that the 
treasury was restored to a sound state, so that 
Congress was enabled, in the year 1825, to ap- 
propriate the full amount of the estimate. The 
exjieuditures of 1824 amounted to $15,330,144. 
This large expenditure is to be attributed to the 
payment made to Spain in that year, of $5,000,000 
for the purchase of Florida. I entertained doubts 
whether I ought to include this sum in the ex- 
penditures ; but, on full consideration, 1 deemed 
it proper to include it. It may be said that it 
i was an extraordinary paymtnt, and such as could 



AOTfO 1832. ANDREW JACKSON, rHESIDENT. 



231 



uot again occur. So is the payment on account 
of awards under the Treaty of Ghent, in 1827 
and 1828, amounting to $1,188,710. Of the 
same character, too, are the payments made for 
the purchase of lands from the Indians ; for the 
removal of the Indians; for payments to the 
several States for moneys advanced during the 
late war ; and a variety of other extraordinary 
charges on the treasury." 

The error of this statement was in the basis 
of the calculation, and in the inclusion of items 
which did not belong to the expenses proper of 
the government, and in beginning to count be- 
fore the year of reduction — the whole of which, 
in a period often years made an excess of twenty- 
two millions above the ordinary expenses. I 
answered thus : 

" ^Ir. Benton rose in reply to the senator from 
Maryland. Mr. B. said that a remark of his, 
in a former debate, seemed to have been the 
occasion of the elaborate financial statements 
which the senator from Maryland had just gone 
through. Mr. B. said he had made the remark 
in debate ; it was a general one, and not to be 
treated as an account stated by an accounting 
oificer. His remark was, that the public expen- 
diture had nearly doubled since he had been a 
member of the Senate. Neither the words 
used, nor the mode of the expression, implied 
the accuracy of an account ; it was a remark to 
signify a great and inordinate increase in a com- 
paratively short time. He had not come to the 
Senate this day with the least expectation of 
being called to justify that remark, or to hear a 
long arraignment of it argued ; but he was 
ready at all times to justify, and he would 
quickly do it. ^Rlr. B. said that when he made 
the remark, he had no statement of accounts in 
his eye, but he had two great and broad facts 
before liim, which all the figures and calcula- 
tions upon earth, and all the compound and 
comparative statements of arithmeticians, could 
not shake or alter, which were — first, that when 
he came into the Senate the machinery of this 
government was worked for between eight and 
nine millions of dollars ; and, secondly, the actual 
payments for the last vear. in the President's 
message, were about fourteen millions and three- 
quarters. The sum estimated for the future 
expenditures, by the Secretary of the Treasury, 
was thirteen and a half miUions ; but fifteen 
millions were recommended by him to be levied 
to meet increased expenditures. Mr. B. said 
these were two great facts which he had in his 
eye, and which he would justify. He would 
produce no proofs as to the second of his facts, 
because the President's message and the Secre- 
tary's report were so recently sent in, and so 
universally reprinted, that every person could 
recollect, or turn to their contents, and verify 
bis statement upon their own examination or 



recollection. He would verify his first state- 
ment only by proofs, and for that purpose would 
refer to the detailed statements of the public 
expenditures, compiled by Van Zandt and Wat- 
terston, and for which he had just sent to the 
room of the Secretary of the Senate. Mr. B. 
would take the years 1822-'3 ; for he was not 
simple enough to take the years before the re- 
duction of the army, when he was looking for 
the lowest expenditure. Four thousand men 
were disbanded, and had remained disbanded 
ever since ; they were disbanded since he came 
into the Senate ; he would therefore date from 
that reduction. This would bring him to the 
years 1822-'3, when you, sir (the Vice-Presi- 
dent), was Secretary of War. What was the 
whole expenditure of the government for each 
of those years ? It stood thus : 

1822, $1'7,6'76,592 63 

1823, 15,314,171 00 

" These two sums include every head of ex- 
penditure — they include public debt, revolution- 
ary and invalid pensions ; three heads of tem- 
porary expenditure. The payments on account 
of the public debt in those two years, wei'e — 



la 1822, 
1823, 



$7,848,919 12 
5,530,016 41 



" Deduct these two snms from the total ex- 
penditure of the years to which they refer, and 
you will have — 



For 1822, 
1823, 



$9,727,673 41 
9,784,155 59 



" The pensions for those years were — 

Revolutionary. Invalid. Aggregate. 

1822, $1,642,590 94 $305,608 46 $1,947,199 40 

1823, 1,449,097 04 331,491 48 1,730,588 52 

" Now, deduct these pensions from the years 
to which they refer, and you will have just about 
$8,000,000 as the expense of working the ma- 
chinery of government at the period which I 
had in my eye. But the pensions have not yet 
totally ceased ; they are much diminished since 
1822, 1823, and in a few years must cease. The 
revolutionary pensioners must now average 
seventy years of age ; their stipends will soon 
cease. I hold myself well justified, then, in say- 
ing, as I did, that the expenditures of the govern- 
ment have nearly doubled in my time. The 
remark had no reference to admiuistratiojis. 
There was nothing comparative in it ; nothing 
intended to put up, or put down, any body. 
The burdens of the people is the onl}- thing I 
wish to put down. i\Iy service in the Sc.iate 
has extended under three administrations, and 
my periods of calculation extend to all three. 
My opinion now is, that the machinery of this 
government, after the payment of the public debt, 
should be worked for ten millions or le s, and 
two millions more for cxtraordinaries ; in all 
twelve millions J but this is a pohit for future 
discussion. My present object is to show a greai 



232 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



increase in a short time ; and to show that, not 
to afTert individuals, hut to show the necessity 
of practisinir wliar wc all profess — economy. I 
am ajrainst keepins up a revenue, after the debt 
and pensions are paid, as larf^u, or nearly as large, 
as the exiienditure was in 1822, lcS23, with these 
items included, f am for throwinj:; down my 
load, when I sret to the end of my journey. I 
am for throwing; off the burden of the debt, when 
I get to the end of the debt. The burden of the 
debt is the taxes levied on account of it. I am 
for aholishini; these taxes ; and this is the great 
question upon which parties now g;o to trial be- 
fore the American people. One word more, and 
I am done for the present. The senator for 
Mar3-land, to make up a goodly average for 1822, 
and 1823, adds the expenditure of 1824, which 
includes, besides sixteen millions and a half for 
the public debt, and a million and a half for pen- 
sions, the sum of live millions for the purchase 
of Florida. Sir, he must deduct twenty-two 
millions from that computation ; and that de- 
duction will bring his average for those years to 
agree ver}- closely with my statement." 

It was something at the time this inquiry 
took place to know which was right — General 
Smith, or myself. Two millions, more or less, 
per annum in the public expenditures, was then 
something — a thing to be talked about, and ac- 
counted for, among tlie economical men of that 
day. It seems to be nothing now, when the 
increases are many millions per annum — when 
personal and job legislation have become the 
frequent practice — when contracts are legislated 
to adventurers and speculators — when the halls 
of Congress have come to be considered the pro- 
per place to lay the foundations, or to repair the 
dilapidations of milhonary fortunes : and when 
the public fisc, and the national domain may con- 
sider themselves fortunate sometimes in getting 
ofF with a loss of two millions in a single opera- 
tion. 



CH APT Ell LXIII. 

BANK OF THE UNITED STATES-RECHARTEI^ 
COMMENCEMENT OF THE rUOCEEDINGS. 

In the month of December 1831, the '"National 
Republicans" (as the party was then called 
wliich aftenvards took the name of "whig), as- 
.-^embled in convention at Baltimore to nominate 
candidates of their party for the presidential, and 
vice-presidential election, which was to take 
place in the autumn of the ensuing year The 



nominations were made — Henry Clay of Ken- 
tucky, for President; and John Sergeant of 
Pennsylvania for Vice-President : and the nomi- 
nations accepted by them respectively. After- 
wards, and according to what was usual on such 
occasions, the convention issued an address to 
the people of the United States, setting forth 
the merits of their own, and the demerits of the 
opposite candidate; and j^resenting the party 
issues which were to be tried in the ensuing 
elections. So for as these issues were political, 
they were legitimate subjects to place before the 
people : so far as they were not political, they 
were illegitimate, and wrongfully dragged into 
the political arena, to be made subservient to 
party elevation. Of this character were the topics 
of the tariff, of internal impi'ovcment, the re- 
moval of the Cherokee Indians, and the renewal 
of the United States Bank charter. Of these 
four subjects, all of them in their nature uncon- 
nected with politics, and requiring for their own 
good to remain so unconnected, I now notice but 
one — that of the renewal of the charter of the 
existing national bank ; — and which was now 
presented as a party object, and as an issue in 
the eleotion. and under all the exaggerated as- 
pects which party tactics consider lawful in the 
prosecution of their aims. The address said : 

" Next to the great measures of policy which 
protect and encourage domestic industiy, the 
most important question, connected with the 
economical policy of the country, is that of the 
bank. This great and beneficial institution, by 
facilitating exchanges between cUllerent parts of 
the Union, and maintaining a sound, ample, and 
healthy state of the currency, ma)' be said to 
supply the body politic, economically viewed, 
with a continual stream of life-blood, without 
which it must inevitably languish, and sink into 
exhaustion. It was first conceived and organ- 
.'iccd by the powerful mind of Hamilton. After 
having been temporarily shaken b}' the honest 
though groundless scruples of other statesmen, 
it has been recalled to existence by the genera] 
consent of all parties, and with the iun"versal ap- 
probation of the people. Under the ablest and 
most faithful management it has been for many 
years past pursuing a course of steady and con- 
stantly increasing influence. Such is the institu- 
tion which the President has gone out of liis way 
in several successive messages, without a j)reteiice 
of necessity or plausible motive, in the lirst in- 
stance six years before his suggestion could with 
any propriety be acted upon, to denounce to 
Congress as a sort of nuisance, and consign, as 
far as his influence extends, to immediate de- 
struction. 



ANNO 1832. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



233 



" For this denunciation no pretext of any ade- 
quate motive is assigned. At a time when the 
institution is known to all to be in the most 
efficient and prosperous state — to be doing all 
that any bank ever did or can do, we are, briefly 
told in ten words, that it has not effected the 
objects for which it was instituted, and must be 
abolished. Another institution is recommended 
as a substitute, which, so far as the description 
given of it can be understood, would be no better 
than a machine in the hands of the government 
for fabricating and issuing paper money without 
check or responsibility. In his recent message 
to Congress, the President declares, for the third 
. time, his opinion on these subjects, in the same 
concise and authoritative style as before, and in- 
timates that he shall consider his re-election as 
an expression of the opinion of the people that 
they ought to be acted on. If, therefore, the 
President be re-elected, it may be considered 
certain that the bank will be abolished, and the 
institution which he has recommended, or some- 
thing like it, substituted in its place. 

" Are the people of the United States prepared 
for this ? Are they ready to destroy one of their 
most valuable establishments to gratify the ca- 
price of a chief magistrate, who reasons, and ad- 
vises upon a subject, with the details of which he is 
evidently unacquainted, in direct contradiction to 
the opinion of his own official counsellors ? Are 
the enterprising, liberal, high-minded, and intel- 
ligent merchants of the Union willing to coun- 
tenance such a measure ? Are the cultivators 
of the "West, who find in the Bank of the United 
States a never-failing source of that capital, 
which is so essential to their prosperity, and 
which they can get nowhere else, prepared to 
lend their aid in drying up the fountain of their 
own prosperity? Is there any class of the 
people or section of the Union so , lost to every 
sentiment of common prudence, so regardless of 
all the principles of republican government, as 
to place in the hands of the executive depart- 
ment the means of an irresponsible and unlim- 
ited issue of paper money — in other words, the 
means of corruption without check or bounds ? 
If such be, in fact, the wishes of the people, they 
will act with consistency and propriety in voting 
for General Jackson, as President of the United 
States ; for, by his re-election, all these disas- 
trous eifects \vjll certainly be produced. He is 
fully and three times over pledged to the people 
to negative any bill that may be passed for re 
chartering the bank, and there is little doubt 
that the additional influence which he would 
acquire by a re-election, would be employed 
to carry through Congress the extraordinary 
substitute which he has repeatedly proposed." 

Thus the bank question was fully presented 
as an issue in the election by that part of its 
friends which classed politically against Presi- 
dent Jackson J but it had also democratic 



friends, without whose aid the recharter could 
not be got through Congress j and the result 
produced which was contemplated with hope 
and pleasui'c — responsibility of a veto thrown 
upon the President. The consent of this wing 
was necessary : and it was obtained as related 
in a previous chapter, through the instrumen- 
tality of a caucus — that contrivance of modern 
invention by which a few govern many — by 
which the many are not only led by the few, but 
subjugated by them, and turned against them- 
selves : and after having performed at the cau- 
cus as ajigurante (to make up a majority), be- 
come real actors in doing what they condemn. 
The two wings of the bank friends were brought 
together by this machinery, as already related 
in chapter Ixi. ; and oijerations for the new char- 
ter immediately commenced, in conformity to 
the decision. On the 9th day of January the 
memorial of the President, Directors & Com- 
pany of the Bank was presented in each House 
— hj Mr. Dallas in the Senate, and iMr. jNIcDuffie 
in the House of Representatives ; and while con- 
demning the time of bringing forward the ques- 
tion of the recharter, Mr. Dallas, in further inti- 
mation of his previously signified opinion of its 
then dangerous introduction, said : " He became 
a willing, as he was virtually an instructed 
agent, in promoting to the extent of his humble 
ability, an object which, however dangeroiushj 
timed its introduction might seem, was in itself 
as he conceived, entitled to every consideration 
and favor." IMr. Dallas then moved for a select 
committee to revise, consider, and report upon 
the memorial — which motion was granted, and 
Messrs. Dallas, Webster, Ewing of Ohio, Haync 
of South Carolina, and Johnston of Louisiana, 
were appointed the committee — elected for that 
purpose by a vote of the Senate — and all except 
one favorable to the recharter. 

In the House of Representatives Mr. IMcDuffie 
did not ask for the same reference — a select 
committee — but to the standing committee of 
Ways and Means, of which he was chairman, 
and which was mainly composed of the same 
members as at the previous session when it re- 
ported so elaborately in favor of the bank. The 
reason of this diSerencc on the point of the 
reference was understood to be this : that in the 
Senate the committee being elective, and the 
majority of the body liivorable to the bank, a 
favorable committee was certain to be had on 



234 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW 



ballot — while in the House the appointment of 
the committee being in the hands of the Speaker 
(Mr. Stevenson), and he adverse to the institu- 
tion, tlie same favorable result could not be safely 
counted on ; and, therefore, the select committee 
was avoided, and the one known to be favorable 
was preferred. This led to an adverse motion to 
refer to a select committee — in support of which 
motion Mr. Wayne of Georgia, since appointed 
one of the justices of the Supreme Court, said : 

" That he had on a former occasion expressed 
his objection to the reference of this subject to 
the Committee of Ways and Means ; and he 
should not trouble the House by repeating now 
what he had advanced at the commencement of 
the session in favor of the appointment of a se- 
lect committee ; but he called upon gentlemen 
to consider what was the attitude of the Com- 
mittee of Ways and Means in reference to the 
bank question, and to compare it with the atti- 
tude in which that question had been presented 
to the House bj' the President of the United 
States ; and he would ask, whether it was not 
manifestl}'^ proper to submit the memorial to a 
committee entirely uncommitted upon the sub- 
ject. But this was not tlit object for which he 
had risen ; the present question had not come 
upon him unexpectedly ; he had been aware 
before he entered the House that a memorial 
of this kind would this morning be presented ; 
and when he looked back upon the occurrences 
of the last four weeks, and remembered what 
had taken place at a late convention in Balti- 
more, and the motives wiiich had been avowed 
for bringing forward the subject at this time, 
he must say that gentlemen ought not to per- 
mit a petition of this kind to receive the atten- 
tion of the House. AVho could doubt that the 
presentation of that memorial was in fact a 
party measure, intended to have an important 
operation on persons occupying the highest 
offices of the government ? If, however, it 
should be considered necessary to enter upon 
the subject at the present time, Mr. Wayne 
said he was prepared to meet it. But when 
gentlemen saw distinctly before their ej-es the 
motive of such a proceeding, he hoped that, not- 
withstanding there might be a majority in the 
House in favor of the bank, gentlemen would 
not lend themselves to that kind of action. 
Could it Ix; necessary to tiike up the question 
of re-chartering the bank at the present session ? 
Gentlemen all knew that four years must pass 
before its charter would expire, and that Con- 
gress had power to extend the period, if further 
time was necessary to wind up its alfairs. It 
wa.s known that other suljects of an exciting 
character must come up during the present ses- 
sion ; and could there be any necessity or pro- 
priety in throwing additional matter into the 
House, calculated to raise that excitement yet 
higher?" 



Mr. McDuffie absolved himself from all con- 
nection with the Baltimore national republican 
convention, and claimed like absolution for tho 
directory of the bank ; and intimated that a 
caucus consultation to which democratic mem- 
bers were party, had led to the presentation of 
the memorial at this time ; — an intimation en- 
tirely true, only it should have comprehended 
all the friends of the bank of both political par- 
ties. A running debate took place on these 
motions, in which many members engaged. 
Admitting that the parliamentary law required 
a friendly committee for the application, it was 
yet urged that that committee should be a se- 
lect one, charged with the single subject, and 
with leisure to make investigations ; — which 
leisure the Committee of Ways did not possess 
— and could merely report as formerly, and 
without giving any additional information to 
the House. JNIr. Archer of Virginia, said : 

" As regarded the disposal of the memorial. It 
appeared clear to him that a select committee 
would be the proper one. This had been the 
disposal adopted with all former memorials. 
Why vary the mode now 1 The subject was of 
a magnitude to entitle it to a special committee. 
As regarded the Committee of Waj's and iMeans, 
with its important functions, were not its hands 
to be regarded as too full for the great attention 
which this matter must demand ? It was to be 
remarked, too, that this committee, at a forme!- 
session, with little variety in its composition, 
had, in the most formal manner, expressed its 
opinion on the great question involved. We 
ought not, as had been said, to jjut the memorial 
to a nurse which would strangle it. Neither 
would it be proper to send it to an inquest in 
which its fate had been prejudged. Let it go to 
either the Committee of Ways and Cleans, or a 
select committee ; the chairman of that commit- 
tee would stand as he ought, in the same relation 
to it. If the last disposal were adopted, too. the 
majority of the committee would consist, under 
the usage in that respect, of friends of the mea- 
sure. The recommendation of this mpde was, 
that it would present the nearest approach to 
equality in the contest, of which the case ad- 
mitted. 

'' Mr. Mitchell, of South Carolina, said that 
he concurred entirely in the views of his friend 
from Georgia [.Mr. VVaync]. He did not think 
that the bank (piestion ought to be lakeu up at 
all this session ; but if it were, it ought most 
unquestionably to be referred to a select com- 
mittee. He saw no reason, however, for its 
being refened at all. The mc-mber fiom South 
Carolina [Mr. McUufSe] tells us, said Mr. M., 
that it involves the vast amount of Gfty milhons 
of dollars ; tliat this is dispersed to every clasd 



ANNO 1832. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



235 



of people in our widely extended country ; and 
if the question of r^chartering were not decided 
now, it would hazard these great and complicated 
interests. Mr. M. said he attached no impor- 
tance to this argument. The stockholders who 
met lately at Philadelphia thought differently, 
for, by a solemn resolution, they left it discre- 
tionary with the president of the bank to propose 
the question to Congress when he saw fit. If 
they had thought that a postponement would 
have endangered their interests, would they not 
have said so? This fact does away the tx-gu- 
ment of the member from South Carolina. The 
bank question was decided by the strongest 
party question which could be put to this or 
any House. It has been twice discussed within 
a few years. It was rejected once in the Senate 
by the vote of the Vice-President, and it after- 
wards passed this House with a majority of two. 
It would divide the whole country, and excite 
on that floor, feehngs of the most exasperated 
bitterness. Not a party question ? Does not 
the member from South Carolina [Mr. McDufBe] 
remember that this question divided the country 
into federalists and republicans? It was a great 
constitutional question, and he hoped all those 
who thought with him, would rally against it 
in all their strength. But why refer it to the 
Committe of Ways and Means ? It was com- 
mitted before to a select committee on national 
currency. If the question was merely financial, 
as whether we should sell our stock, and, if we 
did, whether we should sell it to the bank, he 
would not object to its being referred to the 
Committee of Waj's and Means. But it was not 
a question of revenue. It was one of policy and 
the constitution — one of vast magnitude and of 
the greatest complexity — requiring a committee 
of the most distinguished abilities on that floor. 
It was a party question in reference to men and 
things out of doors. Those who deny this, must 
be blind to every thing around them — we hear 
it every where — we see it in all which we read. 
Sir, we have now on hand a topic which must 
engross every thought and feeling — a topic which 
perhaps involves the destinies of this nation — a 
topic of such magnitude as to occupy us the re- 
mainder of the session ; I mean the tariff. I 
hope, therefore, this memorial will be laid on the 
table, and, if not, that it will be referred to a 
select committee." 

Mr, Charles Johnston, of Virginia, said : 

" The bank has been of late distinctly and re- 
peatedly charged with using its funds, and the 
funds of the people of these States, in operating 
upon and controlling public opinion. He did not 
mean to express any opinion as to the truth or 
falsehood of this accusation, but it Avas of suffi- 
cient consequence to demand an accurate in- 
quiry. The bank was further charged with 
violating its charter, in the issue of a great 
number of small drafts to a large amount, and 
payable, in the language of the honorable member 



from New-York [Mr. Cambreleng], "nowhere;' 
this charge, also, deserved inquiry. There were 
other charges of maladministration which equally 
deserved inquiry ; and it was his [Mr. J.'s] in 
tention, at a future day, unless some othe? 
gentleman more versed in the business of the 
House anticipated him, to press these inquiries 
by a series of instructions to the committee 
intrusted with the subject. Mr. J. urged as an 
objection to referi'ing this inquiry to the Com- 
mittee of Ways and Means, that so much of 
their time would be occupied with the regular 
and important business connected with the fiscal 
operations of the government, that they could 
not spare labor enough to accomplish the minute 
investigations wanted at their hands. We had 
been further told that all the members of that 
committee were friendly to the project of re- 
chartering the bank, and the honorable gentleman 
[Mr. Mercer] had relied upon the fact, as a fair 
exponent of public opinion in favor of the bank. 
He [Mr. J.] added, that although he could by 
no means assent to the force of this remark, yet 
that it furnished strong reason for those who 
wished a close scrutiny of the administration of 
the bank, to wish some gentlemen placed on the 
committee of inquiry, who would be actuated by 
the zeal of fair opposition to the bank ; he con- 
ceded that a majority of the committee should 
be composed of its friends. He concluded, by 
hoping that the memorial would be referred to 
a select committee." 

Finally the vote was taken, and the memoril 
referred to the Committee of Ways and Means 
but by a slender majority — 100 against 90 — an(S 
24 members absent, or not voting. The mem- 
bers of the committee were : Messrs. McDufiie 
of South Carolina ; Verplanck of New-York > 
Ingersoll, of Connecticut ; Gilmore, of Pennsyl- 
vania ; Mark Alexander, of Virginia ; Wilde, of 
Georgia ; and Gaither, of Kentucky. 



CHAPTER LXIV. 

BANK OF THE UNITED STATES— COMMITTEE OP 
INVESTIGATION OKDERED. 

Skeing the state of parties in Congress, and the 
tactics of the bank — that there was a majority 
in each House for the institution, and no inten- 
tion to lose time in arguing for it — our course 
of action became obvious, which was — to attack 
incessantly, assail at all points, display the evil 
of the institution, rouse the pcojile — and prepare 
them to sustain the veto. It was seen to be the 



236 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



policy of the bank leaders to carry the charter 
first, and quietly through the Senate ; and after- 
wards, in the same way in the House. We 
determined to have a contest in both places, and 
to force the bank into defences wliich would 
engage it in a general combat, and lay it open 
to side-blow, as well as direct attacks. AYith 
this view a great many amendments and inqui- 
ries were prepared to be offered in the Senate, 
all of them proper, or plausible, recommendable 
in themselves, and supported by acceptable 
reasons ; which the fiiends of the bank must 
either answer, or reject without answer ; and 
so inciu' odium. In the House it was determined 
to make a move, which, whether resisted or 
admitted by the bank majority, would be certain 
tO have an effect against the institution — namel}', 
an investigation b}' a committee of the House, 
as provided for in the charter. If the investi- 
gation was dciiied, it would be guilt shrinking 
from detection ; if admitted, it Avas well known 
that misconduct would be found. I conceived 
this movement, and had charge of its direction. 
I preferred the House for the theatre of investi- 
gation, as most appropriate, being the grand 
inquest of the nation ; and, besides, wished a 
contest to be going on there while the Senate was 
tngaged in passing the charter ; and the right 
\o raise the committee was complete, in either 
House. Besides the right reserved in the char- 
ter, there was a natural right, when the corpo- 
ration was asked for a renewed lease, to inquire 
how it had acted under the previous one. I got 
Mr. Clayton, a new member from Georgia (who 
had written a pamphlet against the bank in his 
own State), to take charge of the movement; 
and gave him a memorandum of seven alleged 
breaches of the charter, and fifteen instances of 
imputed misconduct, to inquire into, if he got 
his committee ; or to allege on the floor, if he 
encountered resistance. 

On Thursday, the 23d of February, Mr. 
Clayton made his motion — " That a select com- 
mittee be appointed to examine into the affairs 
of the Bank of the United States, with power to 
send for persons and papers, and to report the 
result of their inqviiries to the House." This 
motion was objected to, and its consideration 
l)ostponed until the ensuing Monday. Called 
up on that day, an attempt was made to repulse 
it from the consideration of the House. Mr. 
Watmough, a representative from Pennsylvania, 



and from the city, a friend to the bank, and 
from his locality and fricnd^iip supposed to be 
familiar with its wishes, raised the question of 
consideration — that is, called on the House to 
decide whether they would consider Mr. Clay- 
ton's motion ; a question which is only raised 
under the parliamentary law where the motion 
is too frivolous, or flagrantly improper, to re- 
ceive the attention of the House. It was a false 
move on the part of the institution ; and the 
more so as it seemed to be the result of deliber- 
ation, and came from its immediate representa- 
tive. Mr. Polk, of Tennessee, saw the advantage 
presented ; and as the question of consideration 
was not debatable, he demanded, as the only 
mode of holding the movement to its respon- 
sibility, the yeas and nays on Mr. Watmough's 
question. But it went off on a different point — 
a point of order — the question of consideration 
not lying after the House has taken action on 
the subject ; and in this case that had been done 
— very little action to be sure — only postponing 
the consideration from one day to another ; but 
enough to satisfy the rule ; and so the motion 
of Mr. Watmough was disallowed; and the 
question of consideration let in. Another move- 
ment was then made to cut off discussion, and 
get rid of the resolution, by a motion to lay it 
on the table, also made b}'^ a friend of the bank 
[Mr. Lewis Williams, of North Carolina]. This 
motion was withdrawn at the instance of Mr. 
]\IcDuffie, who began to see the effect of these 
motions to suppress, not only investigation, but 
congressional discussion ; and, besides, Mr. jNIc- 
PufBe was a bold man. and an able debater, 
and had examined the subject, and reported in 
favor of the bank, and fully believed in its 
purity ; and was, therefore, the less averse to 
debate. But resistance to investigation was 
continued by others, and was severely animad- 
verted upon by several speakers — among others, 
by Mr. Polk, of Tennessee, who said: 

" The bank asks a renewal of its charter ; and 
ought its friends to object to the inquiry 1 He 
must say that he had been not a little surprised 
at the unexpected resistance whicii had been of- 
ferred to the resolution under consideration, by 
the friends and admirers of this institution — by 
those who, no doubt, sincerely believed its con- 
tinued existence for anotlicr term of twenty yoarg 
to be essential to the prosperity of the country. 
He repeated his sur})rise that its friends should 
be found shrinking from the investigation pro- 
posed. He would not say that such resistance 



ANNO 1832. ANDREW JACKSON PRESIDENT. 



237 



afforded any fair grounds of inference that there 
might be something " rotten in the state of Den- 
mark." He would not say this ; for he did not 
feel himself authorized to do so ; but was it not 
perceived that such an inference might, and 
probably would, be drawn by the public ? On 
what ground was the inquiry opposed 7 Was 
it that it was improper ? Was it that it was 
unusual ? The charter of the bank itself author- 
ized a committee of either House of Congress to 
examine its books, and report upon its condition, 
whenever either House may choose to institute 
an examination. A committee of this House, 
upon a former occasion, did make such an ex- 
amination, and he would refer to their report 
before he sat down. Upon the presentation of 
the bank memorial to the other branch of the 
legislature, a select committee had been invested 
with power to send for persons and papers, if 
they chose to do so. When the same memorial 
was presented to that House, what had been the 
course pursued by the friends of the bank ? A 
motion to refer it to a select committee was op- 
posed. It was committed to their favorite Com- 
mittee of Ways and Means. He meant no dis- 
respect to that committee, when he said that the 
question of rechartering the bank was known to 
have been prejudged by that committee. When 
the President of the United States brought the 
subject of the bank to the notice of Congress in 
December. 1829, a select committee was refused 
by the friends of the bank, and that portion of the 
message was referred to the Committee of Ways 
and Means. Preciselj^ the same thing occurred 
at the commencement of the last and at the pre- 
sent session of Congress, in the reference which 
was made of that part of the messages of the 
President upon the subject of the bank. The 
friends of this institution have been careful al- 
ways to commit it to the same committee, a 
committee whose opinions were known. Upon 
the occasion first referred to, that committee 
made a report favorable to the bank, which was 
sent forth to the public, — not a report of facts, 
not a report founded upon an examination into 
the affairs of the bank. At the present session, 
we were modestly asked to extend this bank 
monopoly for twenty years, without any such 
examination having taken place. The committee 
had reported a bill to that effect, but had given 
us no facts in relation to the present condition 
of the bank. They had not even deemed it ne- 
cessary to ask to be invested with power to ex- 
amine either into its present condition, or into 
the manner in which its affairs have been con- 
ducted. 

" He would now call the attention of the House 
to the examination of the bank, made by a com- 
mittee of this House in the year 1819, and under 
the order of the House. He then held the re- 
port of that committee in his hand. That com- 
mittee visited the bank at Philadelphia ; they 
examined its books, and scrutinized its conduct. 
They examined on oath the president, a part of 
the directors and officers of the bank. And what 



was the result? Tbey discovered many and 
flagrant abuses. They found that the charter 
had been violated in divers particulars, and they 
so reported to this House. He would not detain 
the House, however, with, the details of that 
document. Gentlemen could refer to it, and 
satisfy themselves. It contained much valuable 
information, as bearing upon the proposition now 
before the House. It was sufficient to say that 
at that period, within three years after the bank 
had gone into existence, it was upon the very 
verge of bankruptcy. This the gentleman from 
South Carolina would not deny. The report of 
the committee to which he had alluded author- 
ized him to say that there had been gross mis- 
management, he would not use any stronger 
term, and in the opinion of that committee (an 
opinion never reversed by Congress) a palpable 
violation of the charter. Now sir, this was the 
condition of the bank in 1819. The indulgence 
of Congress induced them not to revoke the 
charter. The bank had gone on in its opera- 
tions. Since that period no investigation or ex- 
amination had taken place. All we knew of it^ 
doings, since that period, was from the e.v part/' 
reports of its own oflQcers. These may all b* 
correct, but, if they be so, it could do no harm U^ 
ascertain the fact." 

Mr. Clayton then justified his motion for th« 
covcimhtee, first upon the provisions of the char- 
ter (article 23) which gave to either House of 
Congress the right at all times to appoint a com 
mittee to inspect the books, and to examine in 
to the proceedings of the bank ; and to report 
whether the provisions of the charter had been 
violated ; and he treated as a revolt against this 
provision of the charter, as well as a sign of 
guilt, this resistance to an absolute right on the 
part of Congress, and most proper to be exercised 
when the institution was soliciting the continu- 
ation of its privileges ; and which right had been 
exercised by the House in 1819, when its com- 
mittee found various violations of the charter, 
and proposed a scire facias to vacate it : — which 
was only refused by Congress, not for the sake 
of the bank, but for the community — whose dis- 
tresses the closing of the bank might aggravate. 
Next, he justified his motion on the grouud of 
misconduct in the bank in seven instances of 
violated charter, involving forfeiture ; and fifteen 
instances of abuse, which required correction, 
though not amounting to forfeiture of the char- 
ter. All these he read to the House, one by 
one, from a narrow slip of paper, which he con- 
tinued rolling round his finger all the time. 
The memorandum was mine — in my handwrit- 
ing — given to him to copy, and amplify, as thej 



23S 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



were brief memoranda. He had not copied 
them; and having to justify suddenly, he used 
the slip I had i;;ivcnhini — rolling it on his finger, 
as on a cylinder, to prevent my handwriting 
from being seen : so he afterwards told me him- 
self. The reading of these twenty-two heads of 
accusation, like so many counts in an indict- 
ment, sprung the friends of the bank to their 
feet — and its foes also — each finding in it some- 
thing to rouse them — one to th^ defence, the other 
to the attack. The accusatory list was as fol- 
lows : 

'"First: Violations of charter amounting 
to forfeiture : 

" 1. The issue of seven millions, and more, of 
branch bank orders as a currency. 

" 2. Usury on broken bank notes in Ohio and 
Kentuck}^ : nine hundred thousand dollars in 
Ohio, and nearly as much in Kentucky-. See 2 
Peters' Reports, p. 527, as to the nature of the 
case. 

" 3. Domestic bills of exchange, disguised loans 
to take more than at the rate of six per cent. 
Sixteen millions of these bills for December last. 
See monthly statements. 

4. Xon-user of the charter. In this, that 
n-om 1819 to 182G, a period of seven years, the 
South and "West branches issued no currency' of 
any kind. See the doctrine on non-user of char- 
ter and duty of corporations to act up to the 
end of their institution, and forfeiture for neg- 
lect, 

"5. Building houses to rent. See limitation 
in their charter on the right to hold real pro- 
perty. 

" (■). In the capital stock, not having due pro- 
portion of coin. 

" 7. Foreigners voting for directors, through 
their trustees. 

"Skcond: Abuses worthy of inquiry, not 
amounting to forfeiture, but going, if true, 
clearly to shoic the inexpediency of renewing 
the charter. 

" 1. Not cashing its own notes, or receiving 
in deposit at each branch, and at the parent 
bank, the notes of each other. By reason of 
this jiractice, notes of tlie mother bank are at a 
discKunt at many, if not all, of her branches, and 
completely negatives the assertion of 'sound 
and unif(jrm currency.' 

"2. Making a diflerencc in receiving notes 
from the federal government and the citizens of 
the States. TliLs is admitted as to all notes 
above live dollars. 

" 3. Making a diiTerence between members of 
Congress and the citizens generally, in both 
granting loans and selling bills of exchange. It 
Is believed it can be made to appear that mem- 
bers can obtain bills of exchange without, citi- 
zens witli a premium ; the first give nominal 
eiilorscrs. the other must give two sufficient re- 
Bident endorsers. 



"4. The undue accumulation of proxies 'm 
the hands of a few to control the election for 
directors. 

" 5. A strong suspicion of .secret understand- 
ing between the bank and brokers to job in 
stocks, contrary to the charter. For example, 
to buy up three jier cent, stock at this day ; and 
force the government to pay at par for that 
stock; and whether the government deposits 
may not be used to enhance its own debts. 

'•G. Subsidies and loans, directly or indirectly, 
to printers, editors, and lawyers, for purposes 
other than the regular business of the bank. 

" 7. Distinction in favor of merchants in sell- 
ing bills of exchange. 

" 8. Practices upon local banks and debtors to 
make them petition Congress for a renewal of its 
charter, and thus impose upon Congress by false 
clamor. 

"9. The actual management of the bank, 
whether safely and prudently conducted. See 
monthly statements to the contrary. 

" 10. The actual condition of the bank, her 
debts and credits ; how much she has increased 
debts and diminished her means to pay in the 
last year ; how much she has increased her 
credits and multiplied her debtors, since the 
President's message in 1829, without ability to 
take up the notes she has issued, and pay her 
deposits. 

"11. Excessive issues, all on public deposits. 

" 12. Whether the account of the bank's pros- 
perity be real or delusive. 

" 13. The amount of gold and silver coin and 
bullion sent from AVestern and Southern branch- 
es of the parent bank since its establishment in 
1817. The amount is supposed to be fifteen or 
twenty millions, and, with bank interest on 
bank debts, constitutes a system of the most 
intolerable oppression of the South and West. 
The gold and silver of the South and AVest have 
been drawn to the mother bank, mostly by the 
agency of that unlawful currency created by 
branch bank orders, as will be made fully to ap- 
pear. 

" 14. The establishment of agencies in diflfer- 
ent Stales, under the direction and management 
of one person only, to deal in bills of exchange, 
and to transact other business properly belong- 
ing to branch banks, contrary to the charter. 

" 15. Giving authority to State banks to dis- 
count their bills without authority from the 
Secretary of the Treasur}'." 

Upon the reading of these charges a heated and 
prolonged discussion took place, in which more 
than thirty members engaged (and about an 
equal number on each side) ; in which the 
friends of the bank lost so much ground in the 
public estimation, in making direct oppositi(m to 
investigation, that it became necessary to give 
up that species of opposition — declare in favor 
of examination — but so conducted as to be nu- 



AKN'O 1882. A^^)REW JACKSON, PEISIDENT. 



239 



gatory, and worse than useless. One proposi- openly admitting its connection with the presi- 
tion was to have the investigation made by the dential election. On seeing his proposed inquiry 
Committee of "^ays and Means— a proposition j thus restricted, Mr. Clayton thus gave vent to 
which involved many departures from parlia- his feelings : 
mentary law — from propriety — and from the 



respect which the bank owed to itself, if it was 
innocent. By all parliamentary law such a com- 



" I hope I may b^ permitted to take a parting 
leave of my resolution, as I very plainly perceive 
that it is going the way of all flesh. I discover 



oiittee must be composed of members friendly , ^^? ^^^^ ^^^ ^ complying majority at present in 

t xi • • I, ^ • ii T , this House, and at this late hour of the ni"-ht 

to the mqmry — heartv in the cause — and the i „^^ r■t^■^^^J\^r.r^ +^ xaic uuui <ji lue lu^ui, 

, . . ' , are determmed to carry thmgs m their own 

mover always to be its chau-man : here, on the | way ; but, sir, I view with astonishment the 
contrary, the mover was to be excluded: the , conduct of that majority. When a speaker rises 
verv champion of the Bank defence was to be ^° ^^^°^ *^f the bank, he is listened to with great 
the'investigating chairman j and the committee ^"ention; but when one opposed to it attempts 
to whom it was to go, was the same that had 



just reported so warmly for the Bank. But 



to address the House, such is the intentional 
noise and confusion, he cannot be heard j and, 
sir, the gentleman who last spoke but one in 



this proposition had so bad a look that the ^^^^^ <^f ^^ inquiry, had to take his seat in a 

chairman of the Committee of Wavs and Means : '^'^f ^"!^ l^°^*Sf '^ "?*: ^ ^"^ ^^^ understand 
n.T Af T^ ffi \ u- X J X -J. -L.-" ^^ ^1 ^"^^ conduct. When I introduced my resolu- 
(Mr. -AIcDuffie) objected to it himself, utterly tion, I predicated it upon the presumplion that 
refusing to take the ofiBce of prosecutor against every thing in this House would, when respect- 
an institution of which he was the public de- ^^'^7 presented, receive a respectful considera- 

fender. Propositions were then made to have *^^°' ^^^ ^.°"l^ ^,^ treated precisely as all other 

., , „ _.,, ■ 4. A V. u 11 J. XXI questions similarly situated are treated. I ex- 

the committee appomted by baUot, so as to take ^ected the same courtesy that other gentlemen 

the appomtment of the committee out of the received in the propositions submitted by them, 

hands of the Speaker (who, following the par- that it would go to a committee appointed in 

Uamentarj-rule, would select'a maiority of mem- *^® "^"^^ ^^™' *°^ t^^* t^^7 ^^uld have the 
1 „, f „„,, X • -A J ■ xu XI usual time to make their report. I believed, for 
bers favorable to inqmry) ; and m the vote by j tad no right to believe otherwise, that all com- 
ballot, the bank having a majonty in the House, mittees of this House were honest, and that they 
could reverse the parliamentary rule, and give bad too much respect for themselves, as well as 
to the institution a committee to shield, instead I ^"^^ ^^^ House, to trifle with any matter confided 

to their investigation. Bene\-ing this. I did ex- 



of to probe it. Unbecoming, and even suspi- 
dous to the institution itself as this proposition 
was, it came within a tie vote of passing, and 
was only lost by the casting vote of the Speaker. 
Investigation of some kmd, and by a select com- 
mittee, becoming then inevitable, the only thing 
that could be done in favor of the bank was to 
restrict its scope ; and this was done both as to 
time and matter ; and also as to the part of the 
institution t^ j examined. Mr. Adams intro- 
duced a resolution to limit the inquiry to the 
operations of the mother bank, thereby skipping 
the twenty-seven branches, though some of them 
were nearer than the parent bank; also hmiting 
the points of inquiry to breaches of the charter, 
so as to cut off the abuses ; also limiting the time 
to a short day (the 21st of April)— :March then 
being far advanced ; so as to subject full inves- 
tigation to be baffled for the want of time. The 
reason given for these restrictions was to bring 
the investigation within the compass of the 
session — so as to insure action on the application 
Defore the adjournment of Congress — thereby 



pect my resolution would be submitted in the 
accustomed way ; and if this House had thought 
proper to trust me. in part, with the examina- 
tion of the subject to which it refers. I would 
have proceeded to the business in good faith, 
and reported as early as was practicable with 
the impoi-tant interests at stake. It has been 
opposed in every shape; vote upon vote has 
been taken upon it. all evidently tending to 
evade inquiry ; and now it is determined to 
compel the committee to report in a limited 
time, a thing unheard of before in this House, 
and our inquiries are to be confined entirely to 
the mother bank ; whereas her branches, at 
which more than half the frauds and oppressions 
complained of have been committed, are to go 
unexamined, and we are to be limited to breaches 
of the charter when the abuses charged are nu- 
merous and flagrant, and equally injurious to 
the community. We are only to examine the 
books of the parent bank, the greatest part of 
which may be accidental!}- from home, at some 
of the branches. If the bank can reconcile it to 
herself to meet no other kind of investigation buv 
this, she is welcome to all the advantages which 
such an insincere and shuffling course is calculat- 
ed to confer ; the people of this country are too 
intelligent not to understand exactly her object." 



240 



t 

THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



Among the abuses cut off from examinations 
by these restrictions, were two modes of ex- 
torting double and treble compensation for the 
use of money, one by turning a loan note into 
a bill of exchange, and the other by forcing the 
borrower to take his money upon a domestic 
bill instead of on a note — both systematically 
practised upon in the West, and converting 
nearly all the TTcstern loans into enormously 
usurious transactions. Mr. Clayton gave the 
following description of the first of these modes 
of extorting usury : 

" I will now make a fuller statement ; and I 
think I am authorized to sa}^ that there are gen- 
tlemen in this House from the West, and under 
my eye at present, who will confirm every word 
I say. A person has a note in one of the West- 
ern branch banks, and if the bank determines 
to extend no further credit, its custom is, when 
it sends out the usual notice of the time the 
note falls due, to write across the notice, in 
red ink, these three fatal woi'ds — well under- 
stood in that country — ' Payment is expect- 
ed.' This notice, thus rubricated, becomes a 
death- waiTant to the credit of that cu?tonior, 
unless he can raise the wind, as it is called, to 
paj' it off, or can discount a domestic bill of ex- 
change. This last is done in one of two ways. 
If he has a factor in New Orleans who is in the 
habit of receiving and selling his produce, he 
draws upon him to pay it ofl'at maturity. The 
bank cliarges two per centum for two months, 
the factor two and a half, and thus, if the draft 
is at sixty days, he pays at the rate of twenty- 
seven per centum. If, however, he has no fac- 
tor, he is obliged to get some friend who has 
one to make the arrangement to get his draft 
accepted. For this accommodation he pays his 
friend one and a half per cent., besides the two 
per cent, to the bank, and the two and a half 
per cent, to the acceptor ; making, in this mode 
of arrangement, thirty-six per cent, which he 
paj-s before he can get out of the clutches of the 
bank for that time, twelve per cent, of which, 
m either case, goes to the bank ; and so little 
conscience have they, in order to make this, 
they will subject a poor and unfortunate debtor 
to the other enormous burdens, and consequent- 
ly to absolute beggarj-. For it must be obvious 
to every one that such a per cent, for money, 
under the melancholy depreciation of produce 
every where in the South and West, will soon 
wind up the affairs of such a borrower. No 
people under the heavens can bear it ; and un- 
less a stop is put to it, in some way or other, I 
predict the Western people will be in the most 
deplorable situation it is possible to conceive. 
There is another great hardship to which this 
debtor is liable, if he should not be able to fur- 
nish the produce ; or, which is sometimes the 
case, if it is sacrificed in the sale of it at the 



time the draft becomes due, whereby it is pro- 
tested for want of funds, it returns upon him 
with the additional cost of ten per cent, for 
non-i)ayTnent. Now, sir, that is what is meant 
by domestic bills of exchange, disguised as loans, 
to take more than six per cent. 3 for, mark, Mr. 
Speaker, the bank does not purchase a bill of 
exchange by paying out cash for it, and receiv- 
ing the usual rate of exchange, Avhich varies 
from one-quarter to one per cent. ; but it mere- 
ly' delivers up the poor debtor's note which was 
previously in l)ank, and, what is worse, just as 
well secured as the domestic bill of exchange 
which they thus extort from him in lieu thereof 
And while they are thus exacting this per cent, 
from him, they are discounting bills for others 
not in debt to them at the usual premium of 
one per cent. The whole scene seems to pre- 
sent the picture of a helpless sufferer in the 
hands of a ruffian, who claims the merit of 
charity for discharging his victim alive, after 
having torn away half his limbs from his body." 

The second mode was to make the loan take 
the form of a domestic bill from the beginning ; 
and this soon came to be the most general prac- 
tice. The borrowers finding that their notes 
were to be metamorphosed into bills payable in 
a distant city, readily fell into the more con- 
venient mode of giving a bill in the first in- 
stance payable in some village hard by, where 
they could go to redeem it without giving com- 
missions to intermediate agents in the shape of 
endorsers and brokers. The profit to the bank 
in this operation was to get six per centum in- 
terest, and two per cent, exchange ; which, on 
a sixty days' bill, was twelve per cent, per an- 
num ; and, added to the interest, eighteen per 
cent, per annum ; with the addition of ten per 
centum damages if the bill was protested ; and 
of this character were the mass of the loans in 
the AVest — a most scandalous abuse, but cut off, 
with a multitude of others, from investigation 
from the restrictions placed upon the powers 
of the committee^ 

The supporters of the institution carried tneir 
point in the House, and had the investigation 
in their own way ; but with the country it was 
different. The bank stood condcm»cd upon its 
own conduct, and badly crippled by the attacks 
upon her. More than a dozen speakers assailed 
her : Clayton, Wayne, Foster of Georgia ; J. M. 
Patton, Archer, and Mark Alexander of Vir- 
ginia ; James K. Polk of Tennessee ; Cambre- 
Icng, Bcardsley, Hoffman and Angel of New- 
York ; Mitchell and Blair of South Carolina j 
Carson of North Carolina • Leavitt of Ohio 



ANNO 1832. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT, 



241 



The speakers on the other side were : jMcDuflBe 
and Drayton of South CaroUna ; Denny, Craw- 
ford, Coulter, Watmough, of Pennsylvania ; 
Daniel of Kentucky ; Jenifer of Maryland ; 
Huntington of Connecticut ; Root and Collins 
of New-York ; Evans of Maine ; Mercer of 
Virginia ; AYilde of Georgia. Pretty equally 
matched both in numbers and ability ; but the 
diiference between attack and defence — between 
bold accusation and shrinking palliation — the 
conduct of the bank friends, first in resisting all 



in invalidating the report of the majority 
against the bank, disputed the reality of the 
majority, saying that the good nature of Colo- 
nel .Johnson had merely licensed it. On the 
other hand, the committee was as favorably 
composed for the bank — Mr. Adams and Mr. 
McDufBe both able writers and speakers, of na- 
tional reiKitation, investigating minds, ardent 
temperaments, firm believers in the integrity 
and usefulness of the corporation ; and of char 
acter and position to be friendly to the institu 
investigation, then in trying to put it into the ' tion without the imputation of an undue mo 
hands of friends, then restricting the examina- tive. Mr. Watmough was a new member but 



tion, and the noise and confusion with which 
many of the anti-bank speeches were saluted — 
gave to the assailants the appearance of right. 



acceptable to the bank as its immediate repre- 
sentative, as the member that had made the 
motions to baffle investigation ; and as being 
and the tone of victory throughout the contest ; j from his personal as well as political and social 



and created a strong suspicion against the bank. 
Certainly its conduct was injudicious, except 
upon the hypothesis of a guilt, the worst sus- 
picion of which would be preferable to open de- 
tection ; and such, eventually, was found to be 
the fact. In justice to Mr. McDufiie, the lead- 
ing advocate of the bank, it must be remember- 
ed that the attempts to stifle, or evade inquiry, 
did not come from him but from the immediate 
representative of the bank neighborhood — that 
he twice discountenanced and stopped such at- 
tempts, requesting them to be withdrawn ; and 
no doubt all the defenders of the bank at the 
time believed in its integrity and utility, and 
only followed the lead of its immediate friends 
in the course which they pursued. For myself 
I became convinced that the bank was insol- 
vent, as well as criminal ; and that, to her, ex- 
amination was death ; and therefore she could 
not face it. 

The committee appointed were : Messrs. 
Clayton, Richard M. Johnson of Kentucky, 
Francis Thomas of Maryland, and j\Ir. Cambre- 
leng of New-York, opposed to the recharter of 
the Bank ; ^Messrs. McDufBe, John Quincy 
Adams, and Watmough, in favor of it. The 
committee was composed according to the par- 
liamentary rule — the majority in favor of the 
object — but one of them (Colonel Johnson of 
Kentucky), was disqualified bj^ his charitable 
and indulgent disposition for the invidious task 
of criminal inquisition ; and who frankly told 
the House, after he returned, that he had never 
looked at a bank-book, or asked a question 
while he was at Philadelphia ; and, Mr. Adams. 

Vol. I.— 16 



relations, in the category to form, if necessary, 
its channel of confidential communication with 
the committee. 

The committee made three reports — one by 
the majority, one by the minority, and one by 
Mr. Adams alone. The first was a severe re- 
crimination of the bank on many points — usury, 
issuing branch bank orders as a currency, selling 
coin, selling stock obtained from government un- 
der special acts of Congress, donations for roads 
and canals, building houses to rent or sell, loans 
unduly made to editors, brokers, and members 
of Congress. The adversary reports were a de- 
fence of the bank on all these points, and the 
highest encomiums upon the excellence of its 
management, and the universality of its utility ; 
but too much in the spirit of the advocate to 
retain the character of legislative reports — which 
admit of nothing but facts stated, inductions 
drawn, and opinions expressed. Both, or ra- 
ther all three sets of reports, were received as 
veracious, and lauded as victorious, by the 
respective parties which they favored; and 
quoted, as settling for ever the bank question, 
each way. But, alas, for the effect of the pro- 
gress of events ! In a few brief years all this 
attack and defence — all this elaboration of accu- 
sation, and refinement of vindication — all this 
zeal and animosity, for and against the bank — 
the whole contest — was eclipsed and superse- 
ded by the actualities of the times — the majority 
report, as being behind the facts : the minority 
as resting upon vanished illusions. And the 
great bank itself, antagonist of Jackson, called 
imperial by its friends, and actually constituting 



242 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



a power in the State— prostrate in dust and 
ashes — and invoking from the community, 
through the mouth of the greatest of its advo- 
cates (Mr. 'VYebster), the oblivion and amnesty 
of an " obsolete idea." 

It is not the design of this Vien^ to explore 
these reports for the names of persons implicated 
(some perhaps unjustly), in the criminating 
statements of the majority. The object pro- 
posed in this work does not require that inter- 
ference with individuals. The conduct of the 
institution is the point of inquiry ; and in that 
conduct will be found the warning voice against 
the dangers and abuses of such an establishment 
in all time to come. 



CHAPTER LXV. 

THE THREE TER CENT. DEBT, AND LOSS IN NOT 
PAYING IT WHEN THE RATE WAS LOW, AND 
THE MONEY IN THE BANK OF THE UNITED 
STATES WITHOUT INTEREST. 

There was a part of the revolutionary debt, 
incurred by the States and assumed by Con- 
gress, amounting to thirteen and a quarter mil- 
hous of dollars, on which an interest of only 
three per centum was allowed. Of course, the 
stock of this debt could be but little over fifty 
cents in the dollar in a country where legal in- 
terest Avas six per centum, and actual interest 
often more. In 1817, when the Bank of the 
United States went into operation, the price of 
that stock was sixty-four per centum — the 
money was in bank, more than enough to pay 
it — a gratuitous deposit, bringing no interest — 
and which was contained in her vaults — her sit- 
uation soon requiring the aid of the federal gov- 
ernment to enable her to keep her doors open. 
1 had submitted a resolve early in my term of 
service to have this stock purchased at its mar- 
ket value ; and for that purpose to enlarge the 
power of the commissioners of the sinlcing fund, 
then limited to a price a little below the current 
rate : a motion which was resisted and defeated 
by the friends of the bank. I then moved a re- 
solve that the bank pay interest on the deposits : 
wliich was opposed and defeated in like manner. 
Eventually, and when the rest of the public 
debt should be paid off, and the payment of these 



thirteen and a quarter millions would become 
obligatory under a policy which eschewed all 
debt — a consummation then rapidly approach- 
ing, under General Jackson's administration — it 
was clear that the treasury would paj' one hun- 
dred cents on the dollar on what could be then 
purchased for sixty-odd, losing in the mean time 
the interest on the money with which it could b« 
paid. It made a case against the bank, which 
it felt itself bound to answer, and did so through 
senator Johnson, of Louisiana: who showed 
that the bank paid the debt which the commis- 
sioners of the sinking fund required. This was 
true ; but it was not the point in the case. The 
point was that the money w^s kept in deposit 
to sustain the bank, and the enlargement of the 
powers of the commissioners resisted to prevent 
them from purchasing tliis stock at a low rate, 
in view of its rise to par: which soon took 
place ; and made palpable the loss to the United 
States. At the time of the solicited renewal of 
the charter, this non-payment of the three per 
cents was brought up as an instance of loss in- 
curred on account of the bank ; and gave rise to 
the defence from Mr. Johnson; to which I 
replied : 

" Mr. Benton had not intended, he said, to sa}- 
a word in relation to this question, nor should 
he now rise to speak upon it, but from what 
had fallen from the senator from New Jersey. 
That gentleman had gone from the resolution 
to the bank, and from the bank he had gone to 
statements respecting his resolutions on alum 
salt, which were erroneous. Day by day, me- 
morials were poured in upon us by command of 
the bank, all representing, in the same terms, 
the necessity of renewing its charter. These 
memorials, the tone of which, and the time of 
their presentation, showed their common origin, 
were dail}"^ ordered to be printed. These papers, 
forming a larger mass than we ever had on our 
tables before, and all singing, to the same tune, 
the praises of the bank, were ordered to be 
printed without hesitation. The report which 
he had moved to have printed for the benefit of 
tlw farmer.?, was struck at by the senator of 
New Jej'sey. In the first place, the senator was 
in error as to the cost of printing the report. 
He had stated it to be one thousand nine hun- 
dred dollars, whereas it was only one thousand 
one hundred dollars. A few days ago, two 
thousand copies of a report of the Briti.sh llouse 
of Commons on the subject of railroads was 
ordered to be printed. Following the language 
of that resolution, ho had moved the printing of 
another report of that body, which would interest 
a thousand of our citizens, where that report 
would interest one. There was not a farmer in 



,\]SrNO 1832. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



243 



America who would not deem it a treasure. It 
covered the whole saline kingdom ; and those 
unacquainted with its nature had no more idea 
of it than a blind man had of the solar rays. It 
was of the highest value to the farmer and the 
grazier. It showed the effect of the mineral king- 
dom upon the animal kingdom ; and its views 
were the results of the wisdom, experience, and 
first talents of Great Britain. The assertion of 
the senator, that the bank aided in producing a 
sound currency, he would disprove by facts and 
dates. In 1817 the bank went into operation. 
In three or four years after, forty-four banks 
were chartered in Kentucky, and forty in Ohio ; 
and the United States Bank, so far from being 
•able to put them down, was on the verge of 
bankruptcy. With the use of eight millions of 
public money, it was hardly able, from day to 
day to sustain itself. Eleven millions of dollars, 
as he could demonstrate, the people had lost by 
maintaining the bank during this crisis. But 
for a waggon load of specie from the mint, as 
Mr. Cheves informs us, it would have become 
bankrupt. In addition to this, the use of gov- 
ernment deposits, to the extent of eight millions, 
was necessary to sustain it ; and the country lost 
eleven millions by the diversion of those deposits 
to this purpose. Congress authorized the pur- 
chase of the thirteen millions of three per cents. 
— at that time, they could have been purchased 
at sixty -five cents, now they were at ninety-six 
per cent. This was one item of the amount 
lost, and the other was the interest on the 
stock from that time to the present, amounting 
to six millions more. It was sho\vn by Mr. 
Cheves that the United States Bank owed its 
existence to the local banks — to the indulgence 
and forbearance of the banks of Philadelphia and 
Boston, notwithstanding its receipt of the silver 
from Ohio and Kentucky, which drained that 
countr}^, destroyed its local banks, and threw 
down the value of every description of its pro- 
perty. The United States Bank currency was 
called by the senator the poor man's friend. 
The orders on the branches — these drafts issued 
in Dan and made payable in Beersheba — had 
their origin with a Scotchman ; and, when their 
character was discovered, they were stopped as 
oppressive to the poor ; and this bank, which 
was cried up as the poor man's friend, issued 
those same orders, in paper so similar to that of 
the bank notes, that the people could not readily 
discern the difference between them. It was 
thought that the people might mistake the sig- 
nature of the little cashier and the little president 
for the great cashier and the great president. 
The stockholders were foreigners, to a great 
extent — they were lords and ladies — reverend 
clergymen and military officers. The widows, 
in whose behalf our sympathy was required, 
were countess dowagers, and the Barings, some 
of whom owned more of the stock than was pos- 
sessed in sixteen States of this Union," 



CHAPTER LXVI. 

BANK OF THE UNITED STATES— BILL FOR THE 
EECHARTER REPORTED IN THE SENATE— AND 
PASSED THAT BODY. 

The first bank of the United States, chartered 
in 1791, was a federal measure, conducted under 
the lead of General Hamilton — opposed by Mr. 
Jefferson, Mr. jNIadison and the republican party ; 
and became a great landmark of party, not 
merely for the bank itself, but for the latitudi- 
narian construction of the constitution in which 
it was fomided, and the great door which it 
opened to the discretion of Congress to do what 
it pleased, under the plea of being " necessary " 
to carry into effect some granted power. The 
non-renewal of the charter in 1811, was the act 
of the republican party, then in possession of 
the government, and taking the opportunity to 
terminate, upon its own limitation, the existence 
of an institution, whose creation they had not 
been able to prevent. The charter of the second 
bank, in 1816, was the act of the republican 
party, and to aid them in the administration of 
the government, and. as such, was opposed by 
the federal party — not seeming then to under- 
stand that, by its instincts, a great monej^ed 
corporation was in sympathy with their own 
party, and would soon be with it in action 
— which this bank soon was — and now struggled 
for a continuation of its existence under the 
lead of those who had opposed its birth, and 
against the party which created it. Mr. Web- 
ster was a federal leader on both occasions — 
against the charter, in 1816 ; for the recharter, 
in 1832 — and in his opening speech in favor of 
the renewal, according to the bill reported by 
the Senate's select committee, and in allusion 
to these reversals of positions, and in justifica- 
tion of his own, he spoke thus, addressing him 
self to the Vice-President, Mr. Calhoun : 

" A considerable portion of the active part of 
life has elapsed, said ]\Ir. W., since you and I, 
Mr. President, and three or four other gentlemen, 
now in the Senate, acted our respective parts in 
the passage of the bill creating the present Bank 
of the United States. We have lived to little 
purpose, as public men, if the experience of this 
period has not enlightened our Judgments, and 
enabled us to revise our opmions ; and to correct 
any errors into which we may have fallen, if 
such errors there were, either in regard to the 



244 



TniRTY YEARS' VIEW 



general utility of a national bank, or the details 
of its constitution. I trust it \\ill not be unbe- 
conun;j:: the occasion, if I allude to your own 
iniijortant agency in that transaction. The bill 
incorporating the bank, and giving it a constitu- 
tion, proceeded from a connnittee of the House 
<.>f Kejiresentatives. of which you were chairman, 
and was conducted through that House under 
your distinguished lead. Having recently looked 
back to the proceedings of that day, I must be 
jiennittcd to say that I have perused the speech 
by which the subject was introduced to the con- 
sideration of the House, with a revival of the 
feeling of approbation and pleasure with wkich 
I heard it ; and I will add, that it would not, 
perhaps, now, be easy to find a better brief 
synopsis of those principles of currency and of 
banking, which, since they spring from the na- 
ture of money and of commerce, must be essen- 
tially the same, at all times, in all commercial 
comnuuiities, than that speech contains. The 
other gentlemen now with us in the Senate, all 
of them, I believe, concurred with the chairman 
of the committee, and voted for the bill. My 
own vote was against it. This is a matter of 
little importance; but it is connected with other 
circumstances, to which I will, for a moment, 
advert. The gentlemen with whom I acted on 
tliat occasion, had no doubts of the constitutional 
power of Congress to establish a national bank ; 
nor had we an}- doubts of the general utility of 
an institution of that kind. "We had. indeed, 
most of us, voted for a bank, at a preceding 
session. But the object of our regard was not 
whatever might be called a bank. AVe required 
that it should be established on certain princi- 
ples, which alone we deemed safe and useful, 
made subject to certain fixed liabilities, and so 
guarded that it could neither move voluntarily, 
nor be moved by others out of its proper sphei'c 
of action. The bill, when first introduced, con- 
tained features, to which we should never have 
assented, and we set ourselves accordingly to 
work with a good deal of zeal, in order to effect 
sundry amendments. In some of those proposed 
amendments, the chairman, and those who acted 
with him, finally concurred. Others they 
opposed. The result was, that several most 
important amendments, as I thought, prevailed. 
But there still remained, in mj' opinion, objec- 
tions to the bill, which justified a persevering 
opposition till they should be removed." 

He .spoke forcibly and justly against the evils 
of paper money, and a depreciated currency, 
meaning the debased issues of the local banks, 
for the cure of which the national bank was to 
be the instrument — not foreseeing that this 
great bank was itself to be the most striking 
e.\emi>lification of all the evils which he de- 
picted. He said : 

" A disordered currency is one of the greatest 
of political evils. It undermines the virtues 



necessary for the support of the social system, 
and encourages propensities destructive of its 
happiness. It wars against industry, fru- 
gality, and economy; and it fosters the evil 
spirits of extravagance and speculation. Of all 
the contrivances for cheating the laboring classes 
of mankind, none has been more eflFectual than 
that which deludes them with paper money. 
This is the most eflectual of inventions to fer- 
tilize the rich man's field, by the sweat of the 
poor man's brow. Ordinary tyranny, oppres- 
sion, excessive taxation, these bear lightly on 
the happiness of the mass of the community, 
compared with fraudidcnt currencies, and the 
robberies committed by depreciated paper. Our 
own history has recorded for our instruction 
enough, and more than enough, of the demor- 
alizing tendency, the injustice, and the intolera- 
ble oppression on the virtuous and well disposed, 
of a degraded paper currency, authorized by law. 
or any way countenanced by government. " 

He also spoke truly on the subject of the 
small quantity of silver currency in the United 
States — only some twenty-two millions — and 
not a particle of gold; and deprecated the snial'' 
bank note currency as the cause of that evil 
He said : 

" The paper circulation of the country is, aii 
this time, probabl}' seventy-five or eighty mil- 
lions of dollars. Of specie we may have twenty 
or twenty-two millions : and this, principally, in 
masses in the vaults of the banks. Now. sir, 
this is a state of things which, in mj' judgment, 
leads constantly to overtrading, and to the 
consequent excesses and revulsions which so 
often disturb the regular course of commercial 
aliairs. 

" Why have we so small an amount of specie in 
circulation ? Certainl}- the only reason is, be- 
cause we do not require more. We have l>ut to 
ask its presence, and it would return. But we 
voluntarily banish it by the great amount of 
small bank notes. In most of the States the 
banks issue notes of all low denominations, 
down even to a single dollar. How is it possi- 
ble, under such circumstances, to retain specie 
in circulation ? All experience shows it to be 
impossible. The paper will take the place of 
the gold and silver. When Mr. Pitt, in the 
year 1797, proposed in Parliament to authorize 
the Bank of England to issue one ponnd notes, 
Mr. Burke lay sick at Bath of an illness from 

I which he never recovered ; and he is said to 

1 have written to the late Mr. Canning, ' Tell Mr. 

! Pitt that if he consents to the issuing of one 
pound notes, he must never expect to see a 

i guinea again. ' " 

I The bill provided that a bonus of S;500,000 

in three equal annual instalments should bo 

; paid by the bank to the United States for its 



ANNO 1832. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



245 



exclusive privileges : Mr. Webster moved to 
modify the section, so as to spread the payment 
over the entii'e term of the bank's proposed ex- 
istence — .^"150,000 a year for fifteen years. I 
was opposed both to the bonus, and the exclu- 
sive privilege, and said : 

"The proper compensation for the bank to 
make, provided this exclusive privilege was sold 
to it, would be to reduce the rate of interest on 
loans and discounts. A reduction of interest 
would be felt by the i3eople ; the payment of a 
bonus would not be felt by them. It would 
iome into the treasury, and probably be lav- 
'^hed immediately on some scheme, possibly 
unconstitutional in its nature, and sectional in 
its application. He was not in favor of any 
scheme for getting money into the treasury at 
present. The difSculty lay the other way. 
The struggle now was to keep money out of the 
treasury, — to prevent the accumulation of a sur- 
plus ; and the reception of this bonus would go 
to aggravate that difficulty, by increasing that 
surplus. Kings might receive bonuses for selling 
exclusive privileges to monopolizing companies. 
In that case his subjects would hear the loss, 
and he would receive the profit ; but, in a re- 
public, it was incomprehensible that the people 
should sell to a company the privilege of making J 
money out of themselves. He was opposed to 
the grant of an exclusive privilege ; he was op- i 
posed to the sale of privileges ; but if granted, j 
or sold, he was in favor of receiving the price in 
the way tliat would be most beneficial to the 
whole bod}^ of the people ; and, in this case, a 
reduction of interest would best accomplish that 
object. A bank, which had the benefit of the 
credit and revenue of the United States to bank 
upon, could well aiford to make loans and dis- 
counts for less than six per centum. Five per 
centum would be high interest for such a bank ; 
and he had no doubt, if time was allowed for 
the application, that applications enough would 
be made to take the charter upon these terms. " 

I opposed action on the subject at this session. 
The bank charter had yet four years to run, 
and two years after that to remain in force for 
winding up its affairs ; in all, six years before 
the dissolution of the corporation: and this 
would remit the final decision to the Congress 
which would sit between 183G and 1838, and 
there was not only to be a new Congress elected 
before that time, but a new Congress under a 
new apportionment of the representation, in 
which there would be a great augmentation of 
members, and especially in the West, where tlie 
operation of the present bank was most inju- 
rious. The stockholders had not applied for the 
recharter at this session : that was the act of 



the directors and politicians, or rather of the 
politicians and directors; for the former gov- 
erned the decision. The stockholders in their 
meeting last September only authorized the 
president and directors to apply at any time 
before the next triennial meeting — at any time 
within three years ; and that would carr}^ the 
application to the right time. I, therefore, in- 
veighed against the present appUcation, and in- 
sisted that : 

"Many reasons oppose the final action of 
Congress upon this subject at the present time. 
We are exhausted with the tedium, if not with 
the labors of a six months' session. Our hearts 
and minds must be at home, though our bodies 
arc here. Mentally and bodily we are unable 
to give the attention and consideration to this 
question, which the magnitude of its principles, 
the extent and variety of its details, demand 
from us. Other subjects of more immediate 
and pressing interest must be thrown aside, to 
make way for it. The reduction of the price of 
the public lands, for which the new States have 
been petitioning for so many years, and the 
modification of the tariff, the continuance of 
which seems to be weakening the cement which 
binds this Union together, must be postponed, 
and possibly lost for the session, if we go on 
with the bank question. Why has the tariff 
been dropped in the Senate ? Every one recol- 
lects the haste with which that subject was 
taken up in this chamber ; how it was pushed 
to a certain point ; and how suddcnl_y and gen- 
tly it has given way to the bank bill ! Is there 
any union of interest — any conjunction of forces 
— any combined plan of action — any alliance, 
offensive or defensive, between the United 
States Bank and the American system ? Cer- 
tainly they enter the field together, one here, 
the other j^onder (pointing to the House of 
Representatives), and leaving a clear stage to 
each other, they press at once upon both wings, 
and announce a perfect non-interference, if not 
mutual aid, in the double victory which is to be 
achieved. Why have the two bills reported by 
the Committee on jManufactures. and for taking 
up which notices have been given : why are they 
so suddenly, so easily, so gently, abandoned ? 
Why is the land bill, reported by the same 
committee, and a pledge given to call it up 
when the Committee on Public Lands had made 
their counter report, also suffered to sleep on 
the table ? The counter report is made ; it is 
printed ; it lies on every table ; why not go on 
with the lands, when the settlement of the ques- 
tion of the amount of revenue to be derived 
from that source jircccdes the tariff question, 
and must 1x3 settled before ^vc can know how 
much revenue should be raised from imports. 

"An unfinished investigation presented an- 
other reason for delaying the final action of Con 
gress on this subject. The House of Representa- 



246 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



tivos had appointed a committee to investigate 
the affairs of the bank ; thej' had proceeded to 
tfic limit of the time allotted them — had report- 
ed adversely to the l)ank — and especially against 
the renewal of the charter at this session ; and 
luid argued the necessity of further examina- 
tions. "Would the Senate proceed while this 
unfinislicd investigation was depending in the 
other end of the l)uilding ? "VYould they 
act so as to limit the investigation to the few 
weeks which were allowed to the committee, 
when we have from four to six years on hand 
within which to make it ? The reports of 
this committee, to the amount of some 15,000 
copies had been ordered to be printed hj the 
two Houses, to be distributed among the people. 
For what purpose ? Certainly that the people 
might read them — make up their minds upon 
their contents — and communicate their senti- 
ments to their representatives. But these re- 
ports arc not yet distributed ; they are not yet 
read by the people ; and why order this distri- 
bution without waiting for its effect, when there 
is so much time on hand ? Why treat the peo- 
ple with this mockery t)f a pretended consulta- 
tion — this illusive reference to their judgment — 
while proceeding to act before they can read 
what we have sent to them 1 Nay, more ; the 
very documents upon which the reports are 
founded are yet un printed ! The Senate is ac- 
tually pushed into this discussion without hav- 
ing seen the evidence which has been collected 
by the investigating committee, and which the 
Senate itself has ordered to be printed for the 
information of its members. 

" The decision of this question does not belong 
to this Congress, but to the Congress to be 
elected under the new census of 1830. It 
looked to him like usurpation for this Congress 
to seize upon a question of this magnitude, which 
required no decision until the new and full rep- 
resentation of the people shall come in ; and 
which, if decided now, though prematurely and 
by usurpation, is irrevocable, although it cannot 
take effect until 1830 j — that is to saj', until 
three years after the new and full representa- 
tion would be in power. "What Congress is 
this ? It is the apportionment of 1820, formed 
on a population of ten millions. It is just going 
out of existence. A new Congress, apportioned 
upon a representation of thirteen millions, is 
already provided for liy law ; and after the 4th 
of March next — within nine months from this 
day — will be in power, and entitled to the seats 
in which we sit. That Congress will contain 
thirty members more than the present one. 
Three millions of people — a number equal to 
that which made the revolution — are now un- 
represented, who will be then represented. The 
West alone — that section of the Union which 
suffers most from the depredations of the bank 
— loses twenty votes ! In that section alone a 
million of people lose their voice in the decision 
of this great question. And why ? What ex- 
cuse ? \Vhat necessity 1 Wliat plea for this 



sudden haste which interrupts an unfinished 
investigation — sets aside the immediate business 
of the people — and usurps the rights of our suc- 
cessors ? No plea in the world, except that a 
gigantic monej^ed institution refuses to wait, 
and must have her imperial wishes immediately 
gratified. If a charter was to be granted, it 
should be done with as little invasion of the 
rights of posterity — with as little encroachment 
upon the j)rivileges of our successors — as possi- 
ble. Once in ten years, and that at the com- 
mencement of each full representation under a 
new census, would be the most appropriate 
time ; and then charters should be for ten, and 
not twenty years. 

"Mr. B. had nothing to do with motives. He 
neither preferred accusations, nor pronounced 
absolutions ; but it was impossible to shut his 
eyes upon facts, and to close up his Reason against 
the induction of inevitable inferences. The pre- 
sidental election was at hand ; — it would come 
in four months ; — and here was a question which, 
in the opinion of all, must affect that election 
— in the opinion of some, may decide it — which 
is pressed on for decision four years before it is 
necessary to decide it, and six 3-ears before it 
ought to be decided. Why this sudden pressure 1 
Is it to throw the bank bill into the hands 
of the President, to solve, by a practical reference, 
the disputed problem of the executive veto, and 
to place the President under a cross fire from the 
opposite banks of the Potomac River? He [Mr. 
B.] knew nothing about that veto, but he knew 
something of human nature, and something of 
the rights of the people imdcr our representative 
form of government ; and he would be free to 
say that a veto which would stop the encroach- 
ment of a minoi-ity of Congress upon the rights 
of its successors — which would arrest a fri<rht- 
ful act of legislative usurpation — which would 
retrieve for the people the right of deliberation, 
and of action — which wouldarrest the overwhelm- 
ing progress of a gigantic moneyed institution — 
which would prevent Ohio from being deprived 
of five votes, Indiana from losing four, Tennessee 
four. Illinois two, Alabama two, Kentucky, Mis- 
sissippi and Missouri one each— which would 
lose six votes to New- York and two to Pennsyl- 
vania ; a veto, in short, which would protect the 
rights of three millions of people, now unrepre- 
sented in Congress, would be an act of constitu- 
tional justice to the people, which ougiit to raise 
the President, and certainly would raise him, to a 
I higher degree of favor in the estimation of every 
republican citizen of the communitj- than he now 
enjoyed. By passing on the charter now, Con- 
I gress would lose all check and control over the 
1 institution for the four years it had yet to 
i run. The pendency of the question was a rod 
over its head for these four years ; to decide 
the (piestion now, is to free it from all restraint, 
j and turn it loose to play what part it pleased 
in all our affairs — elections, State, federal, presi- 
dential. 

"Mr. B. turned to the example of Englandj 



ANNO 1832. ANDREW JACKSON, i?RESIDENT. 



247 



and begged the republican Senate of the United 
States to take a lesson from the monarchial 
parliament of Great Britain. We copied their 
evil ways ; why not their good ones ? We cop- 
ied our bank charter from theirs ; why not imi- 
tate them m their improvements upon their own 
work ? At first the bank had a monopoly result- 
ing from an exclusive privilege : that is now 
denied. Formerly the charter was renewed 
several years before it was out : it now has less 
than a year to run, and is not yet rechartered." 

A motion was made by Mr. IMoore of Ala- 
bama, declaratory of the right of the States to 
admit, or deny the establishment of branches of 
the mother bank within their limits, and to tax 
their loans and issues, if she chose to admit them : 
and in support of that motion Mr. Benton made 
this speech : 

•' The amendment offered by the senator from 
Alabama [Mr. Moore] was declaratory of the 
rights of the States, both to refuse admission of 
these branch banks into their limits, and to tax 
them, like other property, if admitted : if this 
amendment was struck out, it was tantamount 
to a legislative declaration that no such rights 
existed, and would operate as a confirmation of 
the decision of the Supreme Court to that effect. 
It is to no purpose to say that the rejection of 
the amendment will leave the charter silent upon 
the subject ; and the rights of the States, what- 
soever they may be, will remain in fuU force. 
That is the state of the existing charter. It 
is silent upon the subject of State taxation; 
and in that silence the Supreme Court has 
spoken, and nullified the rights of the States. 
That court has decided that the Bank of the 
United States is independent of State legislation ! 
consequently, that she may send branches into 
the States in defiance of their laws, and keep 
them there without the payment of tax. This 
is the decision ; and the decision of the court is 
the law of the land ; so that, if no declaratory 
clause is put into the cliarter, it cannot be said 
that the new charter will be silent, as the old 
one was. The voice of the Supreme Court is 
now heard in that silence, proclaiming the su- 
premacy of the bank, and the degradation of the 
States ; and, unless we interpose now to coun- 
tervail that voice by a legislative declaration, it 
will be impossible for the States to resit it, ex- 
cept by measures which no one wishes to /con- 
template. 

" Mr. B. regretted that he had not seen in the 
papers any report of the argument of the senator 
from Virginia [I\Ir. Tazewell] in vindication of 
the right of the States to tax these branches. 
It was an argument brief, powerful, and conclu- 
sive — lucid as a sunbeam, direct as an arrow, and 
mortal as the stroke of fate to the adversary 
speakers. Since the delivery of that argument, 
they had sat in dumb show, silent as the grave, 
mute as the dead, and presenting to our imagi- 



nations the realization of the Abbe Sieyes's fa- 
mous conception of a dumb legislature. Before 
the States surrendered a portion of their sove- 
reignity to create this federal government, they 
possessed the unlimited power of taxation ; in 
the act of the surrender, which is the constitu- 
tion, they abridged this unlimited right but in 
two particulars — exports and imports — which 
they agreed no longer to tax, and therefore re- 
tained the taxing power entire over all other 
subjects. This was the substance of the argu- 
ment which dumbfounded the ^ adversary ; and 
the distinction which was attempted to be set 
up between tangible and intangible, visible and 
invisible, objects of taxation; between franchi- 
ses and privileges on one side, and material sub- 
stances on the other, was so completely blast- 
ed and annihilated by one additional stroke of 
lightning, that the fathers of the distinction really 
believed that they had never made it ! and sung 
their palinodes in the face of the House. 

" The argument that these branches are ne- 
cessary to enable the federal government to car- 
ry on its fiscal operations, and, therefore, ought 
to be independent of State legislation, is an- 
swered and expunged by a matter of ftict, name- 
ly, that Congress itself has determined other- 
wise, and that in the very charter of the bank. 
The charter limits the right of the federal gov- 
ernment to the establishment of a single branch, 
and that one in the District of Columbia ! The 
branch at this place, and the parent bank at 
Philadelphia, are all that the federal government 
has stipulated for. All beyond that, is left to 
the bank itself; to establish branches in the 
States or not, as it suited its own interest; or to 
employ State banks, with the approbation of the 
Secretary of the Treasury, to do the business of 
the branches for the United States. Congress 
is contented with State banks to do the business 
of the branches in the States ; and, therefore, au- 
thorizes the very case which gentlemen appre- 
hend and so loudly deprecate, that New-York 
may refuse her assent to the continuance of the 
branches within her limits, and send the public 
deposits to the State banks. This is what the 
charter contemplates. Look at the charter ; see 
the fourteenth article of the constitution of the 
bank ; it makes it optionary with the directors 
of the bank to establish branches in such States 
as they shall think fit, with the alternative A' 
using State banks as their substitutes in States 
in which they do not choose to establish branch- 
es. This brings the establishment of branches 
to a private aifair, a mere question of profit and 
loss to the bank itself; and cuts up b}' the roots 
the whole argument of the necessity of these 
branches to the fiscal operations of tl.e federal 
government. The establislnneut of branches in 
the States is, Ihcn, a ])rivate concern, and presents 
this question: Shall non-residents and aliens 
— even alien enemies, for such they may be — 
have a riiiht to carry on the trade of bankinc 
within the limits of the States, without their 
consent, without liability to taxation, and with- 



248 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



out amenability to State legislation? The sug- 
gestion that the United States owns an interest 
in this banlc, is of no avail. If she owned it all, 
it would still be subject to taxation, like all 
other property is whicli she holds in the States. 
The lands which she had obtained from individ- 
uals in satisfaction of debts, were all subject to 
taxation ; the public lands which she held by 
grants from the States, or purchases from foreign 
powers, were only exempted from taxation by 
"virtue of compacts, and the payment of five per 
centnm on the i^oceeds of the sales for that ex- 
emption." 

The motion of INIr. Moore was rejected, and 
by the usual majority. 

Mr. Benton then moved to strike out so much 
of the bill as gave to the bank exclusive privi- 
leges, and to insert a provision making the 
stockholders liable for the debts of the institu- 
tion ; and in support of his motion quoted the 
case of the three Scottish banks which had no 
exclusive privilege, and in which the stockhold- 
ers were liable, and the superior excellence of 
which over the Bank of England was admitted 
and declared by English statesmen. He said : 

"The three Scottish banks had held each 
other in check, had proceeded moderately in all 
their operations, conducted their business regu- 
larl}^ and prudently, and alwaj^s kept themselves 
in a condition to face their creditors ; while the 
single English bank, having no check from rival 
institutions, ran riot in the wantonness of its own 
unbridled power, deluging the countrj^, when it 
pleased, with paper, and filling it with speculation 
and extravagance' ; drawing iu again when it 
pleased, and filling it with bankruptcy and pau- 
perism ; often transcending its limits, and twice 
stopping payment, and once for a period of 
twent}' years. There can be no question (jf the 
incomparable superiority of the Scottish banking 
sj-stcm over the English banking sj'stem, even 
in a monarchy ; and this has been officially an- 
nounced to the Hank of England by the British 
ministr}', as far back as the year 182G, with the 
authentic declaration that the English system 
of banking must be assimilated to the Scottish 
system, and that her exclusive privilege could 
never be i-enewed. This was done in a corre- 
spondence between the Earl of Liverpool, first 
Lord of the Treasury, and Mr. llobinson. Chan- 
cellor of the Exchequer, on one side, and the 
Governor and Deputy Governor of the Bank of 
EnglaTid on the other. In their letter of the 
18th Jaimar}'^, 182G, the two ministers, adverting 
.o the fiict of the stoppage of payment, and 
-epeatcd convulsions of the I'aTik of England, 
while the Scottish banks had been wholly free 
from such calamities, declared their conviction 
that there existed an unsound and delusive sys- 
tem of banking in Plngland, and a sound and 
oolid system in Scotland ! And thej' gave the 



official assurance of the British government, that 
neither His Majesty's ministers, nor parliament, 
would ever agree to renew the charter of the 
Bank of England with their exclusive privileges ! 
Exclusive privileges, thej^said, were out of fash- 
ion ! Nor is it renewed to this day, though 
the charter is within nine months of its expira- 
tion ! 

" In the peculiar excellence of the Scottish 
plan, lies a few plain and obvious principles, 
closely related to republican ideas. First. No 
exclusive privileges. Secondly. Three inde- 
pendent banks to check and control each other, 
and diffuse their benefits, instead of one to do 
as it pleased, and monopolize the moneyed power. 
Thirdly. The liability of each stockholder for 
the amount of his stock, on the failure of the 
bank to redeem its notes in specie. Fourthly. 
The payment of a moderate interest to deposi- 
tors. Upon these few plain principles, all of 
them founded in republican notions, e(iual rights, 
and equal justice, the Scottish banks have ad- 
vanced themselves to the first rank in Europe, 
have eclipsed the Bank of England, and caused 
it to be condemned in its ovm country, and have 
made themselves the model of all future banking 
institutions in Great Britain. And now, it 
would be a curious political phenomenon, and 
might give rise to some interesting speculations 
on the advance of free principles in England, and 
their decline in America, if the Scottish repub- 
lican plan of banking should be rejected here, 
while preferred there ; and the British monarchial 
plan, which is condemned there, should be per- 
petuated here ! and this double incongruity 
committed without necessity, without excuse, 
without giving the people time to consider, and 
to communicate their sentiments to their con- 
stituents, when there is four, if not six years, for 
them to consider the subject before final decision 
is required ! " 

The clause for continuing the exclusive pri- 
vilege of the bank, was warmlj' contested in the 
Senate, and arguments against it di-awn from the 
nature of our government, as well as from the 
example of the British parliament, which had 
granted the monopoly to the Bank of England 
in her previous charters, and denied it on the 
last renewal. It owed its origin in England to 
the high tory times of Queen Anne, and its ex- 
tinction to the liberal spirit of the present 
centur}-. Mr. Benton was the chief speaker on 
this point; and — 

" Pointed out the clauses in the charter which 
granted the exclusive privilege, and imposed the 
restriction, which it was the object of his motion 
to abolish ; and read a part of the 21st section, 
which enacted that no other bank should be 
established by any future law of the United 
States, during the continuance of that charter, 
and which pledged the faith of tho United States 



ANNO ] 832. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



249 



to the observance of the monopoly thereby 
created. He said the privilej^e of banking, here 
granted, was an exclusive privilege, a monopoly, 
and an invasion of the rights of all future Con- 
gresses, as well as of the rights of all citizens 
of the Union, for the term the charter had to 
run, and which might be considered perpetual ; 
as this was the last time that the people could 
ever make head against the new political power 
which raised itself in the form of the bank to 
overbalance every other power in the govern- 
ment. This exclusive privilege is contrary to 
the genius of our government, which is a gov- 
ernment of equal rights, and not of exclusive 
privileges ; and it is clearly unauthorized by the 
constitution, which only admits of exclusive 
privileges in two solitary, specified cases, and 
each of these founded upon a natural right, 
the case of authors and inventors ; to whom 
Congress is authorized to grant, for a limited 
time, the exclusive privilege of selling their own 
writings and discoveries. But in the case of 
this charter there is no natural right, and it may 
be well said there is no limited time ; and the 
monopoly is far more glaring and indefensible 
now than when first granted; for then the 
charter was not granted to any particular set 
of individuals, but lay open to all to subscribe 
to it ; but now it is to be continued to a par- 
ticular set, and many of them foreigners, and 
all of whom, or their assignees, had already 
enjoyed the privilege for twenty years. If this 
company succeeds now in getting their monopoly 
continued for fifteen years, they will so intrench 
themselves in wealth and power, that they will 
be enabled to perpetuate their charter, and 
transmit it as a private inheritance to their pos- 
terity. Our government delights in rotation of 
oflBce ; all officers, from the highest to the lowest, 
are amenable to that principle ; no one is sufl^ered 
to remain in power thirty-five years ; and why 
should one company have the command of the 
moneyed power of America for that long period ? 
Can it be the wish of any person to establish an 
oligarchy with unbounded wealth and perpetual 
existence, to lay the foundation for a nobility 
and monarchy in this America ! 

" The restriction upon future Congresses is at 
war with every principle of constitutional right 
and legislative equahty. If the constitution has 
given to one Congress the riglit to charter banks, 
it has given it to every one. If this Congress 
has a right to establish a bank, every other 
Congress has. The power to tie the hands of 
our successors is nowhere given to us ; what 
we can do our successors can; a legislative body 
is always ecpial to itself To make, and to 
amend ; to do, and to undo ; is the prerogative 
of each. But here the attempt is to do wliat we 
ourselves cannot amend — what our successors 
cannot amend — and what our successors are 
forbidden to imitate, or to do in any form. This 
shows the danger of assuming implied powers. 
If the power to establish a national bank had 
been expressly granted, then the exercise of that | 



power, being once exerted, would be exhausted, 
and no further legislation would remain to be 
done ; but this power is now assumed vipon con 
struction, after having been twice rejected, in 
the convention which framed the constitution, 
and is, therefore, without limitation as to number 
or character. Mr. Madison was express in his 
opinions in the year 1791, that, if there was one 
bank chartered, there ought to be several ! The 
genius of the British monarchy, he said, favored 
the concentration of wealth and power. In 
America the genius of the government required 
the diffusion of wealth and power. The estab- 
lishment of branches did not satisfy the prin 
ciple of diffusion. Several independent banks 
alone could do it. The branches, instead of les- 
sening the wealth and power of the single insti- 
tution, greatlj^ increased both, by giving to the 
great central parent bank an organization and 
ramification which pervaded the whole Union, 
drawing wealth from every part, and subjecting 
every part to the operations, political and pe- 
cuniar}', of the central institution. But tliis 
restriction ties up the hands of Congress from 
granting other charters. Behave as it may — 
plunge into all elections — convulse the cou atn* 
with expansions and contractions of paper cur- 
rency — fail in its ability to help the merchants 
to pay their bonds — stop payment, and leave the 
government no option but to receive its dis- 
honored notes in revenue payments — and still 
it would be secure of its monopoly ; the hands 
of all future Congresses would be tied up ; and 
no rival or additional banks could be established, 
to hold it in check, or to supply its place. 

"Is this the Congress to do these things 1 Is 
this the Congress to impose restrictions upon 
the power of their successors ? Is this the 
Congress to tie the hands of all Congresses till 
the year 1851 ? In nine months this Congress 
is defunct ! A new and full representation of 
the people will come into power. Thirty addi- 
tional members will be in the House of Repre- 
sentatives ; three millions of additional people 
will be represented. The renewed charter is 
not to take effect till three years after this full 
representation is in power! And are we to 
forestall and anticipate them ? Take their 
proper business out of their hands — snatch the 
sceptre of legislation from them — do an act 
which we cannot amend — which they cannot 
amend — which is irrevocable and intangible ; 
and, to crown this act of usui'pation, deliberately 
set about tying the hands, and imposing a re- 
striction upon a Congi'ess equal to us in consti- 
tutional power, supei'ior to us in representative 
numbers, and better entitled to act upon the 
subject, because the present charter is not to 
expire, nor the new one to take effect, until 
three years after the new Congress sliall be in 
power ! It is in vain to say that this reasoning 
would apply to other legislative measures, and 
require tlie postponement of the land bill and 
the tariff bill. Both these bills require imme- 
diate decision, and therein differ from the bank 



250 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



bill, -which requires no decision for three j-e.irs 
to come. But the difTerence is greater still; for 
the land bill and tariff bill are ordinary acts of 
legislation, open to amendment, or repeal, by 
ourselves and successors ; but tlie charter is to 
be irrevocable, unamendable, binding upon all 
Congresses till the year 1851. This is rank 
usurpation ; and if perpetrated by Congress, and 
afterwards arrested b}- an Executive veto, tlie 
President will become the true representative of 
the people, the faithful defender of their rights, 
and the defender of tlie rights of the new Congress 
which will assemble under the new censiis. 

"Mr. B. concluded his remarks b}^ showing the 
origin, and also the extinction, of the doctrine 
in England. A tory parliament in the reign of 
Queen Anne had first granted an exclusive privi- 
lege to the Bank of England, and imposed a 
restriction upon the right of future parliaments 
to establish another bank ; and the ministry of 
182G had condenmed this doctrine, and pro- 
scribed its continuance in England. The charter 
granted to the old Bank of the United States 
and to the existing bank had copied those ob- 
noxious clauses ; but now that they were con- 
demned in England as too unjust and odious for 
that monarchial country, they ought certainly 
to be discarded in this republic, where equal 
rights was the vital principle and ruling feature 
of all our institutions." 

All the amendments proposed by the oppo- 
nents of the bank being inexorably voted down, 
after a debate wliich, with some cessations, con- 
tinued from January to June, the final vote was 
taken, several senators first taking occasion to 

show thcv had no interest in the institution. ' 

i 

Mr. Benton had seen the names of some mem- ' 
bers in the list of stockholders ; and early in 
the debate had required that the rule of parlia- 
mentary law should be read, which excludes the i 
interested member from voting, and expunges 
Ills vote if he does, and his interest is afterwards 
discovered. Mr. Dallas said that he had sold 
his stock in the institution as soon as it was 
known that the question of the recharter would 
come before him: !Mr. Silsbee said that he had 
disposed of his interest before the question came 
before Congress : Mr. Webster said that the in- | 
scrtion of his name in the list of stockholders 
was a mistake in a clerk of the bank. The vote 
was then taken on the passage of the bill, and 
Btood : Ykas : Messrs. Bell, of New Ilampshii-e ; 
Buckner, of Missouri ; Chambers, of Maryland ; 
Clay, of Kentuck}' ; Clayton, of Delaware ; Dal- 
las of Pennsylvania ; Ewing, of Ohio ; Foot, of 
Connecticut ; Frelinghuysen, of New Jersey ; 
Hendricks, of Indiana ; Holmes, of Maine ; Jo- 
siah S. Johnston, of Louisiana ; Knight, of Rhode 



Island ; Naudain, of Delaware ; Poindcxter, of 
Mississippi ; Prentiss, of Vermont ; bobbins, of 
Rhode Island ; Robinson, of Illinois ; Ruggles, 
of Ohio ; Seymour, of Vermont ; Silsbee, of 
Massachusetts ; Smith (Gen. Samuel), of Mary- 
land ; Sprague, of JMaine ; Tipton, of Indiana 
Tomlinson, of Connecticut ; Waggaman, of 
Louisiana; Webster, of Massachusetts; and 
Wilkins, of Pennsylvania: 28. Nays: Messrs. 
Benton, of Missouri ; Bibb, of Kentucky ; Brown, 
of North Carolina ; Dickerson, of New Jersey ; 
Dudley, of New-York; Ellis, of Mississippi; 
Forsyth, of Georgia ; Grundy, of Tennessee ; 
Ilayne, of South Carolina ; Hill, of New Hamp- 
shire ; Kane, of Illinois ; King, of Alabama ; 
Mangum, of North Carolina ; Marcy, of New- 
York ; Miller, of South Carolina ; IMoore, of 
Alabama; Tazewell, of Virginia; Troup, of 
Georgia ; Tyler, of Virginia ; Hugh L. White, 
of Tennessee : 20. 



CHAPTER LXVII. 

BANK OF THE UNITED STATES— BILL FOR THE 
RENEWED CHARTER PASSED IN THE HOUSE OF 
REPRESENTATIVES. 

The bill which had passed the Senate, after a 
long and arduous contest, quickly passed the 
House, with little or no contest at all. The 
session was near its end ; members were wearied ; 
the result foreseen by every body — that the 
bill would pass — the veto be applied — and the 
whole question of charter or no charter go before 
the people in the question of the presidential 
election. Some attempts were made by the 
adversaries of the bill to amend it, by ofiering 
amendments, similar to those which had been 
offered in the Senate ; but with the same result 
in one House as in the other. They were all 
voted down by an inexorable majority ; and it 
was evident that the contest was political, and 
relied upon by one party to bring them into 
power; and deprecated by the other as the 
flagrant prostitution of a great moneyed corpo- 
ration to partisan and election purposes. Tho 
question was soon put ; and decided by the fol- 
lowing votes : 

Ykas. — Messrs. Adams, C. Allan. II. Allen 
Allison, Appleton, Armstrong, Arnold, Ashlc}'- 
Babcock, Banks, N. Barber, J. S. Barbour, Bar« 



ANNO 1832. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



251 



ringer, Barstow, I. C. Bates, Briggs, Bucher, 
Billiard, Burd, Burges, Choate, Collier, L. Con- 
diet, S. Condit, E. Cooke, B. Cooke, Cooper, 
Corwin, Coulter, Craig, Crane, Crawford, Creigh- 
ton, Daniel, J. Davis, Dearborn, Denny, Dewart, 
Doddridge, Drayton, Ellsworth, G. Evans, J. 
Evans, E. Everett. H. Everett, Ford, Gilmore, 
Grennell, Hodges, Heister, Horn, Hughes, Hunt- 
ington, Ihrie, Ingersoll, Irvin, Isacks, Jenifer, 
Kendall, H. King, Kerr, Letcher, Mann, Marshall, 
Maxwell. McCoy, IMcDuffie, McKennan, Mercer, 
Milligan, Newton, Pearce, Pendleton, Pitcher, 
Potts, Randolph, J. Reed, Root, Russel, Semmes, 
W. B. Shepard, A. H. Shepperd, Slade, Smith, 
Southard, Spence, Stanberry, Stephens, Stewart, 
Storrs, Sutherland, Taylor, P. Thomas, Tomp- 
kins, Tracy, Vance, Verplanck, Vinton, Washing- 
ton, Watmough, E. Whittlesey, F. Whittlesey, 
E. D. White, Wickliffe, WiUiams, Young.— lOG. 
Nays. — Messrs. Adair, Alexander, Anderson, 
Archer, J. Bates, Beardsley, Bell, Bergen, Be- 
thune, James Blair, John Blair, Bouck, Bouldin, 
Branch, Cambreleng, Carr, Chandler, Chinn, 
Claiborne, Clay, Clayton, Coke, Conner. W. R. 
Davis, Dayan, Doubleday, Felder, Fitzgerald, 
Foster, Gaither, Gordon, Griffin, T. H. Hall, W. 
Hall, Hammons, Harper, Hawes, Hawkins, Hoff- 
man, Hogan, Holland, Howard, Hubbard, Jarvis, 
Cave Johnson, Kavanagh, Kennon, A. King, J. 
King, Lamar, Leavitt, Lecompte, Lewis, Lyon, 
Mardis, Mason, McCarty, Mclntire, McKay, 
Mitchell, Newnan, Nuckolls, Patton, Pierson, 
Polk, E. C. Reed, Rencher, Roane, Soule, Speight, 
Standifer, F. Thomas, W. Thompson, J. Thom- 
son, Ward, Wardweli, Wayne, Weeks, Wheeler, 
C. P. White, Wilde, Worthington.— 84. 



CHAPTER LXVIII. 

THE VETO. 

The act which had passed the two Houses for 
the renewal of the bank charter, was presented 
to the President on the 4th day of July, and 
returned by him to the House in which it ori- 
ginated, on the 10th, with his objections. His 
first objection was to the exclusive privileges 
whicli it granted to corporators who had already 
enjoyed them, the great value of these privileges, 
and the inadequacy of the sum to be paid for 
them. He said : 

" Every monopoly, and all exclusive privileges, 
are granted at the expense of the public, which 
ought to receive a fair equivalent. The many 
millions which this act proposes to bestow on 
the stockholders of the existing bank, must come 
directly or indirectly out of the earnings of the 



American people. It is due to them, therefore, 
if their government sell monopolies and exclusive 
privileges, that they should at least exact for 
them as much as they are worth in open market. 
The value of the monopoly in this case may be 
correctly ascertained. The twenty-eight millions 
of stock would probably be at an advance of 
fifty per cent., and command, in market, at least 
forty-two millions of dollars, subject to the pay- 
ment of the present loans. The present value 
of the monopoly, therefore, is seventeen millions 
of dollars, and this the act proposes to sell for 
three millions, payable in fifteen annual instal- 
ments of $200,000 each. 

" It is not conceivable how the present stock- 
holders can have any claim to the special favor 
of the government. The present corporation 
has enjoyed its monopoly during the period 
stipulated in the original contract. If we must 
have such a corporation, why should not the 
government sell out the whole stock, and thus 
secure to the people the full market value of 
the privileges granted ? Why should not Con- 
gress create and sell the twenty-eight millions 
of stock, incorporating the purchasers with all 
the powers and privileges secured in this act, 
and putting the premium upon the sales into tlie 
treasury '? 

" But this act does not permit competition in 
the purchase of this monopoly. It seems to be 
predicated on the erroneous idea that the present 
stockholders have a prescriptive right, not only 
to the favor, but to the bounty of the govern- 
ment. It appears that more than a fourth part 
of the stock is held by foreigners, and the residue 
is held by a few hundred of our citizens, chiefly 
of the richest class. For their benefit does this 
act exclude the whole American people from 
competition in the purchase of this monopoly, 
and dispose of it for man}^ millions less than it 
is worth. This seems the less excusable, because 
some of our citizens, not now stockholders, peti- 
tioned that the door of competition might be 
opened, and offered to take a charter on terms 
much more favorable to the government and 
country. 

" But tliis proposition, although made by men 
whose aggregate wealth is believed to be equal 
to all the private stock in the existing bank, has 
been set aside, and the bounty of our govern- 
ment is proposed to be again bestowed on the 
few who have been fortunate enough to secure 
the stock, and at this moment wield the power 
of the existing institution. I cannot perceive 
the justice or policy of this course. If our gov- 
ernment must sell monopolies, it would seem 
to be its duty to take nothing less than their 
full value ; and if gratuities must be made once 
in fifteen or tAventy years, let them not be 
bestowed on the subjects of a foreign govern- 
ment, nor upon a designated or favored class of 
men in our own country. It is but justice and 
good polic}', as far as the nature of the case will 
admit, to confine our favors to our own fellow- 
citizens, and let each in liis turn enjoy an oppor 



252 



THIRTY YEAHS' VIEW. 



tunity to profit by our boimtj'. In the bearings 
of the act before me upon these points, I find 
ample reasons why it should not become a law." 

The President objected to the constitutionality 
of the bank, and argued against the force of pre- 
cedents in this case, and against the applicabil- 
ity and the decision of the Supreme Court in its 
favor. That decision was in the case of the 
Maryland branch, and sustained it upon an argu- 
ment which carries error, in point of fiict, upon 
its face. The ground of the decision was, that 
the bank was " necessary " to the successful con- 
ductmg of the " fiscal operations " of the govern- 
ment ; and that Congress was the judge of that 
necessity. Upon this ground the ISfaryland 
branch, and every branch except the one in the 
District of Colum})ia, was without the constitu- 
tional warrant which the court required. Con- 
gress had given no judgment in favor of its 
necessity — bu^ the contrary — a judgment 
against it : for after providing for the mother 
bank at Philadelphia, and one branch at Wash- 
ington City, the establishment of all other 
branches was referred to the judgment of the 
bank itself, or to circumstances over which Con- 
gress had no control, as the request of a State 
legislature founded ujion a subscription of 2000 
eharcs within the State — \\'ith a dispensation in 
favor of substituting local banks in places where 
the Secretary of the Treasury, and the directors 
of the national bank should agree. All this was 
contained in the fourteenth fundamental article 
of the constitution of the corporation — wliich 
says: 

" The directors of said corporation shall es- 
tablish a competent oflice of discount and deposit 
in the District of Columbia, whenever any law of 
the United States shall require such an establish- 
ment: also one such ofliee of discount and de- 
posit in any State in which two thousand shares 
shall have been subscribed or ma}- be held, when- 
ever, upon application of the legislature of such 
State, Congress may, by law, require the same : 
Proriflcjl, the directors aforesaid shall not be 
bound to establish such office before tiie whole of 
the capital of the bank shall be paid up. And it 
shall be lawful for the directors of the corpora- 
tion to establish olliccs of discount and deposit 
where they think fit, within the United States 
or the territories thereof, and tc commit the 
management of the said, and tlie business thereof, 
respectively to such persf)ns. and under such re- 
gulations, as they shall deem jjroper, not being 
contrary to the laws or the constitution of the 
bank. Or, instead of establishing such offices, 
It shall be lawful for the directors of the said 



corporation, from time to time, to emi)loy any 
other bank or banks, to be first approved by the 
Secretary of the Treasury, at any place or places 
that they may deem safe and proper, to manage 
and transact the business pi-oposcd aforesaid, 
other than for tlie purposes of discount ; to be 
managed and transacted by such oil ices, under 
such agreements, and subject to such regulations 
as they shall deem just and proper." 

These are the words of the fourteenth funda- 
mental article of the constitution of the bank, and 
the conduct of the corporation in establishing its 
branches was in accordance with this article. 
They placed them where they pleased — at first, 
governed wholly by the question of profit and 
loss to itself — afterwards, and when it was seen 
that the renewed charter was to be resfeted by 
the members from some States, governed by the 
political consideration of creating an interest to 
defeat the election, or control the action of the 
dissenting members. Thus it was in my own 
case. A branch in St. Louis was refused to the 
uppl ication of the business community — establish- 
ed afterwards to govern me. And thus, it is seen 
the Supreme Court was in error — that the judg- 
ment of Congress in favor of the "necessity " of 
branches only extended to one in the District of 
Columbia ; and as for the bank itself, the argument 
in its fiivor and upon which the Supreme Court 
made its decision, was an argument which made 
the constitutionality of a measure dependent, not 
upon the words of the constitution, but upon 
the opinion of Congress for the time being upon 
the question of the "necessity" of a particular 
measure — a question subject to receive dillcrent 
decisions from Congress at different times — 
which actually received different decisions in 
1791, 1811, and 181G: and, we may now add 
the decision of experience since 1836 — during 
which term we have had no national bank ; 
and the fiscal business of the government, as 
well as the commercial and trading business of 
the country, has been carried on with a degree of 
success never equalled in the time of the exist- 
ence of the national bank. I, therefore, believe 
that the President was well warranted in chal- 
lenging both the validity of the decision of the 
Supreme Court, and the obligator}' force of pre- 
cedents : which he did, as follows : 

"It is maintained by the advocates of the 
bank, that its constitutionality, in all its fea- 
tures, ought to be considered as settled b}' pre- 
cedent, and by the decision of the Supreme 



ANNO 1832. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



253 



Court. To this conclusion I cannot assent. 
Mere precedence is a dangerous source of au- 
thority, and should not be regarded as decichng 
questions of constitutional power, except where 
the acquiescence of the people and the States 
can be considered as well settled. So far from 
this being the case on this subject, an argument 
against the bank might be based on precedent. 
One Congress, in 1791, decided in favor of a 
bank ; another, in 1811, decided against it. One 
Congress, in 1815, decided against a bank ; an- 
other, in 1816, decided in its favor. Prior to 
the present Congress, therefore, the precedents 
drawn from that source were equal. If we re- 
-ort to the States, the expressions of legislative, 
judicial, and executive opinions against the bank 
have been, probably, to those in its favor, as four 
to one. There is nothing in precedent, there- 
fore, which, if its authority were admitted, ought 
to weigh in favor of the act before me. 

" If the opinion of the Supreme Court covered 
the whole ground of this act, it ought not to 
control the co-ordinate authorities of this gov- 
ernment. The Congress, the Executive, and the 
court, must each for itself be guided by its own 
opinion of the constitution. Each public officer 
who takes an oath to support the constitution, 
swears that he will support it as he understands 
it, and not as it is understood by others. It is 
as much the duty of the House of Representa- 
tives, of the Senate, and of the President, to 
decide upon the constitutionality of any bill or 
resolution which may be presented to them for 
passage or approval, as it is of the supreme 
judges, when it may be brought before them 
for judicial decision. The opinion of the judges 
has no more authority over Congress than the 
opinion of Congress has over the judges ; and 
on that point the President is independent of 
both. The authority of the Supreme Court must 
not, therefore, be permitted to control the Con- 
gress, or the Executive, when acting in their 
legislative capacities, but to have only such in- 
fluence as the force of their reasoning may de- 
serve. 

'' But in the case relied upon, the Supreme 
Court have not decided that all the features of 
tliis corporation are compatible with the consti- 
tution. It is true that the court have said that 
the law incorporating the bank is a constitution- 
al exercise of power by Congress. But taking 
into view the whole opinion of the court, and 
the reasoning by which they have come to that 
conclusion, 1 understand them to haVe decided 
that, inasmuch as a bank is an appropriate 
means for carrying into effect the enumerated 
powers of the general government, therefore the 
law incorporating it is in accordance with that 
provision of the constitution which declares that 
Congress shall have power ' to make all laws 
which shall be necessary and proper for carrying 
those powers into execution.' Having satisfied 
themselves that the word 'necessary,' in the 
constitution, means 'needful,' ' requisite," essen- 
tial,' ' conducive to,' and that ' a bank ' is a con- 



venient, a useful, and essential instrument in the 
prosecution of the government's ' fiscal opera- 
tions,' they conclude that to ' use one must be 
within the discretion of Congress ; ' and that 
' the act to incorporate the Bank of the United 
States, is a law made in pursuance of the consti- 
tution.' ' But,' say they, ' where the law is not 
prohibited, and is really calculated to effect any 
of the objects intrusted to the government, to 
undertake here to inquire into the degree of its 
necessity, would be to pass the line which cir- 
cumscribes the judicial department, and to tread 
on legislative ground.' 

" The principle, here aflBrmed, is, that the ' de- 
gree of its necessity,' involving all the details of a 
bankmg institution, is a question exclusively for 
legislative consideration. A bank is constitu- 
tional ; but it is the province of the legislature 
to determine whether this or that particular 
power, privilege, or exemption, is ' necessary and 
proper ' to enable the bank to discharge its du- 
ties to the government ; and from their decision 
there is no appeal to the courts of justice. Un- 
der the decision of the Supreme Court, therefore, 
it is the exclusive province of Congress and 
the President to decide whether the particular 
features of this act are ' necessary and proper,' 
in order to enable the bank to perform, conveni- 
ently and efficiently, the public duties assigned 
to it as a fiscal agent, and therefore constitution- 
al ; or unnecessary and improper, and therefore 
unconstitutional." 

With regard to the misconduct of the institu- 
tion, both m conducting its business and in re- 
sisting investigation, the message spoke the gen^ 
eral sentiment of the disinterested country when 
it said : 

" Suspicions are entertained, and charges are 
made, of gross abuses and violations of its charter. 
An investigation unwillingly conceded, and so 
restricted in time as necessarily to make it in- 
complete and unsatisfactory, discloses enough to 
excite suspicion and alarm. In the practices of 
the principal bank, partially unveiled in the ab- 
sence of important witnesses, and in numerous 
charges confidently made, and as yet wholly 
uninvestigated, there was enough to induce a 
majority of the committee of investigation, a 
committee which was selected from the most 
able and honorable members of the House of 
Representatives, to recommend a suspension of 
further action upon the bill, and a prosecution 
of the inquiry. As the charter had yet four 
years to run, and as a renewal now was not ne- 
cessary to the successful prosecution of its busi- 
ness, it was to have been expected that the banlc 
itself, conscious of its purity, and proud of its 
character, would have withdrawn its application 
for the present, and demanded the severest scru- 
tiny into all its transactions. In their declining 
to do .so, tliere seems to be an additional reason 
why the functionaries of the government should 



254 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW 



proceed with less haste, and more caution, in 
the renewal of their monopoly." 

The appearance of the veto message was the 
signal for the delivery of the great speeches of 
the advocates of tlie bank. Thus Air they had 
held back, refraining from general debate, and 
limiting themselves to brief answers to current 
objections. Now they came forth in all their 
strength, in speeches elaborate and studied, and 
covering the whole ground of constitutionality 
and expediency; and delivered with unusual 
warmth and vehemence. j\Ir. Webster, Mr. 
Clay, Mr. Cla3'ton of Delaware, and Mr. Ewing 
of Ohio, thus entered the lists for the bank. 
And why these speeches, at this time, when it 
was certain that speaking would have no effect 
in overcoming the veto — that the constitutional 
maiority of two thirds of each House to carr\^ it, 
so far from being attainable, would but little 
exceed a bare majority ? The reason was told 
by the speakers themselves — fully told, as an 
appeal to the people — as a transfer of the ques- 
tion to the political arena — to the election fields, 
and especially to the presidential election, then 
impending, and within four months of its con- 
summation — and a refusal on the part of the 
corporation to submit to the decision of the con- 
stituted authorities. This was plainly told by 
Mr. Webster in the opening of his argument ; 
frightful distress was predicted : and the change 
of the chief magistrate was presented as the 
only means of averting an immense calamity on 
one hand, or of securing an immense benefit on 
the other. He said : 

" It is now certain that, without a change in 
our public councils, this bank will not be con- 
tinued, nor will any other be established, which, 
according to the general sense and language of 
mankind, can be entitled to the name. In three 
years and nine months from the present mo- 
ment, the charter of the bank expires; within 
that period, therefore, it nmst wind up its con- 
cerns. It must call in its debts withdraw its 
l;ills from circulation, and cease from all its or- 
dinary operations. All tliis is to be done in 
three years and nine months ; because, althou'di 
there is a provision in the cliarter rendering it 
lawful to use the corporate name for two years 
after the expiration of the ciiarler. yet this is 
allowed only for the purpose of suitg, and for 
the sale of the estate belonging to the bank, and 
for no other purpose whatever. The whole ac- 
tive business of the bank, its custody of pub- 
lic dei)Osits, its transfers of public moneys, its 
dealing in exchange, all its loans and discounts, 
uii-J all its issues of bills for circulation, must 



cease and determine on or before the 3d day of 
March, 183G; and, within the same period, its 
debts must be collected, as no new contract can 
be made with it, as a corporation, for the re- 
newal of loans, or discount of notes or bills, 
after that time." 

^Ir. Senator White of Tennessee, seizing upon 
this open entrance into the political arena by 
the bank, thanked Mr. Webster for his candor, 
and summoned the people to the combat of the 
great mone3'ed power, now openly at the head 
of a great political party, and carrying the for- 
tunes of that party in the question of its own 
continued existence. lie said : 

" I thank the senator for the candid avowal 
that unless the President will sign such a char 
ter as will suit the directors, they intend to in- 
terfere in the election, and endeavor to displace 
hiia. With the same candor I state that, after 
tliis declaration, this charter shall never be re- 
newed with my consent. 

" Let us look at this matter as it is. Immedi 
ately before the election, the directors apply for 
a charter, wliich thev think the President at 
au}' other time will not sign, for the express 
purpose of compelling him to sign contrary to 
his judgment, or of encountering all their hos- 
tility in the canvass, and at the polls. Suppose 
this attempt to have succeeded, and the President, 
through fear of his election, had signed this char- 
ter, although he conscientiously believes it will 
be destructive of the liberty of the people who 
have elected him to preside over them, and pre- 
serve their liberties, so far as in his power. 
What next? Why, whenever the charter is 
likely to expire hereafter, thej- will come, as 
they do now, on the eve of the election, and 
compel the chief magistrate to sign such a charter 
as they may dictate, on pain of being turned out 
and disgraced. Would it not be far better to 
gratif\- this moneyed aristocracv, to the whole 
extent at once, and renew their charter for ever ? 
The temptation to a periodical interference in 
our elections would then be talven away. 

"Sir, if, under these cirumstances. the charter 
is renewed, the elective franchise is destroyed, and 
the liberties and prosperity of the people are 
delivered over to this moneyed institution, to be 
disposed of at their discretion. Against this I 
enter my solemn protest." 

The distress to be brought upon the country 
by the sudden winding up of the bank, the sud- 
den calling in of all its debts, the sudden with- 
drawal of all its capital, was pathetically dwelt 
upon by all the speakers, and the alarming pic- 
ture thus presented by Mr. Clayton : 

" I ask, what is to be done for the country ? 
All thinking men must now admit that, as the 
present bank must close its concerns in less than 



ANNO 1832. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



255 



four years, the pecuniary distress, the commer- 
cial embarrassments, consequent upon its de- 
struction, must exceed any thing which has ever 
been known in our history, unless some other 
bank can be established to relieve us. Eight 
and a half millions of the bank capital, belong- 
ing to foreigners, must be drawn from us to 
Europe. Seven millions of the capital must be 
paid to the government, not to be loaned again, 
but to remain, as the President proposes, de- 
posited in a branch of the treasury, to check the 
issues of the local banks. The immense avail- 
able resourses of the present institution, amount- 
ing, as appears by the report in the other House, 
to $82,057,483, are to be used for banking no 
longer, and nearly fifty millions of dollars in 
notes discounted, on personal and other security, 
must be paid to the bank. The State banks 
nmst pay over all their debts to the expiring in- 
stitution, and curtail their discounts to do so, 
or resort, for the relief of their debtors, to the 
old plan of emitting more paper, to be bought 
up by speculators at a heavy discount." 

This was an alarming picture to present, and 
especially as the corporation had it in its power 
to create the distress which it foretold — a con- 
summation frightfully realized three years later 
— but a picture equally unjustifiable and gratu- 
itous. Two years was the extent of the time, 
after the expiration of its charter, that the cor- 
poration had accepted in its charter for winding 
up its business ; and there were now four years 
to run before these two years would commence. 
The section 21, of the charter, provided for the 
contingency thus : 

'• And notwithstanding the expiration of the 
term for which the said corporation is created, 
it shall be lawful to use the coporate name, style 
and capacity, for the purpose of suits for the 
final settlement and liquidation of the aifairs 
and accounts of the corporation, and for the sale 
and disposition of their estate real, personal and 
mixed : but not for any other purpose, or in any 
other manner whatever, nor for a period exceeding 
two years after the expiration of said term of 
incoi'poration." 

Besides the two years given to the institution 
after the expiration of its charter, it was perfect- 
ly well known, and has since been done in its 
own case, and was done by the first national 
bank, and may be by any expiring corporation, 
tliat the directors may appoint trustees to wind 
up their concerns ; and who will not be subject 
to any limited time. The first national bank — 
that which was created in 1791, and expired in 
1811 — had no two years, or any time Avhatever, 
a/lowed for winding up its affairs after the expira- 



tion of its charter — and the question of the re- 
newal was not decided until within the last days 
of the existence of its charter — yet there 
was no distress, and no pressure upon its debt- 
ors: A trust was created ; and the collection 
of debts conducted so gently that it is not yet 
finished. The trustees are still at work : and 
within this year, and while this application for a 
renewed charter to the second bank is going on, 
they announce a dividend of some cents on the 
share out of the last annual collections ; and in- 
timate no time within which they will finish ; 
so that this menace of distress from the second 
bank, if denied a renewal four years before the 
expiration of its charter, and four j'ears before 
the commencement of the two years to which it is 
entitled, was entirely gratuitous, and would have 
been wicked if executed. 

Mr. Clay concluded the debate on the side of 
the bank application, and spoke with great ar- 
dor and vehemence, and with much latitude of 
style and topic — though as a rival candidate for 
the Presidency, it was considered by some, that a 
greater degree of reserve might have been com- 
mendable. The veto, and its imputed undue 
exercise, was the theme of his vehement decla- 
mation. Besides discrediting its use, and de- 
nouncing it as of monarchial origin, he alluded to 
the popular odium brought upon Louis the 16th 
by its exercise, and the nickname which it caused 
to be fastened upon him. He said : 

" The veto is hardly reconcilable with the 
genius of representative government. It is to- 
tally irreconcilable with it, if it is to be fre- 
quently employed in respect to the expediency 
of measures, as well as their constitutionality. 
It is a feature of our government borrowed from 
a prerogative of the British King. And it is re- 
markable that in England it has grown obsolete, 
not having been used for upwards of a century. 
At the commencement of the French Revolution, 
in discussing the principles of their constitution, 
in the national convention, the veto held a con- 
spicuous figure. The ga)^, laughing population 
of Paris bestowed on the King the appellation of 
Monsieur Veto, and on the Queen that of Madame 
Veto." 

;Mr. Benton saw the advantage which this de- 
nunciation and allusion presented, and made re- 
lentless use of it. He first vindicated the use 
and origin of the veto, as derived from the insti- 
tution of the tribunes of the people among the 
Romans, and its exercise always intended for the 
benefit of the people ; and, under our constitu- 



256 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



tion, its only effect to refer a measure to the 
people, for their consideratiou, and to stay its 
execution until the people could pass upon it, and 
to adopt or reject it at an ensuing Congress. It 
was a power eminently just and proper in a ■ re- 
presentative government, and intended for the 
benefit of the whole people ; and, therefore, 
placed in the hands of the magistrate elected by 
the whole. On the allusion to the nickname on 
the King and Queen of France, he said : 

'• lie not only recollected the historical inci- 
dent to which the senator from Kentucky had 
alluded, but also the character of the decrees to 
which the unfortunate Louis the IGth had affixed 
his vetoes. One was the decree against tlie emi- 
grants, dooming to death and confiscation of 
estate every man, woman, and child who should 
attempt to save their lives by flying from the 
j)ike. the guillotine, and the lamp-post. The other 
was a decree exposing to death the ministers of 
rehgion who could not take an oath which their 
consciences repulsed. To save tottering age, 
trembling mothers, and affrighted children from 
massacre — to save the temples and altars of God 
from being stained by the blood of his minis- 
ters — were the sacred objects of those vetoes ; 
and was there any thing to justify a light or re- 
proachful allusion to them in the American 
Senate ? The King put his constitutional vetoes 
to these decrees ; and the canaille of Saint An- 
toinc and ]Marceau — not the gay and laughing 
Parisians, but ti 2 bloody canaille, instigated 
by leaders more ferocious than themselves — be- 
gan to salute the King as Monsieur Veto, and 
demand his head for the guillotine. And the 
Queen, when seen at the windows of her prison, 
her locks pale with premature white, the effect 
of an agonized mind at the ruin she witnessed, 
the poiasardes saluted her also as Madame 
Veto ; and the Dauphin came in for the epithet 
of the Little Veto. All this was terrible in 
France, and in the disorders of a revolution ; but 
why revive their rememl)rance in this Congress, 
successor to those which were accustomed to 
call this king our great ally ? and to comphment 
him on the birth of that child, stigmatized le petit 
veto, and perishing prematurely under the inhu- 
manities of the convention inflicted by the hand 
of Simon, the jailer? The two elder vetoes. 
Monsieur and ^ladamc, came to the guillotine in 
Paris, and the 3'oung one to a death, compared 
to which the guillotine was mercy. And now. 
why this allusion ? what application of its moral ? 
Surel}' it is not pointless ; not devoid of meaning 
and practical application. ^Ve have no bloody 
guillotines here, but we have pohtical ones: 
sharp axes falling from high, and cutting off 
political heads ! Is the service of that axe in- 
voked here upon 'General Andrew Veto?' If 
so, and the invocation should be successful, then 
Andrew Jackson, like Louis IGth. will cease to 
be in any body's way in their march to power." 



Mr. Clay also introduced a fable, not taken 
from iEsop — that of the cat and the eagle — the 
moral of which was attempted to be turned 
against him. It was in allusion to the Presi- 
dent's message in relation to the bank, and the 
conduct of his friends since in ''attacking" the 
institution ; and said : 

" They have done so ; and their condition now 
reminds me of the fable invented by Dr. Frank- 
lin, of the Eagle and the Cat, to demonstrate 
that yEsop had not exhausted invention, in the 
construction of his memorable fables. The ea- 
gle, you know, Mr. President, pounced, from his 
lofty flight in the air, upon a cat, taking it to 
be a pig. Having borne off his prize, he quick- 
ly felt most painfully the claws of the cat thrust 
deeply into his sides and body. Whilst flying, 
he held a parley with the supposed pig, and 
proposed to let go his hold, if the other would 
let him alone. No, says puss, you brought me 
from yonder earth below, and I will hold fast 
to you until you carry me back ; a condition to 
which the eagle readilj^ assented." 

Mr. Benton gave a poetical commencement to 
this fable ; and said : 

" An eagle towering in his pride of height 
was — not by a mousing owl, but by a pig under 
a jimpson weed — not haw'ked and killed, but 
caught and whipt. The opening he thought 
grand ; the conclusion rather bathotic. The 
mistake of the sharp-eyed bird of Jove, he 
thought might be attributed to old age dim- 
ming the sight, and to his neglect of his specta- 
cles that morning. lie was rather surprised at 
the whim of the cat in not choosing to fall, see- 
ing that a cat (unlike a politician sometimes), 
always falls on its legs ; but concluded it was a 
piece of pride in puss, and a wish to assimilate 
itself still closer to an aeronaut ; and having gone 
up pendant to a balloon, it would come down 
artistically, with a parachute spread over its 
head. It was a pretty fable, and well told ; but 
the moral — the application ? ^Esop always h:tfl 
a moral to his fable ; and Dr. Franklin, his im- 
puted continuator in this particular, though 
not yet the rival of his master in fabulous repu- 
tation, yet had a large sprinkling of practical 
sense ; and never wrote* or spoke without a 
point and an application. And now, what is 
the point here ? And the senator from Ken- 
tucky has not left that to be inferred ; he has 
told it himself General Jackson is the eagle ; 
the bank is the cat ; the parley is the proposi- 
tion of the bank to the President to sign its 
charter, and it will support him for the presi- 
dency — if not, will keep his claws stuck in his 
sides. But, Jackson, different from the eagle 
with his cat, will have no compromise, or bar- 
gain with the bank. One or the other shall 
fall ! and be dashed into atoms ! 

" Having disposed of these preliminary topics 



ANNO 1832. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



257 



Mr. B. came to the matter in hand — the debate 
on the bank, which had only commenced on the 
side of the friends of that institution since the 
return of the veto message. Why debate the 
bank question now, he exclaimed, and not de- 
bate it before? Then was the time to make 
converts ; now, none can be expected. Why 
are lips unsealed now, which were silent as the 
grave when this act was on its passage through 
the Senate ? The senator from Kentucky him- 
self, at the end of one of his numerous perora- 
tions, declared that he expected to make no 
converts. Then, why speak three hours 1 and 
other gentlemen speak a whole day ? Why 
this post facto — post mortem — this postJmrnous 
— debate ? — The deed is done. The bank bill 
is finished. Speaking caunot change the minds 
of senators, and make them reverse their votes ; 
still less can it change the President, and make 
hira recall his veto. Then why speak? To 
whom do they speak ? With what object do 
they speak ? Sir ! exclaimed Mr. B.. this post 
facto debate is not for the Senate, nor the Pres- 
ident, nor to alter the fate of the bank bill. It is 
to rouse the officers of the bank — to direct the ef- 
forts of its mercenaries in their designs upon the 
people — to bring out its stream of corrupting influ- 
ence, by inspiring hope, and to embody all its re- 
cruits at the polls to vote against President Jack- 
son. Without an avowal we would all know 
this ; but we have not been left without an 
avowal. The senator from Massachusetts (Mr. 
Webster), who opened yesterday, commenced 
his speech with showing that Jackson must be 
put down ; that he stood as an impassable bar- 
rier between the bank and a new charter ; and 
that the road to success was through the ballot 
boxes at the presidential election. The object 
of this debate is then known, confessed, declared, 
avowed ; the bank is in the field ; enlisted for 
the war ; a battering ram — the catapulta, not 
of the Romans, but of the National Republicans ; 
not to beat down the walls of hostile cities, but 
to beat down the citadel of American liberty ; 
to batter down the rights of the people ; to de- 
stroy a hero and patriot ; to command the elec- 
tions, and to elect a Bank President by dint of 
bank power. 

" The bank is in the field (said Mr. B.), a com- 
batant, and a fearful and tremendous one, in the 
presidential election. If she succeeds, there is 
an end of American liberty — an end of the re- 
public. The forms of election may be permitted 
for a while, as the forms of the consular elec- 
tions were permitted in Rome, during the last 
years of the republic ; but it will be for a while 
only. The President of the bank, and the Pres- 
ident of the United States, will be cousins, and 
cousins in the royal sense of the word. They 
will elect each other. They will elect their suc- 
cessors ; they will transmit their thrones to their 
descendants, and tliat by legislative construc- 
tion. The great Napoleon was decreed to be 
hereditary emperor by virtue of the 22d article 
of the constitution of the republic. The con- 

VoL. I.— 17 



servative Senate and the Tribunitial Assembly 
made him emperor by construction; and the 
same construction which was put upon the 22d 
article of the French constitution of the year 
VIII. may be as easily placed upon the ' general 
welfare ' clause in the constitution of these 
United States. 

" The Bank is in the field, and the West,— 
the Great West, is the selected theatre of her 
operations. There her terrors, her seductions, 
her energies, her rewards and her punishments, 
are to be directed. The senator from Massa- 
chusetts opened yesterday with a picture of the 
ruin in the West, if the bank were not rechar- 
tered; and the senator from Kentucky, Mr. 
Clay, wound up with a retouch of the same pic- 
ture to day, with a closeness of coincidence 
which showed that this part of the battle 
ground had been reviewed in company b}^ the 
associate generals and duplicate senators. Both 
agree that the West is to be ruined if the bank 
be not rechartered ; and rechartered it cannot 
be, unless the veto President is himself vetoed. 
This is certainly candid. But the gentlemen's 
candor did not stop there. They went on to show 
the modus operandi ; to show how the ruin 
would be worked, how the country would be de- 
vastated, — if Jackson was not put down, and the 
bank rechartered. The way was this : The West 
owes thirty millions of dollars to the bank ; the 
bank will sue every debtor within two years af- 
ter its charter expires ; there will be no money in 
the country to pay the j udgments, all property 
will be sold at auction ; the price of all property 
will fall ; even the growing crops, quite iq) to 
Boon's Lick, will sink in value and lose half their 
price ! This is the picture of ruin now drawn by 
the senator from Massachusetts ; these the words 
of a voice now pleading the cause of the West 
against Jackson, the sound of which voice never 
happened to be heard in favor of the West during 
the late war, when her sons were bleeding under 
the British and the Indians, and Jackson was pe- 
rilling life and fortune to save and redeem her. 

" This is to be the punishment of the West if 
she votes for Jackson ; and by a plain and natu- 
ral inference, she is to have her reward for put- 
ting him down and putting up another. Thirty 
millions is the bank debt in the West ; and 
these thirty millions they threaten to collect 
by writs of execution if Jackson is re-elected ; 
but if he be not elected, and somebod}- else be 
elected, then they promise no forced paj-mcnts 
shall be exacted, — hardly any paj-meut at all ! 
The thirty millions it is pretended will almost 
be forgiven ; and thus a bribe of thirty millions 
is deceitfully offered for the "Westei-n vote, 
with a threat of punishment, if it be not taken! 
But the West, and especially the State of Ohio, 
is aware that Mr. Clay does not use the bank 
power, in extending charities — coercion is his 
mode of appeal— and when President Clay and 
President Biddlc have obtained their double 
sway, all these fair promises will be forgotten. 
Mr. B. had read in the Roman history of the 



258 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



empire being put up to sale ; he had read of 
victorious generals, returning from Asiatic con- 
quests, and loaded with oriental spoil, bidding 
in the market for the consulship, and purchas- 
ing their elections with the wealth of conquered 
kingdoms ; but he had never expected to wit- 
ness a bid for the presidency in this young and 
free republic. lie thought he lived too early, — 
too near the birth of the republic, — while every 
thing was j'ct too young and innocent, — to see 
the American presidency put up at auction. 
But he affirmed this to be the case now ; and 
called upon every senator, and ever}' auditor, 
who had heard the senator from Massachusetts 
the daj^ before, or Ihe senator from Kentucky 
on that day, to put any other construction, if 
they could, upon this seductive oiler to the 
West, of indefinite accommodation for thirtj' 
millions of debt, if she would vote for one gen- 
tleman, and the threat of a merciless exaction 
of that debt, if she voted for another ? 

" Mr. B. demanded how the West came to be 
selected by these two senators as the theatre for 
the operation of all the terrors and seductions of 
the bank debt ? Did no other part of the country 
owe money to the bank? Yes! certainly, fifteen 
millions in the South, and twenty-five millions 
north of tlic Potomac. Why then were not the 
North and the South included in the fancied 
fate of the West ? Simply because the presiden- 
tial election could not be affected by the bank 
debt in those quarters. The South was irrevo- 
cahly fixed ; and the terror, or seduction, of the 
pa^-mcnt, or non-payment, of her bank debt, 
would operate nothing there. The North owed 
but little, compared to its means of payment, 
and the presidential election would turn upon 
other points in that region. The bank debt was 
the argument for the West ; and the bank and 



the orators had worked hand in hand, to 



duce, and to use, this 



argument. 



.Air. B. 



pro- 
then 



aflirnied, that the debt had been created for the 
very purpose to which it was now applied ; an 
electioneering, political j)uri)oso ; and this he 
proved by a reference to authentic documents. 

'• First : He took the total bank debt, as it ex- 
isted when President Jackson first brought the 
bank charter before the viev.- of Congress in De- 
cember, 1829, and showed it to be $40,216,000; 
then he took the total debt as it stood at pre- 
sent, being §70,428,000 ; and thus showed an in- 
crease of thirty millions in the short space of 
two years and four months. This great increase 
had occurred since the President had delivered 
opinions against the bank, and when 
dent, and law abiding institution, it 
have been reducing and curtailing its 
or at all events, keeping it stationar}-. He then 
showed the annual progress of this increase, to 
demonstrate that the increase was faster and 
faster, as the charter drew nearer and nearer to 
its termination, and the question of its renewal 
pressed closer and closer upon the people. He 
showed that the increase the first year after the 
message of 1829 was four millions and a quarter ; 



as a pru- 
ought to 
business. 



in the second )'ear, which was last year, about 
nineteen millions, to wit, from $44,052,000, to 
$()3,02r) 452 ; and the increase in the four first 
months of the present year was nearly five mil- 
lions, being at the rate of about one million and 
a quarter a month since the bank had applied 
for a renewal of her charter ! After having 
shown this enormous increase in the sum total 
of the debt, Mr. B. went on to show where it 
had taken place; and this he proved to be 
chiefly in the West, and not merely in the West, 
but prmcipally in those parts of the West in 
which the presidential lection was held to be 
most doubtful and critical. 

" He began with the State of Louisiana, and 
showed that the increase there, since the delivery 
of the message of 1829, was $5,001,161; in 
Kentucky, that the increase was $3,009,838 ; 
that in Ohio, it was $2,079,207. Here was an 
increase of ten millions in three critical and 
doubtful States. And so on, in others. Having 
shown this enormous increase of debt in the 
West, Mr. B. went on to show, from the time 
and circumstances and subsequent events, that 
they were created for a political purpose, and 
had already been used by the bank with that 
view. He then recurred to the two-and-twenty 
circulars, or writs of execution, as he called 
them, issued against the South and West, in 
January and February last, ordering curtailments 
of all debts, and the supply of reinforcements to 
the Northeast. He showed that the reasons 
assigned by the bank for issuing the orders of 
curtailments were false ; that she was not de- 
prived of public deposits, as she asserted ; for 
she then had twelve millions, and now has 
twelve millions of these deposits ; that she was 
not in distress for money, as she asserted, for 
she was then increasing her loans in other quar- 
ters, at the late of a million and a quarter a 
month, and had actually increased them ten 
millions and a half from the date of the first 
order of curtailment, in October, 1831, to the 
end of ^lay, 1832 ! Her reasons then assigned 
for curtailing at the Western branches, were 
false, infamously false, and were proved to be so 
by her own returns. The true reasons were 
I)olitical : a foretaste and prelude to what is now 
threatened. It was a manoeuvre to press the 
debtors — a turn of the screw upon the borrow- 
ers — to make them all cry out and join in the 
clamors and petitions for a renewed charter 1 
This was the reason, this the object ; and a most 
wanton and cruel sporting it was with the pro- 
perty and feelings of the imfortunate debtors. 
The overflowing of the river at Louisville and 
Cincinnati, gave the bank an opportunity of 
showing its gracious condescension in the tem- 
porary and slight relaxation of her orders at 
those places ; but there, and every where else in 
the West, the screw was turned far enough to 
make the screams of the victims reach their re- 
presentatives in Congress- In Mobile, alone, 
half a million was curtailed out of a million and 
a half; at every other branch, curtailments are 



ANNO 1832. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



259 



going on ; and all this for political effect, and to 
be followed up by the electioneering fabrication 
that it is the effect of the veto message. Yes ! 
the veto message and President, are to be held 
up as the cause of these curtailments, which 
have been going on for half a year past ! 

"Connected with the creation of this new 
debt, was the establishment of several new 
branches, and the promise of many more. In- 
stead of remaining stationary, and awaiting the 
action of Congress, the bank showed itself de- 
termined to spread and extend its business, not 
only in debts, but in new branches. Nashville, 
Natchez, St. Louis, were favored with branches 
at the eleventh hour. New-York had the same 
favor done her ; and. at one of these (the branch 
at Utica), the Senat" could judge of the neces- 
sity to the federal government wliich occasioned 
it to be established, and which necessity, in the 
opinion of the Supreme Court, is suflBcient to 
overturn the laws and constitution of a State : 
the Senate could judge of this necessity, from 
the fact that twenty-five dollars is rather a large 
deposit to the credit of the United States Trea- 
surer, and that, at the last returns, the federal 
deposit was preciselj^ two dollars and fifty cents ! 
This extension of branches and increase of debt, 
<at the approaching termination of the charter, 
was evidence of the determination of the bank 
to be rechartered at all hazards. It was done 
to create an interest to carry her through, in 
spite of the will of the people. Numerous pro- 
mises for new branches, is another trick of the 
same kind. Thirty new branches are said to be 
in contemplation, and about three hundred vil- 
lages have been induced each to believe that it- 
self was the favored spot of location ; but, always 
upon the condition, well understood, that Jack- 
son should not be re-elected, and that they 
should elect a representative to vote for the re- 
charter. 

" Mr. B., having shown w'hen and why this 
Western debt was created, examined next into 
the alleged necessity for its prompt and rigorous 
collection, if the charter was not renewed ; he 
denied the existence of any such necessity in 
point of law. He affirmed that the bank could 
take as much time as she pleased to collect her 
debts, and could be just as gentle with her 
debtors as she chose. All that she had to do 
was to convert a few of her directors into trus- 
tees, as the old Bank of the United States had 
done, the affairs of which were wound up so 
gently that the countrj^ did not know when it 
ended. JNIr. B. appealed to what would be ad- 
mitted to be bank authority on this point : it 
w^as the opinion of the senator from Kentucky 
(Mr. Clay), not in his speech against renewing 
the bank charter, in 1811, but in his report of 
that year against allowing it time to wind up its 
affairs. The bank then asked time to wind up 
its affairs ; a cry was raised that the country 
would be ruined, if time was not allowed ; but 
the senator from Kentucky then answered that 
cry, by referring the bank to its common law 



right to constitute trustees to wind up its affairs. 
The Congress acted upon the suggestion by re- 
fusing the time; the bank acted. upon the sug- 
gestion by appointing trustees ; the debtors 
hushed their cries, and the public never heard of 
the subject afterwards. The pretext of an un- 
renewed charter is not necessary to stimulate 
the bank to the pressure of Western debtors. 
Look at Cincinnati ! what but a determination 
to make its power felt and feared occasioned the 
pressure at that place ? And will that disposi- 
tion ever be wanting to such an institution as 
that of the Bank of the LTnited States ? 

" The senator from Kentucky has changed his 
opinion about the constitutionality of the bank ; 
but has he changed it about the legality of the 
trust ? If he has not, he must surrender his 
alarms for the ruin of the West ; if he has, the 
law itself is unchanged. The bank may act 
under it ; and if she does not, it is because she 
■will not ; and because she chooses to punish the 
West for refusing to support her candidate for 
the presidency. What then becomes of all this 
cry about ruined fortunes, fallen prices, and the 
loss of gromng crops ? AU imagination or cruel 
tyranny ! The bank debt of the West is thirty 
millions. She has six years to pay it in ; and, 
at all events, he that cannot pay in six j-ears, 
can hardly do it at all. Ten millions are in bills 
of exchange ; and, if they are real bills, they will 
be payable at maturity, in ninety or one hundred 
and twenty days ; if not real bills, but disguised 
loans, drawing interest as a debt, and premium 
as a bill of exchange, they are usurious and void, 
and may be vacated in any upright court. 

" But, the great point for the West to fix its 
attention upon is the fact that, once in everj'- ten 
years, the capital of this debt is paid in annual 
interest ; and that, after paying the capital many 
times over in interest, the principal will have to 
be paid at last. The sooner, then, the capital is 
paid and interest stopped, the better for the coun- 
try. 

'' Mr. Clay and Mr. Webster had dilated large- 
ly upon the withdrawal of bank capital from 
the West. Mr. B. showed, from the bank doc- 
uments, that they had sent but 938,000 dol- 
lars of capital there ; that the operation was the 
other way, a ruinous drain of capital, and that 
in hard money, from the West. He went over 
the tables which showed the annual amount of 
these drains, and demonstrated its ruinous na- 
ture upon the South and West. He showed tlie 
tendency of all branch bank paper to flow to the 
Northeast, the necessity to redeem it annuall}- 
with gold and silver, and bills of exchange, and 
the inevitable result, that the West would even- 
tually be left without either liard money, or 
branch bank paper. 

"Mr. Clay had attributed all the disasters of 
the late war, especially the surrender of Detroit, 
and the Bladensburg rout, to the want of this 
bank. Mr. B. asked if bank credits, or bank 
advances, could have inspired courage into t: e 
bosom of the unhappy old man who had ijcen 



2G0 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



the cause of tho surrender of Detroit ? or, could 
have made those fi;:ht wlio could not be inspired 
by the view of their capitol. the presence of their 
President, and the near proximity of their fami- 
lies and firesides? Andrew Jackson conquered 
at New Orleans, without money, without arms, 
without credit — aye, without a bank. lie got 
even his flints from the pirates. He scouted the 
idea of brave men being produced by the bank. 
If it had existed, it would have been a burthen 
upon the hands of the government. It was now, 
at this hour, a burthen upon the hands of the 
government, and an obstacle to the payment of 
the public debt. It had procured a payment of 
six millions of the public debt to be delayed, 
from July to October, under the pretext that 
the merchants could not pay their bonds, when 
these bonds were now paid, and twelve millions of 
dollars — twice the amount intended to have been 
paid — lies in the vaults of the bank to be used by 
her in beating down the veto message, the author 
of the message, and all who share his opmions. 
The bank was not only a burthen upon the 
hands of the government now, but had been a 
burthen upon it in three years after it started — 
when it would have stopped payment, as all 
America knows, in April 1819, had it not been 
for the use of eight millions of public deposits, 
and the seasonable arrival of wagons loaded with 
specie from Kentuck}' and Ohio. 

'• Mr. B. defended the old banks in Kentuck)^, 
Ohio, and Tennessee, from the aspersions which 
had been cast upon them. They had aided the 
government when the Northern bankers, who 
now scoff at them, refused to advance a dollar. 
They had advanced the money which enabled 
the warriors of the West to go forth to battle. 
They had crippled themselves to aid their gov- 
ernment. After the war they resumed specie 
payments, which had been suspended with the 
consent of the legislatures, to enable them to ex- 
tend all their means in aid of the national strug- 
gle. This resumption was made practicable by 
the Treasury deposit, in the State institutions. 
They were withdrawn to give capital to the 
branches of the great monopoly, when first extend- 
ed to the West. These branches, then, produc- 
ed again the draining of the local banks, which 
they had voluntarily suffered for the sake of 
government during the war. They had sacri- 
ficed their interests and credit to sustain the 
credit of the national treasury — and the treasu- 
ry surrendered them, as a sacrifice to the national 
bank. They .stopped payment under the pres- 
sure and extortion of the new establishments, 
introduced against the consent of the people and 
legislatures of the Western States. The paper 
of the AYcstern banks depreciated — the stock of 
the States and of individual stockholders was 
sacrificed — the country was filled with a spu- 
rious currency, by the course of an institution 
which, it was pretended, was established to pre- 
vent such a calamity The Bank of the United 
States was thus established on the ruins of the 
banks, and foreigners and non-residents were fat- 



tened on their spoils. They were stripped of 
their specie to pamjjcr the imperial bank. They 
fell victims to their patriotism, and to the estab- 
lishment of the United States bank ; and it was 
unjust and unkind to reproach them with a fate 
which their patriotism, and the establi.shmen 
of the federal bank brought upon them. 

"Mr. Clay and Mr. Webster had rebuked the 
President for his allusion to the manner in which 
the bank charter had been pushed through Con- 
gress, pending an unfinished investigation, reluc- 
tantly conceded. Mr. B. demanded if that was 
not true? He asked if it was not wrong to push 
the charter through in that manner, and if the 
President had not done right to stop it, to balk 
this hurried process, and to give the people time 
for consideration and enable them to act ? He 
had only brought the subject to the notice of the 
Congress and the people, but had not recom- 
mended immediate legislation, before the subject 
had been canvassed before the nation. It was a 
gross perversion of his messages to quote them 
in favor of immediate decision without previous 
investigation. He was not evading the question. 
The veto message proved that. He sought time 
for the people, not for himself, and in that he 
coincided with a sentiment lately expressed by 
the senator himself (from Kentucky) at Cincin- 
nati ; he was coinciding with the example of the 
British parliament, which had not yet decided 
the question of rcchartering the Bank of Eng- 
land, and which had just raised an extraordinary 
committee of thirty-one members to examine 
the bank through all her departments; and, what 
was much more material, he had coincided with 
the spirit of our constitution, and the rights of 
the people, in preventing an expiring minority 
Congress from usurping the powers and rights 
of their successors. The President had not 
evaded the question. He had met it fully. He 
might have said nothing about it in his messages 
of 1820, '30, ami '31. "lie might have remained 
silent, and had the support of both parties ; but 
the safety and interest of the country required 
the people to be awakened to the consideration 
of the subject. He had waked them up; and 
now that they are awake, he has secured them 
time for consideration. Is this evasion? 

"Messrs. C. and W. had attacked the Presi- 
dent for objecting to foreign stockholders in the 
Bank of the United States. Mr. B. maintained the 
solidity of the objection, and exposed the futility 
of the argument urged by the duplicate senators. 
They had asked if foreigners did not hold stock 
in road and canal companies? Mr. B. said, yes ! 
but these road and canal companies did not hap- 
pen to be the bankers of the United States ! The 
foreign stockholders in this bank were the bank- 
ers of the United States. They held its moneys ; 
they collected its revenues; they almost con- 
trolled its finances ; they were to give or with- 
hold aid in war as well as peace, and, it might 
j be, against their own government. Was the 
United States to depend upon foreigners in a 
I point so material to our existence ? The bank 



ANXO 1832. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



261 



was a national institution. Ought a national in- 
stitution to be the private property of aliens? 
It was called the Bank of the United States, and 
ought it to be the bank of the nobility and gen- 
try of Great Britain? The senator from Ken- 
tucky had once objected to foreign stockholders 
himself. He did this in his speech against the 
bank in 1811 ; and although he had revoked the 
constitutional doctrines of that speech, he [Mr. 
B.J never understood that he had revoked the 
sentiments then expressed of the danger of cor- 
ruption in our councils and elections, if foreigners 
wielded the moneyed power of our country. He 
told us then that the power of the purse command- 
ed that of the sword — and would he commit both 
to the hands of foreigners ? AH the lessons of 
history, said INIr. B., admonish us to keep clear of 
foreign influence. The most dangerous influence 
from foreignersis through money. The corruption 
of orators and statesmen, is the ready way to 
poison the councils, and to betray the interest of 
a country. Foreigners now own one fourth of 
this bank ; they may own the whole of it ! 
What a temptation to them to engage in our 
elections ! By carrjnng a President, and a ma- 
jority of Congress, to suit themselves, they not 
only become masters of the moneyed power, but 
also of the political power, of this republic. 
And can it be supposed that the British stock- 
holders are indifferent to the issue of this elec- 
tion ? that they, and their agents, can see with 
indifference, the re-election of a man who may 
disappoint their hopes of fortune, and whose 
achievement at New Orleans is a continued me- 
mento of the most signal defeat the arms of Eng- 
land ever sustained ? 

" The President, in his message, had charac- 
terized the exclusive privilege of the bank as ' a 
monopoly.' To this Mr. Webster had taken 
exception, and ascended to the Greek root of 
the word to demonstrate its true signification, 
and the incorrectness of the President's applica- 
tion. Mr. B. defended the President's use of 
the term, and said that he would give authority 
too, but not Greek authority. He would as- 
cend, not to the Greek root, but to the English 
test of the word, and show that a whig baronet 
had applied the term to the Bank of England 
with still more offensive epithets than any the 
President had used. Mr. B. then read, and 
commented upon several passages of a speech of 
Sir William Pulteney, in the British House of 
Commons, against renewing the charter of the 
Bank of England, in which the term monopoly 
was repeatedly applied to that bank ; and other 
terms to display its dangerous and odious char- 
ter. In one of the passages the whig baronet 
said : ' The bank has been supported, and is still 
supported, by the fear and terror which, by the 
means of its monopoly, it has had the power to 
inspire.' In another, he said : ' I consider the 
jK)wer given by the monopoly to be of the na- 
ture of all other despotic power, ^vhich corrupts 
the despot as much as it corrupts the slave ! ' 
In a third passage he said : 'Whatever language 



the private bankers may feel themselves bound 
to hold, he could not believe they had any sat- 
isfaction in remaining subject to a power which 
might destroy them at any moment.' In a 
fourth : ' No man in France was heard to com- 
plain of the Bastile while it existed; yet when 
it fell, it came down amidst the universal accla- 
mations of the nation ! ' 

"Here, continued Mr. B., is authority, Eng- 
lish authority, for calling the British bank in 
England a monopoly ; and the British bank in 
America is copied from it. Sir Wm. Pulteney 
goes further than Pi'csidcnt Jackson. He says, 
that the Bank of England rules by fear and 
terror. He calls it a despot, and a corrupt des- 
pot. He speaks of the slaves corrupted by the 
bank ; by vrhom he doubtless means the nomi- 
nal debtors who have received ostensible loans, 
real douceurs — never to be I'epaid, except in 
dishonorable services. He considers the praises 
of the country bankers as the unwilling homage 
of the weak and helpless to the corrupt and 
powerful. He assimilates the Bank of England, 
by the terrors which it inspires, to the old Bas- 
tile in France, and anticipates the same burst of 
emancipated joy on the fall of the bank, which was 
heard in France on the fall of the Bastile. And 
is he not right ? And may not every word of 
his invective be applied to the British bank in 
America, and find its appropriate application in 
well-known, and incontestable facts here ? Well 
has he likened it to the Bastile ; well will the 
term apply in our own country. Great is the 
fear and terror now inspired by this bank. Si- 
lent are millions of tongues, under its terrors, 
which are impatient for the downfall of the mon- 
ument of despotism, that they may break forth 
into joy. and thanksgiving. The real Bastile 
was terrible to all France ; the figurative Bas- 
tile is terrible to all America; but above all to 
the West, where the duplicate senators of Ken- 
tucky and Massachusetts, have pointed to the 
reign of terror that is approaching, and drawn 
up the victims for an anticipated immolation. 
But, exclaimed ]\Ir. B., this is the month of 
July ; a month auspicious to Uberty, and fatal 
to Bastiles. Our dependence on the crown of 
Great Britain ceased in the month of July ; the 
Bastile in France fell in the month of July; 
Charles X. was chased from France by the three 
glorious days of July ; and the veto message, 
which is the Declaration of Independence against 
the British bank, originated on the fourth of 
July, and is the signal for the downfall of the 
American Bastile, and the end of despotism. 
The time is auspicious ; the work will go on ; 
down with the British bank ; down with the 
Bastile ; away with the tyrant, will be the pa- 
triotic cry of Americans ; and down it Avill go. 

"The duplicate senators, said jNIr. B., have 
occupied themselves with criticising the Presi- 
dent's idea of the obligation of his oath in con- 
struing the constitution for himself. They also 
think that the President ought to be bound, the 
Congress ought to be bound, to take the consti- 



262 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



tution which the Supreme Court may deal out 
to them ! If so, why take an oath ? The oath 
is to bind the conscience, not to enlighten the 
head. Every officer takes tlie oath for himself; 
the President took the oath for himself ; admin- 
istered by the Chief Justice, but not to the 
Chief Justice. lie bound himself to observe 
the constitution, not the Chief Justice's inter- 
pretation of the constitution ; and his message 
is in conformity to his oath. This is the oath of 
duty and of right. It is the path of Jefferson, 
also, who has laid it down in his writings, 
that each department judges the constitution 
for itself, and that the President is as inde- 
pendent of the Supreme Court as the Supreme 
Court is of the President. 

'• The senators from Kentucky and Massa- 
chusetts have not only attacked the President's 
idea of his own independence in construing the 
constitution, but also the construction he has 
put upon it in reference to this bank. They 
deny its correctness, and enter into arguments 
to disprove it, and have even quoted authorities 
whicli maj- be quoted on both sides. One of 
the senators, the gentleman from Kentuck}-, 
might have spared his objection to the President 
on this point. He happened to think the same 
way once himself; and while all will accord to 
him the right of changing for himself, few will 
allow him the privilege of rebuking others for 
not keeping up with him in the rigadoon dance 
of changeable opinions. 

" The President is assailed for showing the 
drain upon the resources of the West, which is 
made by this bank. IIow assailed ? "With any 
documents to show that he is in error ? No ! 
n(;t at all ! no such document exists. The 
President is right, and the fact goes to a far 
greater extent than is stated in his message. 
He took the dividend profits of the bank, — the 
net, and not the gross profits ; the latter is the 
true measure of the burthen upon the people. 
The annual drain for net dividends from the 
West, is ^1,000,000. This is an enormous tax. 
But the gross profits are still larger. Tlien 
there is the specie drain, which now exceeds 
three millions of dollars per annum. Then 
there is the anmial mortgage of the growing 
crop to redeem the fictitious and usurious bills 
of exchange which arc now substituted for ordi- 
nary loans, and which sweeps olf the staple pro- 
ducts of the South and West to the North- 
eastern cities. — The West is ravaged by this 
bank. New Orleans, especially, is ravaged by 
it ; and in her impoverishment, the wliole West 
sulTers ; for she is thereby disabled from giving 
adequate pric(.'S for AVestern pro<luce. Mr. J3. 
declared that this British bank, in his opinion, 
had done, and would do, more pecuniary dam- 
age to New Orleans, than the British army 
would have done if tliey liad conquered it in 
1815. He verified this opinion by referring to 
the immense dividend, upwards of half a million 
a year, drawn from the branch there ; the im- 
mense amounts of specie drawn from it ; the 



produce carried off to meet the domestic bills 
of exchange ; and the eight and a half milliona 
of debt existing there, of which five millions 
were created in the last two years to answer 
electioneering purposes, and the collection of 
which must paralj'ze, for years, the growth of 
the city. From further damage to New Or- 
leans, tlie veto message would save that great 
city. Jackson would be her saviour a second 
time. He would save her from the British bank 
as he had done from the British army ; and if 
any federal bank must be there, let it be an in- 
dependent one ; a separate and distinct bank, 
which would save to that city, and to the Valley 
of the Mississippi, of which it was the great and 
cherished emporium, the command of their own 
moneyed sj'stem, the regulation of their own 
commerce and finances, and the accommodation 
of their own citizens. 

" Mr. B. addressed himself to the Jackson 
bank men, present and absent. They might 
continue to be for a bank and for Jackson ; but 
they could not be for this bank, and for Jack- 
son. This bank is now the open, as it long 
has been the secret, enemy of Jackson. It is 
now in the hands of his enemies, wielding all 
its own money — wielding even the revenues 
and the credit of the Union — wielding twelve 
millions of dollars, half of which were intended 
to be paid to the public creditors on the first 
day of July, but which the bank has retained 
to itself by a false representation in the pre- 
tended behalf of the merchants. All this mon- 
eyed power, with an organization which per- 
vades the continent, working every where with 
unseen hands, is now operating against the 
President ; and it is impossible to be in favor 
of this power and also in favor of him at the 
same time. Choose ye between them ! To 
those who think a bank to be indispensable, 
other alternatives present themselves. They 
are not bound nor wedded to this. New Amer- 
ican banks may be created. Read, sir, Henry 
Parnell. See his invincible reasoning, and in- 
disi)utable facts, to show that the Bank of Eng- 
land is too powerful for the monarchy of Great 
Britain ! Study his plan for breaking up that 
gigantic institution, and establishing three or 
four independent banks in its place, which 
would be so much less dangerous to liberty, 
and so much safer and better for the people. 
In these alternatives, the friends of Jackson, 
who are in favor of national banks, may find 
the accomplishment of their wishes without a 
sacrifice of their principles, and without com- 
mitting the suicidal solecism of fighting against 
him while professing to be for him. 

" Mr. B. addressed himself to the West — the 
great, the generous, the brave, the patriotic, the 
devoteil West. It was the selected field of bat- 
tle. There the combined forces, the national 
republicans, and the national republican bank, 
were to work together, and to fight togetlier. 
The liolj' allies understand each other. They 
are able to speak in each other's names, and to 



ANNO 1832. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



263 \ 



promise and threaten in each other's behalf. 
For this campaign the bank created its debt of 
thirty millions in the West ; in this campaign 
the associate leaders use that debt for their own 
purposes. Vote for Jackson ! and suits, judg- 
ments, and executions shall sweep, like the besom 
of destruction, throughout the vast region of the 
AVest ! Vote against him ! and indefinite indul- 
gence is basely promised ! The debt itself, it is 
pretended, will, perhaps, be forgiven ; or, at all 
events, hardly ever collected! Thus, an open 
bribe of thirty millions is virtually oflFered to 
the West ; and, lest the seductions of the bribe 
may not be sufficient on one hand, the terrors 
of destruction are brandished on the other ! 
Wretched, infatuated men, cried Mr. B. Do they 
think the West is to be bought 1 Little do they 
know of the generous sons of that magnificent 
region ! poor, indeed, in point of money, but rich 
in all the treasures of the heart ! rich in all the 
qualities of freemen and republicans ! rich in all 
the noble feelings which look with equal scorn 
upon a bribe or a threat. The hunter of the 
West, with moccasins on his feet, and a hunting 
sliirt drawn around him, would repel with in- 
dignation the highest bribe that the bank could 
ofler him. The wretch (said Mr. Benton, with 
a significant gesture) who dared to offer it, would 
expiate the insult with his blood. 

" Mr. B. rapidly summed up with a view of 
the dangerous power of the bank, and the pre- 
sent audacity of her conduct. She wielded a 
debt of seventy millions of dollars, with an or- 
ganization which extended to every part of the 
Union, and she was sole mistress of the moneyed 
power of the republic. She had thrown herself 
into the political arena, to control and govern 
the pi"esidential election. If she succeeded in 
that election, she would wish to consolidate her 
power by getting control of all other elections. 
Governors of States, judges of the courts, rep- 
resentatives and senators in Congress, all must 
belong to her. The Senate especially must be- 
long to her ; for, there lay the power to con- 
firm nominations and to tr^- impeachments ; and, 
to get possession of the Senate, the legislatures 
of a majority of the States would have to be 
acquired. The war is now upon Jackson, and 
if he is defeated, all the rest will fall an easy 
prey. What individual could stand in the States 
against the power of the bank, and that bank 
flushed with a victory over the conqueror of the 
conquerors of Bonaparte ? The whole govern- 
ment would fall into the hands of this moneyed 
power. An oligarchy would be immediately es- 
tablished ; and that oligarchy, in a few genera- 
tions, would ripen into a monarch}-. All govern- 
ments must have their end ; in the lapse of time, 
this republic must perish ; but that time, he now 
trusted, was far distant ; and when it comes, it 
should come in glory, and not in shame. Rome 
liad her. Pharsalia, and Greece her Chteronea; 
:ind this republic, more illustrious in her birth 
than G reece or Rome, was entitled to a death as 
glorious as theh's. She would not die by poison 



— perish in corruption — no ! A field of arms, 
and of glory, should be her end. She had a 
right to a battle — a great, immortal battle — 
where heroes and patriots could die with the 
liberty which they scorned to survive, and con- 
secrate, with their blood, the spot which ma,rked 
a nation's fall. 

" After jMr. B. had concluded his remarks, Mr. 
Clay rose and said : — 

" The senator from Missouri expresses dissatis- 
faction that the speeches of some senators should 
fill the galleries. He has no groxmd for uneasi- 
ness on this score. For if it be the fortune of 
some senators to fill the galleries when they 
speak, it is the fortune of others to empty them, 
with whatever else they fill the chamber. The 
senator from Missouri has every reason to be 
well satisfied with the efiect of his performance 
to day ; for among his auditors is a lady of great 
literary eminence. [Pointing to Mrs. Royal.] 
The senator intimates, that in my remarks on 
the message of the President, I was deficient in 
a proper degi-ee of courtesy towards that ofiicer. 
Whether my deportment here be decorous or 
not, I should not choose to be decided upon by 
the gentleman from Missouri. I answered the 
President's arguments, and gave my own views 
of the facts and inferences introduced by him 
into his message. The President states that the 
bank has an injurious operation on the interests 
of the West, and dwells upon its exhausting 
effects, its stripping the country of its currency, 
&c., and upon these views and statements I com- 
mented in a manner which the occasion called 
for. But, if I am to be indoctrinated in the 
rules of decorum, I shall not look to the gentle- 
man for instruction. I shall not strip him of 
his Indian blankets to go to Boon's Lick for 
lessons in deportment, nor yet to the Court of 
Versailles, which he eulogizes. There are some 
peculiar reasons wh}^ I should not go to that 
senator for my views of decorum, in regard to 
my bearing towards the chief magistrate, and 
why he is not a fit instructor. I never had 
any personal rencontre with the President of 
the United States. 1 never complained of any 
outrages on my person committed by him. I 
never published any bulletins respecting his pri- 
vate brawls. The gentleman will understand 
my allusion. [Mr. B. said : lie will understand 
you, sir, and so will you him.] I never com- 
plained, that while a brother of mine was down 
on the ground, senseless or dead, he received 
another blow. I have never made any declara- 
tion like these relative to the individual who is 
President. There is also a singular prophecy as 
to the consequences of the election of this indi- 
vidual, Avliich far surpasses, in evil foreboding, 
whatever I may have ever said in regard to his 
election. I never made any prediction so sinis- 
ter, nor made any declaration so harsh, as that 
which is contained in the prediction to which I 
allude. I never declared my apprehension and 
belief, that if he were elected, we should be 
obliged to legislate with pistols and du'ks by 



264 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



our side. At this last stage of the session I do 
not rise to renew the discussion of this question. 
I onl}' rose to give the senator from ^lissouri 
a full acquittance, and I trust there will be no 
further occasion for opening a new account Avith 
him. 

"]\rr. B. replied. It is true, sir, that I had 
an aflray with General Jackson, and that I did 
complain of his conduct. Wc fought, sir ; and 
we fought, I hope, like men. AVhen the explo- 
sion was over, there remained no ill will, on 
either .side. No vituperation or system of petty 
persecution was kept up between us. Yes, sir, 
it is true, that I had the personal difficulty, 
which the senator fiom Kentuckj' has had the 
delicacy to bring before the Senate. But let me 
tell the senator from Kentucky there is no ad- 
'journed question of veracity' between me and 
General Jackson. All difficult}^ between us 
ended with the conflict ; and a few months after 
it, I believe that either party would cheerfully 
have relieved the other from any peril ; and now 
we shake hands and are friendly when we meet. 
I repeat, sir, that there is no ' adjourned ques- 
tion of veracity' between me and Genei-al Jackson, 
standing over for settlement. If there had been, 
a gulf would have separated us as deep as hell. 

"Mr. B. then referred to the prediction alleged 
by Mr. Clay, to have been made by him. I 
have seen, he said, a placard, first issued in ^lis- 
souri, and republished lately. It first appeared 
in 1825, and stated that I had said, in a public 
address, that if General Jackson should be 
elected, we must be guarded with pistols and 
dirks to defend ourselves while legislating here. 
This went the rounds of the papers at the time. 
A gentleman, well acquainted in the State of 
Missouri (Col. Lawless), published a handbill 
denying the truth of the statement, and calling 
upon an\- person in the State to name the time 
and place, when and where, any such address 
had been heard from me, or any such declara- 
tion made. C(;loncl Lawless was perfectly fa- 
miliar with the campaign, but he could never 
meet with a single individual, man, woman, or 
child, in the State, who could recollect to have 
ever heard any such remarks from me. No one 
came forward to reply to the call. No one had 
ever heard me make the declaration which was 
charged upon me. The same thing has lately 
been printed here, and, in the night, stuck up in 
a placard upon the post^ and walls of this city. 
While its author remained concealed, it was 
impossible for me to hold him to account, nor 
could I make him responsible, who, in tlie dark, 
sticks it to the posts and walls: but since it is 
in open day introduced into this chamber I 
am enabled to meet it as it deserves to be met. 
1 see who it is that uses it here, and to his face 
{pointing to Mr. Clay] I am enabled to pro- 
nounce it, as I now do, an atrocious calumnj'. 

"Mr. Clay. — The assertion that there is 'an 
adjourned question of veracity' between me and 
Gen. Jackson, is, whether made by man or mas- 
ter absolutely false. The President made a cer- 



tain charge against me, and he referred to wit< 
ncsses to prove it. I denied the truth of the 
charge. lie called upon his witness to prove 
it. I leave it to the country to say, whether 
that witness sustained the truth of the Presi- 
dent's allegation. That witness is now on his 
passage to St. Petersburg, with a commission 
in his pocket. [Mr. B. here said aloud, in his 
place, the Mississippi and the fisheries — Mr. 
Adams and the fisheries — every bod}' under- 
stands it.J Mr. C. said, I do not 3'et understand 
the senator. He then remarked upon the 'pre- 
diction' which the senator from Missouri had 
disclaimed. Can he, said Mr. C, look to me, 
and say that he never used the language attri- 
buted to him in the placard which he refers to ? 
He says. Col. Lawless denies that he used the 
words in the State of ]\Iissouri. Can you look 
me in the face, sir [addressing lilr. B.], and say 
that you never used that language out of the 
State of Missouri ? 

" Mr. B. I look, sir, and repeat that it is an 
atrocious calumny ; and I will pin it to him who 
repeats it here. 

" Mr. ClaJ^ Then I declare before the Senate 
that )-ou said to me the very words — 

" [Mr. B. in his place, while Mr. Clay was yet 
speaking, several times loudly repeated the 
word 'false, false, false.'] 

" Mr. Clay said, I fling back the charge of atro- 
cious calumn}- upon the senator from rtlissouri. 

A call to order was here heard from several 
senators. 

"The President, pro tern., said, the senator 
from Kentucky is not in order, and must take 
his seat. 

" Mr, Clay. Will the Chair state the point 
of order ? 

"The Chair, said Mf. Tazewell (the President 
pro tem.), can enter in no explanations with the 
senator. 

" Mr. Clay. I shall be heard. I demand to 
know Avhat point of order can be taken against 
me, which was not equally applicable to the 
senator from Missouri. 

" The President, pro tem., stated, that he con- 
sidered the whole discussion as out of order. 
He would not have permitted it, had he been in 
the chair at its commencement. 

" Mr. Poindexter said, he was in the chair at 
the commencement of the discussion, and did 
not then sec fit to check it. But he was now 
of the opinion that it was in not in order. 

" Mr. B. I apologize to the Senate for the 
mainur in which I have spoken j but not to the 
senator from Kentucky. 

" Mr. Clay. To the Senate I also offer an 
apologj\ To the senator from Missouri none. 

" The question was here called for, by several 
senators, and it was taken, as heretofore re- 
ported. 

The conclusion of the debate on the side of 
the bank was in the most impressive form to the 
fears and apprehensions of the couutry, and 



ANNO 1832. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



265 



well calculated to alarm and rouse a community. 
Mr. Webster concluded with this perorcition, 
presenting a direful picture of distress if the veto 
was sustained, and portrayed the death of the 
coastitution before it had attained the fiftieth 
year of its age. He concluded thus — little fore- 
seeing in how few years he was to invoke the 
charity of the world's silence and oblivion for 
the institution which his rhetoric then exalted 
into a great and beneficent power, indispensable 
to the well working of the government, and the 
well conducting of their affairs by all the people : 

"Mr. President, we have arrived at a new 
epoch. We are entering on experiments with 
the government and the constitution of the 
country, hitherto untried, and of fearful and 
appalling aspect. This message calls us to the 
contemplation of a future, which little resem- 
bles the past. Its principles are at war with all 
that public opinion has sustained, and all which 
the experience of the government has sanctioned. 
It denies first principles. It contradicts truths 
heretofore received as indisputable. It denies 
to the judiciary the interpretation of law, and 
demands to divide with Congress the origination 
of statutes. It extends the grasp of Executive 
pretension over every power of the government. 
But this is not all. It presents the Chief Mag- 
istrate of the Union in the attitude of arguing 
away the powers of that government over which 
he has been chosen to preside ; and adopting, 
for this purpose, modes of reasoning which, 
even under the influence of all proper feeling 
towards high official station, it is difficult to 
regard as respectable. It appeals to every pre- 
judice which may betray men into a mistaken 
view of their own interests ; and to every pas- 
sion which may lead them to disobey the im- 
pulses of their understanding. It urges all the 
specious topics of State rights, and national en- 
croachment, against that which a great majority 
of the States have aflirmed to be rightful, and 
in which all of them have acquiesced. It sows, 
in an unsparing manner, the seeds of jealousy 
and ill-will against that government of which 
its author is the official head. It raises a cry 
that liberty is in danger, at the very moment 
when it puts forth claims to power heretofore 
unknown and unheard of. It affects alarm for 
the public freedom, when nothing so much en- 
dangers that freedom as its own unparalleled 
pretences. This, even, is not all. It manifest- 
ly seeks to influence the poor against the rich. 
It wantonly attacks whole classes of the people 
for the purpose of turning against them the pre- 
judices and resentments of other classes. It is 
a state paper which finds no topic too exciting 
for its use ; no passion too inflammable for its 
address and its solicitation. Such is this mes- 
sage. It remains, now, for the people of the 
United States to choose between the principles 



here avowed and their government. These 
cannot subsist together. The one or the other 
must be rejected. If the sentiments of the 
message shall receive general approbation, the 
constitution will have perished even earlier than 
the moment which its enemies originally allowed 
for the termination of its existence. It will not 
have survived to its fiftieth year." 

On the other hand, Mr. White, of Tennessee, 
exalted the merit of the veto message above all 
the acts of General Jackson's life, and claimed 
for it a more enduring fame, and deeper grati- 
tude than for the greatest of his victories : and 
concluded his speech thus : 

" When the excitement of the time in which 
we act shall have jjassed away, and the histori- 
an and biographer shall be employed in giving 
his account of the acts of our most distinguished 
public men, and comes to the name of Andrew 
Jackson ; when he shall have recounted all the 
great and good deeds done by this man in the 
course of a long and eventful life, and the cir- 
cumstances under which this message was com- 
municated shall have been stated, the conclusion 
will be, that, in doing this, he has shown a 
willingness to risk more to promote the happi- 
ness of his fellow-men, and to secure their lib- 
erties, than by the doing of any other act what- 
ever." 

And such, in my opinion, will be the judg- 
ment of posterity — the judgment of posterity, 
if furnished with the material to appreciate the 
circumstances under which he acted when sign- 
ing the message which was to decide the ques- 
tion of supremacy between the bank and the 
government. 



CHAPTER LXrX. 

THE PEOTECTIVE SYSTEM. 

The cycle had come round which, periodically, 
and once in four years, brings up a presidential 
election and a tarili* discussion. The two events 
seemed to be inseparable; and this being the 
fourth year from the great tariff debate of 1828, 
and the fourth year from the last presidential 
election, and being the long session whicli pre- 
cedes the election, it was the one in regular 
course in which the candidates and Lheir friends 
make the greatest efforts to operate upon public 
opinion through the measures which they pro- 
pose, or oppose in Congress. Added to this, tha 



266 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



election being one on which not only a change 
of political parties depended, but also a second 
trial of the election in the House of Eepresenta- 
tives in 182-t-'25, in which Mr. Adams and Mr. 
Clay triumphed over General Jackson, with the 
advantage on their side now of both being in Con- 
gross : for these reasons this session became the 
most prolific of party topics, and of party con- 
tests, of any one ever seen in the annals of our 
Congress. And certainly there were large sub- 
jects to be brought before the people, and great 
talents to appear in their support and defence. 
The renewal of the national bank charter — the 
continuance of the protective sj'stem — internal 
improvement by the federal government — divi- 
sion of the public land money, or of the lands 
themselves — colonization society — extension of 
pension list — Georgia and the Cherokees — Geor- 
gia and the Supreme Court — imprisoned mis- 
sionaries — were all brought forward, and pressed 
with zeal, by the party out of power; and pressed 
in a way to show their connection with the 
presidential canvass, and the reliance upon them 
to govern its result. The party in power were 
chiefly on the defensive ; and it was the com- 
plete civil representation of a military attack 
and defence of a fortified place — a siege — with 
its open and covert attacks on one side, its re- 
pulses and sallies on the other — its sappings 
and minings, as well as its open thundering 
assaults. And this continued for seven lonsr 
months — from December to July; fierce in the 
beginning, and becoming more so from day to 
day until the last hour of the last day of the ex- 
hausted session. It was the most fiery and 
eventful session that I had then seen — or since 
seen, except one— the panic session of 1834-'35. 
The two leading measures in this plan of opera- 
tions — the bank and the tariff— were brought 
forward simultaneously and quickly — on the 
same day. and under the same lead. The me- 
morial for the renewal of the bank charter was 
presented in the Senate on the 9th day of January' : 
on the same day, and as soon as it was referred, 
Mr. Clay submitted a resolution in relation to 
the tariff, and delivered a speech of three days' 
duration in suj)port of the American system. 
The President, in his message, and in view of 
the approaching extinction of tlie public debt — 
then reduced to an event of certainty within the 
ensuing year — recommended the abolition of 
duties on numerous articles of neccessity or 



comfort, not produced at home. Mr. Clay pro- 
posed to make the reduction in subordination to 
the preservation of the "American system-" 
and this opened the whole question of free trade 
and protection ; and occasioned that field to be 
trod over again with all the vigor of a fresh ex- 
ploration. Mr. Clay opened his great speech Avith 
a retrospect of what the condition of the country 
was for seven years before the tarriffof 1824, 
and what it had been since — the first a period of 
unprecedented calamity, the latter of equally 
miprecedented prosperity: — and he made the 
two conditions equally dependent upon the ab- 
sence and presence of the protective system. 
He said : 

" Eight years ago, it was my painfid duty to 
present to the other House of Congress an un- 
exaggerated picture of the general distress per- 
vading the whole land. We must all yet re- 
member some of its frightful features. We all 
know that the people were then oppressed and 
borne down by an enormous load of debt ; that 
the value of property was at the lowest point of 
depression; that ruinous sales and sacrifices 
were every where made of real estate ; that stop 
laws and relief laws and paper money were 
adopted to save the people from impending de- 
struction ; that a deficit in the public revenue 
existed, Avhicli compelled government to seize 
upon, and divert from its legitimate object, the 
appropriation to the sinking fund, to redeem the 
national debt; and that our commerce and 
navigation were threatened with a complete 
paralysis. In short, sir, if I were to select any 
term of seven years since the adoption of the 
present constitution, which exhibited a scene of 
the most wide-spread dismay and desolation, it 
would be exactl}' the term of seven j-ears which 
immediately preceded the establisliment of the 
tariff of 1824." 

This was a faithful picture of that calamitous 
period, but the argument derived from it was a 
two-edged sword, which cut, and deeply, into 
another measure, also lauded as the cause of the 
public prosperity. These seven years of nation- 
al distress which immediately preceded the tarifl' 
of 1824, were also the same seven years which 
immediately followed the establishment of the 
national bank ; and which, at the time it was 
chartered, was to be the remedy for all the dis- 
tress under which the country labored: besides, 
the protective sj-stcm was actually- commenced 
in the year 181G — contemporaneously with the 
establishment of the national bank. Before 181 G, 
protection to home industry had been an inci- 
dent to the levy of revenue; but in 181G it bo- 



ANNO 1832. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



267 



came an object. ]\Ir. Clay thus deduced the 
origin and progress of the protective policy : 

" It began on the ever memorable 4th day of 
July — the 4th of July, 1789. The second act 
which stands recorded in the statute book, bear- 
ing the illustrious signature of George Washing- 
ton, laid the corner stone of the whole system. 
That there might be no mistake about the mat- 
ter, it was then solemly proclaimed to the Ame- 
rican people and to the world, that it was neces- 
sary for '' the encouragement and protection of 
manufactures," that duties should be laid. It is 
in vain to urge the small amount of the measure 
of protection then extended. The great princi- 
ple was then established by the fathers of the 
constitution, with the father of his country at 
their head. And it cannot now be questioned, 
that, if the government had not then been new 
and the subject untried, a greater measure of pro- 
tection would have been applied, if it had been 
supposed necessary. Shortly after, the master 
minds of Jefferson and Hamilton were brought 
to act on this interesting subject. Taking views 
of it appertaining to the departments of foreign 
affairs and of the treasury, which they respect- 
ively filled, they presented, severally, reports 
which yet remain monuments of their profound 
wisdom, and came to the same conclusion of pro- 
tection to American industry. Mr. Jefferson 
argued that foreign restrictions, foreign prohibi- 
tions, and foreign high duties, ought to be met, 
at home, by American restrictions, American 
prohibitions, and American high duties. Mr. 
Hamilton, survejdng the entire ground, and look- 
ing at the inherent nature of the subject, treated 
it with an ability which, if ever equalled, has not 
been surpassed, and earnestly recommended pro- 
tection. 

" The wars of the French revolution commen- 
ced about this period, and streams of gold poured 
into the United States through a thousand chan- 
nels, opened or enlarged by the successful com- 
merce which our neutrality enabled us to prose- 
cute. ^Xe forgot, or overlooked, in the general 
prosperity, the necessity of encouraging our do- 
mestic manufactures. Then came the edicts of 
Napoleon, and the British orders in council ; and 
our embargo, non-intercourse, non-importation, 
qnd war, followed in rapid succession. These 
national measures, amounting to a total suspen- 
sion, for the period of their duration, of our 
foreign commerce, afforded the most efBcacious 
encouragement to American manufactures ; and, 
accordingly, they every where sprung up. Whilst 
these measures of restriction and this state of war 
continued the manufacturers were stimulated in 
their enterprises by every assurance of support, 
by public sentiment, and by legislative resolves. 
It was about that period (1808) that South 
Carolina bore her high testimony to the wisdom 
of the policy, in an act of her legislature, the 
preamble of which, now before mc, reads : 
'Whereas the establishment and encouragement 
of domestic manufactures is conducive to the in- 



terest of a State, by adding new incentives to 
industry^ and as being the means of disposing, 
to advantage, the surplus productions of the 
agricultuTist : And whereas, in the present 
unexampled state of the world, their establish- 
ment in our country is not only expedi^nt^ but 
politic, in rendering us independent of foreign 
nations.' The legislature, not being competent 
to afford the most efficacious aid, by imposing 
duties on foreign rival articles, proceeded to in- 
corporate a company. 

" Peace, under the Treaty of Ghent, returned 
in 1815, but there did not return with it the 
golden days which preceded the edicts levelled 
at our commerce by Great Britain and France. 
It found all Europe tranquilly resuming the arts 
and the business of civil life. It found Europe 
no longer the consumer of our surplus, and the 
employer of our navigation, but excluding, or 
heavily burdening, almost all the productions 
of our agriculture, and our rivals in manufac- 
tures, in navigation, and in commerce. It found 
our country, in short, in a situation totally dif- 
ferent from all the past — new and untried. It 
became necessary to adapt our laws, and espe- 
cially our laws of impost, to the new circum- 
stances in which we found ourselves. It has 
been said that the tariff of 1816 was a measure 
of mere revenue ; and that it only reduced the 
war duties to a peace standard. It is true that 
the question then was, how much, and in what 
way, should the double duties of the war be re- 
duced ? Now, also, the question is, on what 
articles shall the duties be reduced so as to sub- 
ject the amount of the future revenue to the 
wants of the government ? Then it was deem- 
ed an inquiry of the first importance, as it 
should be now, how the reduction should be 
made, so as to secure proper encouragement to 
our domestic industry. That this was a lead- 
ing object in the arrangement of the tariff of 
1816, I well remember, and it is demonstrated 
by the language of JNIr. Dallas. 

"The subject of the American system was 
again brought up in 1820, by the bill reported 
by the chairman of the Committee on Manuftic- 
tures, now a member of the bench of the Su- 
preme Court of the United States, and the prin- 
ciple was successfully maintained b}^ the repre- 
sentatives of the people ; but the bill which 
they passed was defeated in the Senate. It 
was revived in 1824, the Avhole ground carefully 
and deliberately explored, and the bill then in- 
troduced, receiving all the sanctions of the con- 
stitution. This act of 1824 needed amendments 
in some jmrticulars, which were attempted in 
1828, but ended in some injuries to the system; 
and now the whole aim was to save an existing 
system — not to create a new one." 

And he summed up his policy thus : 

'■ 1. That the polic}- which we have been con- 
sidering ought to continue to be regarded as 
the genuine Ameiican system. 

" 2. That the free trade system, which is pro- 



268 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW 



posed as its substitute, ought really to be con- 
sidered as the British colonial .system. 

"3. That the American system is beneficial 
to all parts of the Union, and absolutely neces- 
sarv to much the larger portion. 

''"4. That the price of the great staple of cot- 
ton, and of all our chief productions of agricul- 
ture, has been sustained and upheld, and a de- 
cline averted by the protective system. 

"5. That, if the foreign demand for cotton 
has been at all diminished by the operation of 
that system, the diminution has been more than 
compensated in the additional demand created 
at home. 

" 0. That the constant tendency of the sys- 
tem, by creating competition among ourselves, 
and between American and European industry, 
rec'.procally acting uj)on each other, is to reduce 
prices of manufactured objects. 

"7. That, in point of fact, objects within the 
scope of the policy of protection have greatly 
fallen in price. 

" 8. That if, in a season of peace, these bene- 
fits are experienced, in a season of war, when 
the foreign supply might be cut off, they would 
be much more extensively felt. 

'■9. And, linally, that the substitution of the 
British colonial system for the American sys- 
tem, without benefiting any section of the 
Union, by subjecting us to a foreign legislation, 
regulated by foreign interests, would lead to 
the prostration of our manufactures, general im- 
poverishment, and ultimate ruin." 

Mr. Clay was supported in his general views 
by many able speakers — among them, Dicker- 
sou and Frelinghuysen of New Jersej^ ; Ewing 
of Ohio; Holmes of Maine ; Bell of New Hamp- 
shire; Hendricks of Indiana ; Webster and Sils- 
bee of Massachusetts ; Bobbins and Knight of 
Rhode Island ; Wilkins and Dallas of Pennsyl- 
vania ; Sprague of Maine ; Clayton of Delaware; 
Chambers of Maryland ; Foot of Connecticut. 
On the other hand the speakers in opposition 
to the protective policy were equally numerous, 
aident and able. They were : Messrs. Hayne 
and Miller of South Carolina ; Brown and Man- 
gum of North Carolina ; Forsyth and Troup of 
Georgia ; Grundy and White of Tennessee ; 
Hill of New Hampshire ; Kane of Illinois ; 
Benton of Missouri ; King and ^loore of Ala- 
bama ; Poindextcr of Mississippi ; Tazewell 
and Tyler of Virginia ; General Samuel Smith 
of Maryland. I limit the enumeration to the 
Senate. In the House the subject was still 
more fully debated, according to its numbers ; 
and like the bank question, gave rise to heat ; 
and was kept alive to the last day. 

General Smith of Maryland, took up the 



question at once as bearing upon the harmony 
and stabilit}'' of the Union — as unfit to be 
pressed on that account as well as for its own 
demerits — avowed himself a friend to incidental 
protection, for which he had alwa3s voted, and 
even voted for the act of 1816 — which he con- 
sidered going far enough ; and insisted that all 
"manufixcturers" were doing well under it, and 
did not need the acts of 1824 and 1828, which 
were made for " capitalists " — to enable them to 
engage in manufacturing ; and who had not the 
requisite skill and care, and sufTered, and called 
upon Congress for more assistance. He said : 

'"We have arrived at a crisis. Yes. Mr. Presi- 
dent, at a crisis more appalling than a day of 
battle. I adjure the Committee on ]Manufac- 
tures to pause — to reflect on the dissatisfaction 
of all the South. South Carolina has expressed 
itself strongly against the tariff of 1828 — 
stronger than the other States are willing to 
speak. But, sir, the whole of the South feel 
deeply the oppression of that tariff. In this 
respect there is no diflerence of opinion. The 
South — the whole Southern States — all, con- 
sider it as oppressive. They have not 3'et 
spoken; but when they do speak, it will be 
with a voice that will not implore, but will de- 
mand redress. How much better, then, to grant 
redress ? How much better that the Commit- 
tee on Manufactures heal the wound which has 
been inflicted ? I want nothing tliat shall in- 
jure the manuf;\cturcr. 1 only want, justice. 

"I am, ^Ir. President, one of the few survi- 
vors of those who fought in the war of the revo- 
lution. We then thought we fought for liberty 
— for equal rights. We fought against taxa- 
tion, the proceeds of which were for the benefit 
of others. Where is the difference, if the peo- 
ple are to be taxed by the manufacturers or by 
any others ? I say manufiicturers — and why 
do I say so ? When the Senate met, there was 
a strong disposition with all parties to amelio- 
rate the tariff of 1828 ; but I now see a change, 
which makes me almost despair of any thing 
effectual being accomplished. Even the small 
concessions made by the senator from Ken- 
tucky [Mr. Clay], have been reprobated by the 
lobby members, the agents of the nianufiac- 
turers. I am told they have put their fiat on 
any change whatever, and hence, as a conse- 
quence, the change in the course and language 
of gentlemen, which almost precludes all hope. 
Those interested men hang on the Committee 
on Maiuifactures like an incubus. I say to that 
conuiiittee, depend upon j'our own good judg- 
ments — survey the whole subject as politicians 
— discard sectional interests, and study only 
the common weal — act with these views — and 
thus relieve the oppressions of the South. 

" I have ever, Mr. President, supported the 
interest of manufactures, as far as it could bo 



ANNO 1832. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



269 



done incidentally. I supported the late Mr. 
Lowndes's bill of 1816. I was a member of his 
committee, and that bill protected the manufac- 
tures sufficiently, except bar iron. Mr. Lowndes 
had reported fifteen dollars per ton. The House 
reduced it to nine dollars per ton. That act 
enabled the manufacturers to exclude importa- 
tions of certain articles. The hatters carry on 
their business by their sons and apprentices, 
and few, if any, hats are now imported. Large 
quantities ai'e exported, and preferred. All ar- 
ticles of leather, from tanned side to the finest 
harness or saddle, have been excluded from im- 
portation ; and why ? Because the business is 
conducted by their own hard hands, their own 
labor, and they are now heavily taxed by the 
tariif of 1828, to enable the rich to enter into 
the manufactures of the country. Yes, sir, I 
say the rich, who entered into the business after 
the act of 1824, which proved to be a mushroom 
affair, and many of them suffered severely. The 
act of 181G, I repeat, gave all the protection 
that was necessary or proper, under Avhich the 
mdustrious and frugal completely succeeded. 
But, sir, the capitalist who had invested his 
capital in manufactures, was not to be satisfied 
with ordinary profit ; and therefore the act of 
1828." 

Mr. Clay, in his opening speech had adverted 
to the Southern discontent at the working of the 
protective tariff, in a way that showed he felt it 
to be serious, and entitled to enter into the con- 
sideration of statesmen ; but considered this 
system an overruling necessity of such want 
and value to other parts of the Union, that the 
danger to its existence laid in the abandonment, 
and not in the continuance of the "American 
system." On this point he expressed himself 
thus : 

'"And now, Mr. President, I have to make a 
few observations on a delicate subject, which I 
approach with all the respect that is due to its 
serious and grave nature. They have not, in- 
deed, been rendered necessary by the speech of 
the gentleman from South Carolina, whose for- 
bearance to notice the topic was commendable, 
as his argument throughout was characterized 
by an ability and dignity worthy of him and of 
the Senate. The gentleman made one declara- 
tion which might possibly be misinterpreted, 
and I submit to him whether an explanation of 
it be not proper. The declaration, as reported 
in his printed speech, is: 'the instinct of self- 
interest might have taught us an easier way of 
relieving ourselves from this oppression. It 
wanted but the will to have supplied ourselves 
with every article embraced in the protective 
system, free of duty, without any other partici- 
pation, on our part, than a simple consent to re- 
ceive them.' [Here Mr. Hayne rose, and re- 
marked that the passages, which immediately 



preceded and followed the paragraph cited, he 
thought, plainly indicated his meaning, wliich 
related to evasions of the system, by illicit in- 
troduction of goods, which they were not dis- 
posed to countenance in South Carolina.] I am 
happy to hear this explanation, But, sir, it is 
impossible to conceal from our view the fact that 
there is great excitement in South Carolina ; that 
the protective system is openly and violently de- 
nounced in popular meetings ; and that the legis- 
lature itself has declared its purpose of resorting 
to counteracting measures : a suspension of which 
has only been submitted to, for the purpose of 
allowing Congress time to retrace its steps. 
With respect to this Union, Mr. President, the 
truth cannot be too generally proclaimed, nor 
too strongly inculcated, that it is neeessary to 
the whole and to all the parts — necessary to 
those parts, indeed, in different degrees, but vi- 
tally necessary to each ; and that, threats to 
disturb or dissolve it, coming from any of the 
parts, would be quite as indiscreet and improper, 
as would be threats from the residue to exclude 
those parts from the pale of its benefits. The 
great principle, which lies at the foundation of 
all free governments, is, that the majority must 
govern ; from which there is nor can be no ap- 
peal but to the sword. That majority ought to 
govern wisely, equitably, moderately, and con- 
stitutionally ; but, govern it must, subject only 
to that terrible appeal. If ever one, or several 
States, being a minority, can, by menacing a dis- 
solution of the Union, succeed in forcing an 
abandonment of great measures, deemed essen- 
tial to the interests and prosperity of the whole, 
the Union, from that moment, is practically gone. 
It may linger on, in form and name, but its vital 
spirit has tied for ever ! Entertaining these de- 
liberate opinions, I would entreat the patriotic 
people of South Carolina — the land of Marion, 
Sumpter, and Pickens; of Rutledge, Laurens, 
the Pickneys, and Lowndes ; of living and pre- 
sent names, which I would mention if they were 
not living or present — to pause, solemnly pause ! 
and contemplate the frightful precipice which lies 
directl}" before them. To retreat, may be pain- 
ful and mortifying to their gallantry and pride ; 
but it is to retreat to the Union, to safety, and 
to those brethren, with whom, or, with whose 
ancestors, they, or their ancestors, have won, on 
the fields of glory, imperishable renown. To ad- 
vance, is to rush on certain and inevitable dis- 
grace and destruction. 

"The danger to our Union does not lie on the 
side of persistanco in the American system, but 
on that of its abandonment. If, as I have sup- 
posed and believe, the inhabitants of all north 
and east of James River, and all west of the 
mountains, including Louisiana, arc deeply inte- 
rested in the preservation of that system, would 
they be reconciled to its overthrow ? Can it be 
expected that two thirds, if not three fourths, of 
the people of the United States would consent to 
the destruction of a policy believed to be indis- 
pensably necessary to their prosperity ? "When, 



270 



TUIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



too, this sacrifice is made at the instance of a 
single interest, which they verily believe will not 
be promoted by it ? In estimating the degree of 
peril which may be incident to two opposite 
courses of human policy, the statesman would 
be short-sighted who should content himself 
with viewing only the evils, real or imaginary, 
which belong to that course which is in practi- 
cal oj)eration. lie sliould lift himself up to the 
contemplation of those greater and more certain 
dangers which might inevitably attend the adop- 
tion of the alternative course. What would be 
the condition of this Union, if Pennsylvania and 
New- York, those mimmoth members of our 
confederacy, were firmly persuaded that their 
industry was paralyzed, and their prosperity 
blighted, by the enforcement of the British colo- 
nial system, under the delusive name of free 
trade ? They are now tranquil, and happy, and 
contented, conscious of their welfare and feel- 
ing a salutary and rapid circulation of the pro- 
ducts of home manufactures and home industry 
througout all their great arteries. But let that 
be checked, let them feel that a foreign s^'stem 
is to predominate, and the sources of their sub- 
sistence and comfort dried up ; let New England 
and the AVest, and the Middle States, all feel 
that they too are the victims of a mistaken 
liolic\', and let these vast portions of our coun- 
try despair of any favorable change, and then, 
indeed, might we tremble for the continuance 
and safety of this Union ! " 

Here was an appalling picture presented: dis- 
solution of the Union, on cither hand, and one 
or the other of the alternatives obliged to be 
taken. If persisted in, the opponents to the 
protective system, in the South, were to make 
the dissolution ; if abandoned, its friends, in the 
North, were to do it. Two citizens, whose word 
was law to two great parties, denounced the 
same event, ft'om opposite causes, and one of 
which causes was obliged to occur. The crisis 
required a hero-patriot at the head of the govern- 
ment, and Providence had reserved one for the 
occasion. There had been a design, in some, to 
bring Jackson forward for the Presidency, in 
1810, and again, in 1820, when he hold back, 
lie was brought forward, in 1824. and defeated. 
These three successive postponements brought 
him to the right years, for which Providence 
seemed to have destined him, and which he 
would have missed, if elected at either of the 
three preceding elections. It was a reservation 
above human wisdom or foresight ; and gave to 
the American people (at the moment they wanted 
him) the man of head, and heart, and nerve, to 
do what the crisis required : who possessed the 
confidence of the people, and who knew no 



course, in any danger, but that of duty and pa- 
triotism ; and had no feeling, in any extremity, 
but that God and the people would sustain him. 
Such a man was wanted, in 1832, and was found 
— found before, but reserved for use now. 

The representatives from the South, generally 
but especially those from South Carolina, while 
depicting the distress of their section of the 
Union, and the reversed aspect which had come 
upon their affairs, less prosperous now than be- 
fore the formation of the Union, attributed the 
whole cause of this change to the action of the 
federal government, in the levy and distribution 
of the public revenue ; to the protective system, 
which was now assuming permanency, and in- 
creasing its exactions ; and to a course of expendi- 
ture which carried to the North what was levied 
on the South. The democratic party generally 
concurred in the belief that this system was 
working injuriousl}'- upon the South, and that 
this injury ought to be relieved; that it was a 
cause of dissatisfaction with the Union, which a 
regard for the Union required to be redressed ; 
but all did not concur in the cause of Southern 
eclipse in the race of prosperity which their 
representatives assigned ; and, among them, Mr. 
Dallas, who thus spoke : 

"The impressive and gloomy description of 
the senator from South Carolina [Mr. Ilayne], 
as to the actual state and wretched prospects of 
his immediate fellow-citizens, awakens the live- 
liest sympathy, and should command our atten- 
tion. It is their right ; it is our duty. I cannot 
feel indifferent to the suflerings of any portion 
of the American people ; and esteem it incon- 
sistent with the scope and purpose of the federal 
constitution, that any majoritv, no matter how 
large, should connive at, or protract the oppres- 
sion or misery of any minority, no matter how 
small. I disclaim and detest the idea of making 
one part subservient to another ; of feastmg upon 
the extorted substance of mj- coinitrymen ; of 
enriching my own region, by draining the fer- 
tility and resources of a neighbor ; of becoming 
wealthy with sjioils which leave their legitimate 
owners impoverished and desolate. But, sir, I 
want pi-oof of a fact, whose existence, at least as 
described, it is difficult even to conceive ; and, 
above all. I want the true causes of that fact to 
be ascertained ; to be brought witliin the reach 
of legislative remedy, and to have tluvt lemedy 
of a nature which may be applied without pro- 
ducing more mischiefs than those it proposes to 
cure. The proncness to exaggerate social evils is 
greatest with the most patriotic. 'J'emporary 
embarrassment is sensitively apprehended to be 
permanent. Every day's experience teaches how 
apt we are to magnify partial into universal dig- 



ANNO 1882. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



271 



tress, and with what diflScultyan excited imagi- 
nation rescues itself from despondency. It will 
not do, sir, to act upon the glowing or pathetic 
delineations of a gifted orator ; it will not do to 
become enlisted, by ardent exhortations, in a 
crusade against established systems of policy ; 
it wUi not do to demolish the walls of our cita- 
del to the sounds of plaintiff' eloquence, or fire 
the temple at the call of impassioned enthu- 
siasm. 

" What, sir, is the cause of Southern distress ? 
Has anjr gentleman yet ventured to designate 
it 1 Can any one do more than suppose, or ar- 
gumentatively assume it ? I am neither willing 
nor competent to flatter. To praise the honor- 
able senator from South Carolina, would be 

' To add perfume to the -violet — 
"Wasteful and ridiculous excess.' 

But, if he has failed to discover the source of 
the evils he deplores, who can unfold it 1 Amid 
the warm and indisci'iminating denunciations 
with which he has assailed the policy of protect- 
ing domestic manufactures and native produce, he 
frankly avows that he would not ' deny that there 
are other causes, besides the tariff', which have 
contributed to produce the evils which he has 
depicted.' What are those ' other causes ?' In 
what proportion have they acted ? How much 
of this dark shadowing is ascribable to each 
singly, and to all in combination ? Would the 
tariff' be at all felt or denounced, if these other 
causes were not in operation? Would not, in 
fact, its influence, its discriminations, its inequal- 
ities, its oppressions, but for these 'other causes,' 
be shaken, by the elasticity and energy, and ex- 
haustless spirit of the South, as ' dew-drops from 
the lion's mane ? ' These inquiries, sir, must be 
satisfactorily answered before we can be justly 
required to legislate away an entire system. If 
it be the root of all evil, let it be exposed and 
demolished. If its poisonous exhalations be but 
partial, let us preserve such portions as are in- 
noxious. If, as the luminary of day, it be pure 
and salutary in itself, let us not wish it extin- 
guished, because of the shadows, clouds, and 
darkness which obscure its brightness or impede 
its vivifying power. 

"That other causes still, Mr. President, for 
Southern distress, do exist, cannot be doubted. 
They combine witli the one I have indicated, and 
are equally unconnected with the manufacturing 
policy. One of these it is peculiarly painful to 
advert to ; and when I mention it, I beg honor- 
able senators not to suppose that I do it in the 
spirit of taunt, of reproach, or of idle declama- 
tion. Regarding it as a misfortune merely, not 
as a fault ; as a disease inherited, not incurred ; 
perhaps to be alleviated, but not eradicated, I 
should feel self-condemned were I to treat it 
other than as an existing fact, whose merit or 
demerit, apart from the question under debate, is 
shielded from commentary by the highest and 
most just considerations. I refer, sir, to the 
character of Southern labor, in itself, and in its 



influence on others. Incapable of adaptation to 
the ever-varying changes of human society and 
existence, it retains the communities in which it 
is established, in a condition of apparent and 
comparative inertness. The lights of science, and 
the improvements of art, which vivify and accel- 
erate elsewhere, cannot penetrate, or, if they do, 
penetrate with dilatory inefficiency, among its 
operatives. They are merely instinctive and 
passive. While the intellectual industry of other 
parts of this country springs elastically forward 
at every fresh impulse, and manual labor is pro- 
pelled and redoubled by countless inventions, 
machines, and contrivances, instantly understood 
and at once exercised, the South remains station- 
ary, inaccessible to such encouraging and invig- 
orating aids. Nor is it possible to be wholly 
blind to the moral eff'ect of this species of labor 
upon those freemen among whom it exists. A 
disrelish for humble and hardy occupation; a 
pride adverse to drudgery and toil ; a dread that 
to partake in the employments allotted to color, 
may be accompanied also by its degradation, are 
natural and inevitable. The high and lofty quali- 
ties which, in other scenes and for other pur- 
poses, characterize and adorn our Southern 
brethren, are fatal to the enduring patience, the 
corporal exertion, and the painstaking simpU- 
city, by which only a successful yeomanry can 
be formed. When, in fact, sir, the senator from 
South Carolina asserts that ' slaves are too im- 
provident, too incapable of that minute, constant, 
delicate attention, and that persevering industry 
which is essential to the success of manufactur- 
ing establishments,' he himself admits the defect 
in the condition of Southern labor, by which the 
progress of his favorite section must be retarded. 
He admits an inability to keep pace with the 
rest of the world. He admits an inherent weak- 
ness ; a weakness neither engendered nor aggra- 
vated by the tariff — which, as societies are now 
constituted and directed, must drag in the rear, 
and be distanced in the common race." 

Thus spoke Mr. Dallas, senator from Pennsyl- 
vania; and thus speaking, gave offence to no 
Southern man ; and seemed to be well justified 
in what he said, from the historical fact that the 
loss of ground, in the race of prosperity, had 
commenced in the South before the protective 
system began — before that epoch year, 1816, 
when it was first installed as a system, and so 
installed by the power of the South Carolina 
vote and talent. But the levy and expenditure 
of the federal government was, doubtless, the 
main cause of this Southern decadence — so un- 
natural in the midst of her rich staples — and 
which had commenced before 1816. 

It so happened, that while the advocates of the 
American system were calhng so earnestly for 
government protection, to enable them to sus- 



272 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



tain themselves at home, that the custom-house 
books were showing that a great many species 
of our manufactures, and especially tJie cotton. 
were going abroad to far distant countries ; and 
sustaining themselves on remote theatres against 
all competition, and beyond the range of any 
help from our laws. Mr. Clay, himself, spoke of 
this exportation, to show the excellence of our 
fabrics, and that they were worth protection ; I 
used the same fact to show that they were inde- 
pendent of protection ; and said : 

"And here I would ask, how many and which 
are the articles that require the present high rate 
of protection 1 Certainly not tlie cotton manu- 
facture; for, the senator from Kentucky [Mr. 
(Hav], who appears on this floor as the leading 
chanijiion of domestic manufactures, and whose 
admissions of fact must be conchisive against his 
arguments of theory ! this senator tells you, and 
dwells upon the disclosure with triumphant ex- 
ultation, that American cottons are now exported 
to Asia, and sold at a profit in the cotton mar- 
kets of Canton and Calcutta ! Surely, sir, our 
tariff laws of 1824 and 1828 are not in force in 
Bengal and China. And I appeal to all mankind 
for tiie truth of the infei'ence, that, if our cottons 
can go to these countries, and be sold at a profit 
without any protection at all, they can stay at 
honiCj and be sold to our own citizens, without 
loss, under a less protection than fifty and two 
liundred and fifty per centum! One fact, i\Ir. 
President, is said to be worth a thousand theo- 
ries ; I will add that it is worth a hundred thou- 
sand speeches ; and this fact that the American 
cottons now traverse the one-half of the circum- 
ference of this globe — cro-ss the equinoctial line ; 
descend to the antipodes ; seek foreign markets 
on the double tlieatre of British and Asiatic com- 
petition, and come off victorious from the con- 
test — is a full and overwhelming answer to all 
the speeches that have been made, or ever can 
be made, in favor of high protecting duties on 
these cottons at home. The only effect of such 
duties is to cut off importations — to create mono- 
poly at home — to enable our mainifacturcrs to 
sell their goods higher to their own christian fel- 
low-citizens than to the pagan worshippers of Fo 
and of Brahma ! to enal>le the inhabitants of the 
Ganges and the Burrainpooter to wear Ameri- 
can cottons nfion cheaper terms than the inhabit- 
ants of the Ohio and Mississippi. And every 
Western citizen knows the fact, that when these 
shipments of American cottons were making to 
the extremities of A.sia, the price of these same 
cottons was actually raised twenty aiid twenty- 
five per cent., in all the towns of the West ; with 
this further difference to our prejudice, that we 
can oidj^ pay for them in money, while the in- 
habitants of Asia make payment in the products 
of their own country. 

"This is what the gentleman's admission 



proved ; but I do not come here to argue upon 
admissions, whether candid or unguarded, of the 
adversary speakers. I bring my own facts and 
proofs ; and, really, sir, I have a mind to com- 
plain that the gentleman's admission about cot- 
tons has crippled the force of my argument ; 
that it has weakened its effect by letting out half 
at a time, and destroyed its novelty, by an anti- 
cipated revelation. The truth is, I have this fact 
(that we exported domestic cottons) treasured 
up in my magazine of material ! and intended 
to produce it, at the proper time, to show that 
we exported this article, not to Canton and Cal- 
cutta alone, but to all quarters of the globe ; not 
a few cargoes onl}^, b}' way of experiment, but 
in great quantities, as a regular trade, to the 
amount of a million and a quarter of dollars, 
annually ; and that, of this amoimt, no less than 
forty thousand dollars' worth, in the year 1830, 
had done what the combined fleets and armies 
of the world could not do ; it had scaled the 
rock of Gibraltar, penetrated to the heart of the 
British garrison, taken possession of his Britan- 
nic Majesty's soldiers, bound their arms, legs, and 
bodies, and strutted in triumph over the ram- 
parts and batteries of that unattackable fortress. 
And now, sir, I will use no more of the gentle- 
man's admissions ; I will draw upon my own 
resources ; and will show nearly the whole list 
of our domestic manufactures to be in the same 
flourishing condition with cottons, actually going 
abroad to seek competition, without protection, 
in every foreign clime, and contending victo- 
riously with foreign manufactures wherever they 
can encounter them. I read from the custom- 
house returns, of 1830 — the last that has been 
printed. Listen to it : 

" This is the list of domestic manufactures ex- 
ported to foreign countries. It comj)rehends the 
whole, or nearly the whole, of that long cata- 
logue of items which the senator from Kentucky 
[Mr. Clay] read to us, on the second day of his 
discourse ; and shows the whole to be going 
abroad, without a shadow of protection, to seek 
competition, in foreign markets, with the foreign 
goods of all the world. The list of articles I 
have read, contains near fifty varieties of manu- 
factures (and 1 have omitted many minor arti- 
cles) amounting, in value, to near six millions of 
dollars ! And now behold the diversity of human 
reasoning ! The senator from Kentucky exhi- 
bits a list of articles manufactured in the United 
States, and argues that the slightest diminution 
in the enormous protection they now enjoy, will 
overwhelm the whole in ruin, and cover the 
country with distress ; I read the same identical 
list, to show that all these articles go abroad 
and contend victoriously with their foreign rivals 
in all foreign markets." 

Mr. Clay had attributed to the tariffs of 1824 
and 1828 the reviving and returning prosperity 
of the country, while in fact it was the mere 
effect of recovery from prostration, and in spite 



ANNO 1832. ANDREW JACKSON, PIIESIDENT. 



27: 



of these tariffs, instead of by their help. Busi- 
ness had been brought to a stand during the 
disastrous period which ensued the estabhsh- 
ment of the Bank of the United States. It was 
a period of stagnation, of settlement, of paying 
up, of getting clear of loads of debt ; and start- 
ing afresh. It was the strong man, freed from 
the burthen lender which he had long been pros- 
trate, and getting on his feet again. In the 
West I knew that this was the process, and that 
our revived prosperity was entirely the result 
of our own resources, independent of, and in 
spite of federal legislation ; and so declared it in 
my speech. I said : 

" The fine effects of the high tariff upon the 
prosperity of the West have been celebrated on 
this floor : with how much reason, let facts res- 
pond, and the people judge ! I do not think we 
are indebted to the high tariff for our fertile 
lands and our navigable rivers ; and I am cer- 
tain we are indebted to these blessings for the 
prosperity we enjoy. In all that comes from 
the soil, the people of the West are rich. They 
have an abundant supply of food for man and 
beast, and a large surplus to send abroad. They 
have the comfortable living which industry cre- 
ates for itself in a rich soil ; but, beyond this, 
they are poor. They have none of the splendid 
works which imply the presence of the moneyed 
power ! No Appian or Flaminian ways ; no 
roads paved or McAdamized ; no canals, except 
what are made upon borrowed means ; no aque- 
ducts ; no bridges of stone across our innume- 
rable streams ; no edifices dedicated to eternity ; 
no schools for the fine arts : not a public library 
for which an ordinary scholar would not apolo- 
gize. And why none of those things ? Have the 
people of the West no taste for public improve- 
ments, for the useful and the fine arts, and for 
literature ? Certainly they have a very strong 
taste for them ; but they have no money ! not 
enough for private and current uses, not enough 
to defray our current expenses, and buy neces- 
saries ! without thinking of public improve- 
ments. We have no money ! and that is a tale 
which has been told too often here— chanted 
too dolefully in the book of lamentations which 
was composed for the death of the Maysville 
road — to be denied or suppressed now. They 
have no adequate supply of money. And why ? 
Have they no exports? Nothing to send 
abroad 1 Certainly they have exports. Behold 
the marching myriads of living animals annually 
taking their departure from the heart of the 
West, defiling through the gorges of the Cum- 
berland, the Alleghany, and the Apalachian 
mountains, or traversing the plains of the South, 
diverging as they march, and spreading them- 
selves all over that vast segment of our territo- 
rial circle which lies between the debouches of 
the Mississippi and the estuary of the Potomac ! 

Vol. I.— 18 



Behold, osa the other hand, the fljnng steam- 
boats, and the fleets of floating arks, loaded 
with the products of the forest, the form, and 
the pasture, following the course of our noble 
rivers, and bearing their freights to that great 
city which revives, upon the banks of the^Mis- 
sissippi, the name* of the greatest of the empe- 
rors that ever reigned upon the banks of the 
Tiber, and who eclipsed the glory of his own 
heroic exploits by giving an order to his legions 
never to levy a contribution of salt upon a Ro- 
man citizen ! Behold this double line of ex- 
ports, and observe the refluent currents of gold 
and silver which result from them ! Large are 
the supplies — millions are the amount which is 
annually poured into the West from these dou- 
ble exportations ; enough to cover the face of 
the earth with magnificent improvements, and 
to cram every mdustrious pocket with gold and 
silver. But where is this money ? for it is not 
in the country ! Where does it go 1 for go it 
does, and scarcely leaves a vestige of its transit 
behind ! Sir, it goes to the Northeast ! to the 
seat of the American system ! there it goes ! 
and thus it goes !" 

Mr. Clay had commenced his speech with an 
apology for what might be deemed failing pow- 
ers on account of advancing age. He said he 
was getting old, and might not be able to fulfil 
the expectation, and requite the attention, of the 
attending crowd; and wished the task could 
have fallen to younger and abler hands. This 
apology for age when no diminution of mental 
or bodily vigor was perceptible, induced seve- 
ral speakers to commence their replies with al- 
lusions to it, generally complimentary, but not 
admitting the fact. Mr. Hayne gracefully said, 
that he had lamented the advances of age, and 
mourned the decay of his eloquence, so elo- 
quently as to prove that it was still in full vigor ; 
and that he had made an able and ingenious 
argument, fully sustaining his high reputation 
as an accomplished orator. General Smith, 
of Maryland, said that he could not complain 
himself of the infirmities of age, though older 
than the senator from Kentucky, nor could find 
in his years any apology for the insufficiency of 
his speech. Mr. Clay thought this was intended 
to be a slur upon him, and replied in a spirit 
which gave rise to the following sharp encountei*: 

" Mr. Smith then rose, and said he was sorry 
to find that he had unintentionally oflended the 
honorable gentleman from Kentucky. In refer- 
ring to the vigorous age he himself enjoyed, he 

* " Aurclliui," whoso name was given to the military sta 
tion (presidium) which was afterwards corrupted ii^^'i " Or 
leans. 



274 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



had not supposed he should give offence to others 
who cotnphiined of the infirmities of age. The 
{gentleman from Kentucky was the last wlio 
should take the remark as disparagmg to his 
vigor and personal appearance ; for, when that 
gentleman spoke to us of his age, he heard a 
young lady near him exclaim — " Old, why I 
think he "is mighty pretty." The honorable 
gentleman, on Friday last, made a similitude 
where none existed. I, said Mr. S., had suggest- 
ed the necessity of mutual forbearance in set- 
tling the tariff, and, thereupon, the gentleman 
vociferated loudly and angrily about removals 
from office. lie said I was a leader in the sys- 
tem. I den)^ the fact. I never exercised the 
least influence in effecting a removal, and on the 
contrary, I interfered, successfully, to prevent the 
removal of two gentlemen in office. I am charg- 
ed with making a committee on roads and canals, 
adverse to internal improvement. If this be so, 
it is by mistake. I certainly supposed every 
gentleman named on that committee but one to 
be fricndl}' to internal improvement. To the 
committee on manufactures I assigned four out 
of five who were known to be friendly to the 
protective system. The rights of the minority, 
he had endeavored, also, in arranging the com- 
mittee, to secure. The appointment of the com- 
mittees he had foimd one of the most difficult 
and onerous tasks he had ever undertaken. One- 
third of the house were lawj-^ers, all of whom 
wanted to be put upon some important commit- 
tee. The oath which the senator had tendered, 
he hoped he would not take. In the year 1795, 
Mr. S. said, he had sustained a protective duty 
against the opposition of a member from Pitts- 
burg. Previous to the year 1822, he had always 
given incidental support to manufactures, in fix- 
ing the tariff. lie was a warm friend to the 
tariff of 181 «'), which he still regarded as a wise 
and beneficial law. He hoped, then, the gentle- 
man would not take his oath. 

" ^Ir. Clay placed, he said, a high value on the 
compliment of which the honorable senator was 
the channel of communication ; and he the more 
valued it, inasmuch as he did not recollect more 
than once before, in his life, to have received a 
similar compliment. lie was happy to find that 
the honorable gentleman disclaimed the S3-stcm 
of proscription ; and he should, with his appro- 
bation, hereafter cite his authority in opposition 
to it. The Committee on Roads and Canals, 
whatever were the gentleman's intentions in 
constructing it, had a majority of members 
whose votes and speeches against internal im- 
provements were matter of notoriety. The gen- 
tleman's appeal to his acts in '95, is perfectly 
safe ; for, old as I am, my knowledge of his course 
does not extend back that far. He would take 
the period which the gentleman named, since 
1822. It comes, then, to this : The honora- 
ble gentleman was in fovor of protecting man- 
ufactures ; but he had turned — I need not use 
the word — he has abandoned manufactures. 
Thus: 



'01(1 politicians chew on wisdom pa.st. 
And totter on in blunders to the last.' 

" ]Mr. Smith. — The last allusion is unworthy 
of the gentleman. Totter, sir, I totter ? Though 
some twenty years older than the gentleman, I 
can yet stand firm, and am yet able to correct 
his errors. I could take a view of the gentle- 
man's coui'se, which would show how inconsis- 
tent he has been. [Mr. Clay exclaimed: 'Take 
it, sir, take it— I dare you.' [Cries of "order."] 
No, sir, said Mr. S.. I will not take it. I will 
not so far disregard what is due to the dignity 
of the Senate." 

Mr. Hayne concluded one of his speeches with 
a declaration of the seriousness of the Southern 
resistance to the tariff, and with a feeling appeal 
to senators on all sides of the house to meet their 
Southern brethren in the spirit of conciliation, 
and restore harmony to a divided people by re- 
moving from among them the nevei'-failing source 
of contention. He said : 

" Let not gentlemen so far deceive themselves 
as to .suppose that the opposition of the South to 
the protecting system is not based on high and 
lofty principles. It has nothing to do with par- 
ty politics, or the mere elevation of men. It 
rises {av above all such con.siderations. Nor is 
it influenced chiefly by calculations of interest, 
but is founded in much nobler impulses. The 
instinct of self-interest might have taught us an 
easier way of relieving ourselves from this op- 
pression. It wanted but the will, to have sup- 
plied ourselves with every article embraced in 
the protective system, free of duty, without any 
other participation on our part than a simple con- 
sent to receive them. But, sir. we have scorned, 
in a contest for our rights, to resort to any but 
open and fair means to maintain them. The 
spirit with which we have entered into this 
business, is akin to that which was kindled in 
the bosom of our fathers when they were made the 
victims of oppression ; and if it has not displayed 
itself in the same way, it is because we have ever 
cherished the strongest feelings of confraternity 
towards our brethren, and the warmest and 
most devoted attachment to the Union.-- If we 
have been, in an}^ degree, divided among our- 
selves in this matter, the source of that division. 
let gentlemen be a.ssured, has not arisen so much 
from any difference of opinion as to the true 
character of the oppi-ession, as from the different 
degrees of hope of redress. All parties have for 
3'ears past Ijeen looking forward to this crisis 
for the fulfilment of their hopes, or the confir- 
mation of their fears. And God grant that the 
result may be auspicious. 

"Sir, 1 call upon gentlemen on all sides of the 
House to meet us in the true spirit of conciliation 
and concession. Remove, I earnestly beseech 
von, from amonc us, this never-failing source of 
contention. Dry up at its source this fountain 



ANNO 1832. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



275 



of the waters of bitterness. Restore that har- 
monj' which has been disturbed — that mutual 
affection and confidence which has been impair- 
ed. And it is in your power to do it this day ; 
but there is but one means under heaven by 
which it can — by doing equal justice to all. And 
be assured that he to whom the country shall be 
indebted for this blessing, will be considered as 
the second founder of the republic. He will be 
regarded, in all aftertimes, as the ministering 
angel visiting the troubled waters of our politi- 
cal dissensions, and restoring to the element its 
healing virtues." 

I take pleasure in quoting these words of Mr, 
Hayne. They are words of moderation and of jus- 
tice — of sorrow more than anger — of expostula- 
tion more than menace — of loyalty to the Union 
— of supplication for forbearance ; — and a moving 
appeal to the liigh tariff party to avert a nation- 
al catastrophe by ceasing to be unjust. His mo- 
deration, his expostulation, his supplication, his 
appeal — had no effect on the majority^ The pro- 
tective system continued to be an exasperating 
theme throughout the session, which ended with- 
out any sensible amelioration of the system, 
though with a reduction of duty on some articles 
of comfort and convenience : as recommended by 
President Jackson. 



CHAPTER LXX. 

PUBLIC LANDS.— DISTRIBUTION TO THE STATES. 

The efforts which had been making for years to 
ameliorate the public land system in the feature 
of their sale and disposition, had begun to have 
their effect — the effect which always attends 
perseverance in a just cause. A bill had ripen- 
ed to a third reading in the Senate reducing the 
price of lands which had been long in market 
less than one half— to fifty cents per acre — and 
the pre-emption principle had been firmly esta- 
blished, securing the settler in his home at a 
fixed price. Two other principles, those of do- 
nations to actual settlers, and of the cession to 
the States in which they lie of all land not sold 
within a reasonable and limited period, were all 
that was wanting to complete the ameliorated 
system which the graduation bills proposed ; 
and these biUs were making a progress which 
promised them an eventual success. All the 
indications were favorable for the speedy ac- 



complishment of these great reforms in the 
land system when the session of 1831-'32 open- 
ed, and with it the authentic annunciation of 
the extinction of the public debt within two 
years — which event would remove the objection 
of many to interfering with the subject, the 
lands being pledged to that object. This ses- 
sion, preceding the presidential election, and 
gathering up so many subjects to go into the 
canvass, fell upon the lands for that purpose, 
and in the way in which magazines of grain in 
republican Rome, and money in the treasury in 
democratic Athens, were accustomed to be dealt 
with by candidates for office in the periods of 
election ; that is to say, Avere proposed for dis- 
tribution. A plan for dividing out among the 
States for a given period the money arising 
from the sale of the lands, was reported from 
the Committee on Manufactures by Mr. Clay, a 
member of that committee — and which properly 
could have nothing to do with the sale and dis- 
position of the lands. That report, after a gen- 
eral history, and view of the public lands, came 
to these conclusions : 

"Upon full and thorough consideration, the 
committee have come to the conclusion that it 
is inexpedient either to reduce the price of the 
public lands, or to cede them to the new States. 
They believe, on the contrary, that sound policj^ 
coincides with the duty which has devolved on 
the general government to the whole of the 
States, and the whole of the people of the 
Union, and enjoins the preservation of the ex- 
isting system as having been tried and approv- 
ed after long and triumphant experience. But, 
in consequence of the extraordinary financial 
prosperity which the United States enjo}^, the 
question merits examination, whether, whilst 
the general government steadily retains the 
control of this great national resource in its 
own hands, after the payment of the public 
debt, the proceeds of the sales of the public 
lands, no longer needed to meet the ordinary 
expenses of government, may not be beneficial- 
ly appropriated to some other objects for a lim- 
ited time. 

" Governments, no more than individuals, 
should be seduced or intoxicated bj^ prosperity, 
however flattering or great it may be. The 
country now happily enjoys it in a most unex- 
ampled degree. We have abundant reason to 
be grateful for the blessings of peace and plen- 
ty, and freedom from debt. But we must be 
forgetful of all history and experience, if we in- 
dulge the delusive hope that we shall always be 
exempt from calamity and reverses. Seasons 
of national adversity, of suffering, and of war, 
will assuredly come. A wise government 



276 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW 



should expect, and provide for them. Instead 
of wasting or squandering its resources in a pe- 
riod of general prosperity, it should husband 
and cherish them for those times of trial and 
diHiculty, which, in the dispensations of Provi- 
dence, may be certainly anticipated. Enter- 
taining these views, and as the proceeds of the 
sales of the public lands are not wanted for or- 
dinary revenue, which will be abundantly sup- 
plied from the imposts, the committee respect- 
fully recommend that an appropriation of them 
be made to some other purpose, for a limited 
time, subject to be resumed in the contingency 
of war. Should such an event unfortimately 
occur, the fund may be withdrawn from its 
peaceful destination, and applied in aid of other 
means, to the vigorous prosecution of the war. 
and, afterwards to the payment of any debt 
which may be contracted in consequence of its 
existence. And when peace shall be again re- 
stored, and the debt of the new war shall have 
been extinguished, the fund may be again ap- 
propriated to some fit object other than that of 
the ordinary expenses of government. Thus 
may this great resource be preserved and ren- 
dered subservient, in peace and in war, to the 
common benefit of all the States composing the 
Union. 

•' The inquiry' remains, what ought to be the 
specific apphcation of the fund under the restric- 
tion stated ? After deducting the ten per cent, 
proposed to be set apart for the new States, a 
portion of the committee would have preferred 
that the residue should be applied to the ob- 
jects of internal improvement, and colonization 
of the free blacks, under the direction of the 
general government. But a majority of the 
committee beheves it better, as an alternative 
for the scheme of cession to the new States, 
and as being most likely to give general .satis- 
faction, that the residue be divided among the 
twenty-four States, according to their federal 
representative population, to be applied to edu- 
cation, internal improvement, or colonization, or 
to the redemption of any existing debt contract- 
ed for internal improvements, as each State, 
judging for itself, shall deem most conformable 
with its own interests and policy. Assuming 
the annual product of the sales of the public 
lands to be three millions of dollars, the table 
hpreto annexed, marked C, shows what each 
State would be entitled to receive, according to 
the principle of division which has been stated. 
In order that the propriety of the proposed ap- 
propriation should again, at a day not very far 
distant, be brought under the review fif Con- 
gress, the committee would recommend that it 
be limited to a period of five years, suliject to 
the condition of war not breaking out in the 
mean time. By an appropriation so restricted 
as to time, each State will be enabled to esti- 
mate the probable extent of its proportion, and 
to adapt its measures of education, improve- 
ment, colonization, or extinction of existing 
debt, accordingly. 



" In conformity with the views and principles 
which the committee have now submitted, they 
beg leave to report a bill, entitled ' An act to 
appropriate, for a limited time, the proceeds of 
the sales of the public lands of the United 
States.' " 

The impropriety of originating such a bill in 
the committee on manufactures was so clear that 
acquiescence in it was impossible. The chair- 
man of the committee on public lands immedi- 
ately moved its reference to that committee ; 
and although there was a majority for it in the 
Senate, and for the bill as it came from the com- 
mittee on manuf\\ctures, yet the reference was 
immediately voted ; and Mr. Clay's report and 
bill sent to that committee, invested with gen- 
eral authority over the whole subject. That 
committee, through its chairman. Mr. King of 
Alabama, made a counter report, from which 
some extracts are here given : 

" The committee ventures to suggest that the 
view which the committee on manufactures has 
taken of the federal domain, is fundamental!}^ 
erroneous; that it lias misconceived the true 
principles of national policy with respect to wild 
lands ; and, from this fundamental mistake, and 
radical misconception, have resulted the great 
errois which pervade the whole structure of 
their report and bill. 

'"The committee on mauufiictures seem to 
contemplate the federal domain merely as an 
object of revenue, and to look for that revenue 
sold}- from the receivers of the land offices ; 
when the science of political economy has ascer- 
tained such a fund to be chiefly, if not exclu- 
sively, valuable un<ler the asjiect of population 
and cultivation, and the eventual extraction of 
revenue from the people in its customary modes 
of taxes and imposts. 

" The celebrated Edmimd Burke is sujipo-sed 
to have expres.sed the sum total of political wis- 
dom on this subject, in his well-known proposi- 
tions to convert the forest lands of the British 
crown into private property ; and this commit- 
tee, to spare themselves further argument, and 
to extinguish at once a political fallacy which 
ought not to have been broached in the nine- 
teenth century, will make a brief quotation from 
the speech of that eminent man. 

" ' The revenue to be derived from the sale of 
the forest lands will not be .so considerable as 
many have imagined ; and I conceive it would 
be unwise to screw it u\) to the utmost, or even 
to sud'er bidders to enhance, according to their 
eagerness, the purchase of objects wherein the 
expense of that purchase maj" weaken the capi- 
tal to be employed in their cultivation. * * * 
The principal revenue which I propose to draw 
from these uncultivated wastes, is to spring from 
the improvement and cultivation of the kingdom 



ANNO 1832. ANDREW JACKSON, PrJlSIDENT. 



277 



events infinitely more advantageous to the reve- 
nues of the Crown, than the rents of the best 
landed estates which it can hold, * * * * 
It is thus that I would dispose of the unprofita- 
ble landed estates of the Crown — throw them 
into the mass of private property — by which 
they will come, through the course of circula- 
tion, and through the political secretions of the 
state, into well-regulated revenue. * * * * 
Thus would fall an expensive agency, with all 
the influence which attends it.' 

" This committee takes leave to say that the 
sentiments here expressed by Mr. Burke are the 
inspirations of political wisdom ; that their truth 
and justice have been tested in all ages and all 
countries, and particularly in our own age and 
in our own country. The history of the public 
lands of the United States furnishes the most 
instructive lessons of the inutility of sales, tke 
value of cultivation, and the fallacy of large cal- 
culations. These lands were expected, at the 
time they were acquired by the United States, to 
pay off the public debt immediately, to support 
the government, and to furnish large surplusses 
for distribution. Calculations for a thousand 
millions were made upon them, and a charge of 
treachery was raised against General Hamilton, 
then Secretary of the Treasury, for his report in 
the year 1791, in which the fallacy of all these 
visionary calculations was exposed, and the real 
value of the lands soberly set down at an aver- 
age of twenty cents per acre. Yet, after an ex- 
periment of nearly fifty years, it is found that 
the sales of the public lands, so far from paying 
the public debt, have barely defrayed the ex- 
penses of managing the lands ; while the reve- 
nue derived from cultivation has paid both prin- 
cipal and interest of the debts of two wars, and 
supported the federal government in a style of 
expenditure infinitely beyond the conceptions of 
those who established it. The gross proceeds 
of the sales are but thirty-eight millions of dol- 
lars, from which the large expenses of the sys- 
tem are to be deducted ; while the clear receipts 
from the customs, after paying all expenses of 
collection, amount to $550,443,830. This im- 
mense amount of revenue springs from the use 
of soil reduced to private property. For the 
duties are derived from imported goods; the 
goods are received in exchange for exports ; and 
the exports, with a small deduction for the pro- 
ducts of the sea, are the produce of the farm 
and the forest. This is a striking view, but 
it is only one half of the picture. The other 
half must be shown, and will display the culti- 
vation of the soil, in its immense exports, as 
giving birth to commerce and navigation, and 
supplying employment to all the trades and 
professions connected with these two grand 
branches of national industry ; while the busi- 
ness of selling the land is a meagre and barren 
operation, auxiliary to no useful occupation, in- 
jurious to the young States, by exhausting them 
of their currency, and extending the patronage 
of tlie federal government in the complicated 



machinery of the land office department. Such 
has been the difference between the revenue re- 
ceived from the sales and from the cultivation 
of the laud ; but no powers of cultivation can 
carry out the difference, and show what it will 
be : for, while the sale of the land is a single 
operation, and can be performed but once, the 
extraction of revenue from its cultivation is an 
annual and perpetual process, increasing in pro- 
ductiveness through all time, with the increase 
of population, the amelioration of soils, the im- 
provement of the country, and the application 
of science to the industrial pursuits, 

'• This committee have said that the bill re- 
ported b}^ the Committee on Manufactures, to 
divide the proceeds of the sales of public lands 
among the several States, for a limited time, is a 
bill wholly inadmissible in principle, and essen- 
tially erroneous in its details. 

" They object to the principle of the bill, be- 
cause it proposes to change — and that most in- 
juriously and fatally for the new States, the 
character of their relation to the federal govern- 
ment, on the subject of the public lands. That 
relation, at present, imposes on the federal go- 
vernment the character of a trustee, with the 
power and the duty of disposing of the public 
lands in a liberal and equitable manner. The 
principle of the bill proposes to substitute an 
individual State interest in the lands, and would 
be perfectly equivalent to a division of the lands 
among the States ; for, the power of legislation 
being left in their hands, with a direct interest 
in their sales, the old and populous States would 
necessarily consider the lands as their own, and 
govern their legislation accordingly. Sales 
would be forbid or allowed ; surveys stopped or 
advanced ; prices raised or lowered ; donations 
given or denied ; old French and Spanish claims 
confirmed or rejected ; settlers ousted ; emigra- 
tions stopped, precisely as it suited the interest 
of the old States ; and this interest, in every in- 
stance, would be precisely opposite to the inte- 
rest of the new States. In vain would some just 
men wish to act equitably by these new States ; 
their generous efforts would expose them to at- 
tacks at home, A new head of electioneering 
would be opened; candidates for Congress would 
rack their imaginations, and exhaust their arith- 
metic, in the invention and display of rival pro- 
jects for the extraction of gold from the new 
States ; and he that would promise best for pro- 
moting the emigration of dollars from the new 
States, and preventing the emigration of people 
to them, would be considered the best qualified 
for federal legislation. If this plan of distribu- 
tion had been in force heretofore, the price of 
the public lands would not have been reduced, 
in 1819-'20, nor the relief laws passed, which 
exonerated the new States from a debt of near 
twenty millions of dollars. If adopted now, 
these States may bid adieu to their sovereignty 
and independence ! They will become the feu- 
datory vassals of the paramount States ! Their 
subjection and dependence will be without Umit 



278 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



or remedy. The five years mentioned in the 
bill had as well be fifty or fire himdred. The 
State that would surrender its sovereignty, for 
ten per centum of its own money, would eclipse 
the folly of Esau, and become a proverb in the 
annals of folly with those who have sold their 
birthright for ' a mess of pottage.' " 

After these general objections to the principle 
and policy of the distribution project, the report 
of the Committee on Public Lauds went on to 
show its defects, in detail, and to exhibit the 
special injuries to which it would subject the 
new States, in which the public lands lay. It 
said: 

" The details of the bill are 2)i'egnant with in- 
justice and unsound policy. 

'■ 1. The rule of distribution among the States 
makes no distinction between those States which 
did or did not make cessions of their vacant land 
to the federal government. Massachusetts and 
Maine, which are now selling and enjoying their 
vacant lands in their own right, and Connecti- 
cut, which received a deed for two millions of 
acres from the federal government, and sold them 
for her own benefit, are put upon an equal foot- 
ing with Virginia, which ceded the immense do- 
main which lies in the forks of the Ohio and 
Mississippi, and Georgia, which ceded territory 
for two States. This is manifestly unjust. 

"2. The bill proposes benefits to some of the 
States, which they cannot receive without dis- 
honor, nor refuse without pecuniary prejudice. 
Several States deny the power of the federal 
government to appropriate the public moneys to 
obiects of internal improvement or to coloniza- 
tion A refusal to accept their dividends would 
subject such States to loss ; to receive them, 
would imply a sale of their constitutional prin- 
ciples for so much money. Considerations con- 
nected with the harmony and perpetuity of our 
confederacy should forbid any State to be com- 
pelled to choose between such alternatives. 

" 3. The public lands, in great part, were 
granted to the federal government to pay the 
debts of the Revolutionary War ; it is notorious 
that other objects of revenue, to wit, duties on 
imported goods, have chieflj^ paid that debt. It 
would seem, then, to be just to the donors of the 
land, after having taxed them in other v/ays to 
pay the debt, that the land should go in relief 
of their present taxes ; and that, so long as any 
revenue may be derived from them, it should go 
into the common treasury, and diminish, by so 
much, the amount of their annual contributions. 

"4. The colonization of free people of color, 
on the western coast of Africa, is a delicate 
question for Congress to touch. It connects it- 
self indissolubly with the slave questiun, and 
cannot be agitated by the federal legislature, 
without rousing and alarming the apprehensions 
of all the slaveholding States, and lighting up 
the fires of the extinguished conllagration which 



lately blazed in the Missouri question. The 
harmony of the States, and the durability of this 
coTifederacy, interdict the legislation of the fede- 
ral legislature upon this subject. The existence 
of slavery in the United Stales is local and sec 
tional. It is confined to the Southern and Mid- 
dle States. If it is an evil, it is an evil to them, 
and it is their business to say so. If it is to be 
i-emoved, it is their business to remove it. Other 
States put an end to slavery, at their own time, 
and in their own way, and without interference 
from federal or State legislation, or organized so- 
cieties. The rights of equality demand, for the 
remaining States, the same freedom of thought 
and immunity of action. Instead of assuming 
the business of colonization, leave it to the slave- 
holding States to do as they please ; and leave 
them their resources to carry into effect their 
rf solves. Raise no more money from them than 
the exigencies of the government require, and 
then they will have the means, if they feel the 
inclination, to rid themselves of a burden which 
it is theirs to bear and theirs to remove. 

" 5. The sum proposed for distribution, though 
nominally to consist of the net proceeds of the 
sales of the public lands, is, in reahty, to consist 
of their gross proceeds. The term net, as ap- 
plied to i-evenue from land offices or custom- 
houses, is quite different. In the latter, its 
signification corresponds with the fact, and im- 
plies a deduction of all the expenses of collection ; 
in the former, it has no such implication, for the 
expenses of the land system are defrayed b}"- ap- 
propriations out of the treasury. To make the 
whole sum received from the land offices a fund 
for distribution, would be to devolve the heavy 
expenses of the land sy.stem upon the custom- 
house revenue : in other words, to take so much 
from the custom-house revenue to be divided 
among the States. This would be no small 
item. Accorchng to the principles of the account 
drawn up against the lands, it would embi'ace — 

" 1. Expenses of the general land office. 

" 2. Appropriations for surveying. 

" 3. Expenses of six survej-or generals' offices. 

" 4. Expenses of forty-four land offices. 

" 5. Salaries of eighty-eight registers and re- 
ceivers. 

" 6. Commissions on sales to registers and re- 
ceivers. 

"7. Allowance to receivers for depositing 
money. 

" 8. Interest on money paid for extinguishing 
Indian titles. 

'• 9. Annuities to Indians. 

" 10. Future Indian treaties for extinguishing 
title. 

"11. Expenses of annual removal of Indians. 

'• These items exceed a million of dollars. They 
are on the increase, and will continue to grow at 
least mitil the one hundred and thirteen million 
five hundred and seventy-seven thousand eight 
himdred and sixty-nine acres of land within the 
limits of the States and territories now covered 
by Indian title shall be released from such title. 



ANNO 1832. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



279 



The reduction of these items, present and to 
come, from the proposed fund for distribution, 
must certainly be made to avoid a contradiction 
between the profession and the practice of the 
bill; and this reduction might leave little or no- 
thing for division among the distributees. The 
gross proceeds of the land sales for the last year 
were large ; they exceeded three millions of dol- 
lars ; but they were equally large twelve years 
ago, and gave birth to some extravagant calcu- 
lations then, which vanished with a sudden de- 
cline of the land revenue to less than one mil- 
lion. The proceeds of 1819 were ^3,274,422 ; 
those of 1823 were ^916,523. The excessive 
sales twelve years ago resulted from the exces- 
sive issue of bank paper, while those of 1831 
were produced by the several relief laws passed 
by Congress. A detached year is no evidence 
of the product of the sales ; an average of a series 
of years presents the only approximation to cor- 
rectness ; and this average of the last ten years 
would be about one million and three quarters. 
So that after all expenses are deducted, with the 
five per centum now payable to the new States. 
and ten per centum proposed by the bill, there 
may be nothing worth dividing among the States ; 
certainly nothing worth the alarm and agitation 
which the assumption of the colonization ques- 
tion must excite among the slaveholding States; 
nothing worth the danger of compelling the old 
States which deny the power of federal internal 
improvement, to choose between alternatives 
which involve a sale of their principles t»n one 
side, or a loss of their dividends on the other ; 
certainly nothing worth the injury to the new 
States, which must result from the conversion 
of their territory into the private property of 
those who are to have the power of legislation 
over it, and a direct interest in using that power 
to degrade and impoverish them." 

The two sets of reports were printed in extra 
numbers, and the distribution bill largely debated 
in the Senate, and passed that body : but it was 
arrested in the House of Representatives. A 
motion to postpone it to a day beyond the session 
— equivalent to rejection — prevailed by a small 
majority: and thus this first attempt to make 
distribution of public property, was, for the 
time, gotten rid of. 



CHAPTER LXXI. 

BETTLEJIENT OF FRENCH AND SPANISH LAND 
CLAIMS. 

It was now near thirty j'cars since the pro- 
vince of Louisiana had been acquired, and with 
it a mass of population owning and inhabiting 



lands, the titles to which in but few instances 
ever had been perfected into complete grants; and 
the want of which was not felt in a new country 
where land was a gratuitous gift to every culti- 
vator, and where the government was more 
anxious for cultivation than the people were to 
give it. The transfer of the province from France 
and Spain to the United States, found the mass 
of the land titles in an inchoate state ; and com- 
ing under a government which made merchandise 
out of the soil, and among a people who had the 
Anglo-Saxon avidity for landed property, some 
legislation and tribunal was necessary to separate 
the perfect from the imperfect titles ; and to 
provide for the examination and perfection of the 
latter. The treaty of cession protected every 
thing that was "property;" and an inchoate title 
fell as well within that category as a perfect 
one. Without the treaty stipulation the law of 
nations would have operated the same protec- 
tion, and to the same degree ; and that in the 
case of a conquered as well as of a ceded people. 
The principle was acknowledged : the question 
was to apply it, and to carry out the imperfect titles 
as the ceding government would have done, if it 
had continued. This was attempted through 
boards of commissioners, placed under limitar 
tions and restrictions, which cut off masses of 
claims to which there was no objection except 
in the confirming law ; and with the obligation 
of reporting to Congress for its sanction the 
claims which it found entitled to confirmation : 
— a condition which, in the distance of the 
lands and claimants from the seat of government, 
their ignorance of our laws and customs, their 
habitude to pay for justice, and their natural dis- 
trust of a new and alien domination, was equiv- 
alent in its effects to the total confiscation of 
most of the smaller claims, and the quarter or 
the half confiscation of the larger ones in the 
division they were compelled to make with 
agents— or in the forced sales which despair, or ^ 
necessity forced upon them. This s'tate of things 
had been going on for almost thirty years in all 
Louisiana — ameliorated occasionally by slight 
enlargements of the powers of the boards, and 
afterwards of the courts to which the business 
was transferred, but failing at two essential 
points./rs«, of acknowledging the validity of all 
claims which might in fact have been completed 
if the French or Spanish government had con- 
tinued under which they origmated ; secondly 



280 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



in not providing a cheap, speedy and local tri- 
bunal to decide summarily upon claims, and 
definitiveh^ when their decisions were in their 
favor. 

In this year — but after an immense number 
of pcojile had been ruined, and after the country 
had been atliicted for a generation with the curse 
of unsettled land titles — an act was passed, 
founded on the principle which the case required, 
and approximating to the process which was 
necessary to give it effect. The act of 1832 ad- 
mitted the validity of all inchoate claims — all 
that might in fact have been perfected under the 
previous governments ; and established a local 
tribunal to decide on the spot, making two 
classes of claims — one coming under the princi- 
ple acknowledged, the other not coming under 
that' principle, and destitute of merit in law or 
equity — but with the ultimate reference of their 
decisions to Congress for its final sanction. The 
principle of the act, and its mode of operation, 
was contained in the first section, and in these 
words : 

" That it shall be the duty of the recorder of 
land titles in the State of Missouri, and two 
commissioners to be appointed by the President 
of the United States, by and with the advice and 
consent of the Senate, to examine all the uncon- 
firmed claims to land in that State, heretofore 
filed in the office of the said recorder, according 
to law, founded upon any incomplete grant, con- 
cession, warrant, or order of survey, issued by 
the authority of France or Spain, prior to the 
tenth day of ^larch, one thousand eight hun- 
dred and four ; and to class the same so as to 
show, first, what claims, in their opinion, would, 
in fact, have been confirmed, according to the 
laws, usages, and customs of the Sjianish gov- 
ernment, and the practices of the Spanish au- 
thorities under them, at New Orleans, if the 
government under which said claims originated 
had continued in ^lissouri ; and secondly, what 
claims, in their opinion, are destitute of merit, 
in law or equity, under such laws, usages, cus- 
toms, and practice of the Spanish autliorities 
aforesaid ; and shall also assign their reasons for 
the opinicjns so to be given. And in examining 
and classing such claims, the recorder and com- 
missioners shall take into consideration, as well 
the testimony heretofore taken by the boards 
of commissioners and recorder of land titles 
upon those claims, as such other testimony as 
may be admissible under the rules heretofore 
existing for taking such testimony before said 
boards and reconler : and all such testiraon}^ 
shall be taken within twelve months after the 
passage of this act." 

Under this act a thirty years' disturbance of 



land titles was closed (nearly), in that part of 
Upper Louisiana, now constituting the State of 
Missouri. The commissioners executed the act 
in the liberal spirit of its own enactment, and 
Congress confirmed all they classed as coming 
under the principles of the act. In other parts 
of Louisiana, and in Florida, the same harassing 
and ruinous process had been gone through in 
respect to the claims of foreign origin — limita- 
tions, as in Missouri, upon the kind of claims 
which might be confirmed, excluding minerals 
and saline waters — limitations upon the quanti- 
ty to be confirmed, so as to split or grant, and 
divide it between the grantee and the govern- 
ment — the former having to divide again with 
an agent or attorney — and limitations upon the 
inception of the titles which might be examined, 
so as to confine the origination to particular 
officers, and forms. The act conformed to all 
previous one^s, of requiring no examination of a 
title which was complete under the previous 
governments. 



CHAPTER LXXII. 

"EFFECTS OF THE VETO." 

Under this caption a general register cona- 
menccd in all the newspapers opposed to the 
election of General Jackson (and the}^ wei'e a 
great majority of the whole number published), 
immediately after the delivery of the veto mes- 
sage, and were continued down to the day of 
election, all tending to show the disastrous con- 
sequences upon the business of the country, and 
upon his own popularity, resulting from tliat 
act. To judge from these items it would seem 
that the property of the country was nearly 
destroyed, and the General's populaj'ity entirely ; 
and that both were to remain in that state un- 
til the bank was rechartered. Their character 
was to .show the decline which had taken place 
in the price of labor, produce, and property — the 
stoppage and suspension of buildings, improve- 
ments, and useful enterprises — the renunciation 
of the President bj'^ his old friends — the scarcity 
of money and the high rate of interest — and the 
consequent pervading distress of the whole com- 
munity. These lugubrious memorandums of 
calamities produced by the conduct of one man 



ANNO 1832. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



281 



were duly collected from the papers in which 
they were chronicled and registered in '• Niles' 
Kegister," for the information of posterity ; and 
a few items now selected from the general regis- 
tration will show to what extent this business 
of distressing the country — (taking the facts to 
be true), or of alarming it (taking them to be 
false), was carried by the great moneyed corpo- 
ration, which, according to its own showing, had 
power to destroy all local banks; and conse- 
quently to injure the whole business of the 
community. The following are a few of these 
items — a small number of each class, by way of 
showing the character of the whole : 

" On the day of the receipt of the President's 
bank veto in New-York, four hundred and thir- 
ty-seven shai'es of United States Bank stock 
were sold at a decline of four per centum from 
the rates of the preceding day. We learn from 
Cincinnati that, within two days after the veto 
reached that city, building-bricks fell from five 
dollars to three dollars per thousand. A general 
consternation is represented to have pervaded 
the city. An intelligent friend of General Jack- 
son, at Cincinnati, states, as the opinion of the 
best informed men there, that the veto has 
caused a depreciation of the real estate of the 
city, of from twenty-five to thirty-three and 
one third per cent." — "A thousand people as- 
sembled at Richmond, Kentucky, to protest 
against the veto." — '• The veto reached a meeting 
of citizens, in Mason county, Kentucky, which had 
assembled to hear the speeches of the opposing 
candidates for the legislature, on which two of 
the administration candidates immediately with- 
drew themselves from the contest, declaring that 
they could support the administration no long- 
er." — " Lexington, Kentucky : July 25th. A call, 
signed by fifty citizens of great respectability, 
formerly supporters of General Jackson, an- 
nounced their renunciation of him, and invited 
all others, in the like situation with themselves, 
to assemble in public meeting and declare their 
sentiments. A large and very respectable meet- 
ing ensued."—" Louisville, Kentucky : July 18. 
Forty citizens, ex-friends of General Jackson, 
called a meeting, to express their sentiments on 
the veto, declaring that they could no longer 
support him. In consequence, one of the largest 
meetings ever held in Louisville was convened, 
and condemned the veto, the anti-tariff and anti- 
internal improvement policy of General Jackson, 
and accused him of a breach of jn-omise, in be- 
coming a second time a candidate for the Presi- 
dency." — "At Pittsburg, seventy former friends 
of General Jackson called a meeting of those 
who had renounced him, which was numerously 
and respectably attended, the veto condemned, 
and the bank applauded as necessary to the pros- 
perity of the country." — " Irish meeting in Phi- 



ladelphia. A call, signed by above two thousand 
naturalized Irishmen, seceding from General 
Jackson, invited their fellow-countrymen to 
meet and choose between the tyrant and the 
bank, and gave rise to a numerous assemblage 
in Independence Square, at which strong resolu- 
tions were adopted, renouncing Jackson and his 
measures, opposing his re-election and sustaining 
the bank." — " The New Orleans emporium men- 
tions, among other deleterious effects of the bank 
veto, at that place, that one of the State banks 
had already commenced discounting four months' 
paper, at eight per centum." — " Cincinnati far- 
mers look here ! We are credibly informed that 
several merchants in this city, in making con- 
tracts for their winter supplies of pork, are of- 
fering to contract to pay two dollars fifty cents 
per hundred, if Clay is elected, and one dollar 
fifty cents, if Jackson is elected. Such is the 
effect of the veto. This is something that peo- 
ple can understand." — "Baltimore. A great 
many mechanics are thrown out of employment 
by the stoppage of building. The prospect 
ahead is, that we shall have a very distressing 
winter. There will be a swift reduction of prices 
to the laboring classes. Many who subsisted 
upon labor, will lack regular employment, and 
have to depend upon chance or charity ; and 
many will go supperless to bed who deserve to 
be filled." — "Cincinnati. Facts are stubborn 
things. It is a fact that, last year, before this 
time, .^300,000 had been advanced, by citizens of 
this place, to farmers for pork, and now, not one 
dollar. So much for the veto." — " Brownsville, 
Pennsylvania. We understand, that a large 
manufacturer has discharged all his hands, and 
others have given notice to do so. We under- 
stand, that not a single steamboat will be built 
this season, at Wheeling, Pittsburg, or Louis- 
ville." — " Niles' Register editorial. No King 
of England has dared a practical use of the word 
'veto,' for about two hundred years, or more; 
and it has become obsolete in the United King- 
dom of Great Britain ; and Louis Philippe would 
hardly retain his crown three days, were he to 
veto a deliberate act of the two French Cham- 
bers, though supported by an army of 100,000 
men." 

All this distress and alarm, real and factitious, 
was according to the programme which pre- 
scribed it, and easily done by the bank, and its 
branches in the States : its connection with mo- 
ney-dealers and brokers ; its power over its 
debtors, and its power over the thousand local 
banks, which it could destroy by an exertion of 
its strength, or raise up by an extension of its 
favor. It was a wicked and infamous attempt, 
on the part of the great moneyed corporation, 
to govern the election by operating on the busi- 
ness and the fears of the people — destroying 
some and alarming others. 



282 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



CHAPTEK LXXIII. 

PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 1S32. 

General Jackson and Mr. Van Buren were 
the candidates, on one side ; Mr. Clay and ^Ir. 
John Sergeant, of Pennsylvania, on the other, 
and the result of no election had ever been look- 
ed to with more solicitude. It was a question 
of s^'stems and of measures, and tried in the 
persons of men who stood out boldly and un- 
equivocall}^ in the representation of their re- 
spective sides. Renewal of the national bank 
charter, continuance of the high protective po- 
licy, distribution of the public land money, in- 
ternal improvement by the federal government, 
removal of the Indians, interference between 
Georgia and the Cherokees, and the whole Ame- 
rican system were staked on the issue, repre- 
sented on one side by JNIr, Clay and Air. Sergeant, 
and opposed, on the other, by General Jackson 
and Mr. Van Buren. The defeat of JMr. Clay, 
and the consequent condemnation of his mea- 
sures, was complete and overwhelming. He 
received but forty-nine votes out of a totality of 
two hundred and eighty-eight ! And this re- 
sult is not to be attributed, as done by Mons. 
de Tocqueville, to military fame. General Jack- 
son was now a tried statesman, and great issues 
were made in his person, and discussed in every 
form of speech and writing, and in every forum, 
State, and federal— from tjie halls of Congress 
to township meetings— and his success was not 
only triumphant but progressive. His vote was 
a large increase upon the preceding one of 1828, 
as that itself had been upon the previous one 
of 1824. The result was hailed with general 
satisfaction, as settling questions of national dis- 
turbance, and leaving a clear field, as it was 
hoped, for future temperate and useful legisla- 
tion. The vice-presidential election, also, had 
a point and a lesson in it. Besides concur- 
ring Avith General Jackson in his systems of 
policj'. Mr. Van Buren had, in his own person 
questions which concerned himself, and which 
went to his character as a fair and honorable 
man. He had been rejected by the Senate as 
minister to the court of Great Britain, under 
circumstances to give eclat to the rejection, being 
then at his post ; and on accusations of prosti- 



tuting ofiBcial station to party intrigue and ele- 
vation, and humbling his country before Great 
Britain to obtain as a favor what was due as a 
right. He had also been accused of breaking up 
friendship between General Jackson and Mr. Cal- 
houn, for the purpose of getting a rival out of 
the way— contriving for that purpose the disso- 
lution of the cabinet, the resuscitation of the 
buried question of the punishment of General 
Jackson in I\Ir. Monroe's cabinet, and a system 
of intrigues to destroy I\Ir. Calhoun — all brought 
forward imposingly in senatorial and Congress 
debates, in pamphlets and periodicals, and in 
every variety of speech and of newspaper pub- 
Ucation ; and all with the avowed purpose of 
showing him unworthy to be elected Vice-Pre- 
sident. Yet, he was elected— and triumphantly 
— receiving the same vote with General Jackson, 
except that of Pennsylvania, which went to one 
of her own citizens, Mr. "William Wilkins, then 
senator in Congress, and afterwards Minister to 
Russia, and Secretary of War. Another circum- 
stance attended this election, of ominous charac- 
ter, and deriving emphasis from the state of the 
times. South Carolina refused to vote in it ; 
that is to say, voted with neither party, and 
threw away her vote upon citizens who were 
not candidates, and who received no vote but 
her own ; namely. Governor John Floyd of 
Virginia, and Mr. Henry Lee of Massachusetts : 
a dereliction not to be accounted for upon any 
intelligible or consistent reason, seeing that the 
rival candidates held the opposite sides of the 
system of which the State complained, and that 
the success of one was to be its overthrow ; of 
the other, to be its confirmation. This circum- 
stance, coupled with the nullification attitude 
which the State had assumed, gave significance 
to this separation from the other States in the 
matter of the election : a separation too marked 
not to be noted, and interpreted by current 
events too clearly to be misunderstood. Another 
circumstance attended this election, of a nature 
not of itself to command commemoration, but 
worthy to be remembered for the lesson it 
reads to all political parties founded upon one 
idea, and espcciall}' when that idea has nothing 
political in it ; it was the anti-masonic vote of 
the State of Vermont, for ^Ir. Wirt, late United 
States Attorney-General, for President ; and for 
Mr. Amos EUmakcr of Pennsylvania, for Vice- 
President. The cause of that vote was this: 



ANNO 1832. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



283 



some years before, a citizen of New-York, one 
Mr. JMorgan, a member of the Freemason fra- 
ternity, had disappeared, under circumstances 
which induced the belief that he had been secret- 
ly put to death, by order of the society, for di- 
vulging their secret. A great popular ferment 
grew out of this belief, spreading into neighbor- 
ing States, with an outcry against all masons, 
and all secret societies, and a demand for their 
suppression. Politicians embarked on this cur- 
rent ; turned it into the field of elections, and 
made it potent in governing many. After ob- 
taining dominion over so many local and State 
elections, '"anti-masonry," as the new enthusi- 
asm was called, aspired to higher game, under- 
took to govern presidential candidates, subject- 
ing them to interrogatories upon the point of 
their masonic faith ; and eventually set up can- 
didates of their own for these two high offices. 
The trial was made in the persons of Messrs. 
Wirt and Ellmaker, and resulted in giving them 
seven votes — the vote of Vermont alone — and, 
in showing the weakness of the party, and its 
consequent inutility as a political machine. The 
rest is soon told. Anti-masonry soon ceased to 
have a distinctive existence ; died out, and, in its 
death, left a lesson to all political parties found- 
ed in one idea — especially when that idea hasno- 
tliing political in it. 



CHAPTER LXXIV. 

FIRST ANNUAL MESSAGE OF PRESIDENT JACK- 
SON AFTER HIS SECOND ELECTION. 

This must have been an occasion of great and 
honest exultation to General Jackson — a re- 
election after a four years' trial of his adminis- 
tration, over an opposition so formidable, and 
after having assumed responsibihties so vast, 
and by a majority so triumphant — and his mes- 
sage directed to the same members, who, four 
months before, had been denouncing his mea- 
sures, and consigning himself to popular con- 
demnation. He doubtless enjoyed a feeling of 
elation when drawing up that message, and had 
a right to the enjoyment j but no symptom of 
that feeling appeared in the message itself, 
which, abstaining from all reference to the elec- 
tion, wholly confined itself to business topics, 



and in the subdued style of a business paper. 
Of the foreign relations he was able to give a 
good, and therefore, a brief account ; and pro 
ceeding quickly to our domestic affairs gave to 
each head of these concerns a succinct conside- 
ration. The state of the finances, and the pub 
lie debt, claimed his first attention. The re* 
ceipts from the customs were stated at twenty- 
eight millions of dollars — from the lands at two 
millions — the payments on account of the pub- 
lic debt at eighteen millions ; — and the balance 
remaining to be paid at seven millions — to 
which the current income would be more than 
adequate notwithstanding an estimated reduc- 
tion of three or four millions from the customs 
in consequence of reduced duties at the preced- 
ing session. He closed this head with the fol 
lowing view of the success of his administration 
in extinguishing a national debt, and his con- 
gratulations to Congress on the auspicious and 
rare event : 

"I cannot too cordially congratulate Congress 
and my fellow-citizens on the near approach of 
that memorable and happy event, the extinction 
of the public debt of this great and free nation. 
Faithful to the wise and patriotic policy marked 
out by the legislation of the country for this 
object, the present administration has devoted 
to it all the means which a flourishing commerce 
has supplied, and a prudent economy preserved, 
for the public treasury. Within the four years 
for which the people have confided the execu- 
tive power to my charge, fifty-eight millions of 
dollars will have been applied to the payment 
of the public debt. That this has been accom- 
plished without stinting the expenditures for 
all other proper objects, will be seen by refer- 
ring to the liberal provision made, during the 
same period, for the support and increase of our 
means of maritime and military defence, for in- 
ternal improvements of a national character, for 
the removal and preservation of the Indians, 
and, lastly, for the gallant veterans of the Revo 

tion." 

« 

To the gratifying fact of the extinction of 
the debt, General Jackson vrished to add the 
substantial benefit of release from the burthens 
which it imposed — an object desirable in itself, 
and to all the States, and particularly to those 
of the South, greatly dissatisfied with the bur- 
thens of the tariS", and with the large expcndi- 
ditures which took place in other quarters of 
the Union. Sixteen millions of dollars, he stat- 
ed to be the outlay of the federal government 
for all objects exclusive of the public debt ; so 
that ten millions might be subject to reduction : 



284 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW 



and this to be effected so as to retain a protect- 
ing duty in favor of the articles essential to our 
defence and comfort in time of war. On this 
point he said : 

"Those who take an enlarged view of the 
condition of our country, must be satisfied that 
the policy of protection must be ultimately lim- 
ited to those articles of domestic manufacture 
which are indispensable to our safety in time of 
war. Within this scope, on a reasonable scale, 
it is recommended by every consideration of 
patriotism and dutj^ which will doubtless al- 
ways secure to it a liberal and efficient support. 
But beyond this object, we have already seen 
the operation of the svstem jiroductive of dis- 
content. In some sections of the republic, its 
influence is deprecated as tending to concentrate 
wealth into a few hands, and as creating those 
germs of dependence and vice which, in other 
countries, have characterized the existence of 
monopolies, and proved so destructive of liberty 
and the general good. A large portion of the 
people, in one section of the republic, declares it 
not only inexpedient on these grounds, but as 
disturbing the equal relations of property by 
legislation, and therefore unconstitutional and 
unjust." 

On the subject of the public lands his recom- 
mendations were brief and clear, and embraced 
the subject at the two great points which dis- 
tinguish the statesman's view from that of a 
mere politician. He looked at them under the 
great aspect of settlement and cultivation, and 
the release of the new States from the presence 
of a great foreign landholder within their limits. 
The sale of the salable parts to actual settlers 
at what they cost the United States, and the 
cession of the unsold parts within a reasonable 
time to the States in which they lie, was his 
wise recommendation ; and thus expressed : 

" It seems to me to be our true policy that 
the public lands shall cease, as soon as practica- 
ble, to be a source of revenue, and that they be 
sold to .settlers in limited parcels, at a price 
barely suflBcient to reimburse to the United 
States the expense of the present system, and 
the cost arising under our Indian compacts. 
The advantages of accurate surveys and un- 
doubted titles, now secured to purchasers, seem 
to forbid the abolition of the present S3stem, 
because none can be substituted which will 
more perfect!}' accomplish those important ends. 
It is desirable, however, that, in convenient 
time, this machinery be withdrawn from the 
States, and that the right of .soil, and the future 
disposition of it, be surrendered to the States, 
respectively, in which it lies. 

"The advLiiturous and hardy population of 
the "West, besides contributing their equal share 



of taxation under our impost system, have, in 
the progress of our government, for the lands 
they occupy, paid into the treasurj^ a large pro- 
portion of forty millions of dollars, and. of the 
revenue received therefrom, but a small part 
has been expended amongst them, "When, to 
the disadvantage of their situation in this re- 
spect, we add the consideration that it is their 
labor alone which gives real value to the lands, 
and that the proceeds arising from their sale 
are distributed chiefly among States which had 
not originally an}^ claim to them, and whi<ih 
have enjoyed the imdivided emolument arising 
from the sale of their own lands, it cannot be 
expected that the new States will remain longer 
contented with the present policy, after the pay- 
ment of the public debt. To avert the conse- 
quences which may be apprehended from this 
cause, to put an end for ever to all partial and 
interested legislation on the subject, and to af- 
ford to every American citizen of enterprise, the 
opportunity of s.ecuring an independent free- 
hold, it seems to me, therefore, best to abandon 
the idea of raising a future revenue out of the 
public lands." 

These are the grounds upon which the mem- 
bers from the new States should unite and 
stand. The Indian title has been extinguished 
within their limits ; the federal title should be 
extinguished also. A stream of agriculturists 
is constantly pouring into their bosom — many 
of them without the means of purchasing land 
— and to all of them the whole of their means 
needed in its improvement and cultivation. 
Donations then, or sales at barely reimbursing 
prices, is the wise policy of the government ; 
and a day should be fixed by Congress in everj' 
State (regulated by the quantity of public land 
within its limits), after which the surrender of 
the remainder should take effect within the 
State ; and the whole federal machinery for the 
sale of the lands be withdrawn from it. In 
thus filling the new States and Territories with 
independent landholders — with men having a 
stake in the soil — the federal government would 
itself be receiving, and that for ever, the two 
things of which every government has need 
namely, perennial revenue, and military .service. 
The cultivation of the lands would bring in well- 
regulated revenue through the course of circu- 
lation, and, what ]Mr. Burke calls, " the politi- 
cal secretions of the State." Their population 
would be a perpetual army for the service of 
the country when needed. It is the true and 
original defence of nations — the incitement and 
reward for defence — a freehold, and arms to de« 



ANNO 1832. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



285 



fend it. It is a source of defence which preced- 
ed standing armies, and should supersede them ; 
and pre-eminently belongs to a republic, and 
above all to the republic of the United States, 
so abounding in the means of creating these de- 
fenders, and needing them so much. To say 
nothing of nearer domains, there is the broad 
expanse from the Mississippi to the Pacific 
ocean, all needing settlers and defenders. Cover 
it with freeholders, and you have all the de- 
fenders that are required — all that interior sav- 
ages, or exterior foreigners, could ever render 
necessary to appear in arms. In a mere milita- 
ry point of view, and as assuring the cheap and 
efflcient defence of the nation, our border, and 
our distant public territory, should be promptly 
-overed with freehold settlers. 

On the subject of the removal of the Indians, 
the message said : 

" I am happy to inform you, that the wise 
and humane policy of transferring from the 
eastern to the western side of the Mississippi, 
the remnants of our aboriginal tribes, with their 
own consent, and upon just terms, has been 
steadily pursued, and is approaching, I trust, its 
consummation. By reference to the report of 
the Secretary of War, and to the documents 
submitted with it, you will see the progress 
wliich has been made since your last session in 
the arrangement of the various matters connected 
with our Indian relations. With one exception, 
every subject involving any question of conflict- 
ing jurisdiction, or of peculiar difficulty, has been 
happily disposed of, and the conviction evidently 
gains ground among the Indians, that their re- 
moval to the country assigned by the United 
States for their permanent residence, furnishes 
the only hope of their ultimate prosperity. 

" With that portion of the Cherokees, how- 
ever, living within the State of Georgia, it has 
been found impracticable, as yet, to make a 
satisfactory adjustment. Such was my anxiety 
to remove all the grounds of complaint, and to 
bring to a termination the diflflculties in which 
they are involved, that I directed the very liberal 
propositions to be made to them which accom- 
pany the documents herewith submitted. They 
cannot but have seen in these offers the evidence 
of the strongest disposition, on the part of the 
government, to deal justly and liberally with 
them. An ample indemnity was offered for their 
present possessions, a liberal provision for their 
future support and improvement, and full .security 
/ for their private and political rights. Whateve'r 
difference of opinion may have prevailed respect- 
ing the just claims of these people, there will 
probably be none respecting the liberality of the 
propositions, and very little respecting the ex- 
pediency of their immediate acceptance. They 



were, however, rejected, and thus the position 
of these Indians remains unchanged, as do the 
views comnmnicated in my message to the Se- 
nate, of February 22, 1831." 

Tne President does not mention the obstacles 
which delayed the humane policy of transferring 
the Indian tribes to the west of the Mississippi, 
nor allude to the causes which prevented the 
remaining Cherokees in Georgia from accepting 
the liberal terms offered them, and joining the 
emigrated portion of their tribe on the Arkansas ; 
but these obstacles and causes were known to 
the public, and the knowledge of them was car- 
ried into the parliamentary, the legislative, and 
the judicial history of the country. These 
removals wei'e seized upon by party spirit as 
soon as General Jackson took up the policy of 
his predecessors, and undertook to complete what 
they had began. Ilis injustice and tyranny to 
the Indians became a theme of political party 
vituperation ; and the South, and Georgia espe- 
cially, a new battle-field for political warfare. 
The extension of her laws and jurisdiction over 
the part of her territory still inhabited by a part 
of the Cherokees, was the signal for concentrating 
upon that theatre the sympathies, and the interfer- 
ence of politicians and of missionaries. Congress 
was appealed to ; and refused the intervention 
of its authority. The Supreme Court was apphed 
to to stay, by an injunction, the operation of the 
laws of Georgia on the Indian part of the State ; 
and refused the application, for want of juris- 
diction of the question. It was applied to to brinf 
the case of the missionaries before itself, and did 
so, reversing the judgment of the Georgia State 
Court, and pronouncing one of its own ; which 
was disregarded. It was applied to to reverse 
the judgment in the case of Tassells, and the writ 
of error was issued to bring up the case ; and 
on the day appointed Tassells was hanged. The 
missionaries were released as soon as they ceased 
their appeals to the Supreme Court, and address- 
ed themselves to the Governor of Georgia, to 
whom belonged the pardoning power ; and the 
correspondence and communications which took 
place between themselves and Governor Lump- 
kin showed that they were emissaries, as well 
as missionaries, and acting a prescribed part for 
the " good of the country " — as tliey expressed 
it. They came from the North, and returned to 
it as soon as released. All Georgia was outraged, 
and justly, at this political interference in her 



286 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



affairs, and this intrusive philanthropy in behalf 
of Indians to whom she gave the same protection 
as to her own citizens, and at these attempts, 
so repcatcdlj- made to bring her before the Su- 
preme Court. Her governors (Troup, Gilmer, 
and Lumpkin,) to whom it successively belonged 
to represent the rights and dignity of the State, 
did so with firmness and moderation ; and, in 
the end, all her objects were attained, and the 
interference and intrusion ceased ; and the issue 
of the presidential election rebuked the political 
and ecclesiastical intermeddlcrs in her affairs. 

A passage in the message startled the friends 
of the^Bank of the United States, and, in fact, 
took the public by surprise. It was an intima- 
tion of the insolvency of the bank, and of the 
insecurity of the public deposits therein; and a 
recommendation to have the affairs of the in- 
stitution thoroughly investigated. It was in 
these terms : 

" Such measures as are within the reach of 
the Secretary of the Treasury have been taken to 
enable him to judge whether the public deposits 
in that institution may be regarded as entirely 
safe ; but as his limited power may prove inade- 
quate to this object, I recommend the subject to 
the attention of Congress, under the firm belief 
that it is worthy their serious investigation. An 
incjuiry into the transactions of the institution, 
embracing the branches as well as the principal 
bank, seems called for by the credit which is 
given throughout the country to many serious 
charges impeaching its character, and which, if 
true, may justly excite the apprehension that it 
is no longer a safe depository of the money of 
the people." 

This recommendation gave rise to proceedings 
in Congress, which vrill be noted in their proper 
place. The intimation of insolvency was re- 
ceived with scorn by the friends of the great 
corporation — with incredulity by the masses — 
and with a belief that it was true only by the 
few who closely observed the signs of the times, 
and by those who confided in the sagacity and 
provident foresight of Jackson (by no means 
inconsiderable either in number or judgment). 
For my own part I had not suspicioned insol- 
vency when I commenced my opposition to the 
renewed charter ; and was only brought to that 
suspicion, and in fact, conviction, by seeing the 
flagrant manner in which the institution resisted 
investigation, when proposed under circumstan- 
ces which T'endered it obligatory to its honor; 
and which could only be so resisted from a 



consciousness that, if searched, something would 
be found worse than any thing charged. The 
only circumstance mentioned by the President 
to countenance suspicion was the conduct of the 
bank in relation to the payment of five millions 
of the three per cent. "Btock, ordered to have been 
paid at the bank in the October preceding (and 
where the money, according to its returns, was 
in deposit) ; and instead of paying which the 
bank secretly sent an agent to London to obtain 
delay from the creditors for six, nine and twelvfl 
months ; and even to purchase a part of the stock 
on its account — which was done — and in clear 
violation of its charter (which forbids the in- 
stitution to traffic in the stocks of the United 
States). This delay, with the insufficient and 
illegal reason given for it (for no reason could 
be legal or sufficient while admitting the money 
to be in her hands, and that which the bank 
gave related to the cholera, and the ever-ready 
excuse of accommodation to the public), could 
only be accounted for from an inability to pro- 
duce the funds ; in other words, that while her 
returns to the treasurj' admitted she had the 
money, the state of her vaults showed that she 
had it not. This view was further confirmed 
by her attempt to get a virtual loan to meet the 
payment, if delay could not be obtained, or the 
stock purchased, in the application to the London 
house of the Barings to draw upon it for the 
amount imcovcrod by delay or by purchase. 

But the salient passage in the message — the 
one which gave it a new and broad emphasis in 
the public mind — was the part which related to 
the attitude of South Carolina. The proceed- 
ings of that State had now reached a point which 
commanded the attention of all America, and 
could not be overlooked in the President's mes- 
sage. Organized opposition, and forcible re- 
sistance to the laws, took their open form ; and 
brought up the question of the governmental 
enforcement of these laws, or submission to their 
violation. The question made a crisis ; and the 
President thus brought the subject before Con- 
gress : 

"It is my painHil dut)!- to state, that, in one 
quarter of the United States, opposition to the 
revenue laws has risen to a height which threat- 
ens to thwart their execution, if not to endan- 
ger the integrity of the Union. Whatever ob- 
structions may be thrown in the way of the 
judicial authorities of the general government, 
it is hoped they will be able, peaceably, to over- 



AI^NO 1833. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



287 



come them by the prudence of their own ofiBcers, 
and the patriotism of the people. But should 
this reasonable reliance on the moderation and 
good sense of all portions of our fellow-citizens 
be disappointed, it is believed that the laws 
themselves are fully adequate to the suppression 
of such attempts as may be immediately made. 
Should the exigency arise, rendering the execu- 
tion of the existing laws impracticable, from any 
cause whatever, prompt notice of it will be given 
to Congress, with the suggestion of such views 
and measures as may be deemed necessary to 
meet it." 

Nothing could be more temperate, subdued, 
and even conciliatory than the tone and language 
of this indispensable notice. The President 
could not avoid bringing the subject to the no- 
tice of Congress ; and could not have done it in 
a more unexceptionable manner. His language 
was that of justice and mildness. The peaceful 
administration of the laws were still relied upon, 
and if any thing further became necessary he 
promised an immediate notice to Congress. In 
the mean time, and in a previous part of his 
message, he had shown his determination, so far 
as it depended on him, to remove all just com- 
plaint of the burthens of the tariff by effecting a 
reduction of many millions of the duties : — a dis- 
pensation permitted by the extinction of the 
public debt within the current year, and by the 
means already provided, and which would admit 
of an abolition of ten to twelve milhons of dol- 
lars of duties. 



CHAPTER LXXV. 

BANK OF THE UNITED STATES— DELAY IN PAY- 
ING THE THREE PER CENTS— COMMITTEE OF 
INVESTIGATION. 

The President in his message had made two re- 
commendations which concerned the bank — one 
that the seven millions of stock held therein by 
the United States should be sold j the other that a 
committee should be appointed to investigate its 
condition. On the question of referring the dif- 
ferent parts of the message to appropriate com- 
mittees, Mr. Speight, of North Carolina, moved 
that this latter clause be sent to a select commit- 
tee ; to which ]\Ir. Wayne, of Georgia, proposed 
an amendment, that the committee should have 
power to bring persons before them, and to ex- 



amine them on oath, and to call upon the bank 
and its branches for papers. This motion gave 
rise to a contest similar to that of the preceding 
session on the same point, and by the same 
actors — and with the same result in favor of 
the bank — the debate being modified by some 
fresh and material incidents. Mr. Wickliffe, of 
Kentuclvy, had previously procured a call to be 
made on the Secretary of the Treasury for the 
report which his agent was employed in making 
upon the condition of. the bank; and wished the 
motion for the committee to be deferred until 
that report came in. He said : 

" He had every confidence, both from his own 
judgment and from information in his posses- 
sion, that when the resolution he had offered 
should receive its answer, and the House should 
have the report of the agent sent by the Secre- 
tar}^ of the Treasury to inquire into the affairs of 
the bank, with a view to ascertain whether it 
was a safe depository for the public funds, the 
answer would be favorable to the bank and to 
the entire security of the revenue. Mr. W. said 
he had hoped that the resolution he had offered 
would have superseded the necessity of another 
bank discussion in that House, and of the con- 
sequences upon the financial and commercial 
operations of the country, and upon the credit 
of our currency. He had not understood, from 
a hasty reading of the report of the Secretary of 
the Treasury, that that officer had expressed any 
desire for the appointment of anj^ committee on 
the subject. The secretary said that he had 
taken steps to obtain such information as was 
within his control, but that it was possible he 
might need further powers hereafter. What 
had already been the effect throughout the 
country of the broadside discharged by the mes- 
sage at the bank ? Its stock had, on the recep- 
tion of that message, instantlj'^ fallen down to 
104 per cent. Connected with this proposition 
to sell the stock, a loss had already been incur- 
red by the government of half a miUion of dol- 
lars. What further investigations did gentle- 
men require ? What new bill of indictment was 
to be presented ? There was one in the secre- 
tary's report, which was also alluded to in the 
message : it was, that the bank had, by its un- 
waranted action, prevented the government from 
redeeming the three per cent, stock at the time 
it desired. But what was the actual state of 
the fact ? W hat had the bank done to prevent 
such redemption? It had done nothing more 
nor less than what it had been required by the 
government to do." 

' The objection to inquiry, made by Mr. Wick- 
liffe, that it depreciated the stock, and made a 
loss of the difference to its holders, was entirely 
fallacious, as fluctuations in the price of stocks 



288 



THTRTT YEARS' VIEW. 



are greatly under the control of those who gam- 
ble in them, and who seize every circumstance, 
alternately to depress anJ exalt them ; and the 
fluctuations ailcct nobody but those who are 
buyers or sellers. Yet this objection was grave- 
ly resorted to every time that any movement 
was made which atTected the bank ; and arith- 
metical calculations were gravely gone into to 
show, upon each decline of the stock, how much 
money each stockholder had lost. On this oc- 
casion the loss of the United States was set 
down at half a million of dollars: — which was 
recovered four daj's afterwards upon the reading 
of the report of the treasury agent, favorable 
to the bank, and which enabled the dealers to 
put up the shares to 112 again. In the meau 
time nobody lost any thing but the gamblers ; 
and that was nothing to the public, as the loss 
of one was the gain of the other : and the thing 
balanced itself. Holders for investment neither 
lost, nor gained. For the rest, Mr. "Wayne, of 
Georgia, replied : 

" It has been said that nothing was now be- 
fore the House to make an inquiry into the con- 
dition of the bank desirable or necessary. He 
would refer to the President's message, and to 
the report of the Secretary of the Treasury, 
both suggesting an examination, to ascertain if 
the bank was, or would be in future, a safe de- 
pository for the public funds. Mr. ^V". did not 
say it was not, but an inquiry into the fact 
might be very proper* notwithstanding ; and the 
President and Secretary, in suggesting it, had 
imputed no suspicion of the insolvency of the 
bank. Eventual ability to discharge all of its 
obligations is not of itself enough to entitle the 
bank to the confidence of the government. Its 
itianagenient, and the spirit in which it is man- 
aged, in direct reference to the government, or 
to those administering it, may make investiga- 
tion proper. What was the Executive's com- 
plaint against the bank ? That it had interfered 
with the payment of the public debt, and would 
postpone the payment of five millions of it for 
a year after the time fixed upon for its redemp- 
tion, by becoming actually or nominally the 
possessors of that amount of the three per 
centum stock, though the charter prohibited it 
from holding such stock, and from all advanta- 
ges which might accrue from the purchase of 
it. True, the bank had disavowed the owner- 
ship. But of that sum which had been bought 
by Baring, Brothers, & Co.. under the agree- 
ment widi the agent of the bank, at ninety-one 
and a half, and the cost of which had been 
charged to the bank, who would derive the 
benefit of the difference between the cost of it 
and the par value, which the government will 
pay ? Mr. W. knew this gain would be effected 



by what may be the rate of exchange between 
the United States and England, but still there 
would be gain, and who was to recei^'e it ? Ba- 
ring, Brothers, & Co. ? No. The bank was, by 
agreement, charged with the cost of it, in a 
separate account, on the books of Baring, Bro- 
thers, & Co., and it had agreed to pay interest 
upon the amount, until the stock was redeemed. 
" The bank being prohibited to deal in such 
stock, it would be well to inquire, even under 
the present arrangements with Baring, Brothers, 
& Co., whether the charter, in this respect, was 
substantially complied with. Mr. W. would 
not now go into the question of the policy of 
the arrangement by the bank concei'ning the 
three per cents. It may eventuate in great 
public benefit, as regards the commerce of the 
country'; but if it does, it will be no apolo^ 
gy for the temerity of an interference with the 
fixed policy of the government, in regard to 
the payment of the national debt ; a policy, 
which those who administer the bank knew had 
been fixed by all who, by law, can have any 
agency in its payment. Nor can any apology 
be found for it in the letter of the Secretary of 
the Treasury of the 19th of July last to Mr. 
Biddle ; for, at Philadelphia, the day before, on 
the 18th, he employed an agent to go to Eng- 
land, and had given instructions to make an 
arrangement, by which the payment of the pub- 
lic debt was to be postponed until October, 
1833." 

Mr. "Watmough, representative from the dis- 
trict in which the bank was situated, disclaimed 
any intention to thwart any course which the 
House was disposed to take ; but said that the 
charges against the bank had painfully affected 
the feelings of honorable men connected with 
the corporation, and injured its character ; and 
deprecated the appointment of a select commit- 
tee; and proposed the Committee of Waj's and 
Cleans — the same which had twice reported in 
favor of the bank : — and he had no objection 
that this committee should be clothed with all 
the powers proposed by ]\Ir. Wayne to be con- 
ferred upon the select committee. In this state 
of the question the report of the treasury agent 
came in, and deserves to be remembered in con- 
trast with the actual condition of the bank as 
afterwards discovered, and as a specimen of the 
imposing exhibit of its affairs whicli a moneyed 
corporation can make when actually insolvent. 
The report, founded on the statements furnished 
by the institution itself, presented a superb con- 
dition — near eighty millions of assets (to be 
precise, !jJ79,593,870), to meet all demands 
against it, amounting to thirty-seven millions 
and a quarter — leaving forty-two millions and 



ANNO 1833. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



289 



a quarter for the stockholders; of which thirty- 
five millions would reimburse the stock, and 
seven and a quarter millions remain for divi- 
dend. Mr. Polk stated that this report was a 
mere compendium of the monthly bank returns, 
showing nothing which these returns did not 
show; and especially nothing of the eight mil- 
lions of unavailable funds which had been ascer- 
tained to exist, and which had been accumulat- 
ing for eighteen years. On the point of the 
non-payment of the three per cents, he said : 

'•The Secretary of the Treasury had given 
public notice that the whole amount of the three 
per cents would be paid off on the first of July. 
The bank was apprised of this arrangement, 
and on its application the treasury department 
consented to suspend the redemption of one 
third of this stock until the first of October, the 
bank paying the interest in the mean while. 
But, if the condition of the bank was so very 
prosperous, as has been represented, why did it 
make so great a sacrifice as to pay interest on 
that large amount for three months, for the 
sake of deferring the payment ? The Secretary 
of the Treasury, on the 19th July, determined 
that two thirds of the stock should be paid off 
on the first of October; and, on the 18th of Ju- 
ly what did the bank do 7 It dispatched an 
agent to London, without the knowledge of the 
treasury, and for what ? In effect, to borrow 
5,000,000 dollars, for that was the amount of 
the transaction. From this fact Mr. P. inferred 
that the bank was unable to go on without the 
public deposits. They then made a communi- 
cation to the treasury, stating that the bank 
would hold up such certificates as it could con- 
trol, to suit the convenience of the government ; 
but was it on this account that they sent their 
agent to London? Did the president of the 
bank himself assign this reason 1 No ; he gave 
a very different account of the matter ; he said 
that the bank apprehended that the spread of 
the cholera might produce great distress in the 
country, and that the bank wished to hold itself 
in an attitude to meet the public exigencies, 
and that \vith this view an agent was sent to 
make an arrangement with the Barings for with- 
holding three millions of the stock." 

The motion of Mr. ^Vatmough to refer the 
inquiry to the Committee of Ways and Means, 
was carried ; and that committee soon reported : 
Jirst, on the point of postponing the payment 
of a part of the tliree per cents, that the busi- 
ness being now closed by the actual payment 
of that stock, it no longer presented any im- 
portant or practicable point of inquiry, and did 
not call for any action of Congress upon it ; and, 
eecondlij, on the point of the safety of the pub- 

VoL. I.— 19 



lie deposits, that there could be no doubt of the 
entire soundness of the whole bank capital, after 
meeting all demands upon it-, either by its bill 
holders or the government ; and that such was 
the opinion of the committee, who felt great 
confidence in the well-known character and in- 
telligence of the directors, whose testimony sup- 
ported the facts on which the committee's opin- 
ion rested. And they concluded with a resolve 
which they recommended to the adoption of 
the House, " That the government deposits may, 
in the opinion of the House, be safely continued 
in the Bank of the United States." Mr. Polk, 
one of the committee, dissented from the re- 
port, and argued thus against it: 

" He hoped that gentlemen who believed the 
time of the House, at this period of the session, 
to be necessarily valuable, would not press the 
consideration of this resolution upon the House 
at this juncture. During the small remainder 
of the session, there were several measures of 
the highest public importance which remained 
to be acted on. For one, he was extremely 
anxious that the session should close by 12 
o'clock to-night, in order that a sitting upon the 
Sabbath might be avoided. He would not pro- 
ceed in expressing his views until he should un- 
derstand from gentlemen whether they intended 
to press the House to a vote upon this resolu- 
tion. [A remark was made bj' Mr. Ingersoll, 
which was not heard distinctly by the reporter.] 
Mr. P. proceeded. As it had been indicated 
that gentlemen intended to take a vote upon the 
resolution, he would ask whether it was possi- 
ble for the members of the House to express 
their opinions on this subject with an adequate 
knowledge of the facts. The Committee of 
Ways and Means had spent nearly the whole 
session in the examination of one or two points 
connected with this subject. The range of in- 
vestigation had been, of necessity, much less 
extensive than the deep importance of the sub- 
ject required ; but, before any opinion could be 
properly expressed, it was important that the 
facts developed by the committee should be un- 
derstood. There had been no opportunity for 
this, and there was no necessity for tlie expres- 
sion of a premature opinion unless it was consi- 
dered essential to whitewash the bank. If the 
friends of the bank deemed it indispensably neces- 
sary, in order to sustain the bank, to call for an 
expression of opinion, where the House had en- 
joyed no opportunity of examining the testimony 
and proof upon which alone a correct opinion 
could be formed, he should be compelled, briefly, 
to present one or two facts to the House. It had 
been one of the objects of the Committee of Ways 
and Means to ascertain the circumstances relative 
to the postponement of the redemption of the 
three per cent, stock by the bank. With the mass 



290 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



of other important duties devolving upon the 
committee, as full an investigation of the con- 
dition of the bank as was desirable could not be 
expected. The conuiiittce, therefore, had been 
obliged to limit their inquiries to this subject 
of the three per cents ; the other subjects of 
investigation were onl}- incidental. Upon this 
main subject of inquiry the whole committee, 
majority as well as minority, were of opinion 
that the bank had exceeded its legitimate au- 
thority, and had taken measures which were in 
direct violation of its charter. He would read 
a single sentence from the report of the major- 
ity, which conclusively established this position. 
In the transactions upon this subject, the ma- 
jority of the committee express!}' sa}', in their 
report, that ' the bank exceeded its legitimate 
authority, and that this proceeding had no suf- 
ficient warrant in the correspondence of the 
Secretary- of the Treasur}-.' Could language be 
more explicit ? It was then the unanimous opin- 
ion of the committee, upon this main topic of 
inciuiry. that the bank had exceeded its legiti- 
mate authority, and that its proceedings relative 
to the three per cents had no sufficient warrant 
in the correspondence of the Sccretarj' of the 
Treasury. The Bank of the United States, it 
must be remembered, had been made tlie place 
of deposit for the public revenues, for the pur- 
pose of meeting the expenditures of the govern- 
ment. With the i)ublic money in its vaults, it 
was bound to pay the demands of the govern- 
ment. Among these demands upon the public 
money in the bank, was that portion of the pub- 
lic debt of which the redemption had been or- 
dered. Had the bank manifested a willingness 
to pay out the public money in its possession 
for this object? On examination of the evi- 
dence it would be found that, as early as ]March, 
1832, the president of the bank, without the 
knowledge of the government directors, had in- 
stituted a correspondence with certain holders 
of the public debt, for the purpose of procuring 
a postponement of its redemption. There was, 
at that time, no cholera, which could be charged 
with giving occasion to the correspondence. 
When public notice had been given by the Sec- 
retary of the Treasury of the redemption of the 
debt, the president of the bank immediately came 
to Washington, and requested that the redemp- 
tion miglit be postponed. And what was the 
reason then assigned by the president of the 
bank for this postponement? Whj', that the 
measure would enable the bank to afford the 
merchants great facilities for the transaction of 
their business under an extraordinary pressure 
upon the money market. What was the evi- 
dence upon this point? The proof distinctl}' 
showed that there was no extraordinary pres- 
sure. The monthly statements of the bank es- 
tablished that there was, in fact, a very consider- 
able curtailment of the facilities given to the 
uierchanis in the commercial cities, 

•• The minority of the £)ommittee of Ways 
and Means had not disputed the ability of the 



bank to discharge its debts in its own convenient 
time ; but had the bank promptly paid the public 
money deposited in its vaults when called for? 
As early as October, 1831, the bank had antici- 
pated that during the course of 1832 it would 
not be allowed the undisturbed and permanent 
use of the public deposits. In the circular orders 
to the several branches which were then issued, 
the necessity was stated for collecting the means 
for refunding those deposits from the loans 
which were then outstanding. Efforts were 
made bj^ the branches of tlie West to make 
collections for that object; but those efforts en- 
tirely failed. The debts due upon loans made 
by the Western branches had not been ciu-tailed. 
It was found impossible to curtail them. As 
the list of discounts had gone down, the list of 
domestic bills of exchange had gone up. The 
application before alluded to was made in March 
to Mr. Ludlow, of New-York, who represented 
about 1,700,000 of the public debt to postpone 
its redemption. This expedient also failed. Then 
the president of the bank came to Washington 
for the purpose of procuring the postponement 
of the period of redemption, upon the ground 
that an extraordinary pressure existed, and the 
public interest would be promoted by enabling 
the bank to use the public money in affording 
fiicilities to the merchants of the commercial 
cities. And what next ? In July, the president 
of the bank and the exchange committee, without 
the knowledge of the head of the treasury, or 
of the board of directors of the bank, instituted 
a secret mission to England, for the purpose of 
negotiating in effect a loan of five millions of 
dollars, for which tlie bank was to pay interest. 
The propriety or object of this mission was not 
laid before the board of directors, and no clue 
was afforded to the government. Mr. Cadwal- 
ader Avent to England upon this secret mission. 
On the 1st of October the bank was advised of 
the arrangement made by ]\Ir. Cadwalader, by 
which it was agreed, in behalf of the bank, to 
purchase a part of the debt of the foreign holders, 
and to defer the redemption of a part. Now, it 
was well known to every one who had taken 
the trouble to read the charter of the bank, that 
it was expressl}' prohiljited from purchasing 
public stock. On the 15th October it was dis- 
covered that Cadwalader had exceeded his in- 
structions. This discovery by the bank took 
])lace immediately after the circular letter of 
Baring, Brothers, & Co., of London, announcing 
that the arrangement had been published in one 
of the New-York papers. This circular gave vhe 
first information to tlie government, or to any one 
in this countiy, as far as he was advised, excepting 
the exchange committee of the bank, of the 
object of Cadwalader's mission. In the limited 
time which could now be spared for this discus- 
sion, it was impossible to go through the parti- 
culars of this scheme. It would be seen, on 
examination of the transaction, that the bank 
had directly interfered with the redemption of 
the public debt, for the obvious i-eason that it 



ANNO 1833. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



291 



was unable to refund the public deposits. The 
cholera was not the ground of the correspondence 
with Ludlow. It was not the cholera which 
brought the president of the bank to Washington, 
to request the postponement of the redemption 
of the debt ; nor was it the cholera which led to 
the resolution of the exchange committee of the 
bank to send Cadwalader to England. The true 
disorder was, the impossibility in which the 
bank found itself to concentrate its funds and 
diminish its loans. It had been stated in the 
report of the majority of the committee, that the 
certificates of the greater portion of the three 
per cents had been surrendered. It had been 
said that there was now less than a million of 
this debt outstanding. In point of fact, it would 
seem, from the correspondence, that between one 
and two millions of the debts of which the cer- 
tificates had been surrendered, had been paid by 
the bank becoming debtor to the foreign holder 
instead of the government. The directors appear 
to suppose this has not been tlie case, but the 
correspondence shows that the certificates have 
been sent home under this arrangement. After 
this brief explanation of the conduct of the bank 
in relation to the public deposits, he would ask 
whether it was necessary to sustain the credit 
of the bank by adopting this resolution." 

The vote on the resolution was taken, and 
resulted in a large majority for it — 109 to 46. 
Those who voted in the negative were : John 
Anderson of Maine ; William G. Angel of New- 
York ; William S. Archer of Virginia ; James 
Bates of Maine; Samuel Beardsley of New- 
York ; John T. Bergen of New-York ; Laughlin 
Bethvme of North Carolina ; John Blair of 
Tennessee ; Joseph Bouck of New-York ; John 
C. Brodhead of New-York ; John Carr of 
Indiana; Clement C. Clay of Alabama; Henry 
W. Connor of North Carolina ; Charles Dayan 
of New-York ; Thomas Davenport of Vii-ginia ; 
William Fitzgerald of Tennessee ; — Clayton 
of Georgia ; Nathan Gaither of Kentucky ; 
William F. Gordon of Virginia; Thomas H. 
Hall of North Carolina; Joseph W. Harper 
of New Hampshire ; — Hawkins ; Michael 
Hoffman of New-York ; Henry Horn of Penn- 
sylvania ; Henry Hubbard of New Hampshire ; 
Adam King of Pennsylvania ; Joseph Lecompte 
of Kentucky; Chittenden Lyon of Kentucky; 
Joel K. INIann of Kentucky ; Samuel W. Mardis 
of Alabama ; John Y. Mason of Virginia ; Jon- 
athan McCarty of Indiana ; Thomas R. Mitchell 
of South Carolina ; Job Pierson of New- York ; 
James K. Polk of Tennessee ; Edward C. Reed 
of New- York; Nathan Soule of New-York; 
Jesse Speight of North Carolina; Jas. Standifer 



of Tennessee ; Francis Thomas of Maryland ; 
Wiley Thompson of Georgia ; Daniel Wardwell 
of New-York ; James M. Wayne of Georgia ; 
John W. Weeks of New Hampshire ; Campbell 
P. White of New-York : J. T. H. Worthington 
of Maryland. And thus the bank not only es- 
caped without censure, but received high com- 
mendation ; while its conduct in relation to the 
three per cents placed it unequivocally in the 
category of an unfaithful and prevaricating agent; 
and only left open the inquiry whether its con- 
duct was the result of inability to pay the sum 
required, or a disposition to make something for 
itself, or to favor its debtors — the most innocent 
of these motives being negatived by the sinister 
concealment of the whole transaction from the 
government (after getting delay from it), its 
concealment from the public, its concealment 
even from its own board of directors — its entire 
secrecy from beginning to end — until accidentally 
discovered through a London letter published in 
New-York. These are > he same three per cents, 
the redemption of which through an enlargement 
of the powers of the sinking fund commissioners 
I had endeavored to effect some years before, 
when they could have been bought at about 
sixty-six cents in the dollar, and when my at- 
tempt was defeated by the friends of the bank. 
They were now paid at the rate of one hundred 
cents to the dollar, losing all the time the inter- 
est on the deposits, in bank, and about four 
millions for the appreciation of the stock. The 
attempt to get this stock redeemed, or interest 
on the deposits, was one of my first financial 
movements after I came into the Senate ; and the 
ease with which the bank defeated me, preventing 
both the extinction of the debt and the payment 
of interest on the deposits, convinced me how 
futile it was to attempt any legislation unfavor- 
able to the bank in a case which concerned itself. 



CHAPTER LXXVI. 

ABOLITION OP IMPRISONMENT FOR DEBT. 

The philanthropic Col. R. M. Johnson, of Ken- 
tucky, had labored for years at this humane 
consummation ; and finally saw his labors suc- 
cessful. An act of Congress was passed abol- 
ishing all imprisonment for debt, under process 



292 



THIRTY TEARS' VIEW. 



from the courts of the United States : the only 
extent to which an act of Congress could go, 
by force of its enactments ; but it could go much 
further, and did, in the force of example and in- 
fluence ; and has led to the cessation of the prac- 
tice of imprisoning the debtors, in all, or nearly 
all, of the States and Territories of the Union ; 
and without the evil consequences which had 
been dreaded from the loss of this remedy over 
the person. It led to a great many oppressions 
while it existed, and was often relied upon in ex- 
tending credit, or inducing improvident people 
to incur debt, where there was no means to pay 
it, or property to meet it, in the hands of the 
debtor himself ; but reliance wholly placed upon 
the syitipathies of third persons, to save a friend 
or relative from confmement in a prison. The 
dower of wives, and the purses of fathers, bro- 
thers, sisters, friends, were thus laid under con- 
tribution by heartless creditors ; and scenes of 
cruel oppression were witnessed in every State. 
Insolvent laws and bankrupt laws were invented 
to cover the evil, and to separate the unfortunate 
from the fraudulent debtor ; but they were slow 
and imperfect in operation, and did not reach 
the cases in which a cold and cruel calculation 
was made upon the sympathies of friends and 
relatives, or upon the chances of catching the 
debtor in some strange and imbefriended place. 
A broader remedy was wanted, and it was found 
in the total abolition of the practice, leaving in 
full force all the remedies against fraudulent 
evasions of debt. In one of his reports on the 
subject. Col. Johnson thus deduced the history 
of this custom, called '' barbarous," but only to 
be found in civilized countries : 

"In ancient Greece, the power of creditors 
over the persons of their debtors was absolute ; 
and, as in all cases where despotic control is toler- 
ated, their rapacity was boundless. They com- 
pelled the insolvent debtors to cultivate their 
lands like cattle, to perform the service of beasts 
of burden, and to transfer to them their sons and 
daughters, whom tliey exported as slaves to for- 
eign countries. 

" These acts of cruelty were tolerated in Athens, 
during her more barbarous state, and in perfect 
consonance with the character of a i)C0j)le who 
could elevate a Draco, and bow to his mandates, 
registered in 'blood. But the wisdom of Solon 
corrected- the evil. Athens felt the benefit of 
the reform ; and the pen of the histoi-ian has re- 
corded the name of her lawgiver as the benefac- 
tor of man. In ancient Rome, the condition of 
the unfortunate poor was still more abject. The 
cruelty of the Twelve Tables against insolvent 



debtors should be held up as a beacon of warn- 
ing to all modem nations. After judgment waa 
obtained, tliirty days of grace wore allowed be- 
fore a Roman was delivered into the power of his 
creditor. After this period, he was retained in 
a private prison, with twelve ounces of rice for 
his daily sustenance. He might be bound with 
a chain of fifteen pounds weight ; and his misery 
was three times exposed in the market-place, to 
excite the compassion of his friends. At the 
expiration of sixty days, the debt was discharged 
by the loss of liberty or life. The insolvent 
debtor was either put to death or sold in for- 
eign slavery beyond the Tiber. But, if several 
creditors were alike obstinate and unrelenting, 
they might legally dismember his body, and 
satiate their revenge by this horrid partition. 
Though the refinements of modern criticisms 
have endeavored to divest this ancient cruelty of 
its horrors, the faithful Gibbon, who is not re- 
markable for his i^artiality to the poorer class, 
preferring the liberal sense of antiquity, draws 
this dark picture of the effect of giving the cre- 
ditor power over the person of the debtor. No 
sooner was the Roman empire subverted than 
the delusion of Roman perfection began to vanish, 
and then the absurdity and cruelty of this sys- 
tem began to be exploded — a system which con- 
vulsed Greece and Rome, and filled the world 
with misery, and, without one redeeming bene- 
fit, could no longer be endured — and, to the 
honor of humanity, for about one thousand 
years, during the middle ages, imprisonment for 
debt was generally alwlished. They seemed to 
have understood what, in more modern times, 
we are less ready to comprehend, that power, in 
any degree, over the person of the debtor, is the 
same in principle, varying only in degree, whether 
it be to imprison, to enslave, to brand, to dis- 
member, or to divide liis body. But, as the lapse 
of time removed to a greater distance the cruel- 
ties which had been sullered, the cupidity of the 
affluent found means again to introduce thesj'S- 
tem ; but by such slow gradations, that the un- 
suspecting poor were scarcely conscious of the 
change, 

" Tlie history of English jurisprudence fur- 
nishes the remarkable fact, that, for many cen- 
turies, personal liberty could not be violated for 
debt. Property alone could be taken to satisfy 
a pecuniary demand. It was not until the reign 
of Henry III., in tlie thirteenth century, tliat the 
principle of im])risonment for debt was recognized 
in the land of our ancestors, and that was in 
favor of the barons alone ; the nobility against 
their bailiifs, who had received their rents and 
had appropriated them to their own use. Here 
was tlie shadow of a pretext. The great objec- 
tion to the punishment was, that it was inflicted 
at tlie pleasure of the baron, without a trial : an 
evil incident to aristocracies, but obnoxious to 
republics. The courts, under the pretext of im- 
puted crime, or constructive violence, on the part 
of the debtor, soon began to extend the principle, 
but without legislative sanction. In the eleventh 



ANNO 1833. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



293 



year of the reign of Edward I., the immediate 
successor of Henry, the right of imprisoning 
debtors was extended to merchants — Jewish 
merchants excepted, on account of their hetero- 
doxy in religion — and was exercised with great 
severity. This extension was an act of policy 
on the part of the monarch. The ascendency 
obtained by the barons menaced the power of 
the throne ; and, to counteract their influence, 
the merchants, a numerous and wealthy class, 
were selected by the monarch, and invested with 
the same authority over their debtors. 

" But England was not yet prepared for the 
yoke. She could endure an hereditary nobility ; 
she could tolerate a monarchy ; but she could 
not yet resign her unfortunate sons, indiscrimi- 
nately, to the prison. The barons and the mer- 
chants had gained the power over their victims ; 
3^et more than sixty years elapsed before Parlia- 
ment dared to venture another act recognizing 
the principle. During this period, imprison- 
ment for debt had, in some degree, lost its no- 
velty. The incarceration of the debtor began 
to make the impression that fraud, and not mis- 
fortune, had brought on his catastrophe, and 
that he was, therefore, unworthy of the protec- 
tion of the law, and too degraded for the society 
of the world. Parliament then ventured, in the 
reign of Edward III., in the fourteenth century, 
to extend the principle to two other cases — debt 
and detinue. This measure opened the door 
for the impositions which were gradually intro- 
duced by judicial usurpation, and have resulted 
in the most cruel oppression. Parliament, for 
one hundred and fifty years afterwards, did not 
venture to outrage the sentiments of an injured 
and indignant people, by extending the power 
to ordinary creditors. But they had laid the 
foundation, and an unresponsible judiciary reared 
the superstructure. From the twenty-fourth 
year of the reign of Edward III., to the nine- 
teenth of Henry VIII., the subject slumbered 
in Parliament. In the mean time, all the inge- 
nui^ of the courts was employed, by the intro- 
duction of artificial forms and legal fictions, to 
extend the power of imprisonment for debt in 
cases not provided for by statute. The juris- 
diction of the court called the King's Bench, ex- 
tended to all crimes or disturbances against the 
peace. Under this court of criminal jurisdic- 
tion, the debtor was arrested by what was 
called the writ of Middlesex, upon a supposed 
trespass or outrage against the peace and dig- 
nity of the crown. Thus, by a fictitious con- 
struction, the person who owed his neighbor 
was supposed to be, what every one knew him 
not to be, a violator of the peace, and an of- 
fender against the dignity of the crown ; and 
while his body was held in ctistody for this 
crime, he was proceeded against in a civil action, 
for which he was not liable to arrest under 
statute. The jurisdiction of the court of com- 
mon pleas extended to civil actions arising be- 
tween individuals upon private transactions. 
To sustain its importance upon a scale equal 



with that of its rival, this court also adopted its 
fictions, and extended its power upon artificial 
construction, quite as far beyond its statutory 
prerogative; and upon the fictitious plea of 
trespass, constituting a legal supposition of out- 
rage against the peace of the kingdom, author- 
ized the wi'it of capias, and subsequent impri- 
sonment, in cases where a summons only was 
warranted by law. The court of exchequer 
was designed to protect the king's revenue, and 
had no legal jurisdiction, except in cases of 
debtors to the public. The ingenuity of this 
court found means to extend its jurisdiction to 
all cases of debt between individuals, upon the 
fictitious plea that the plaintiff, who instituted 
the suit, was a debtor to the king, and rendered 
the less able to discharge the debt by the de- 
fault of the defendant. Upon this artificial pre- 
text, that the defendant was debtor to the 
king's debtor, the court of exchequer, to secure 
the king's revenue, usurped the power of ar- 
raigning and imprisoning debtors of every de- 
scription. Thus, these rival courts,, each ambi- 
tious to sustain its relative importance, and ex- 
tend its jurisdiction, introduced, as legal facts, 
the most palpable fictions, and sustained the 
most absurd solecisms as legal syllogisms. 

" Where the person of the debtor was, by 
statute, held sacred, the courts devised the 
means of construing the demand of a debt into 
the supposition of a crime, for which he was 
subject to arrest on mesne process ; and the 
evidence of debt, into the conviction of a crime 
against the peace of the kingdom, for which he 
was deprived of his liberty at the pleasure of 
the oftended party. These practices of the 
courts obtained by regular gradation. Each act 
of usurpation was a precedent for similar out- 
rages, until the system became general, and at 
length received the sanction of Parliament. 
The spirit of avarice finally gained a complete tri- 
umph over personal liberty. The sacred claims 
of misfortune were disregarded, and, to the iron 
grasp of poverty, were added the degrada- 
tion of infamy, and the misery of the dungeon. 

" While imprisonment for debt is sanctioned, 
the threats of the creditor are a source of per- 
petual distress to the dependent, friendless 
debtor, holding his liberty by sufierance alone. 
Temptiitions to oppression are constantly in 
view. The means of injustice are always at 
hand ; and even helpless females are not ex- 
empted from the barbarous practice. In a land 
of hberty, enjoying, in all other respects, the 
freest and happiest government with Avhich the 
world was ever blessed, it is matter of astonish- 
ment that this cruel custom, so anomalous to 
all our institutions, inflicting so much misery 
upon society, should have been so long endured." 

The act was passed soon after this masterly 
report was made, followed by similar acts in 
most of the States ; and has been attended 
every where with the beneficial efiect resulting 



294 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



from the suppression of any false and vicious 
principle in legislation. It is a false and vicious 
principle in the system of credit to admit a cal- 
culation for the chance of pajnicnt, founded on 
the sympathy and alarms of third imrties, or on 
the degradation and incarceration of the debtor 
himself. Such a principle is morally wrong, 
and practically unjust ; and there is no excuse 
for it in the plea of fraud. The idea of fraud 
does not enter into the contract at its original 
formation ; and if occurring afterwards, and the 
debtor undertakes to defraud his creditor, there 
is a code of law made for the case ; and every 
case should rest upon its own circumstances. 
As an element of credit, imprisonment for debt is 
condemned by morality, by humanity, and by the 
science of pohtical economy ; and its abolition 
has worked well in reducing the elements of cre- 
dit to their legitimate derivation in the personal 
character, visible means, and present securities 
of the contracting debtor. And, if in that way, 
it has diminished in any degree the wide circle 
of credit, that is an additional advantage gained 
to the good order of society and to the solidity 
of the social edifice. And thus, as in so many 
other instances, American legislation has ame- 
liorated the law derived from our English ances- 
tors, and given an example which British legis- 
lation may some day follow. — In addition to 
the honor of seeing this humane act passed 
during his administration, General Jackson had 
the further and higher honor of having twice 
recommended it to the favorable consideration 
of Congress. 



CHAPTER LXXVII. 

SALE OF UNITED STATE3 STOCK IN THE NA- 
TIONAL BANK. 

Tin: President in his annual message had re- 
commended the sale of this stock, and all other 
stock held by the United States in corporate 
companies, with the view to disconnecting the 
government from such corporations, and from 
ill pursuits properly belonging to individuals. 
And he made the recommendation upon tlie po- 
litical principle which condemns the partnership 
of the government with a corporation ; and 
npon the economical principle which condemns 



the national pursuit of any branch of industry 
and leaves the profit, or loss of all such pursuits 
to individual enterprise ; and upon the belief, in 
this instance, that the partnership was unsafe — 
that the firm would fail — aud the stockholders 
lose their investment. In conformity to this 
recommendation, a bill was brought into the 
House of Representatives to sell the public stock 
held in the Bank of the United States, being 
seven millions of dollars in amount, and consist- 
ing of a national stock bearing five per centum 
interest. The bill was met at the threshold by 
the parliamentary motion which implies the un- 
worthiness of the subject to be considered; 
namely, the motion to reject the bill at the first 
reading. That reading is never for considera- 
tion, but for information only ; and, although 
debatable, carries the implication of unfitness 
for debate, aud of some flagrant enormity 
which requires rejection, without the honor of 
the usual forms of legislation. That motion was 
made by a friend of the bank, and seconded by 
the member (IMr. "Watmough) supposed to be 
familiar with the wishes of the bank directory. 
The speakers on each side gave vent to expres- 
sions which showed that they felt the indignity 
that was offered to the bill, one side in promot- 
ing — the other in opposing the motion. Mr. 
"Wickliffe, the mover, said : " He was impelled, 
by a sense of duty to his constituents and to his 
countr}-, to do in this case, what he had never 
done before — to move the rejection of a bill at 
its first reading. There are cases in which 
courtesy should yield to the demands of justice 
and public duty ; and this, in my humble opin- 
ion, is one of them. It is a bill fraught with 
ruin to all private interests, except the interest 
of the stockjobbers of Wall-street." Mr. Wat- 
mough expressed his indignation and amaze- 
ment at the appearance of such a bill, and even 
fell upon the committee which reported it with 
so much personality as drew a call to order from 
the Speaker of the Ilouse. '• He expressed his 
sincere regret at the neccessity which compelled 
him to intrude upon the House, and to express 
his opinion on the bill, and his indignation 
against this persecution of a national institu- 
tion. He was at a loss to say which feeling 
predominated in his bosom — amazement, at the 
want of financial skill in the supporters of the bill 
— or detestation of the unrelenting spirit of the 
administration persecution on that floor of an in* 



ANNO 1833. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



295 



stitution admitted by the wisest and the best 
men of the times to be absolutely essential to the 
existence and safety of this Union, and almost 
to that of the constitution itself which formed 
its basis. He said, he was amazed that such a 
bill, at such a crisis, could emanate from any 
committee of this House ; but his amazement 
was diminished when he recalled to mind the 
source from which it came. It came from the 
Committee of Ways and Means, and was under 
the parental care of the gentleman from Ten- 
neessee. Need he say more 1 " 

Now, the member thus referred to, and who, 
after being pointed out as the guardian of the 
bill required nothing more to be said, was Mr. 
Polk, afterwards President of the United States. 
But parliamentary law is no respecter of per- 
sons, and would consider the indecorum and 
outrage of the allusion equally reprehensible in 
the case of the youngest and least considerable 
member; and the language is noted here to 
show the indignities to which members were 
subjected in the House for presuming to take 
any step concerning the bank which militated 
against that corporation. The sale of the gov- 
ernment stock was no injuiy to the capital of 
the bank : it was no extinction of seven millions 
of capital but a mere transfer of that amount 
to private stockholders — such transfer as took 
place daily among the private stockholders. The 
only injury could be to the market price of the 
stock in the possible decline involved in the 
withdrawal of a large stockholder ; but that was 
a damage, in the eye of the law and of morality, 
without injury ; that is, without injustice — 
the stockholder having a right to do so without 
the assignment of reasons to be judged of by the 
corporation; and consequently a right to sell 
out and withdraw when he judged his money to 
be unsafe, or unprofitably placed, and suscepti- 
ble of a better investment. 

Mr. Polk remarked upon the unusual but not 
unexpected opposition to the bill ; and said if the 
House was now forced to a decision, it would be 
done without opportunity for deliberation. He 
vindicated the bill from any necessary connection 
with the bank — with its eulogy or censure. 
This eulogy or censure had no necessary con- 
nection with a proposition to sell the government 
stock. It was a plain business proceeding. The 
bill authorized the Secretary of the Treasury to 
sell the stock upon such terms as he should deem 



best for the government. It was an isolated 
proposition. It proposed to disenthral the gov- 
ernment from a partnership with this incorporat- 
ed company. It proposed to get rid of the in- 
terest which the government had in this moneyed 
monopoly ; and to do so by a sale of the govern- 
ment stocks, and on terms not below the market 
price. He was not disposed to depreciate the 
value of the article which he wished to sell. He 
was willing to rest upon the right to sell. The 
friends of the bank themselves raised the question 
of solvencj', it would seem, that they might have 
an opportunity, to eulogize the institution under 
the forms of a defence. This was not the time 
for such a discussion — for an inquiry into the 
conduct and condition of the bank. 

The argument and the right were with the 
supporters of the bill ; but they signified nothing 
against the firm majority, which not only stood 
by the corporation in its trials, but supported it 
in its wishes. The bill was immediately rejected, 
and by a summary process which inflicted a new 
indignity. It was voted down under the opera- 
tion of the " previous question," which, cutting 
oW all debate, and all amendments, consigns a 
measure to instant and silent decision — like the 
" mott sans phrase " (death without talk) of the 
Abbe Sieyes, at the condemnation of Louis tho 
Sixteenth. But the vote was not very triumpli- 
ant — one of the leanest majorities, in fact, which 
the bank had received : one hundred and two to 
ninety-one. 

The negative votes were : 

" Messrs. Adair, Alexander, R. Allen, Anderson. 
Angel. Archer, Barnwell, James Bates, Beardsley, 
Bell, Bergen, Bethune, James Blair, John Blair, 
Boon, Bouck, Bouldin, John Brodhead, John C. 
Brodhcad, Cambreleng, Chandler, Chinn. Clai- 
borne, Clay, Clayton, Coke, Connor, Davenport, 
Dayan, Doubleday, Draper, Felder, Ford, Foster, 
Gaither, GUmore, Gordon, Griffin, Thomas H. 
Hall, William Hall, Harper, Hawkins, Hoffman, 
Holland, Horn, Howard, Hubbard, Isacks, Jar- 
vis, Jewett, Richard M. Johnson, Cave John- 
son, Kavanagh, Kennon, Adam King, John King, 
Lamar, Ijansing, Lcavitt, Lccompte, Lewis. Lyon, 
Mann, jNIardis, Mason, McCarty, AVm. ]\IcCoy, 
iNIcIntire, McKay, Mitchell, Newnan, Nuckolls. 
Patton, Pierson. l^Iummer, Polk, Edward C. 
Reed, Roane, Soule, Speight. Standifer, John 
Thompson, Vcrplanck, \Vard, Wardwell, Wa3'ne, 
Weeks, Campbell, P. Wliite, Worthington. — 
91." 

Such was the result of this attempt, on the 
part of the government, to exercise the most or- 



296 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



dinarj right of a stockholder to sell its shares : 
opposed, insulted, defeated ; and by the power 
of the bank in Con<rross, of whose members 
subsequent investigations showed above fifty to 
be borrowers from the institution ; and many to 
be on the list of its retained attoi'neys. But 
this was not the first time the government had 
been so treated. The same thing had happened 
once before, and about in the same way ; but 
without the same excuse of persecution and en- 
mity to the corporation ; for, it was before the 
time of General Jackson's Presidency ; to wit, in 
the 3'car 1827, and under the Presidency of ^Mr. 
Quincy Adams. Mr. Philip P. Barbour, represen- 
tative from Virginia, moved an inquiry, at that 
time, into the expediency of selling the United 
States stock in the bank : the consideration of tlie 
resolution was delayed a week, the time necessary 
for a communication with Philadelphia. At the 
end of the week, the resolution was taken up, 
and summarily rejected. Mr. Barbour had placed 
his proposition wholly upon the ground of a 
public advantage in selling its stock, unconnected 
with any reason disparaging to the bank, and in 
a way to avoid, as he believed, any opposition. 
He said : 

" The House were aware that the government 
holds, at this time, stock of the Bank of the 
United States, to the amount of seven millions of 
dollars, which stock was at present worth in 
market about twenty-three and one half per 
cent, advance above its par value. If the whole 
of this stock should now be sold by the govern- 
ment, it would net a profit of one million and 
six hundred thousand dollars above the nominal 
amount of the stock. Such being the case, he 
thought it deserved the serious consideration of 
the House, whether it would not be a prudent 
and proper measure now to sell out that stock. 
It had been said, Mr. B. observed, by one of the 
best writers on political economy, w'th whom 
he was acquainted, that the pecimiary att'airs of 
nations bore a close analogy to those of private 
households: in both, their prosperity mainly 
depended on a vigilant and effective management 
of their resources. There is, said Mr. B.. an 
amount of between seventeen and eighteen mil- 
lions of the stock of the United States now re- 
deemable, and an amount of nine millions more, 
which will be redeemable next year. If the in- 
terest paid by the United States on this debt is 
compared with the dividend it receives on its 
stock in the Bank of the United States, it will 
It found that a small advantage would be gained 



b}^ the sale of the latter, in this respect ; sincfl 
the dividends on bank stock are received semi- 
anntially, while the interest of the United States' 
securities is paid quarterly; this, however, he 
waived as a matter of comparatively small mo- 
ment. It must be obvious, he said, "that the ad- 
dition of one million six hundred thousand dol- 
lars to the available funds of the United States 
will produce the extinguishment of an equiva- 
lent amount of the public debt, and consequently 
relieve the interest payable thereon, by which a 
saving would accrue of about one hundred thou- 
sand dollars per annum." 

This was what Mr. Barbour said, at the time 
of offering the ro-olution. When it came up for 
consideration, a week after, he found his motion 
not only opposed, but his motives impeached, and 
the most sinister designs imputed to himself — 
to him ! a Virginian country gentleman, honest 
and modest ; ignorant of all indircction ; upright 
and open ; a stranger to all guile ; and with the 
simplicity and integrity of a child. He deeply 
felt this impeachment of motives, certainly the 
first time in his life that an indecent imputation 
had ever fallen upon him ; and he feelingly depre- 
cated the intensity of the outrage. He said : 

" We shall have fallen on evil times, indeed, if 
a member of this House might not, in the in- 
tegrity of his heart, rise in his place, and offer 
for consideration a measure which ho believed 
to be for the public weal, without having all that 
he said and did imputed to some hidden motive, 
and referred to some secret purpose which was 
never presented to the public eye." 

His proposition was put to the vote, and re- 
ceived eight votes besides his own. They were : 
Messrs. Mark Alexander, John Floyd, John 
Roane, and himself, from Virginia ; Thomas H. 
Ilall, and Daniel Turner, of North Carolina; 
Tomlinson Foot of Connecticut; Joseph Le- 
compte, and Henry Daniel, of Kentucky. And 
this was the result of that first attempt to sell 
the United States stock in a bank chartered by 
itself and bearing its name. And now, why re- 
suscitiite these buried recollections? I answer: 
for the benefit of posterity ! that they may have 
the benefit of our experience without the humi- 
liation of having undergone it, and know what 
kind of a master seeks to rule over them if 
another national bank shall ever seek incorpora* 
tion at their hands. 



ANNO 1832. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



297 



CHAPTER LXXVIII. 

NULLIFICATION OEDINANCE IN SOUTH CARO- 
LINA. 

It has been seen that the whole question of the 
American sj^stem, and especially its prominent 
feature of a high protective tariff, was put in 
issue in the presidential canvass of 1832 ; and 
that the long session of Congress of that year 
was occupied by the friends of this system in 
bringing forward to the best advantage all its 
points, and staking its fate upon the issue of the 
election. That issue was against the system ; 
and the Congress elections taking place contem- 
poraneouslj^ with the presidential were of the 
same character. The fate of the American sys- 
tem was sealed. Its domination in federal 
legislation was to cease. This was acknowledged 
on all hands ; and it was naturally expected 
that all the States, dissatisfied with that system, 
would be satisfied with the view of its speedy 
and regular extinction, under the legislation of 
the approaching session of Congress ; and that 
expectation was only disappointed in a single 
State — that of South Carolina. She had held 
aloof from the presidential election — throwino- 
away her vote upon citizens who were not can- 
didates—and doing nothing to aid the election 
of General Jackson, with whose success her 
interests and wishes were apparently identified. 
Instead of quieting her apprehensions, and mode- 
rating her passion for viole->t remedies, the 
success of the election seemed to inflame them ; 
and the 24th of November, just a fortnight after 
the election which decided the fate of the tariff', 
she issued her ordinance of nullification against 
it, taking into her own hands the sudden and 
violent redress which she prescribed for herself. 
That ordinance makes an era in the history of 
our Union, which requires to be studied in order 
to understand the events of the times, and the 
history of subsequent events. It was in these 
words : 

" ORDINANCE. 

" An ordinance to nullify certain acts of the 
Congress of the United iSlates, purporting to 
be laws laying duties and imposts on the im- 
portation of foreign commodities. 

" Whereas the Congress of the United States, 
by various acts, purporting to be acts laying 



duties and imposts on foreign imports, but in 
reality intended for the protection of domestic 
manufactures, and the giving of bounties to 
classes and individuals engaged in particular 
employments, at the expense and to the injury 
and oppression of other classes and individuals, 
and by wholly exempting from taxation certain 
foreign commodities, such as are not produced 
or manufactured in the United States, to afford 
a pretext for imposing higher and excessive 
duties on articles similar to those intended to 
be protected, hath exceeded its just powers under 
the constitution, which confers on it no authority 
to afford such protection, and hath violated the 
true meaning and intent of the constitution, 
which provides for equality in imposing the bur- 
dens of taxation upon the several States and 
portions of the confederacy : And whereas the 
said Congress, exceeding its just power to impose 
taxes and collect revenue for the purpose of 
effecting and accomplishing the specific objects 
and purposes which the constitution of the 
United States authorizes it to effect and accom- 
plish, hath raised and collected unnecessary 
revenue for objects unauthorized by the consti- 
tution. 

"We, therefore, the people of the State of 
South Carolina, in convention assembled, do 
declare and ordain, and it is hereby declared and 
ordained, that the several acts and parts of acts 
of the Congress of the United States, purporting 
to be laws for the imposing of duties and imposts 
on the importation of foieign commodities, and 
now having actual operation and effect within 
the United States, and, more especially, an act 
entitled ' An act in alteration of the several acts 
imposing duties on imports,' approved on the 
nineteenth day of IMay, one thousand eight hun- 
dred and twenty-eight, and also an act entitled 
'An act to alter and amend the several acts 
imposing duties on imports,' approved on the 
fourteenth day of July, one thousand eight 
hundred and thirty-two, are unauthorized by 
the constitution of the United States, and violate 
the true meaning and intent thereof, and are 
null, void, and no law, nor binding upon this 
State, its officers or citizens ; and all promises, 
contracts, and obligations, made or entered into, 
or to be made or entered into, with purpose to 
secure the duties imposed by the said acts, and 
all judicial proceedings which shall be hereafter 
had in affirmance thereof, are and shall be held 
utterly null and void. 

" And it is further ordained, that it shall not 
be lawful for any of the constituted authorities, 
whether of this State or of the United States, to 
enforce the payment of duties imposed by the 
said acts within the limits of this State ; but it 
shall be the duty of the legislature to adopt such 
measures and pass such acts as may be necessa- 
ry to give full effect to this ordinance, and to 
prevent the enforcement and arrest the opera- 
tion of the said acts and parts of acts of the Con- 
gress of the United States within the limits of 
tliis State, from and after the 1st day oi Feb- 



298 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



ruary next, and the duty of all other constituted 
authorities, and of all persons residing or being 
within the limits of this State, and they are 
hereby required and enjoined to obey and give 
effect to this ordinance, and such acts and mea- 
sures of the legislature as may be passed or 
adopted in obedience thereto. 

'' And it is further ordained, that in no case 
of law or equity, decided in the courts of this 
State, \vherein shall be drawn in (juestion the 
authority of this ordinance, or the validity of 
such act or acts of the legislature as may be 
passed for the purpose of giving effect thereto, 
or the validity of the aforesaid acts of Congress, 
imposing duties, shall any appeal be taken or 
allowed to the Supreme Court of the United 
States, nor shall any copy of the record be per- 
mitted or allowed for that purpose ; and if any 
such appeal shall be attempted to be taken, the 
courts of this State shall proceed to execute and 
enforce their judgments, according to the laws 
and usages of the State, without reference to 
such attempted appeal, and the person or per- 
sons attempting to take such appeal may be 
dealt with as for a contempt of the court. 

" And it is further ordained, that all persons 
now holding any office of honor, profit, or trust, 
civil or military, under this State (members of 
the legislature excepted), shall, within such 
time, and in such manner as the legislature shall 
prescribe, take an oath well and truh' to obey, 
execute, and enforce this ordinance, and such act 
or acts of the legislature as maj'- be passed in 
pursuance thereof, according to the true intent 
and meaning of the same ; and on the neglect 
or omission of any such person or pensons so to 
do, his or their office or offices shall be forth- 
with vacated, and shall be filled up as if such 
person or per.sons were dead or had resigned ; 
and no person hereafter elected to any office of 
honor, profit, or trust, civil or military (mem- 
bers of the legislature excepted), sliall. until the 
legislature shall otherwise provitle and direct, 
enter on the execution of his office, or be in any 
respect competent to discharge the duties there- 
of, imtil he shall, in like manner, have taken a 
similar oath ; and no juror shall be empannelled 
in any of the courts of this State, in any cause 
in which shall be in question this ordinance, or 
any act of the legislature passed in pursuance 
thereof unless he shall first, in addition to the 
usual oath, have taken an oath that he will well 
and truly obej', execute, and enforce this ordi- 
nance, and .such act or acts of the legislature as 
may be passed to carrj' the same into operation 
and effect, according to the true intent and 
meaning thereof. 

"'And we, the people of South Carolina, to the 
end that it may be fully understood by the gov- 
ernment of the United States, and the people of 
the co-States, that we are determined to main- 
tain this our ordinance and declaration, at eveiy 
hazard, do further declare that we will not sub- 
mit to the api)lication of force, on the part of 
^e federal government, to reduce this State to 



obedience ; but that we will consider the pas- 
sage, by Congress, of any act authorizing the 
employment of a military or naval force against 
the State of South Carolina, her constitutional 
authorities or citizens ; or any act abolishing or 
closing the ports of this State, or any of them, 
or otherwise obstructing the free ingi-ess and 
egress of vessels to and from the said ports, or 
any other act on the part of the federal govern- 
ment, to coerce the State, .shut up her ports, de- 
stroy or harass her commerce, or to enforce the 
acts hereby declared to be null and void, other- 
wise than through the civil tribunals of the 
country, as inconsistent with the longer con- 
tinuance of South Carolina in the Union; and 
that the people of this State will thenceforth 
hold themselves absolved from all further obU- 
gation to maintain or preserve their political 
connection with the people of the other States, 
and will forthwith proceed to organize a sepa- 
rate government, and do all other acts and things 
which sovereign and independent States ma}- of 
right do. 

" Done in convention at Columbia, the twen- 
ty-fourth day of November, in the year of our 
Lord one thousand eight hundred and thirty- 
two, and in the fifty-seventh year of the decla- 
ration of the independence of the United States 
of America." 

This ordinance placed the State in the atti- 
tude of open, forcible resistance to the laws of 
the United States, to take effect on the first day 
of February next ensuing — a period within 
which it was hardly possible for the existing 
Congress, even if so disposed, to ameliorate ob- 
noxious laws ; and a period a month earlier 
than the commencement of the legal existence 
of the new Congress, on which all reliance was 
placed. And, in the mean time, if any attempt 
should be made in any way to enforce the ob- 
noxious laws except through her own tribunals 
sworn against them, the fact of such attempt 
was to terminate the continuance of South Caro- 
lina in the Union — to absolve her from all con- 
nection with the federal government — and to 
establish her as a separate government, not only 
unconnected with the United States, but uncon- 
nected with any one State. This ordmjiucc, 
si"-ned by more than a hundred citizens of the 
greatest respectability, was officially conmiuni- 
cated to the President of the United States ; 
and a case presented to him to test his patriot- 
ism, his courage, and his fidelity to his inaugu- 
ration oath— an oath taken in the prc.-^nice of 
God and man. of Heaven and earth. " to lake 
cure that the laws of the Union were faithfully 
executed.''^ That President was Jackson ; and 



ANNO 1833. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



299 



the event soon proved, what in fact no one doubt- 
ed, that he was not false to his duty, his coun- 
try, and his oath. Without calhng on Congress 
for extraordinary powers, he merely adverted 
in his annual message to the attitude of the 
State, and proceeded to meet the exigency by 
the exercise of the powers he already possessed. 



CHAPTER LXXIX. 

PEOCLAMATION AGAINST NULLIFICATION. 

The ordinance of nullification reached Presi- 
dent Jackson in the first days of December, 
and on the tenth of that month the proclama- 
tion was issued, of which the following are the 
essential and leading parts : 

" Whereas a convention assembled in the State 
of South Carolina have passed an ordinance, by 
which they declare 'that the several acts and 
parts of acts of the Congress of the United States, 
purporting to be laws for the imposing of duties 
and imposts on the importation of foreign com- 
modities, and now having actual operation and 
effect within the United States, and more es- 
peciall}'" ' two acts for the same purposes, passed 
on the 29th of May, 1828, and on the 14th of 
July, 1832, 'are unauthorized by the constitu- 
tion of the United States, and violate the true 
meaning and intent thereof, and are null and 
void, and no law,' nor binding on the citizens of 
that State, or its officers : and by the said ordi- 
nance, it is further declared to be unlawful for 
any of the constituted authorities of the State or 
of the United States to enfoi'ce the payment of 
the duties imposed by the said acts within the 
same State, and that it is the duty of the legisla- 
ture to pass such laws as may be necessary to 
give full effect to the said ordinance : 

" And whereas, by the said ordinance, it is 
further ordained, that in no case of law or equity 
decided in the courts of said State, wherein shall 
be drawn in question the validity of the said or- 
dinance, or of the acts of the legislature that may 
be passed to give it eflect, or of the said laws of 
the United States, no appeal shall be allowed to 
the Supreme Court of the United States, nor 
shall any copy of the record be permitted or al- 
lowed for tliat purpose, and that any pei'son at- 
tempting to take such appeal shall be punished 
as for a contempt of court : 

" And, finally, the said ordinance declares that 
the people of South Carolina will maintain the 
said ordinance at every hazard ; and that they 
will consider the passage of any act, by Congress, 
abolishing or closing the ports of the said State, 
or otherwise obstructing the free ingress or 



egress of vessels to and from the said ports, or 
any other act of the federal government to coerce 
the State, shut up her ports, destroy or harass 
her commerce, or to enforce the said acts other- 
wise than through the civil tribunals of the coun 
try, as inconsistent with the longer continuance 
of South Carolina in the Union ; and that the 
people of the said State will thenceforth hold 
themselves absolved from all further obligation 
to maintain or preserve their political con- 
nection with the people of the other States, 
and will forthwith proceed to organize a sepa- 
rate government, and" do all other acts and things 
which sovereign and independent States may of 
right do : 

" And whereas the said ordinance prescribes 
to the people of South Carolina a course of con- 
duct in direct violation of their duty as citizens 
of the United States, contrary to the laws of 
their country, subversive of its constitution, 
and having for its object the destruction of the 
Union — that Union which, coeval with our po- 
litical existence, led our fathers, mthout any 
other ties to unite them than those of patriotism 
and a common cause, through a sanguinary 
struggle to a glorious independence — that sacred 
Union, hitherto inviolate, which, perfected by 
our happy constitution, has bi'ought us, by the 
favor of Heaven, to a state of prosperity at 
home, and high consideration abroad, rarely, if 
ever, equalled in the history of nations : To 
preserve this bond of our political existence from 
destruction, to maintain inviolate this state of 
national honor and prosperity, and to justify the 
confidence my fellow-citizens have reposed in me, 
I, Andrew Jackson, President of the United 
States, have thought proper to issue this my 
proclamation, stating my views of the constitu- 
tion and laws applicable to the measures adopt- 
ed by the convention of South Carolina, and to 
the reasons they have put forth to sustain them, 
declaring the course which duty will require me 
to pursue, and, appealing to the understanding 
and patriotism of the people, warn them of the 
consequences that must inevitably result from 
an observance of the dictates of the convention, 

" Strict duty would require of me nothing 
more than the exercise of those powers with 
which I am now, or may hereafter be, invested, 
for preserving the peace of the Union, and for 
the execution of the laws. But the imposing as- 
pect which opposition has assumed in this case, 
by clothing itself with State authority, and the 
deep interest which the people of the United 
States must all feel in preventing a resort to 
stronger measures, while there is a hope that 
any thing will be yielded to reasoning and re- 
monstrance, perhaps demanded, and will certain- 
ly justify, a full exposition to South Carolina 
and the nation of the views I entertain of this 
important question, as well as a distinct enun- 
ciation of the course which my sense of duty 
will require me to pursue. 

" The ordinance is founded, not on the inde- 
feasible right of resistmg acts which are plainly 



300 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



unconstitutional and too oppressive to be endur- 
ed, but on the stranjie position that any one 
State maj- not only declare an act of Congress 
void, but prohibit its execution ; that they may 
do this consistently with the constitution ; that 
the true construction of that instnunent permits 
a State to retain its place in the Union, and yet 
be bound by no other of its laws than thot^e it 
may choose to consider as constitutional. It is 
true, the}' add, that to justify this abrogation of 
a law, it must be palpably contrary to the con- 
stitution ; but it is evident, that to give the right 
of resisting laws of that description, coupled with 
the uncontrolled right to decide what laws de- 
serve that character, is to give the power of re- 
sisting all laws. For as, b}- the theory, there is 
no appeal, the reasons alleged by the State, good 
or bad, must prevail. If it should be said that 
public opinion is a sufficient check against the 
abuse of this power, it may be asked why it is 
not deemed a sufficient guard against the passage 
of an unconstitutional act by Congress. There 
is, however, a restraint in this last case, which 
makes the assumed power of a State more inde- 
fensible, and which does not exist in the other. 
There are two appeals from an unconstitutional 
act passed by Congress — one to the judiciar}', 
the other to the people and the States. There 
is no appeal from the State decision in theory, 
and the practical illustration shows that the 
courts are closed against an application to review 
it, both judges and jurors being sworn to decide 
in its favor. But reasoning on this subject is 
superfluous, when our social compact, in express 
terms, declares that the laws of the United States, 
its constitution, and treaties made under it, are 
the supreme law of the land ; and, for greater 
caution, adds • that the judges in ever}' State 
shall be bound thereby, any thing in the consti- 
tution or laws of any State to the contrary not- 
witlistanding.' And it may be asserted with- 
out fear of ix-futation, that no federative govern- 
ment could exist without a similar provision. 
Look for a moment to the consequence. If South 
Carolina considers the revenue laws unconstitu- 
tional, and has a right to prevent their execution 
in the port of Charleston, there would be a clear 
constitutional objection to their collection in 
every other port, and no revenue could be col- 
lected any where; for all imposts must be equal. 
It is no answer to repeat, that an unconstitution- 
al law is no law, so long as the question of its 
legality is to be decided by the State itself; for 
every law operating injuriousl}^ upon any local 
interest will be perhaps thought, and certainly 
represented, as unconstitutional, and, as has been 
shown, there is no appeal. 

" [f this doctrine had been established at an 
earlier day, the Union would have been dissolved 
in its infancy. The excise law in Pennsylvania, 
the embargo and non-inteicourse law in the 
Eastern States, the carriage tax in Virginia, were 
all deemed unconstitutional, and were more un- 
equal in their operation than any of the laws 
now complained of; but fortunately none of 



those States discovered that they had the right 
now claimed b}^ South Carolina. The war, into 
which we were forced to support the dignity of 
the nation and the rights of our citizens, might 
have ended in defeat and disgrace, instead of vic- 
tory and honor, if the States who supposed it a 
runious and unconstitutional measure, had 
thought they possessed the right of nullifying 
the act by which it was declared, and denj'ing 
supplies for its prosecution. Hardly and un- 
equally as thoiio measures bore upon several 
members of the Union, to the legislatures of none 
did this efficient and peaceable remedy, as it is 
called, suggest itself. The discovery of this im- 
portant feature in our constitution was reserved 
to the present day. To the statesmen of South 
Carohua belongs the invention, and upon the 
citizens of that State will unfortunately fall the 
evils of reducing it to practice. 

" If the doctrine of a State veto upon the laws 
of the Union carries with it internal evidence of 
its impracticable absurditj', our constitutional 
history will also afford abundant proof that it 
would have been repudiated with indignation 
had it been proposed to form a feature in our 
government. 

" In our colonial state, although dependent on 
another power, we verj'^ early considered our- 
selves as connected by common interest with each 
other. Leagues were formed for common de- 
fence, and, before the declaiation of indepen- 
dence, we were known in our aggregate character 
as the United Colonies of America. That de- 
cisive and important step was taken jointly 
AVe declared ourselves a nation by a joint, not 
by several acts, and when the terms of our con- 
federation were reduced to form, it was in that 
of a solemn league of several States, by which 
they agreed that they would collectively form 
one nation for the purpose of conducting some 
certain domestic concerns and all foreign rela- 
tions. In the instrument forming that Union 
is found an article which declares that 'every 
State shall abide by the determinations of Con- 
gress on all questions which, by that confedera- 
tion, should be submitted to them.' 

" Under the confederation, then, no State could 
legally annul a decision of the Congress, or re- 
fuse to submit to its execution ; but no pro"visiou 
was made to enforce these decisions. Congress 
made requisitions, but they were not complied 
with. The government could not operate on in- 
dividuals. They had no judiciary, no means of 
collecting revenue. 

" But the defects of the confederation need 
not be detailed. Under its operation we could 
scared}^ be called a nation. We had neither 
prosperity at home, nor consideration abroad. 
This state of things could not be endured, and 
our present happy constitution was formed, but 
formed in vain, if this fatal doctrine prevail. It 
was formed for important objects that are an- 
nounced in the preamble made in the name and 
by the authority of the people of the United 
States, whose delegates framed, and whose con- 



ANNO 1833. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



301 



ventions approved it. The most important 
among these objects^ that which is placed first 
in rank, on which all the others rest, is ' to form 
a more perfect Union.' Now, is it possible that 
even if there were no express provision giving 
supremacy to the constitution and laws of the 
United States over those of the States — can it 
be conceived that an instrument made for the 
purpose of ' forming a more perfect Union' than 
that of the confederation, could be so construct- 
ed by the assembled wisdom of our country, as 
to substitute for that confederation a form of 
government dependent for its existence on the 
local interest, the part}^ spirit of a State, or of a 
prevailing faction in a State ? Every man of 
plain, unsophisticated understanding, who hears 
the question, will give such an answer as will 
preserve the Union. Metaphysical subtlety, in 
pursuit of an impracticable theory, could alone 
have devised one that is calculated to destroy it. 
"The constitution declares that the judicial 
powers of the United States extend to cases 
arising under the laws of the United States, and 
that such laws, the constitution and treaties shall 
be pai'amount to the State constitutions and laws. 
The judiciary act prescribes the mode by which 
the case may be brought before a codrt of the 
United States : by appeal, when a State tribunal 
shall decide against this provision of the consti- 
tution, 'j'he ordinance declares there shall be 
no appeal ; makes the State law paramount to 
the constitution and laws of the United States ; 
forces judges and jurors to swear that they will 
disregard their provisions; and even makes it 
penal in a suitor to attempt relief by appeal. It 
further declares that it shall not be lawful for 
the authorities of the United States, or of that 
State, to enforce the paj'ment of duties imposed 
by the revenue laws within its limits. 

" Here is a law of the United States, not even 
pretended to be unconstitutional, repealed by the 
authority of a small majority of the voters of a 
single State. Here is a provision of the consti- 
tution which is solemnly abrogated by the same 
authority. 

" On such expositions and reasonings, the or- 
dinance grounds not only an assertion of the 
right to annul the laws of which it complains, 
but to enforce it by a threat of seceding from the 
Union, if any attempt is made to execute them. 
" This right to secede is deduced from the na- 
ture of the constitution, which, they say, is a 
compact between sovereign States, who have pre- 
served their whole sovereignty, and, therefore, 
are subject to no superior ; that, because they 
made the compact, they can break it when, in 
their opinion, it has been departed from, by the 
other States. Fallacious as this course of rea- 
soning is, it enlists State pride, and finds advo- 
cates in the honest prejudices of those who have 
not studied the nature of our government suffi- 
ciently to see the radical error on which it rests. 
" The people of the United States formed the 
constitution, acting through the State legisla- 
tures in making the compact, to meet and discuss 



its provisions, and acting in separate conventions 
when they ratified those provisions ; but, the 
terms used in its construction show it to be a 
government in which the people of all the States 
collectively are represented. We are one people 
in the choice of the President and Vice-President. 
Here the States have no other agency than to 
direct the mode in which the votes shall be 
given. Candidates having the majority of all 
the votes are chosen. The electors of a majority 
of States may have given their votes for one 
candidate, and yet another may be chosen. The 
people, then, and not the States, are represented 
in the executive branch. 

'■ In the House of Representatives, there is 
this difference : that the people of one State do 
not, as in the case of President and Vice-Presi- 
dent, all vote for the same officers. The people 
of all the States do not vote for all the members, 
each State electing only its own representatives. 
But this creates no material distinction. When 
chosen, they are all representatives of the United 
States, not representatives of the particular 
State from which they come. They are paid by 
the United States, not by the State, nor are they 
accountable to it for any act done in the per- 
formance of their legislative functions ; and 
however they may in practice, as it is their 
duty to do, consult and prefer the interests of 
their particular constituents, when they come in 
conflict with any other partial or local interest, 
yet it is their first and highest duty, as repre- 
sentatives of the United States, to promote the 
general good. 

" The constitution of the United States, then, 
forms a government, not a league ; and whether 
it be formed by compact between the States, or 
in any other manner, its character is the same. 
It is a government in wlaich all the people are 
represented, wliich operates directly on the peo- 
ple individually, not upon the States — they re- 
tained all the power they did not grant. But 
each State, having expressly parted with so 
many powers as to constitute, jointly with the 
other States, a single nation, cannot, from that 
period, possess any right to secede, because 
such secession does not break a league, but de- 
stroys the unity of a nation ; and any injurj^ to 
that unity is not only a breach which would re- 
sult from the contravention of a compact, but it 
is an offence against the whole Union. To say 
that any State may at pleasure secede from the 
Union, is to say that the United States are not 
a nation ; because it would be a solecism to con- 
tend that any part of a nation might dissolve its 
connection with the other parts, to their injury 
or ruin, without committing any offence. Seces- 
sion, like any other revolutionary act, may be 
morally justified by the extremity of oppression ; 
but, to call it a constitutional right, is confound- 
ing the meaning of terms ; and can only be done 
through gross error, or to deceive those who are 
willing to assert a right, but would pause before 
they made a revolution, or incur the penalties 
consequent on a failure. 



302 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



" Fellow-citizens of my native State, let me 
not onl3^ admonish you, as the First ]\Iagistrate 
of our common country, not to incur the penalty 
of its laws, but use the influence that a father 
would over his children whom he saw rushing 
to certain ruin. In that paternal language, with 
that paternal feeling, let me tell you, my coun- 
trymen, that you are deluded by men who are 
either deceived themselves, or wish to deceive 
you. ]\Iark under what pretences you have been 
led on to the brink of insurrection and treason, 
on which j^ou stand ! First, a diminution of the 
value of your staple commodity, lowered by over 
production in other quarters, and the consequent 
diminution in the value of your lauds, were the 
sole effect of the tariff laws. 

" The effect of those laws was confessedly in- 
jurious, but the evil was greatly exaggerated by 
the imfounded theory you were taught to believe, 
that its burdens were in proportion to your ex- 
ports, not to your consumption of imported 
articles. Your pride was roused by the assertion 
that a submission to those laws was a state of 
vassalage, and that resistance to them was equal, 
in patriotic merit, to the oppositions our fathers 
offered to the oppressive laws of Great Britain. 
You were told tliis opposition might be peace- 
ably, might be constitutionally made ; that you 
might enjoy all the advantages of the Union, 
and bear none of its burdens. Eloquent appeals 
to your passions, to your State pride, to your 
native courage, to j^our sense of real injury, 
were used to prepare you for the period when 
the mask, which concealed the hideous features 
of disunion, should be taken off. It fell, and you 
were made to look with complacency on objects 
which, not long since, you would have regarded 
with horror. Look back to the arts which have 
brought you to this state ; look forward to the 
consequences to which it must inevitably lead ! 
Look back to what was first told you as an in- 
ducement to enter into this dangerous course. 
The great political truth was repeated to you, 
that you had the revolutionary right of resisting 
all laws that were palpably unconstitutional and 
intolerably oppressive ; it was added that the 
right to nullify a law rested on the same prin- 
ciple, but that it was a peaceable remedy ! This 
character which was given tt3 it, made you re- 
ceive with too much confidence the assertions 
that were made of the imconstitutionality of the 
law, and its oppressive elfects. Mark, my fellow- 
citizens, that, by the admission of your leaders, 
the unconstitutionality must be palpalile, or it 
will not justify either resistance or nullification ! 
AV'hat is the meaning of the word jialpablc, in 
the sense in which it is here vised? That which 
is apparent to every one ; that which no man 
of ordinary intellect will fail to perceive. Is 
the unconstitutionality of these laws of that 
description ? Let those among your leaders 
who once approved and advocated the principle 
of protective duties, answer the question ; and 
let them choose whether they will be considered 
as incapable, then, of perceiving that which must 



have been apparent to every man of common 
understanding, or as imposing upon your confi 
dence, and endeavoring to mislead you now. 
In either case they are unsafe guides in the 
perilous path they urge you to tread. Ponder 
well on this circumstance, ajid you will know 
how to appreciate the exaggerated language 
they address to you. They are not champions 
of liberty emulating the fame of our revolution- 
ary fathers ; nor are jou an oppressed people, 
contending, as they repeat to you, against worse 
than colonial vassalage. 

" You are free members of a flourishing and 
happy Union. There is no settled design to 
oppress you. You have indeed felt the unequal 
operation of laws which may have been unwisely, 
not vinconstitutionally pgsscd ; but that ine- 
quality must necessarily be removed. At the 
very moment when you were madly urged on 
to the unfortunate course you have begun, a 
change in public opinion had commenced. The 
nearly approaching payment of the public debt, 
and the consequent necessity of a diminution 
of duties, had already produced a considerable 
reduction, and that, too, on some articles of 
general consumption in j'our State. The impor- 
tance of this change was underrated, and you 
were authoritatively told that no further allevi- 
ation of your butdens was to be expected, at the 
very time when the condition of the country 
imperiously demanded such a modification of 
the duties as should reduce them to a just and 
equitable scale. But, as if apprehensive of the 
effect of this change in allaying your discontents, 
you were precipitated into the fearful state in 
which you now find yourselves. 

'• I adjure you. as j-ou honor their memory • 
as you love the cause of freedom, to which they 
dedicated their lives ; as j'ou prize the peace of 
your country, the lives of its best citizens, and 
your own fiiir fame, to retrace your steps. 
Snatch from the archives of your State the dis- 
organizing edict of its convention ; bid its mem- 
bers to reassemble, and promulgate the decided 
expressions of )'oin" will to remain in the path 
which alone can conduct you to safet}^, prosperity 
and honor. Tell them that, compared to dis- 
union, all other evils are hght, because that 
brings with it an accumulation of all. Declare 
that you will never take the field unless the 
star-spangled banner of your country shall float 
over you ; that 3"ou will not be stigmatized when 
dead, and dishonored and scorned while you 
live, as the authors of the first attack on the 
constitution of your country. Its destroyers 
you cannot be. You may disturb its peace, you 
may interrupt the course of its prosperity, you 
may cloud its reputation for stability, but its 
tranquillity Avill be restored, its prosperity will 
return, and the stain upon its national character 
will be transferred, and remain an eternal blot 
on the memory of those who caused the disorder. 
" Fellow-citizens of the United States, the 
threat of unhallowed disunion, the names of 
those, once respected, by whom it is uttered, 



ANNO 1833. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



303 



the array of military force to support it, denote 
the approach of a crisis in our affairs, on which 
the continuance of our unexampled prosperity, 
our political existence, and perhaps that of all 
free governments, may depend. The conjunc- 
ture demanded a free, a full, and explicit enun- 
ciation, not only of m}^ intentions, but of mj^ 
principles of action ; and, as the claim was 
asserted of a right by a State to annul the laws 
of the Union, and even to secede from it at 
pleasure, a frank exposition of my opinions in 
relation to the origin and form of our government, 
and the construction I give to the instrument 
by which it was created, seemed to be proper. 
Having the fullest confidence in the justness of 
the legal and constitutional opinion of my duties, 
Avhich has been expressed, I rely, with equal 
confidence, on your undivided support in my 
determination to execute the laws, to preserve 
the Union by all constitutional means, to arrest, 
if possible, by moderate, but firm measures, the 
necessity of a recourse to force ; and, if it be the 
will of Heaven that the recurrence of its primeval 
curse on man for the shedding of a brother's 
blood should fall upon our land, that it be not 
called down by any offensive act on the part of 
the United States. 

" Fellow-citizens : The momentous case is 
before you. On your undivided support of your 
government depends the decision of the great 
question it involves, whether your sacred Union 
will be preserved, and the blessings it secures to 
us as one people shall be perpetuated. No one 
can doubt that the unanimity with which that 
decision will be expressed, will be such as to 
inspire new confidence in republican institutions, 
and that the prudence, the wisdom, and the 
courage which it will bring to their defence, will 
transmit them unimpaired and invigorated to 
our children." 



CHAPTEK LXXX. 

MESSAGE ON THE SOUTH CAEOLINA PEOCEED- 
INGS. 

In his annual message to Congress at the open- 
ing of the session 1832-'33, the President had 
adverted to the proceedings in South Carolina, 
hinting at their character as inimical to the 
Union, expressing his belief that the action in 
reducing the duties which the extinction of the 
public debt would permit and require, would 
put an end to those proceedings ; and if they 
did not, and those proceedings continued, and 
the executive government should need greater 
powers than it possessed to overcome them, he 
promised to make a communication to Congress, 



showing the state of the question, — what had 
been done to compose it, — and asking for the 
powers which the exigency demanded. The 
proceedings not ceasing, and taking daily a more 
aggravated form in the organization of troops, 
the collection of arms and of munitions of war, 
and in declarations hostile to the Union, he found 
himself required, early in January, to make the 
promised communication ; and did so in a mes- 
sage to both Houses, of which the following are 
the essential parts which belong to history and 
posterity : 

" Since the date of my last annual message,' I 
have had officially transmitted to me by the 
Governor of South Carolina, which I now com- 
municate to Congress, a copy of the ordinance 
passed by the convention which assembled at 
Columbia, in the State of South Carolina, in 
November last, declaring certain acts of Congress 
therein mentioned, within the limits of that 
State, to be absolutely null and void, and mak- 
ing it the duty of the legislature to pass such 
laws as would be necessary to carry the same 
into effect from and after the 1st of February 
next 

" The consequences to which this extraordi- 
nary defiance of the just authority of the gov- 
ernment might too surely lead, were clearly 
foreseen, and it was impossible for me to hesi- 
tate as to my own duty in such an emergency. 

"The ordinance had been passed, however, 
without any certain knowledge of the recom- 
mendation which, from a view of the interests 
of the nation at large, the Executive had deter- 
mined to submit to Congress ; and a hope was 
indulged that, by frankly explaining his senti- 
ments, and the nature of those duties which the 
crisis would devolve upon him, the authorities 
of South Carolina might be induced to retrace 
their steps. In this hope, I determined to issue 
my proclamation of the 10th of December last, 
a copy of which I now lay before Congress. 

" I regret to infoi-m j'ou that these reasonable 
expectations have not been reahzed, and that 
the several acts of the legislature of South 
Carolina, which I now lay before you, and which 
have, all and each of them, finally passed, after 
a knowledge of the desire of the administration 
to modify the laws complained of, are too well 
calculated, both in their positive enactments, 
and in the spirit of opposition wliicli they obvi- 
ously_eucouragc, wholly to obstruct the collec-' 
tion of the revenue within the limits of that 
State. 

"Up to this period; uc^ither the recommenda- 
tion of the Executive in regard to our financial 
policy and impost system, nor the disposition 
manifested by Congress promptly to act upon 
that subject, nor the unequivocal expression of 
the public will, in all parts of the Union, ap- 
pears to have produced any relaxation in the 



304 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



measures of opposition adopted by the State of 
South Carolina ; nor is there any reason to hope 
that the ordinance and laws will be abandoned. 

" I have no knowledge that an attempt has 
been made, or that it is in contemplation, to 
reassemble cither the convention or the legis- 
lature ; and it will be perceived that the inter- 
val before the 1st of February is too short to 
admit of the preliminary steps necessary for 
that purpose. It appears, moreover, that the 
State authorities are actively organizing their 
military resources, and providing the means, 
and giving the most solemn assurances of pro- 
tection and support to all who shall enlist in 
opposition to the revenue laws. 

" A recent proclamation of the present Gover- 
nor of South Carolina has openlj- defied the au- 
thority of the Executive of the Union, and gene- 
ral orders from the head quarters of the State 
announced his determination to accept the ser- 
vices of volunteers, and his belief that, should 
their country need their services, they will be 
found at the post of honor and duty, ready to 
lay down their lives in her defence. Under 
these orders, the forces referred to are directed 
to ' hold themselves in readiness to take the 
field at a moment's warning ;' and in the city of 
Charleston, within a collection district and a 
port of entry, a rendezvous has been opened for 
the purpose of enlisting men for the magazine 
and municipal guard. Thus, South Carolina 
presents herself in the attitude of hostile prepa- 
ration, and read)' even for military violence, if 
need be. to enforce her laws for preventing the 
collection of the duties within her limits. 

"Proceedings thus announced and matured 
must be distinguished from menaces of unlawful 
resistance by irregular bodies of people, who, 
acting under temporary delusion, may be re- 
strained by reflection, and the influence of public 
opinion, from the commission of actual outrage. 
In the present instance, aggression may be re- 
garded as committed when it is officially au- 
thorized, and the means of enforcing it fully 
provided. 

'•' Under these circumstances, there can be no 
doubt that it is the determination of the autho- 
rities of South Carolina fully to carry into effect 
their ordinance and laws after the 1st of Febru- 
ary. It therefore becomes my duty to bring the 
subject to the serious consideration of Congress. 
in order that such measures as they, in their 
wisdom, may deem fit, shall be seasonably pro- 
vided ; and that it may be thereby understood 
that, while the government is disposed to re- 
move all just cause of complaint, as fiir as may 
be practicable consistently with a proper regard 
to the interests of the community at large, it is, 
nevertheless, determined that the supremacy of 
the laws shall be maintained. 

" In making this communication, it .appears to 
me to be proper not only that 1 should lay be- 
fore you the acts and i)roceedings of South Ca- 
rolina, but that I should also fully acquaint you 
with those steps which I have already caused to 



be taken for the due collection of the revenue, 
and with my views of the subject generally, that 
the suggestions which the constitution requires 
me to make, in regard to your future legislation, 
may be better understood. 

'• This subject, having early attracted the anx- 
ious attention of the Executive, as soon as it was 
probable that the authorities of South Carolina 
seriously meditated resistance to the faitliful exe- 
cution of the revenue laws, it was deemed ad- 
visable that the Secretary of the Treasury should 
particularly instruct the officers of the United 
States, in that part of the Union, as to the na- 
ture of the duties prescribed hy the existing 
laws. 

'• Instructions were accordingly issued, on the 
sixth of November, to the collectors in that 
State, pointing out their respective duties, and 
enjoining upon each a firm and vigilant, but dis- 
creet performance of them in the emergency then 
apprehended. 

■' I herewith transmit copies of these instruc- 
tions, and of the letter addressed to the district 
attorney, requesting his co-operation. These 
instructions were dictated in the hope that, as 
the opposition to the laws, by the anomalous 
proceeding of nullification, was represented to 
be of a pacific nature, to be pursued, substan- 
tially, according to the forms of the constitution, 
and without resorting, in any event, to force or 
violence, the measures of its advocates would be 
taken in conformity with that profession ; and, 
on such supposition, the means atTorded by the 
existing laws would have been adequate to meet 
any emergency likely to arise. 

" It was, however, not possible altogether to 
suppress apprehension of the excesses to which 
the excitement prevailing in that quarter might 
lead ; but it certainly was not foreseen that the 
meditated obstruction to the laws would so soon 
openly assiune its present character. 

' " Subsequently to the date of those instruc- 

! tions, however, the ordinance of the convention 
was passed, which, if comphed with by the peo- 

1 pie of that State, must effectually render in- 
operative the present revenue laws within her 
limits. 

"This solemn denunciation of the laws and 
authority of the United States has been follow- 
ed up by a series of acts, on the part of the 
authorities of that State, which manifest a de- 

j termination to render inevitable a resort to those 
measures of self-defence which the paramount 
duty of the federal government requires ; but, 
upou the adoption of which, that State will 
proceed to execute the purpose it has avowed in 
this ordinance, of withdrawing from the Union- 
"On the 27th of November, the legislature 
assembled at Columbia ; and, on their meeting. 
the Governor laid before them the ordinance of 
the convention. In his message, on that occa- 
sion, he acquaints tbem that ' this ordinance has 
thus become a part of the fundamental law of 
South Carolina ; ' that • the die has been at last 
cast, and South Carolina has at length appealed 



AVS'O IS? 3. AVDREW JACKS^jX, PRESmEVT. 



305 



to her Tilterior sovereignty as a member of tLii 
confederacy, and has planted herself on her re- 
served rights. The rightful exercise of this 
power is not a question which we shall any 
longer argue. It is sufficient that she has willed 
it^ and that the act is done; nor is its strict 
compatibility with our ojnstirutioiifll obligation 
to all laws passed by the general government, 
within the authorized grants of power, to be 
drawn in question, when this interposition is 
exerted in a case in which the comp<act has he^-n 
palpably, deliberately, and dangerously vi : 1 
That it brings up a conjuncture of deep a:^vi i^ - 
mentous interest, is neither to be concealed nor 
denied. This en sis presents a class of duties 
which is referable to yourselves, Tou have 
been commanded bv the people, in their highest 
s^jvereigaty. to take care that, within the limits 
of this State, their will shall be obeyed," • 'The 
measure of legislation,' he says. • which you have 
to employ at this crisis, is the precise amount of 
such enactments as may be necessary to render 
it utterly impossible to collect, within our lim its, 
the dudes imposed by the protective tariffe thtis 
nullined," He proceeds : • That you should arm 
every citizen with a civil process, by which ' 
may claim, if he pleases, a restitution of ■ - 
g>»ds, seized tmder the existing imposts, on his 
giving security to abide the issue of a suit at 
law. and, at the same time, define what shall 
constitute treason against the State, and, ty 
biU of pains and penalties, compel obeiiien. . 
and punish disobedience to your own laws, are 
points too obvious to require any discussion- In 
one word, you nmst survey the whole ground. 
Tou must loc'k to and provide for aU possi" 
contingencies. In your own limits, your ottu 
courts of judicature must not only be supreme, 
but you must look to the ultimate issue of any 
conflict of jurisdiction and piwer between them 
and the courts of the United States.' 

" The Grovemor also asks for power to grant 
clearances, in violation of the laws of the Union ; 
and, to prepare for the alternative which must 
happen, unless the United States shall passively 
surrender their authority, and the Executive, 
disregarding his oafli. refrain from execut: _• :" 
laws of the Union, he recommends a th _:. 
revision of the mili tia system, and that the Go- 
vernor " be authorized to accept, for the defer. : 
of Charleston and its dependencies, the serri . 
of two thousand volunteers, either by companies 
or files ; ' and that they be formed into a legion- 
ary brigade, consisting of infantry, riflemen, ca- 
valry, field and heavj- artillery; and that t:. 
be • armed and equipped, from the public ar ~ - 
nals, completely for the field ; and that appro- 
priations be made for supplying all deficiencies 
in our mtinitions of war.' In addition to these 
volunteer draughts, he recommends that the [ 
Governor be authorized * to accept the services i 
of ten thousand volunteers from the other di- ! 
visions of the State, to be organized and ar- 
ranged in regiments and brigades;" the ofB- 
cers to be selected by the commander-in-chief; . 

Vol. I.— 20 



ani that this whole force be called the • State 
Guard." 

"K these measures cannot be defeated and 
overcame, by the power conferred by the con- 
stitution on the federal government, the consti- 
tution mtist be considered as incompetent to its 
own defence, the sijffemacy of the laws is at an 
end. and the rights gad liberties of the citizens 
can no longer lecvive protection from the go- 
vernment of the Union, They not only abro- 
gate the acts of Congress, commonly called the 
tariff acts of 1S28 and 18-32. but they prostrate 
and sweep away, at once, and without exception. 
every act, and every part of every act imposing 
any amount whatever of duty on any foreign 
merchandise : and, virtually, every existing act 
which has exer been passed authorizing the col- 
lection of the revenue, induding the act of 1S16. 
and, also, the collection law of 1799. the consti- 
tutionality of which has never been quesdoned- 
It is not only those duties which are chained to 
have been imposed for the protection of manu- 
fectures that are thereby repealed, but all others, 
though laid for the purpose of revenue merely, 
and upon articles in no degree suspected of being 

eots of protection. The whole revenue sys- 
:_ of the Unite>i States, in South Carolina, is 
obstructed and overthrown; and the govern- 
ment is absolutely prohibited from collecting 
any part of the publK revenue within the limits 
: :hat State, Henceforth, not only the cirlzens 
. ; S juth Carolina and of the Unite'' States, but 
the subjects of foreign states, "may .^nport any 
description or quantity of merchandise into the 
ports of South Carolina, without the payment 
: ny duty whatsc«ever. That State is thus re- 
i-cTei from the payment of any part of the puln 
lie burdens, and duties and imposts are not only 
rendered not tmiform throughout the United 
States, but a direct and ruinous preference is 
grren to the ports of that State over those of all 
the other States of the Union, in manifest viola- 
tion of the positive provisions of the constitution, 

■ In point of duration, also, those aggressions 
upon the authority of Congress, which, by the 
ordinance, are made part of the fondamentaJ law 
of South Carolina, are absolute, indefinite, and 
without li m itation. They neither prescribe the 
period when they shall cease, nor indicate any 
"i IIS upon which those who have thus un- 
11 to arrest the operation of the laws are 
to retrace their steps, and rescind their measures. 
They offer to the United States no alternative 
but unconditional submission- If the scope of 
" ordinance is to be received as the scale of 

. :ession, their demands can be satisfied only 
by a repeal of the whole system of revenue laws. 
and by abstaining from the collection of any 
duties or imp<:«sts whatsoever. 

~ By these various proceedings, therefore, the 
State of South Carolina has forced the general 
government, unavoidably, to decide the new 
and dangerous alternative of permitting a State 
to obstruct the execution of the laws within its 
limits, or seeing it attempt to execute a threat 



306 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



of withdrawing; from the Union. That portion 
of the iieople at present exercising the authority 
of the State, solemnly assert their rijrht to do 
either, and as solemnly announce their determi- 
nation to do one or the other. 

" In my opinion, both ])urposes are to be re- 
p;arded as revolutionary in their character and 
rcndency, ;uid subversive of the supremacy of 
the laws and of the integrity of the Union. 
The result of each is the same ; since a State in 
which, by a usurpation of power, the constitu- 
tional authority of the federal government is 
opcnl}'' defied and set aside, wants only the 
form to be independent of the Union. 

"The right of the people of a single State to 
absolve themselves at will, and without the 
consent of the other States, from their most 
solemn obligations, and hazard the liberties and 
happiness of the millions composing this Union, 
cannot be acknowledged. Such authority is 
believed to be utterly repugnant both to the 
principles upon which the general government 
is constituted, and to the objects which it is ex- 
pressly formed to attain. 

" Against all acts which may be alleged to 
transcend the constitutional power of the gov- 
ernment, or which may be inconvenient or op- 
pressive in their operation, the constitution it- 
self has prescribed the modes of redress. It is 
the acknowledged attribute of free institutions, 
that, under them, the empire of reason and law 
is substituted for the power of the sword. To 
no other source can appeals for supposed wrongs 
be made, consistently with the obligations of 
South Carolina ; to no other can such appeals 
be made with safety at any time ; and to their 
decisions, when constitutionally pronounced, it 
becomes the duty, no less of the ])ublic authori- 
ties than of the people, in every case to yield a 
patriotic submission. 

" In deciding upon the course which a high 
sense of duty to all the people of the United 
States imposes upon the authorities of the 
Union, in this emergency, it cannot be over- 
looked that there is no sufficient cause for the 
acts of South Carolina, or for her thus placing 
in jeopard}^ the happiness of so many millions of 
people. Misrule and oppression, to warrant 
che disruption of the free institutions of the 
(Tnion of these States, should be great and last- 
ing, defying all other remedy-. For causes of 
minor character, the government could not sub- 
mit to such a catastrophe without a violation of 
its most sacred obligations to the other States 
of the Union who have submitted their destiny 
to its hands. 

"There is, in the present instance, no such 
cause, either in the degree of misrule or oppres- 
sion complained of, or in the hopelessness of re- 
dress by constitutional means. The long sanc- 
tion they have received from the proper author- 
ities, and from the people, not less than the un- 
exampled growth and increasing prosperity of 
so many millions of freemen, attest that no 
such oppression as would justify or even palliate 



such a resort, can be justly imputed either to 
the present policy or past measuras of the fede- 
ral government. The same mode of collecting 
duties, and for the same general objects, which 
began with the foundation of the government, 
and which has conducted the country, through 
its subsequent steps, to its present enviable con 
dition of happiness and renown, has not been 
changed. Taxation and representation, the 
great principle of the American Revolution, have 
continually gone hand in hand ; and at all times, 
and in every instance, no tax, of any kind, has 
been imposed without their participation ; and 
in some instances, which have been complained 
of, with the express assent of a part of the rep- 
resentatives of South Carolina in the councils 
of the government. Up to the present period, 
no revenue has been raised beyond the necessa- 
ry wants of the country, and the authorized ex- 
penditures of the government. And as soon as 
the burden of the public debt is removed, those 
charged with the administration have promptly 
recommended a corresponding reduction of rev- 
enue. 

" Tliat this system, thus pursued, has resulted 
in no such oppression upon South Carolina, 
needs no other proof than the solemn and ofBcial 
declaration of the late Chief ^Magistrate of that 
State, in his address to the legislature. In that 
he says, that ' the occurrences of the past year, 
in connection with our domestic concerns, are 
to be reviewed with a sentiment of fervent gra- 
titude to the Great Disposer of human events ; 
that tributes of grateful acknowledgment are 
due for the various and multiplied blessings he 
has been pleased to bestow on our peo])le ; that 
abundant harvests, in every quarter of the State, 
have crowned the exertions of agricultural labor ; 
that health, almost beyond former precedent, 
has blessed our homes ; and that there is not 
less reason for thankfulness in surveying our 
social condition.' It would, indeed, be difficult 
to imagine oppression where, in the social con- 
dition of a people, there was equal cause of 
thankfulness as for abundant harvests, and varied 
and multiplied blessings with which a kind Pro- 
vidence had favored them. * 

" Independently of these considerations, it will 
not escape observation that South Carolina still 
claims to be a component part of the Union, to 
participate in the national councils, and to share 
in the public benefits, without contributing to 
the public burdens ; thus asserting the danger- 
ous anomal}' of continuing in an association 
without acknowledging any other obligation to 
its laws than what depends upon her own will. 

"In this posture of affairs, the duty of the 
government seems to be plain. It inculcates a 
recognition of that State as a member of the 
Union, and subject to its authority ; a vindica- 
tion of the just power of the constitution ; the 
preservation of the integrity of the Union ; and 
the execution of the laws by all constitutional 
means. 

"The constitution, which his oath of office 



ANNO 1833. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



307 



obliges him to support, declares that the Execu- 
tive ' shall take care that the laws be faithfully 
executed ; ' and, in providing that he shall, from 
time to time, give to Congress information of 
the state of the Union, and recommend to their 
consideration such measures as he shall judge 
necessary and expedient, imposes the additional 
obligation of recommending to Congress such 
more efficient provision for executing the laws 
as may, from ti:ne to time, be found requisite. 

"It being thu.='. shown to be the duty of the 
Executive to eyecute the laws by all constitu- 
tional means, it remains to consider the extent 
of those already at his disposal, and what it may 
be proper further to provide. 

" In the instructions of the Secretary of the 
Treasury to the collectors in South Carolina, the 
provisions and regulations made by the act of 
1799, and also the fines, penalties, and forfeitures, 
for their enforcement, are jiarticularly detailed 
ftnd explained. It may be well apprehended, 
However, that these provisions may prove inad- 
equate to meet such an open, powerful, organized 
opposition as is to be commenced after the first 
day of February next. 

" Under these circumstances, and the provi- 
sions of the acts of South Carolina, the execution 
of the laws is rendered impracticable even 
through the ordinar}" judicial tribunals of the 
United States. There would certainly be fewer 
difficulties, and less opportunity of actual colli- 
sion between the officers of the United States 
and of the State, and the collection of the revenue 
would be more eflectually secured — if indeed it 
can be done in any other way — by placing the 
custom-house beyond the immediate power of 
the county. 

" For this purpose, it might be proper to pro- 
vide that whenever, by any unlaAvful combination 
or obstruction in any State, or in any port, it 
should become impracticable faithfully to collect 
the duties, the President of the United States 
should be authoi'ized to alter and abolish such 
of the districts and ports of entry as should be 
necessary, and to establish the custom-house at 
some secure place witliin some port or harbor 
of such State ; and, in such cases, it should be 
the duty of the collector to reside at such place, 
and to detain all vessels and cargoes until the 
duties imposed by law should be properly se- 
cured or paid in cash, deducting interest ; that, 
in such cases it should be unlawful to take the 
vessel and cargo from the custody of the proper 
officer of the customs, unless by process from 
the ordinary judicial tribunals of the United 
States ; and that, in case of an attempt otherwise 
to take the propert}- bj" a force too great to be 
overcome by the ofiicers of the customs, it should 
be lawful to protect the possession of the officers 
b}'' the employment of the land and naval forces, 
and militia, under provisions similar to those 
authorized by the 11th section of the act of the 
ninth of January, 1809. 

" It may, therefore, be desirable to revive, 
with some modifications better adapted to the 



occasion, the 6th section of the act of the 3d of 
March, 1815, which expired on the 4th of March. 
1817, by the limitation of that of the 27th ot 
April, 1816 ; and to provide that, in any case 
where suit shall be brought against any indivi- 
dual in the courts of the State, for any act done 
under the laws of the United States, he shoulfl 
be authorized to remove the said cause, by peti 
tion, into the Circuit Court of the United States, 
without anj' copy of the record, and that the 
courts should proceed to hear and determine the 
same as if it had been originally instituted 
therein. And that in all cases of injuries to the 
persons or property of individuals for disobedi- 
ence to the ordinance, and laws of South Carolina 
in pursuance thereof, redress may be sought in 
the courts of the United States. It may be 
expedient, also, by modifying the resolution of 
the 3d of March, 1791, to authorize the marshals 
to make the necessary provision for the safe 
keeping of prisoners committed under the au 
thority of the United States. 

" Provisions less than these, consisting, as they 
do, for the most part, rather of a revival of 
the policy of former acts called for by the exist- 
ing emergency, than of the introduction of any 
unusual or rigorous enactments, would not cause 
the laws of the Union to be properly respected 
or enforced. It is believed these would prove 
adequate, unless the military forces of the State 
of South Carojyia, authorized by the late act of 
the legislature, should be actually embodied and 
called out in aid of their proceedings, and of the 
provisions of the ordinance generally. Even in 
that case, however, it is believed that no more 
will be necessary than a few modifications of 
its terms, to adapt the act of 1795 to the present 
emergency, as, by the act, the provisions of the 
law of 1792 were accommodated to the crisis 
then existing ; and by conferring authority upon 
the President to give it operation during the ses- 
sion of Congress, and without the ceremony of 
a proclamation, whenever it shall be officially 
made known to him by the authority of any 
State, or by the courts of the United States, 
that, within the limits of such State, the laws 
of the United States will be openly opposed, and 
their execution obstructed, by the actual em- 
ployment of military force, or by any unlawful 
means whatsoever, too great to be otherwise 
overcome. 

" In closing this communication, I should do 
injustice to my own feelings not to express my 
confident reliance upon the disposition of each 
department of the government to perform its 
duty, and to co-operate in all measures necessary 
in the present emergency. 

" The crisis undoubtedly invokes the fidehty 
of the patriot and the sagacity of the statesman, 
not more in removing such portion of the public 
burden as may be necessary, than in preserving 
the good order of society, and in the mainte- 
nance of well-regulated liberty. 

" While a forbearing spirit may. and I trust 
will be exercised towards the errors of our 



308 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



brethren in a particular quarter, duty to the rest 
of the Union demands that open and organized 
resistance to the laws should not be executed 
with impunity."' 

Such was the message which President Jack- 
son sent to the two Houses, in relation to the 
South Carolina proceedings, and his own to 
counteract them ; and it was worthy to follow 
the proclamation, and conceived in the same 
spirit of justice and patriotism, and. therefore, 
wise and moderate. He knew that there was a 
deep feeling of discontent in the South, founded 
in a conviction that the federal government was 
working disadvantagcously to that part of the 
Union in the vital points of the levy, and the 
expenditure of the federal revenue ; and that it 
was upon this feeling that politicians operated 
to produce disafl'ection to the Union. That 
feelmg of the masses he knew to be just and 
reasonable, and removable by the action of 
Congress in removing its cause ; and when re- 
moved the politicians who stirred up discontent 
for '■'■personal and aml)itioiis objects,^^ would 
become harmless for want of followers, or man- 
ageable by the ordinary process of law. His 
proclamation, his message, and all his proceedings 
therefore bore a two-fold aspect — one of relief 
and justice in reducing the revenue to the wants 
of the government in the economical adminis- 
tration of its affairs ; the other of firm and mild 
authority in enforcing the laws against offenders. 
He drew no line between the honest discontented 
masses, wanting only relief and justice, and the 
ambitious politicians inflaming this discontent 
for ulterior and personal objects. He merely 
affirmed the existence of these two classes of 
discontent, leaving to every one to classify liim- 
self by his conduct ; and, certain that the honest 
discontents were the mass, and only wanted 
relief from a real grievance, he therefore pursued 
the measures necessary to extend that relief while 
preparing to execute the laws upon tliose who 
should violate them. Bills for the reduction of 
the tariff — one commenced in the Finance Com- 
mittee of the Senate, and one reported from the 
Committee of ^V'ays and Means of the House of 
Representatives — and both moved in the first 
days of the session, and by committees politically 
and personally fiivorable to the President, went 
hand m hand with the exhortations in the pro- 
clamation and the steady preparations for enforc- 
ing the laws, if the extension of justice and the 



appeals of reason and patriotism should pro\'.i 
insufficient. Many thought that he ought to 
relax in his civil measures for allaying discontent 
while South Carolina held the military attitude 
of armed defiance to the United States — and 
among them Mr. Quincy Adams. But he ad- 
hered steadily to his purpose of going on with 
what justice required for the relief of the South, 
and promoted, by all the means in his power, 
the success of the bills to reduce the revenue, 
especially the bill in the House ; and which, 
being framed upon that of 181G (which had 
the support of ^Ir. Calhoun), and which was 
(now that the public debt was paid), sufficient 
both for revenue and the incidental protection 
which manufactures required, and for the relief 
of the South, must have the effect of satisfying 
every honest discontent, and of exposing and 
estopping that wliich was not. 



CHAPTER LXXXI. 

REDUCTION OF DUTIES.-MK. VERPLANK'S BILL 

Reduction of duties to the estimated amount 
of three or four millions of dollars, had been 
provided for in the bill of the preceding session, 
passed in July, 1832, to take effect on the 4th 
of March, ensuing. The amount of reduction 
was not such as the state of the finances ad- 
mitted, or the voice of the country demanded, 
but was a step in the right direction, and a good 
one, considering tliat the protective policy was 
still dominant in Congress, and on trial, as it 
were, for its life, before the people, as one of the 
issues of the presidential election. That elec- 
tion was over ; the issue had been tried ; had 
been found against the " American ^ystem," and 
with this finding, a further and larger reduction 
of duties was expected. The President had re- 
commended it. in his annual message ; and the 
recommendation, being referred to the Commit- 
tee of Waj's and Cleans, quickJy produced a bill, 
known as Mr. Verplank's, because reported by 
the member of that name. It was taken up 
promptly by the House, and received a very per- 
spicuous explanation from the reporter, who 
gave a brief view of the financial history of the 
country, since the late war and stated that— 



ANNO 1833. ANPREW JACKSON, PRESmENT. 



309 



" During the last six years, an annual average 
income of 27,000,000 of dollars had been re- 
ceived ; the far greater part from the customs. 
That this sum had been appropriated, the one 
half towards the necessary expenses of the go- 
rernment, and the other half in the payment of 
the public debt. In reviewing the regular calls 
upon the treasury, during the last seven years, 
for the civil, naval, and military departments of 
the government, including all ordinary contin- 
gencies, about 13j000,000 of dollars a year had 
Been expended. The amount of 13,000,000 of 
dollars would seem, even now, sufficient to cover 
the standing necessary expenses of government. 
A long delayed debt of public justice, for he 
would not call it bounty, to the soldiers of the 
Revolution, had added, for the present, since it 
could be but for a few years only, an additional 
annual million. Fourteen miUions of dollars 
then covered the necessary expenditures of our 
government. But, however rigid and ec'onomi- 
cal we ought to be in actual expenditures, in 
providing the sources of the revenue, which 
might be called upon for unforeseen contingen- 
cies, it was wise to arrange it on a liberal scale. 
This would be done by allowing an additional 
million, wliich would cover, not only extra ex- 
penses in time of peace, but meet those of 
Indian warfare, if such should arise, as well as 
those of increased naval expenditure, from tem- 
porary collisions with foreign powers, short of 
permanent warfare. We are not, therefore, jus- 
tifiable in raising more than 15,000,000 dollars 
as a permanent revenue. In other words, at 
least 13,000,000 dollars of the revenue that 
would have been collected, under the tariff sj^s- 
tem of 1828, may now be dispensed with ; and, 
in years of great importation, a much larger 
sum. The act of last summer removed a large 
portion of this excess ; yet, taking the importa- 
tion of the last year as a standard, the revenues 
derived from that source, if calculated according 
to the act of 1832, would produce 19,500,000, 
and, with the other sources of revenue, an in- 
come of 22,000,000 dollars. This is, at least, 
seven millions above the wants of the treasury." 

This was a very satisfactory statement. The 
public debt paid off; thirteen millions (the one 
half) of our revenue rendered unnecessary ; its 
reduction provided for in the bill ; and the tariff 
of duties by that reduction brought down to the 
standard subtantially of 1816. It was carrying 
back the protective system to the year of its 
commencement, a little increased in some parti- 
culars, as in the article of iron, but more than 
compensated for, in this increase, in the total 
abolition of the minimunis, or abritrary valua- 
tions — first introduced into that act, and after- 
wards greatly extended — by which goods costing 
below a certain sum were to be assumed to have 



cost that sum, and rated for duty accordingly. 
Such a bill, in the judgment of the practical and 
experienced legislator (General Smith, of Mary- 
land, himself a friend to the manufacturing in- 
terest), was entirely sufficient for the manufac- 
turer — the man engaged in the business, and un- 
derstanding it — though not sufficient for the 
capitalists who turned their money into that 
channel, under the stimulus of legislative pro- 
tection, and lacked skill and care to conduct their 
enterprise with the economy which gives legiti- 
mate profit , and to such real manufacturers, it 
was bound to be satisfactory. To the great op- 
ponents of the tariff (the South Carolina school), 
it was also bound to be satisfactory, as it carried 
back the whole system of duties to the standard 
at which that school had fixed them, with the 
great amelioration of the total abolition of the 
arbritrary and injurious minimums. The bill, 
then, seemed bound to conciliate every fair inte- 
rest: the government, because it gave all the 
revenue it needed ; the real manufacturers, be- 
cause it gave them an adequate incidental pro 
tection ; the South, because it gave them their 
own bUl, and that ameliorated. A prompt pas- 
sage of the bill might have been expected ; on 
the contrary, it lingered "in the House, under in- 
terminable debates on systems and theories, in 
which ominous signs of conjunction were seen 
between the two extremes which had been lately 
pitted against each other, for and against the 
protective sj^stem. The immediate friends of 
the administration seemed to be the only ones 
hearty in the support of the bill ; but they were 
no match, in numbers, for those who acted in 
concert against it — spinning out the time in ste- 
rile and vagrant debate. The 25th of Februaiy 
had arrived, and found the bill still afloat upon 
the wordy sea of stormy debate, when, all of a 
sudden, it was arrested, knocked over, run un- 
der, and merged and lost in a new one wliich 
expunged the old one and took its place. It was 
late in the afternoon of that day (Mondaj-, the 
25th of February), and within a week of the 
end of the Congress, when Mr. Letcher, of Ken- 
tucky, the fast friend of Mr. Clay, rose ia his 
place, and moved to strike out the whole Vcr- 
plank bill — every word, except the enacting 
clause — and insert, In lieu of it, a bill offered in 
the Senate by 3Ir. ( ' ay, since called the " com- 
promise," and which lingered at the door of the 
Senate, upon a question of leave for its admit- 



310 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



tance, and opposition to its entrance there, on 
account of its revenue character. This was of- 
fered in the House, without notice, without sig- 
nal, without premonitory S3^mptom, and just as 
the members were preparing to adjourn. Some 
were taken by surprise, and looked about in 
amazement ; but the majority showed conscious- 
ness, and, what was more, readiness for action. 
The Northern members, from the great manu- 
facturing States, were astounded, and asked for 
delay, which, not being granted, Mr. John Davis, 
of Massachusetts, one of their number, thus 
gave vent to his amazed feelings : 

" He was greatly surprised at the sudden 
movement made in this House. One short hour 
ago, said he, we were collecting our papers, and 
putting on our outside garments to go home, 
when the gentleman from Kentucky rose, and 
proposed to send this bill to a Committee of the 
Whole on the state of the Union, with instruc- 
tions to strike it all out, and insert, by way of 
amendment, an entire new bill, formed upon 
entirely ditlerent principles; j^es, to insert, I 
believe, the bill which the Senate now have un- 
der consideration. This motion was carried; 
the business has passed through the hands of the 
committee, is now in the House, and there is a 
cr}^ of question, question, around me, upon the 
engrossment of the bill. Who that was not a 
party to this arrangement, could one hour ago 
have credited this ? "We have, I believe, been 
laboriously engaged for eight weeks upon this 
topic, discussing and amending the bill which 
has been before the House. Such obstacles and 
difficulties have been met at every move, that, 
I believe, very little hope has of late been enter- 
tained of the passage of any bill. But a gleam 
of light has suddenly burst upon us ; those that 
groped in the dark seemed suddenly to sec their 
course; those that halted, doubted, hesitated, 
are in a moment made firm ; and even some of 
those that have made an inmiediate abandonment 
of the protective system a sHnt; qua non of their 
approbation of an}' legislation, seem almost to 
favor this measure. I am obliged to acknowl- 
edge that gentleman have sprung the proposition 
upon us at a moment when I did not expect 
it. And as the measure is one of great interest 
to the people of the United States, I must, even 
at this late hour, when I know the House is 
botli hungry and impatient, and when I per- 
ceive distinctly it is their pleasure to vote 
rather than debate, beg their indulgence for a 
few minutes while I state some of the reasons 
which impose on me the duty of opposing the 
passage of this act. [Cries from diiferent 
parts of the House, 'go on, go on, we will 
hear.'] 

"Mr. Speaker, I do not approve of hasty 
legislation under any circumstances, but it is 
especially to be deprecated in matters of great im- 



portance. That this is a measure of great import- 
ance, affecting, more or less, the entire popula- 
tion of the United States, will not be denied, 
and ought, therefore, to be matured with care, 
and well understood by every gentleman who 
votes upon it. And yet, sir, a copy has, for the 
first time, been laid upon our tables, since I 
rose to address you ; and this is the first oppor- 
tunity we have had even to read it. I hope 
others feel well prepared to act in this precipi- 
tate matter ; but I am obliged to acknowledge 
I do not ; for I hold even the best of intentions 
will not, in legislation, excuse the errors of 
haste. 

" I am aware that this measure assumes an 
imposing attitude. It is called a bill of com- 
promise ; a measure of harmony, of conciliation ; 
a measure to heal disaffection, and to save 
the Union. Sir, I am aware of the imposing 
effect of these bland titles ; men love to be 
thought generous, noble, magnanimous ; but 
they ought to be equally anxious to acquire the 
reputation of being just. While they are 
anxious to compose difficulties in one direction. 
I entreat them not to oppress and wrong the 
people in anothei". In their efforts to save the 
Union, I hope their zeal will not go so far as to 
create stronger and better-founded discontents 
than those they compose. Peacemakers, media- 
tors, men who allay excitements, and tran- 
quillize public feehng, should, above all conside- 
rations, study to do it by means not offensivs 
to the contending parties, b}^ means which will 
not inflict a deeper wound than the one which 
is healed. Sir, ^\•hat is demanded by those tha( 
threaten the integrity of the Union ? An aban- 
donment of the American system ; a formal 
renunciation of the right to protect American 
industry. This is the language of the nullifica- 
tion convention ; tlicy declare they regard the 
abandonment of the principle as vastly more 
imj)ortant than any other matter ; they look to 
that, and not to an abatement of duties without 
it ; and the gentleman from South Carolina 
[Mr. Davis], with his usual frankness, told us 
this morning it was not a question of dollars 
and cents ; the money they legarded not, but 
they required a change of polic}'. 

" This is a bill to tranquillize feeling, to har- 
monize jarring opinions ; it is oil poured into 
inflamed wounds; it is to definitively settle the 
matters of complaint. What iissurance have we 
of that ? Have those who thix'atened the Union 
accepted it? Has any one here risen in his 
place, and announced his satisfaction and his de- 
termination to abide by it? Not a word has 
been uttered, nor any sign or assurance of satis- 
faction given. Suppose they should vote for the 
bill, what then ? They voted for the bill of July 
last, and that wasabiil passed expressly to save 
the Union ; but did they not flout at it ? Did 
they not spurn it with contempt ? And did not 
South Carolina, in derision of that compromise, 
nulhfy the law ? This is a jiractical illustration 
of the exercise of a philanthropic spirit of con- 



ANNO 1833. ANDREW JACKSON; PRESIDENT. 



311 



descension to save the Union. Your folly and 
3'our imbecility was treated as a jest. It has 
already been said that this law will be no more 
binding than any other, and may be altered and 
modified at pleasure by any subsequent legisla- 
ture. In what sense then is it a compromise ? 
Does not a compromise imply an adjustment on 
terms of agreement? Suppose, then, that South 
Carolina should abide by the compromise while 
she supposes it beneficial to the tariff States, and 
injurious to her; and when that period shall 
close, the friends of protection shall then pro- 
pose to re-establish the system. AVhat honor- 
able man, who votes for this bill, could sustain 
such a measure ? Would not South Carolina 
say, you have no right to change this law, it was 
founded on compromise ; you have had the bene- 
fit of your side of the bargains, and now I de- 
mand mine ? Who coidd answer such a declara- 
tion ? If, under such circumstances, you were 
to proceed to abolish the law, would not South 
Carolina have much more just cause of complaint 
and disaffection than she now has ? 

" It has been said, we ought to legislate now, 
because the next Congress will be hostile to the 
tariff. I am aware that such a sentiment has 
been industriously circulated, and we have been 
exhorted to escape from the hands of that body 
as from a fion. But, sir, who knows the senti- 
ments of that body on this question ? Do you, 
or does any one, possess any information which 
justifies him in asserting that it is more unfriend- 
ly than this House ? There is, in my opinion, 
little known about this matter. But suppose 
the members shall prove as ferocious towards 
the tariff" as those who profess to know their 
opinions represent, will the passage of this bill 
stop their action ? Can you tie their hands ? 
Give what pledges you please, make what bar- 
gains j-ou may, and that body will act its plea- 
sure without respecting them. If you fall short 
of their wishes in warring upon tlie tariff, they 
will not stay their hand ; but all attempts to 
limit their power by abiding compromises, will 
be considered by them as a stimulus to act up- 
on the subject, that they may manifest their dis- 
approbation. It seems to me, therefore, that if 
the next Congress is to be feared, we are pur- 
suing the right course to rouse their jealousy, 
and excite them to action. 

" Mr. Speaker, I rose to express my views on 
this very important question, I regret to say, 
without the slightest preparation, as it is drawn 
before us at a ver}^ unexpected moment. But, 
as some things in this bill are at variance with 
the principles of public policy which I have uni- 
formly niaintained, I could not suffer it to pass 
mto a law without stating such objections as 
have hastily occurred to me. 

" Let me, however, before sitting down, be un- 
derstood on one point. I do not object to a rea- 
sonable adjustment of the controversies which 
exist. I have said repeatedly on this floor, that 
I would go for a gradual reduction on protected 
urticles ; but it mu.st be very gradual, so that no 



violence shall be done to business ; for all re- 
duction is necessarily full of hazard. My objec- 
tions to this bill are not so much against the 
first seven years, for I would take the conse- 
quences of that experiment, if the provisions be- 
yond that were not of that fatal character which 
will at once stop all enterprise. But I do ob- 
ject to a compromise which destines the East 
for the altar. No victim, in my judgement, is 
required, none is necessary ; and yet you pro- 
pose to bind us, hand and foot, to pour out our 
folood upon the altar, and sacrifice us as a burnt 
offering, to appease the unnatural and unfounded 
discontent of the South; a discontent^ I fear, 
having deeper root than the tariff, and will 
continue when that is forgotten. I am far from 
meaning to use the language of menace, when 1 
say such a compromise cannot endure, nor can 
any adjustment endure, which disregards the in- 
terests, and sports with the rights of a large 
portion of the people of the United States. It 
has been said that we shall never reach the low- 
est point of reduction, before the country will 
become satisfied of the folly of the experiment, 
and will restore the protective policy ; and it 
seems to me a large number in this body act 
under the influence of that opinion. But I cannot 
vote down my principles, on the ground that 
some one may come after me who will vote them 
up." 

This is one of the most sensible speeches ever 
delivered in Congress ; and, for the side on which 
it was delivered, perfect ; containing also much 
that was valuable to the other side. The dan- 
gers of hasty legislation are well adverted to 
The seductive and treacherous nature of compro 
mise legislation, and the probable fate of the act 
of legislation then so called, so pointedly foretold, 
was onl}'' writing history a few years in advance. 
The folly of attempting to bind future Congresses 
by extending ordinary laws years ahead, with a 
prohibition to touch them, was also a judicious 
reflection, soon to become history ; while the 
fear expressed that South Carolina would not be 
satisfied with the overthrow of the protective 
policy — " that the root of her discontent lay 
deeper than the tariff, and looidd continue 
when that was forgotten " — was an apprehen- 
sion felt in common with many others, and to 
which subsequent events gave a sad realization. 
But all in vain. The bill which made its first 
appearance in the House late in the evening, 
when members were gathering up their over- 
coats for a walk home to their dinners, was pass- 
ed before those coats had got on the back ; and 
the dinner whicli was waiting had but little time 
to cool before the astonished members, their 
work done, were at the table to eat it. A bill 



312 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



without precedent in tlie annals of our legisla- 
tion, and pretending to the sanctity of a com- 
promise, and to settle great questions for ever, 
went through to its consummation in the frag- 
ment of an evening session, without the compli- 
ance with an}- form which experience and par- 
liamentary law have devised for the safety of 
legislation. This evasion of all salutary forms 
was effected under the idea of an amendment to 
a bill, though the substitute introduced was an 
^itire bill in itself, no way amending the other, 
or even connecting with it, but rubbing it all 
out from the enacting clause, and substituting a 
new bill' entirely foreign, inconsistent, and in- 
congruous to it. The proceeding was a gross 
perversion of the idea of an amendment, which 
always implies an improvement and not a de- 
struction of the bill to be amended. But there 
was a majority in waiting, ready to consummate 
what had been agreed upon, and the vote was 
immediately taken, and the substitute passed — 
105 to 71 : — the mass cf the manufacturing in- 
terest voting against it. And this was called a 
'* compromise," a species of arrangement hereto- 
fore always considered as fbmided in the mutual 
consent of adversaries — an agreement by which 
contending part'cs voluntarily settle disputes or 
questions. But here one of the parties dissent- 
ed, or rather was never asked for assent, nor 
had any knowledge of the compromise by which 
they were to be bovmd, until it was revealed to 
their vision, and executed upon their consciences, 
in the style of a surprise from a vigilant foe up- 
on a sleeping adversary. To call this a " com- 
promise" was to make sport of language — to 
burlesque misfortune — to turn force into stip- 
ulation — and to confound fraud and violence 
w^th concession and contract. It was like call- 
ing the rape of the Romans upon the Sabine 
women, a inarriage. The suddenness of the 
movement, and the want of all time for reflection 
, or concert— even one night lor private commu- 
nion — led to the most incongruous association 
of voters — to such a mixture of persons and par- 
ties as had never been seen confounded together 
before, or since : and the reading of which must 
be a puzzle to any man acquainted with the po- 
litical actors of that day, the unravelling of 
which would set at defiance both his knowledge 
and his ingenuity. The following is the list — 
the voters with JNIr. Clay, headed by Mr. Mark 
Alexander of Virginia, one of hi."", stififest oppon- 



ents : the voters against him, headed by Mr. Johr 
Quincy Adams, for eight years past his indis- 
soluble colleague in every system of policy, in 
every measure of public concern, and in every 
enterprise of political victory or defeat. Here is 
the list ! 

Yeas. — Messrs. Mark Alexander, Chilton Al- 
lan, Robert Allen, John Anderson, William G. 
Angel, William S. Archer, John S. Barbour, 
Daniel L. Barringer, James Bates, John Bell, 
John T. Bergen, Laughlin Bethune, James Blair, 
John Blair, Ratliff Boon, Joseph Bouck, Tlionias 
T. Bouldin, John Branch, Henry A. Bullard, 
Churchill C. Cambreleng, John Carr, Joseph 
W. Chinn, Nathaniel H. Claiborne, Clement C. 
Clay, Augustin S. Clayton, Richard Coke, jr., 
Henry W. Connor, Thomas Corwin, Richard 
Coulter, Robert Craig, William Creighton, jr., 
Henry Daniel, Thomas Davenport, Warren R. 
Davis, Ulysses F. Doubleday, Joseph Draper, 
John M. Felder, James Findlay, William Fitz- 
gerald, Nathan Gaither, John Gilmore. William 
F. Gordon, Thomas H. Hall, W^illiam Hall. Jo- 
seph M. Harper, Albert G. Hawes, Micajali T. 
Hawkin.s, Michael Hoffman, Cornelius Holland, 
Henry Horn, Benjamin C. Howard, Henry 
Hubbard, William W. Irvin, Jacob C. Isaacs, 
Leonard Jarvis, Daniel Jenifer, Riehard M. 
Johnson, Cave Johnson, Joseph Johnson, Ed- 
ward Kavanagh, John Leeds Kerr. Henry G. 
Lamar, Garret Y. Lansing, Joseph Lecompte, 
Robert P. Letcher, Dixon H. Lewis, Chitten- 
den Lyon, Samuel W^. Mardis, John Y. Mason, 
Thomas A. Marshall, Lewis Maxwell, Rufus 
McTntirc, James McKay, Thomas Newton, Wil- 
liam T, Nuckolls, John M. Patton, Franklin E. 
Plummer, James K. Polk, Abraham Renchcr, 
John J. Roane, Erastus Root, Charles S. Sewall, 
William B. Shepard, Augustine H. Shepperd, 
Samuel A. Smith, Isaac Southard, Jesse Speight, 
John S. Spence, William Stanberry, James 
Standefer, Francis Thomas, Wiley Thompson, 
John Thomson, Christopher Tompkins, Phineas 
L. Tracy, Joseph A'ance, Gulian C. Verjjlanck, 
Aaron Ward, George C. Washington, James M. 
Wayne, John W. AVeeks, Elisha Whittlesey, 
Campbell P. White, Charles A. Wicklifie, John 
T. H. Worthington. 

Nays. — Messrs. John Q. Adams. Heman Al- 
len, Robert Allison, Nathan Appleton, Thomas 
D. Arnold, William Babcock, John Banks, 
No3-es Barlier, Gamaliel H. Barstow, Thoma? 
Chandler, Bates Cooke, Richard M. Coopei 
Joseph H. Crane, Thomas H. Crawford, John 
Davis, Charles Dayan, Henry A. S. Dearborn, 
llarmar Denny, Lewis Dcwart, John Dickson, 
William W. Ellsworth, George Evans, Joshua 
Evans, Edward Everett, Horace Everett, Georg« 
Grennell. jr., Hiland Hall, William Heister, M; 
chael Hofi'man, Thomas H. Hughes, Jabez AV 
Huntington, Peter Ihrie, jr., Ralph 1. Ingcrsoll 
Joseph G. Kendall. Henry King, Humphrey II 



ANKO 1833. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



313 



Leavitt, Robert McCoy, Thomas M. T. IMcKen- 
nan, John J. Milligan, Henry A. Muhlenberg, 
Jeremiah Nelson, Dutee J. Pearce, Edmund H. 
Pendleton, Job Pierson, David Potts, jr., James 
F. Randolph, John Reed, Edward C. Reed, Wil- 
liam Slade, Nathan Soule, William L. Storrs, 
Joel B. Sutherland, John W. Taylor, Samuel 
F. Vinton, Daniel Wardvvell, John G. Wat- 
mough, Grattan H. Wheeler, Frederick Whit- 
tlesey, Ebeuezer Young. 



CHAPTER LXXXII. 

REDUCTION OF DUTIES.— MR. CLAY'S BILL. 

On the 12th of February Mr. Clay asked leave 
to introduce a bill for the reduction of duties, 
styled by him a "compromise" measure ; and 
prefaced the question with a speech, of which 
the following are parts : 

" In presenting the modification of the tariff 
laws which I am now about to submit, I have 
two great objects in view. My first object 
looks to the tariff. I am compelled to express 
the opinion, formed after the most deliberate 
reflection, and on a full survey of the whole 
country, that, whether rightfully or wrongfully, 
the tariff stands in imminent danger. If it 
should even be preserved during this session, 
it must fall at the next session. By what cir- 
cumstances, and through what causes, has arisen 
the necessity for this change in the policy of our 
country, I will not pretend now to elucidate. 
Others there are who may differ from the im- 
pressions which my mind has received upon this 
point. Owing, however, to a variety of concur- 
rent causes, the tariff, as it now exists, is in im- 
minent danger ; and if the system can be pre- 
served be3"ond the next session, it must be by 
some means not now within the reach of human 
sagacity. The fall of that policy, sir, would be 
productive of consequences calamitous indeed. 
When I look to the variety of interests which 
are involved, to the number of individuals in- 
terested, the amount of capital invested, the 
value of the buildings erected, and the whole 
arrangement of the business for the prosecution 
of the various branches of the manufacturing 
art which have sprung up under the fostering 
care of this government, I cannot contemplate 
any evil equal to the sudden overthrow of all 
those interests. History can produce no paral- 
lel to the extent of the miscliief which would 
be produced by sucli a disaster. The repeal of 
the Edict of Nantes itself was nothing in com- 
parison with it. That condemned to exile and 
brought to ruin a great number of persons. 
The most respectable portion of the population 



of France were condemned to exile and ruin by 
that measure. But in my opinion, sir, the sud- 
den repeal of the tariff policy would bring ruin 
and destruction on the whole people of this 
country. There is no evil, in my opinion, equal 
to the consequences which would result from 
such a catastrophe. 

" I believe the American system to be in the 
greatest danger ; and I believe it can be placed 
on a better and safer foundation at this session 
than at the next. I heard, with surprise, my 
friend from Massachusetts say that nothing had 
occurred within the last six months to increase 
its hazard. I entreat him to review that opinion. 
Is it correct ? Is the issue of numerous elec- 
tions, including that of the highest officer of the 
government, nothing ? Is the explicit recom- 
mendation of that officer, in his message at the 
opening of the session, sustained, as he is, by a 
recent triumphant election, nothing ? Is his de- 
claration in his proclamation, that the burdens 
of the South ought to be relieved, nothing 7 Is 
the introduction of the bill in the House of Rep- 
resentatives during this session, sanctioned by 
the head of the treasury and the administration, 
prostrating the greater part of the manufactures 
of the country, nothing? Are the increasing 
discontents, nothing ? Is the tendency of re- 
cent events to unite the whole South, nothing ? 
What have we not witnessed in this chamber 1 
Friends of the administration bursting all the 
ties which seemed indissolubly to unite them 
to its chief, and, with few exceptions south of 
the Potomac, opposing, and vehemently oppos- 
ing, a favorite measure of that administration, 
which three short months ago they contributed 
to establish ? Let us not deceive ourselves. 
Now is the time to adjust the question in a 
manner satisfactory to both parties. Put it off 
until the next session, and the alternative may, 
and probably then would be, a speedy and ruin- 
ous reduction of the tariff, or a civil war with 
the entire South. 

" It is well known that the majority of the 
dominant party is adverse to the tariff. There 
are many honorable exceptions, the senator from 
New Jersej^ [Mr. Dickerson], among them. But 
for the exertions of the other party, the tai-iff 
would have been long since sacrificed. Now 
let us look at the composition of the two 
branches of Congress at the next session. In 
this body we lose three friends of the protective 
policy, w'ithout being sure of gaining one. Here. 
judging from the present appearances, we shall, 
at the next session, be in the minority. In the 
House it is notorious that there is a considera- 
ble accession to the number of the dominant 
party. How, then, I ask, is the system to bo 
sustained against numbers, against the whole 
weight of the administration, against the united 
South, and against the increased impending dan- 
ger of civil war ? 

"I have been represented as the father of thi, 
sj'stem, and I am charged with an unnatural 
abandonment of my own offspring. I hav« 



314 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



never arrogated to myself any such intimate 
relation to it. I have, indeed, cherished it with 
parental fondness, and my affection is imdimin- 
•ishcd. But in what condition do I find this 
child ? It is in the hands of the Philistines, 
who would strangle it. I fly to its rescue, to 
snatch it from their custodj^, and to place it on 
a bed of securitj^ and repose for nine years, 
where it may grow and strengthen, and become 
acceptable to the whole people. I behold a 
torch about being applied to a favorite edifice, 
and I would save it, if possible, before it was 
wrapt in flames, or at least preserve the precious 
furniture which it contains." 

j\Ir. Clay further advanced another reason for 
his bill, and which was a wish to separate the 
tariff from politics and elections — a wish which 
admitted their connection — and which, being 
afterwards interpreted by events, was supposed 
to be the basis of the coalition with Mr. Cal- 
houn ; both of them having tried the virtue of 
the tarifl:" question in elections, and found it 
unavaihng either to friends or foes. Mr. Clay, 
its champion, could not become President upon 
its support. Mr. Calhoun, its antagonist, could 
not become President upon its opposition. To 
both it was equally desirable, as an unavailable 
element in elections, and as a stumbling-block 
to both in future, that it should be withdrawn 
for some years from the political arena; and 
Mr. Clay thus expressed himself in relation to 
that withdrawal : 

^^ I wish to see the tariff separated from the 
politics of the countrij. 'thai business men may 
go to u-ork in security, with some prospect of 
stability in our laus, and xcithout every thing- 
being staked on the issue of elections, as it 
were on the hazards of the die." 

Mr. Clay then explained the principle of his 
bill, which was a series of annual reductions of 
one tenth per cent, on the value of all duties above 
twenty per cent, for eight successive j-ears ; and 
after that, the reduction of all the remainder 
above twenty per centum to that rate hj two 
annual reductions of the excess : so as to com- 
plete the reduction to twenty per centum on 
the value of all imported goods on the 30th day 
of September, 1842; with a total abolition of 
duties on about one hundred articles after that 
time ; and with a proviso in favor of the right 
of Congress, in the event of war with any foreign 
power to impose such duties as might be neces- 
sary to prosecute the war. And this was called 
a " compromise,'''' although there was no stipu- 



lation for the permanency of the reduced, and 
of the abolished duties ; and no such stipulation 
could be made to bind future Congresses; and 
the only equivalent which the South received 
from the party of protection, was the stipulated 
surrender of their principle in the clause which 
provided that after the said 30th of September, 
1842, ''•duties shotdd only be laid for raising 
such revenue as might be necessary for an 
economical administration of the govern- 
ment ;" an attempt to bind future Congresses, 
the value of which was seen before the time 
was out. IMr. Clay proceeded to touch the ten- 
der parts of his plan — the number of years the 
protective policy had to run, and the guaranties 
for its abandonment at the end of the stipulated 
protection. On these points he said : 

"Viewing it in this light, it appeared that 
there wei'e eight years and a half, and nine 
years and a half, taking the ultimate time, 
which would be an efficient protection ; the re- 
maining duties would be withdrawn by a bien- 
nial reduction. The protective principle must 
be said to be, in some measure, relinquished at 
the end of eight years and a half. This period 
could not appear imreasonable, and he thought 
that no member of the Senate, or any portion 
of the country, ought to make the slightest ob- 
jection. It now remained for him to consider 
the other objection — the want "of a guaranty to 
there being an ulterior continuance of the 
duties imposed by the bill, on the expiration of 
the term which it prescribes. The best gua- 
ranties would be found in the circumstances 
under which the measure would be passed. If 
it were passed by common consent ; if it were 
passed with the assent of a portion, a conside- 
rable portion, of those who had hitherto di- 
rectly supported this system, and by a consi- 
derable portion of those who opposed it; if 
they declared their satisfaction with the mea- 
sure, he had no doubt the rate of duties guaran- 
tied would be continued after the expiration of 
the term, if the country continued at peace." 

Here was a stipulation to continue the pro- 
tective principle for nine years and a half, and 
the bill contained no stipulation to abandon it 
at that time, and consequently no guaranty that 
it would be abandoned ; and certainly the gua- 
ranty would have been void if stipulated, as it 
is not in the power of one Congress to abridg(; 
by law the constitutional power of its succes- 
sors. Ml-. Clay, therefore, had recourse to mo- 
ral guaranties ; and found them good, and best, 
in the circumstances in which the bill would bo 
passed, and the common consent with which it 



ANNO 1833. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



315 



^as expected to be done — a calculation which 
found its value, as to the " common consent," 
before the bill was passed ; as to its binding 
force before the time fixed for its efBcacy to 
begin. 

Mr. Forsyth, of Georgia, replied to INIr. Clay, 
and said : 

" The avowed object of the bill would meet 
with universal approbation. It was a project to 
harmonize the people, and it could have come 
from no better source than from the gentleman 
from Kentucky : for to no one were we more 
indebted than to him for the discord and dis- 
content which agitate us. But a few months 
ago it was in the power of the gentleman, and 
those with whom he acted, to settle this question 
at once and for ever. The opportunity was not 
seized, but he hoped it was not passed. In the 
project now offered, he could not see the elements 
of success. The time was not auspicious. But 
fourteen days remained to the session ; and we 
had better wait the action of the House on the 
bill before them, than by taking iip this new 
measure here, produce a cessation of their action. 
Was there not danger that the fourteen days 
would be exhausted in useless debate 1 Why, 
twenty men, with a suflBciency of breath (for 
words they would not want), could annihilate 
the bill, though a majority in both Houses were 
in favor of it. He objected, too, that the bill 
was a violation of the constitution, because the 
Senate had no power to raise revenue. Two 
\'ears ago, the same senator made a proposition, 
which was rejected on this very ground. The 
offer, however, would not be useless ; it would 
be attended with all the advantages which could 
follow its discussion hei*e. We shall see it, and 
take it into consideration as the offer of the 
manufacturers. The other party, as we are 
called, will view it as a scheme of diplomacy ; 
not as their ultimatum, but as their first offer. 
But the bargain was all on one side. After they 
are defeated, and can no longer sustain a conflict, 
they come to make the best bargain they can. 
The senator from Kentucky says, the tariff is 
in danger ; aye, sir, it is at its last gasp. It has 
received the immedicable wound ; no hellebore 
can cure it. He considered the confession of the 
gentleman to be of immense importance. Yes, 
sir, the whole feeling of the country is opposed 
to the high protective system. The wily serpent 
that crept into our Eden has been touched by 
the spear of Ithuriel. The senator is anxious 
to prevent the ruin which a sudden abolition of 
the system will produce. No one desires to 
inflict ruin upon the manufacturers ; but suppose 
the Southern people, having the power to control 
the subject, should totally and suddenly abolish 
the system ; what riglit would those have to 
complain who had combined to oppixjss the 
South ? What has the tariff led us to already ? 
From one end of the country to the other, it has 
oroduced evils which are worse than a thousand 



tariffs. The necessity of appeahng now to fra- 
ternal feeling shows that that feeling is not 
sleeping, but nearly extinguished. He opposed 
the introduction of the bill as a revenue measure, 
and upoA it demanded the yeas and nays : whici) 
were ordered." 

The practical, clear-headed, straightforward 
Gen. Smith, of Maryland, put his finger at once 
upon the fallacy and insecurity of the whole 
scheme, and used a word, the point and applica- 
tion of which was more visible afterwards than 
at the time it was uttered. He said : 

" That the bill was no cure at all for the evils 
complained of by the South. They wished to 
try the constitutionahty of protecting duties. 
In this bill there Avas nothing but protection, 
from beginning to end. We had been told that 
if the bill passed with common consent, the sys- 
tem established by it would not be touched. 
But he had once been cheated in that way, and 
would not be cheated again. In 1816 it was 
said the manufacturers would be satisfied with 
the protection afforded by the bill of that year; 
but in a few years after they came and insisted 
for more, and got more. After the first four 
years, an attempt would be made to repeal all 
the balance of this bill. He would go no further 
than four years in prospective reduction. The 
reduction was on some articles too great." 

He spoke history, except in the time. Tha 
manufacturers retained the benefits of the bill 
to the end of the protection which it gave them , 
and then re-established the protective system in 
more amplitude than ever. 

" Mr. Calhoun rose and said, he would make 
but one or two observations. Entirely approving 
of the object for which this bill was introduced, 
he should give his vote in favor of the motion 
for leave to introduce it. He Avho loved the 
Union must desire to see this agitating question 
brought to a termination. Until it should be 
terminated, we could not expect the restoration 
of peace or harmony, or a sound condition of 
things, throughout the country. He believed 
that to the unhappy divisions which hud kept 
the Northern and Southern States apart from 
each other, the present entirely degraded condi- 
tion of the country (for entirely degraded he 
believed it to be) was solely attributable. The 
general principles of this bill received his appro- 
bation. He believed that if the present difficul 
tics were to be adjusted, tliey must be adjusted 
on the principles embiaced in the bill, of fixing 
ad valorem duties, except in the few cases in 
the bill to which specific duties were assigned. 
He said that it had been his fate to occupy a 
position as hostile as any one could, in reference 
to the piotecting policy ; but, if it depended 
on his will, he would not give his vote for the 



316 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



prostration of the manufacturing interest. A 
very large capital had been invested in manu- 
facuires, which had been of great service to the 
country ; and he would never give his vote to 
suddenly withdraw all those duties b^ which 
that capital was sustained in the channel into 
which it had been directed. But.he would only 
vote for the ad valorem system of duties, which 
he deemed the most beneticial and the most 
e(iuitablc. At this time, he did not rise to go 
into a consideration of any of the details of this 
bill, as such a course would be premature, and 
contrary to the practice of the Senate. There 
were some of the provisions which had his entire 
approbation, and there were some to which he 
objected. But he looked upon these minor 
points of difference as points in the settlement 
nf which no difficulty would occur, when gen- 
tlemen meet together in that spirit of mutual 
compromise which, he doubted not, would be 
' brought into their deliberations, without at all 
yielding the constitutional question as to the 
right of protection." 

This union of Mr. Calhoun and Mr. Clay in 
the belief of the harmony and brotherly affection 
which this bill would produce, professing as it 
did, and bearing on its face the termination of 
the American system, afforded a strong instance 
of the fallibility of pohtical opinions. It was 
only six months before that the dissolution of 
the Union would be the effect, in the opinion of 
one of them, of the continuance of the American 
system — and of its abandonment in the opinion 
of the other. Now, both agreed that the bill 
which professed to destroy it would restore 
peace and harmony to a distracted country. 
How far Mr. Clay then saw the preservation, 
and not the destruction, of the American system 
in the compromise he was making, may be 
judged by wliat he said two weeks later, when 
he declared that he looked forward to a re-action 
which would restore the protective system at 
the end of the time. 

The first news of Mr. Clay's bill was heard 
with dismay by the manufacturers. Niles' Re- 
gister, the most authentic organ and devoted 
advocate of that class, heralded it thus : " Mr. 
Clay''s new tariff project will be received like 
a crash of thunder in the winter season, and 
some will hardly trust the evidence of their 
senses on a first examination of it — so radical 
and sudden is the change of policy proposed 
because of a combination of circumstances 
which, in the judgment of Mr. Clay, has ren- 
dered such a change necessary. It may be 
that our favorite systems are all to be destroy- 



ed. If so the majority determine — so be it * 
The manufacturers flocked in crowds to Washmg- 
ton City — leaving home to stop the bill — arriving 
at Washington to promote it. Those practical 
men soon saw that they had gained a reprieve 
of nine years and a half in the benefits of protec- 
tion, with a certainty of the re-establishment of 
the system at the end of that time, from the 
revulsion which would be made in the revenue 
— in the abrupt plunge at the end of that time 
in the scale of duties from a high rate to an ad 
valorem of twenty per centum ; and that leaving 
one hundred articles free. This nine years and 
a half reprieve, with the certain chance for the 
revulsion, they found to be a good escajie from 
the possible passage of Mr. Verplank's bill, or 
its equivalent, at that session ; and its certain 
passage, if it failed then, at the ensuing session 
of the new Congress. They found the protective 
system dead without this reprieve, and now re- 
ceived as a deliverance what had been viewed as 
a sentence of execution ; and having helped the 
bill through, the}^ went home rejoicing, and more 
devoted to Mr. Clay than ever. 

Mr. Webster had not been consulted, in the 
formation of this bill, and was strongly opposed 
to it, as well as naturally dissatisfied at the ne- 
glect with which lie had been treated. As the 
ablest champion of the tariff, and the represen- 
tative of the chief seat of mamifiictures. he 
would naturally have been consulted, and made 
a party, and a leading one, in any scheme of 
tariff adjustment ; on the contrary, the whole 
concoction of the bill between Mr. Clay and Mr. 
Calhoun had been entircl}' concealed from him. 
S3'mptoms of discontent appeared, at times, in 
their speeches ; and, on the night of the 23d, 
some sharp words passed — composed the nest 
day by their friends : but it was a strange idea 
of a "compromise," from which the main party 
was to be excluded in its formation, and bound 
in its conclusion. And Mr. Webster took an 
immediate opportunity to show that he had not 
been consulted, and would not be bound by the 
arrangement that had been made. He said : 

" It is impossible that this proposition of the 
honorable member from Kentucky sliouM not ex- 
cite in the country a very strong sensation ; and, in 
the relation in which 1 stand to the subject, 1 am 
anxious, at an early moment, to say, that, as far 
as I understand the bill, from the gentleman's 
statement of it, there are principles in it to 
which I do not at present see how I can eve? 



ANNO 1833. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



317 



concur. If I understand the plan, the result 
of it will be a well-understood surrender of 
the power of discrimination, or a stipulation 
not to use that power, in the laying duties on 
imports, after the eight or nine years have ex- 
pired. This appears to me to be matter of great 
moment. I hesitate to be a party to any such 
stipulation. The honorable member admits, 
that though there will be no positive surren- 
der of the power, there will be a stipulation not 
to exercise it ; a treaty of peace and amity, as 
he says, which no American statesman can, here- 
after, stand up to violate. For one, sir, I am 
not ready to enter into the treaty. I propose, 
so far as depends on me, to leave all our succes- 
sors in Congress as free to act as we are our- 
selves. 

" The honorable member from Kentucky says 
the tariff is in imminent danger ; that, if not 
destroyed this session, it cannot hope to survive 
the next. This may be so, sir. This may be 
so. But, if it be so, it is because the American 
people will not sanction the tariff; and, if they 
will not, why, then, sir. it cannot be sustained 
at all. I am not quite so despairing as the hon- 
orable member seems to be. I know nothing 
which has happened, within the last six or eight 
months, changing so materially the prospects of 
the tariff. I do not despair of the success of an 
appeal to the American people, to take a just 
care of their own interest, and not to sacrifice 
those vast interests which have grown up under 
the laws of Congress." 

There was a significant intimation in these few 
remarks, that Mr. Webster had not been con- 
sulted in the pi'eparation of this bill. He shows 
that he had no knowledge of it, except from i\Ir. 
Clay's statement of its contents, on the floor, for 
it had not then been read ; and the statement 
made by Mr. Clay was his only means of under- 
standing it. This is the only public intimation 
which he gave of that exclusion of himself from 
all knowledge of what Mr. Clay and Mr. Cal- 
houn were doing ; but, on the Sunday after the 
sharp words between him and j\Ir. Clay, the fact 
was fully communicated to me, by a mutual 
friend, and as an injurious exclusion which Mr. 
Webster naturally and sensibly felt. On the 
next day, he delivered his opinions of the bill, 
in an unusually formal manner — in a set of re- 
solutions, instead of a speech — thus : 

''jResolved, That the annual revenues of the 
country ought not to be allowed to exceed a 
just estimate of the wants of the government ; 
and that, as soon as it shall be ascertained, with 
reasonable certainty, that the rates of duties on 
imports, as established by the act of July, 1832, 
will yield an excess over those wants, provision 
ought to be made for their reduction ; and that, 



in making this reduction, just regard should ba 
had to the various interests and opinions of dif- 
ferent parts of the country, so as most effectu- 
ally to preserve the integrity and harmony of 
the Union, and to provide for the common de- 
fence, and promote the general welfare of the 
whole. 

" But, whereas it is certain that the diminu- 
tion of the rates of duties on some articles 
would increase, instead of reducing, the aggre- 
gate amount of revenue on such articles ; and 
whereas, in regard to such articles as it has 
been the policy of the country to protect, a 
slight reduction on one might produce essential 
injury, and even distress, to large classes of the 
community, while another might bear a larger 
reduction without any such consequences ; and 
whereas, also, there are many articles, the duties 
on which might be reduced, or altogether abol- 
ished, without producing any other effect than 
the reduction of revenue : Therefore, 

'■^liesolved, That, in reducing the rates of du- 
ties imposed on imports, by the act of the 14th 
of July aforesaid, it is not wise or judicious to 
proceed by way of an equal reduction per centum 
on all articles ; but that, as well the amount as 
the time of reduction ought to be fixed, in re- 
spect to the several articles, distinctly, having 
due regard, in each case, to the questions whether 
the proposed reduction will affect revenue alone, 
or how far it will operate injuriously on those 
domestic manufactures hitherto protected ; es- 
pecially such as are essential in time of war, and 
such, also, as have been established on the faith 
of existing laws ; and, above all, how far such 
proposed reduction will affect the rates of wages 
and the earnings of American manual labor. 

''"Resolved, That it is unwise and injudicious, 
in regulating imposts, to adopt a plan, hitherto 
equally unknown in the liistory of this govern- 
ment, and in the practice of all enlightened na- 
tions, which shall, either immediately or pros- 
pectively, reject all discrimination on articles to 
be taxed, whether they be articles of necessity 
or of luxury, of general consumption or of limit- 
ed consumption ; and whether they be or be not 
such as are manufactured and produced at home ; 
and which shall confine all duties to one equal 
rate per centum on all articles. 

^^ Resolved, That, since the people of the United 
States have deprived the State governments of 
all power of fostering manufiieturcs, however 
indispensable in peace or in war, or however im- 
portant to national independence, by commercial 
i-egulations, or by laying duties on imports, and 
have transferred the whole authority to make 
such regulations, and to lay such duties, to the 
Congress of the United States, Congress cannot 
surrender or abandon such power, compatibly 
with its constitutional duty ; and, therefore, 

'■'Resolved, That no law ought to be passed on 
the subject of imposts, containing any stipula- 
tion, express or implied, or giving any pledge or 
assurance, direct or indirect, which shall tend to 
restrain Congress from the full exercise, at aU 



318 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



times hereafter, of all its constitutional powers, 
in giving reasonable protection to American in- 
dustry, coxmtcrvailing the policy of foreign na- 
tions, and maintaining the substantial indepen- 
dence of the United States." 

These resolutions brought the sentiments of 
Mr. Webster, on the tariff and federal revenue, 
very nearly to the standard recommended by 
General Jackson, in his annual message ; which 
was a limitation of the revenue to the wants of 
the government, with incidental protection to 
essential articles ; and this approximation of 
policy, with that which had already taken place 
on the doctrine of nullification and its measures, 
and his present support of the " Force Bill," may 
have occasioned the exclusion of Mr. Webster 
from all knowledge of this " compromise." Cer- 
tain it is, that, with these sentiments on the sub- 
ject of the tariff and the revenue, and with the 
decision of the people, in their late elections 
against the American system, that Mr. Webster 
and his friends would have acted with the friends 
of General Jackson and the democratic party, 
in the ensuing Congress, in reducing the duties 
in a wa}' to be satisfactory to every reasonable 
interest ; and, above all, to be stable ; and to 
free the country from the agitation of the tariff 
question, the manufacturers from uncertainty, 
and the revenue from fluctuations which alter- 
nately gave overflowing and empty treasuries. 
It was a consummation devoutly to be wished ; 
and frustrated by the intervention of the delu- 
sive " compromise," concocted out of doors, and 
in conclave by two senators ; and to be carried 
through Congress by their joint adherents, and 
by the fears of some and the interests of others. 
Mr. Wright, of New-York, saw objections to 
the bill, which would be insurmountable in other 
circumstances, lie proceeded to state these ob- 
jections, and the reason which would outweigh 
them in his mind : 

'• He thought the reduction too slow for the 
first eight years, and vastly too rapid afterwards. 
Again, he objected to the inequality vi' the rule 
of reduction which had been adopted. It will 
be seen, at once, that on articles paying one 
hundred per cent, duty, the reduction is danger- 
ously rapid. There was uniformity in the rule 
adopted by the bill, as regards its operation on 
existing laws. The first object of the bill was 
to effect a compromise between the conflicting 
views of the friends and the opponents of pro- 
tection. It purports to extend relief to Southern 
interest ; and yet it enhances the dut}' on one of 
the most material articles of Southern consump- 



tion — negro cloths. Again, tvhile it increases 
this duty, it imposes no corresponding duty on 
the raw material from which the fabric is made. 
" Another objection aro.se from his mature 
conviction that the principle of home valuation 
was absurd, impracticable, and of very unequal 
operation. The reduction on some articles of 
prime necessity — iron, for example — was so great 
and so rapid, that he was perfectly satisfied that 
it would stop all further production before the 
expiration of eight years. The principle of dis- 
crimination was one of the points introduced 
into the discussion ; and, as to this, he would say 
that the bill did not I'ecognize, after a limited 
period, the power of Congress to afford protec- 
tion by discriminating duties. It provides pro- 
tection for a certain length of time, but does not 
ultimately recognize the principle of protection. 
The bill proposes ultimately to reduce all arti- 
cles which pay duty to the same rate of duty. 
This principle of revenue was entirely unknown 
to our laws, and, in his opinion, was an unwar- 
rantable innovation. Gentlemen advocating the 
principle and policy of free trade admit the power 
of Congress to lay and collect such duties as are 
necessary for the purpose of revenue ; and to 
that extent they will incidentally afford pro- 
tection to manufactures. He would, upon all 
occasions, contend that no more money should 
be raised from duties on imports than the gov- 
ernment needs ; and this principle he wished 
now to state in plain terms. He adverted to 
the proceedings of the Free Trade Convention 
to show that, by a large majority, (120 to 7,) 
they recognized the constitutional power of Con- 
gress to afford incidental protection to domestic 
manufactures. They expressly agreed that the 
principle of discrimination was in consonance 
with the constitution. 

" Still another objection he had to the bill. It 
proposed on its face, and, as he thought, directly, 
to restrict the action of our successors. We had 
no power, he contended, to bind our successors. 
We might legislate prospectively, and a future 
Congi'ess could stop the cour.se of this prospec- 
tive legislation, lie had, however, no alternative 
but to vote for the bill, with all its defects, be- 
cause it contained some provisions which the 
state of the country- I'cndered indispensably ne- 
cessary." 

He then stated the reason which M'ould induce 
him to vote for the bill notwithst:mding these 
objections. It was found in the attitude of South 
Carolina, and in the extreme desire which he 
had to remove all cause of discontent in that 
State, and to enable her to return to the state of 
feeling which belonged to an affectionate member 
of the Union. For that reason he would do what 
was satisfactory to her, though not agreeable to 
him.'self. 

While the bill was still depending before 
the Senate, the bill itself for which the leav» 



ANNO 1833. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



319 



was being asked, made its appearance at the 
door of the chamber, Adth a right to enter it, 
in the shape of an act passed by the House, 
and sent to the Senate for concurrence. This 
was a new feature in the game, and occasioned 
the Senate bill to be immediately dropped, and 
the House bill put in its place ; and which, being 
quickly put to the vote, was passed, 29 to IC. 

"Yeas. — Messrs. Bell, Bibb, Black, Calhoun, 
Chambers, Clay, Clayton, Ewing, Foot, Forsyth, 
Frelinghuysen, Grundy, Hill, Hohnes, Johnston, 
King, Mangum, Miller, Moore, Maudain, Poin- 
dexter. Rives, Robinson, Sprague, Tomlinson, 
Tyler, Waggaman, White, Wright. 

"Nays. — Messrs. Benton, Buckner, Dallas, 
Dickerson, Dudley, Hendricks, Knight, Prentiss, 
Robbins, Ruggles, Seymour, Silsbee, Smith, Tip- 
ton. Webster, Wilkins." 

And the bill was then called a "compromise," 
which the dictionaries define to be an " agreement 
without the intervention of arbitrators ; " and so 
called, it was immediately proclaimed to be 
sacred and inviolable, as founded on mutual con- 
sent, although the only share which the manu- 
facturing States (Pennsylvania, New Jersey, 
Maryland, Massachusetts. Rhode Island, Ver- 
mont) had in making this " compromise," was 
to see it sprung upon them without notice, ex- 
ecuted upon them as a surprise, and forced upon 
them by anti-tariff votes, against the strenuous 
resistance of their senators and representatives 
in both Houses of Congress. 

An incident which attended the discussion of 
this bill shows the manner in which great meas- 
ures — especially a bill of many particulars, like 
the tariff, which affords an opportunity of grati- 
fying &mall interests — may be worked through 
a legislative body, even the Senate of the United 
States, by other reasons than those derived from 
its merits. The case was this : There were a 
few small manufactories in Connecticut and some 
other New England States, of a coarse cloth call- 
ed, not Kendall green, but Kendall cotton — 
quite antithetically, as the article was made 
wholly of wool — of which much was also import- 
ed. As it was an article exclusively for the la- 
boring population, the tariff of the preceding 
session made it virtually free, imposing only a 
duty of five per centum on tbe value of the cloth 
and the same on the wool of which it was made. 
Now this article was put up in tliis " compro- 
mise " bill which was to reduce duties, to fifty 
per centum, aggravated by an arbitrary minimum 



valuation, and by the legerdemain of retaining 
the five per centum duty on the foreign wool 
which they used, and which was equivalent to 
making it free, and reduced to that low rate to 
harmonize the duty on the raw material and 
the cloth. General Smith, of JMaryland, moved 
to strike out this duty, so flagrantly in con- 
trast to the professed objects of the bill, and 
in fraud of the wool duty; and that motion 
bi'ought out the reason why it was put there 
— which was, that it was necessary to secure 
the passage of the bill. Mr. Foot, of Con- 
necticut, said : " This was an important 
feature of the hill, in which his constituents 
had a great interest. Gentlemen from the 
South had agreed to it; and they were com- 
petent to guard their own interest.'''' Mr. Clay 
said : " The provision proposed to be stricken 
out was an essential part of the compromise, 
which, if struck out, woxdd destroy the whole." 
Mr. Bell of New Hampshire, said : " The pas- 
sage of the bill depended upon it. If struck 
out, he should feel himself compelled to vote 
against the bill." So it was admitted by those 
who knew what they said, that this item had 
been put into the bill while in a state of concoc- 
tion out of doors, and as a douceur to conciliate 
the votes which were to pass it. Thereupon 
Mr. Benton stood up, and 

" Animadverted on the reason which was al- 
leged for this exti'aordinary augmentation of 
duties in a bill which was to reduce duties. The 
reason was candidly expressed on this floor. 
There were a few small manufactories of these 
woollens in Connecticut ; and unless these man- 
uflictories be protected by an increase of duties, 
certain members avow their determination to 
vote against the whole bill ! This is the secret 
— no ! not a secret, for it is proclaimed. It was 
a secret, but is not now. Two or three little 
factories in Connecticut must be protected ; and 
that by imposing an annual tax upon the weai-ers 
of these coarse woollens of four or five times the 
value of the fee-simple estate of the factories. 
Better far, as a point of economy and justice, to 
purchase them and burn them. The whole 
American s3-stcm is to be given up in the year 
1842; and why impose an ainuial tax of near 
five hundred thousand dollars, upon tlie laboring 
community, to prolong, for a few years, a few 
small branches of that system, when the whole 
bill has the axe to the root, and nods to its fall? 
But, said Mr. B., these manufactories of coarse 
woollens, to be protected by this bill, are not 
even American ; they are rather Asiatic estab- 
lishments in America ; for they get their wooi 
from Asia, and not from America. The impor* 



320 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



tation of this wool is one million two hundred 
and fifty thousand pounds weight; it comes 
chiefly from Smyrna, and costs less than eight 
cents a pound. It was made free of duty at the 
last session of Congress, as an equivalent to these 
very manufactories for the reduction of the duty 
on coarse woollens to five per cent. The two 
measures went together, and were, each, a con- 
sideration for the other. Before that time, and 
by the act of 1828, this coarse wool was heavily 
dutied for the benefit of the home wool growers. 
It was subjected to a double duty, one of four 
cents on the pound, and the other of fifty per 
cent, on the value. As a measure of compromise, 
this double duty was abolished at the last session. 
The wool for these Aictories was admitted duty 
free, and, as an equivalent to the community, 
the woollens made out of the corresponding kind 
of wool were admitted at a nominal duty. It 
was a bargain, entered into in open Congress, 
and sealed with all the forms of law. Now, in 
six months after the bargain Vv^as made, it is to 
be broken. The manufacturers are to have the 
duty on woollens run up to fifty per cent, for 
protection, and are still to receive the foreign 
wool free of duty. In plain English, they are 
to retain the pay which was given them for re- 
ducing the duties on these coarse woollens, and 
they are to have the duties restored. 

" He said it was contrary to the whole tenor 
and policy of the bill, and presented the strange 
contradiction of multiplying duties tenfold, upon 
an article of prime necessity, u&vhI exclusively 
by the laboring part of the comnuinity, while 
reducing duties, or abolisliing them in ioto, upon 
every article used by the rich and luxurious. 
Silks were to be free ; cambrics and fine linens 
were to be free •, muslins, and casimeres, and 
broad cloths were to be reduced ; but the coarse 
woollens, worn by the laborers of every color 
and every occupation, of every sex and of every 
age, bond or free — tliese coarse woollens, neces- 



sary to shelter the exposed laborer from cold 
and damp, are to be put up tenfold in point of 
tax, and the cost of procuring them doubled to 
the wearer. 

"The American value, and not the foreign 
cost, will be the basis of computation for the 
twenty per cent. The difference, when all is fair, 
is about thirty-five per cent, in the value ; so 
that an importation of coarse woollens, costing 
one million in Europe, and now to pay five per 
cent, on that cost, will be valued, if all is fair, at 
miUion three hundred and fifty thousand 



turers, that the twenty per cent, on the statuta 
book will exceed thirty in the custom-house. 

'• Mr. B. took a view of the circumstances 
whicli had attended the duties on these coarse 
woollens since he had been in Congress. Every 
act had discriminated in favor of these goods, 
because they were used by the poor and the 
laborer. The act of 1824 fixed the duties upon 
them at a rate one third less than on other wool- 
lens ; the act of 1828 fixed it at upwards of one 
half less; the act of 1832 fixed it nine tenths 
less. All these discriminations in favor of coarse 
woollens were made upon the avowed principle 
of favoring the laborers, bond and free, — the 
slave which works the field for his master, the 
mariner, the miner, the steamboat hand, the 
worker in stone and wood, and every out-door 
occupation. It was intended by the framers of 
all these acts, and especially by the supporters 
of the act of 1832, that this class of our popula- 
tion, so meritorious from their daily labor, so 
nuich overlooked in the operations of the gov- 
ernment, because of their little weight in the 
political scale, should at least receive one boon 
from Congress — they should receive their work- 
ing clothes free of tax. This was the intention 
of successive Congresses ; it was the performance 
of this Congress in its act of the last session ; 
and now, in six short months since this boon 
was granted, before the act had gone into eflfect, 
the very week before the act was to go into 
effect, the boon so lately granted, is to be snatched 
away, and the day laborer taxed higher than ever; 
taxed fifty per cent, upon his working clothes ! 
while gentlemen and ladies are to have silks and 
cambrics, and fine linen, free of any tax at all ! 

" In allusion to the alleged competency of 
the South to guard its own interest, as averred 
by Mr. Foot, "j\Ir. Benton said that was a species 
of ability not confined to the South, but existent 
also in the North — whether indigenous or exotic 
he could not say— but certainly existent there, 
at least in some of the small States ; and active 
when duties were to be raised on Kendal cotton 
clotli. and the wool of which it was made to re- 
main free." 



cent, will be cal- 
give two hundred 
s, instead of two 



one 

dollars ; and the twenty per 
culated on that sum, and will 
and seventy thousand dollar 
hundred thousand dollars, for the quantum of 
the tax. It will be near sixfold, instead of four- 
fold, and that if all is fair ; but if there are gross 
errors or gross frauds in the valuation, as every 
human being knows there must be, the real tax 
may be far above sixfold. On this very floor, 
and in this very debate, we hear it computed, by 
way of recommending this bill to the manufac- 



The motion of General Smith was rejected, 
of course, and by the same vote which passed 
the bill, no one of those giving way an inch of 
ground in the House who had promised out of 
doors to stand by the bill. Another incident to 
which the discussion of this bill gave rise, and 
the memory of which is necessary to the under- 
standing of the times, was the character of 
'^ protections^ which Mr. Clay openly claimed 
for it ; and the peremptory manner in which he 
and his friends vindicated that claim in open 
Senate, and to the face of Mr. Calhoun. The 
circumstances were these : Mr. For.syth object- 
ed to the leave asked by Mr. Clay to introduce 
his bill, because it was a revenue bill, the origi- 



ANNO 1833. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESmENT. 



321 



nation of which under the constitution exclu- 
sively belonged to the House of Representa- 
tives, the immediate representative of the peo- 
ple. And this gave rise to an episodical debate, 
in which Mr. Clay said : " The main object of 
the bill is not revenue^ but protection.'''' — In an- 
swer to several senators who said the bill was 
an abandonment of the protective principle, Mr. 
^Clay said: " The langT.iage of the bill author- 
ized no such construction, and that no one 
would be justified in inferring that there V)as 
to be an abandonment of the system of protec- 
tion.'''' — And Mr. Clayton, of Delaware, a sup- 
porter of the bill, said : " The government can- 
not be kept together if the principle of protec- 
tection were to be discarded in our policy; 
and declared that he would pause before he 
surrendered that principle, even to save the 
Union.'''' — Mr. Webster said : " The bill is 
brought forward by the distinguished senator 
from Kentucky, who professes to have re- 
nounced none of his former opinions as to the 
constitutionality and expediency of protec- 
tion.'''' — And Mr. Clay said further : " Tlie bill 
assumes, as a basis, adequate protection for 
nine years, and less (^protections beyond that 
term. The friends of protection say to their 
opponents, we are willing to take a lease of 
nine years, with the long chapter of accidents 
beyond that period, including the chance of 
war, the restoration of concord, and along 
with it a conviction common to all. of the util- 
ity of protection ; and in consideration of it, 
if, in 1842 none of these contingencies shall 
have been realized, we are willing to submit, 
as long as Congress may think proper, with a 
maximum, of twenty per centum,^'' &c. — "Z?e 
avowed his object in framing the bill was to 
secure that protection to manufactures which 
every one foresaw must otherwise soon be swept 
away.'" So that the bill was declared to be one 
of protection (and upon sufficient data), upon 
a lease of nine years and a half, with many 
chances for converting the lease into a fee sim- 
ple at the end of its run ; which, in fact, was 
done ; but with such excess of protection as to 
produce a revulsion, and another tariff catastro- 
phe in 1846. The continuance of protection 
was claimed in argument by Mr. Clay and his 
friends throughout the discussion, but here it 
was made a point on which the fate of the bill 
depended, and on which enough of its friends to 

Vol. I.— 21 



defeat it declared they would not support it ex- 
cept as a protective measure. Mr, Calhoun in 
other parts of the debate had declared the bill 
to be an abandonment of protection ; but at 
this critical point, when such a denial from him 
would have been the instant death warrant of 
the bill, he said nothing. His desire for its pas- 
sage must have been overpowering when he 
could hear such declarations without repeating 
his denial. 

On the main point, that of the constitutionali- 
ty of originating the bill in the Senate, Mr. Web- 
ster spoke the law of Parliament when he said : 

•■'It was purely a question of privilege, and 
the decision of it belonged alone to the other 
House. The Senate, by the constitution, could 
not originate bills for raising revenue. It was 
of no consequence whether the rate of duty 
were increased or decreased ; if it was a money 
bill it belonged to the House to originate it. 
In the House there was a Committee of Ways 
and Means organized expressly for such objects. 
There was no such committee in the Senate. 
The constitutional provision was taken from the 
practice of the British Parhament, whose usages 
were well known to the framers of the constitu- 
tion, with the modification that the Senate might 
alter and amend money bills, which was denied 
by the House of Commons to the Lords. This 
subject belongs exclusively to the House of 
Representatives. The attempt to evade the 
question, by contending that the present bill 
was intended for protection and not for revenue, 
afforded no relief, for it was protection by means 
of revenue. It was not the less a money bill 
from its object being protection. After 1842 
this bill would raise the revenue, or it would 
not be raised by existing laws. He was alto- 
gether opposed to the provisions of this bill; 
but this objection was one which belonged to 
the House of Representatives." 

Another incident which illustrates the vice 
and tyranny of this outside concoction of mea- 
sures between chiefs, to be supported in the 
House by their adherents as they fix it, occur- 
red in the progress of this bill. Mr. Benton, 
perceiving that there was no corresponding re- 
duction of drawback provided for on the expor- 
tation of the manufactured article made out of 
A.VL imported material on which duty was to be 
reduced, and supposing it to have been an over- 
sight in the framing of the bill, moved an 
amendment to that effect ; and meeting resist- 
ance, stood up, and said : 

"His motion did not extend to the general 
system of drawbacks, but only to those special 



322 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW 



cases in which the exporter was authorized to 
draw from the treasury the amount of money 
which he had paid into it on the importation of 
the materials which he had manuftictured. The 
amount of drawback to be allowed in every case 
had been adjusted to the amount of duty paid, 
and as all these duties were to be periodically 
reduced by the bill, it would follow, as a regu- 
lar consequence, that the drawback should un- 
dergo equal reductions at the same time. jNIr. 
B. would illustrate his motion by stating a sin- 
gle case — the case of refined sugar. The draw- 
back payable on this sugar was five cents a 
pound. These five cents rested upon a duty of 
three cents, now payable on the importation of 
foreign brown sugar. It was ascertained that 
it required nearly two pounds of brown sugar 
to make a pound of refined sugar, and five cents 
was held to be the amount of duty paid on the 
quantity of brown sugar which made the pound 
of refined sugar. It was simply a reimburse- 
ment of what he had paid. By this bill the 
duty of foreign brown sugar will be reduced im- 
mediately to two and a half cents a pound, and 
afterwards will be periodically reduced until the 
year 1842. when it will be but six-tenths of a 
cent, very little more than one-sixth of the duty 
when five cents the pound were allowed for a 
drawback. Now, if the drawback is not re- 
duced in proportion to the reduction of the duty 
on the raw sugar, two very injurious conse- 
quences will result to the public : first, that a 
large sum of money will be annually taken out 
of the treasury in gratuitous bounties to sugar 
refiners ; and next, that the consumers of refin- 
ed sugar will have to pay more for American 
refined sugar than foreigners will ; for the re- 
finers getting a bounty of five cents a pound on 
all that is exported, will export all, unless the 
American consumer will pay the bounty also. 
Mr. B. could not undertake to say how much 
money woidd be dravm from the treasurj', as a 
mere bounty, if this amendment did not prevail. 
It must, however, be great. The drawback was 
now frequently a hundred thousand dollars a 
year, and great frauds were committed to obtain 
it. Frauds to the amount of forty thousand 
dollars a year had been detected, and this while 
the inducement was small and inconsiderable; 
but, as fast as that inducement swells from year 
to year, the temptation to commit frauds must 
increase ; and the amount drawn by fraud, add- 
ed to that drawn by the letter of the law, must 
be enormous. Mr. B. did not think it necessary 
to illustrate his motit)n by further examples. 
l>ut said there were other cases which would be 
as strong as that of refined sugar ; and justice 
to the public required all to be checked at once, 
by adopting the amendment he had oUered." 



offered by friends of the bill: a qualification 
which usually attends all this class of outside 
legislation. In the end, I saw the amendment 
adopted, as it regarded refined sugars, after ii 
began to take hundreds of thousands per annum 
from the treasury, and was hastening on to mil- 
lions per annum. The vote on its rejection in 
the compromise bill, was : 

J 

"Yeas. — Messrs. Benton, Buckner, Calhoun, 
Dallas, Dickerson, Dudley, Forsyth, Johnson, 
Kane, King, Rives, Robinson, Seymour, Tomlin- 
son, Webster, White, Wilkins, Wright. — 18. 

" Nays.— Messrs. Bell, Bibb, Black, Clay, Clay- 
ton, Ewing, Foot, Grundy, Hendricks, Holmes, 
Knight, Mangum, Miller, jNIoore, Naudain, Poin- 
dexter, Prentiss, Bobbins, Silsbee, Smith, 
Sprague, Tipton, Troup, Tyler.— 24." 

But the protective feature of the bill, which 
sat hardest upon the Southern members, and, at 
one time, seemed to put an end to the " compro- 
mise," was a proposition, by Mr. Clay, to sub- 
stitute home valuations for foreign on imported 
goods ; and on which home valuation, the duty 
was to be computed. This was no part of the 
bill concocted by Mr, Clay and Mr. Calhoun ; 
and, when offered, evidently took the latter gen- 
tleman by surprise, who pronounced it uncon- 
stitutional, unequal, and unjust ; averred the ob- 
jections to the proposition to be insurmount- 
able ; and declared that, if adopted, would compel 
him to vote against the whole bill. On the 
other hand, Mr. Clayton and others, declared 
the adoption of the amendment to be indispensa- 
ble ; and boldly made known their determina- 
tion to sacrifice the bill, if it was not adopted. 



A brief and sharp debate took place, in the 
course of which Mr. Calhoun declared his opin- 
ions to remain unaltered, and Mr. Clayton 
moved to lay the bill upon the table. Its fate 
seemed, at that time, to be sealed ; and certainly 
would have been, if the vote on its passage had 
then been taken ; but an adjournment was 
moved, and carried ; and, on the next day, and 
after further debate, and the question on Mr. 
Clay's proposition about to be taken, Mr. Cal- 
houn declared that it had become necessary for 
him to determine whether he would vote for or 
against it ; ' said he would vote for it, otherwise 
the bill would be lost. He then called upon 
This amendment was lost, although its neces- the reporters in the gallery to notice well what 
sity was self-evident, and supported by Mr. Cal- he said, as he intended his declaration to be part 
houn's vote ; but Mr. Clay was inexorable, and of the proceedings : and that he voted upon the 
would allow (f no amendment which was not conditions : first^ that no valuation should be 



ANNO 1883. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



323 



adopted, which would make the duties unequal 
in different parts ; and secondly, that the duties 
themselves should not become an element in the 
valuation. The practical sense of General Smith 
immediately exposed the futility of these con- 
ditions, which were looked upon, on all sides, as 
a mere salvo for an inevitable vote, extorted from 
him by the exigencies of his position ; and seve- 
ral senators reminded him that his intentions 
and motives could have no effect upon the law, 
which would be executed according to its own 
words. The following is the debate on this 
point, very curious in itself, even in the outside 
view it gives of the manner of affecting great 
national legislation ; and much more so in the in- 
side view of the manner of passing this particular 
measure, so lauded in its day ; and to understand 
which, the outside view must first be seen. It 
appears thus, in the prepared debates : 

"Mr. Clay now rose to propose the amend- 
ment, of which he had previously given notice. 
The object was, that, after the period prescribed 
by the bill, all duties should thereafter be as- 
sessed on a valuation made at the port in which 
the goods are first imported, and under ' such 
regulations as may be prescribed by law.' Mr. 
C, said it would be seen, by this amendment, 
that, in place of having a foreign valuation, it 
was intended to have a home one. It was be- 
lieved by the friends of the protective system, 
that such a regulation was necessary. It was 
believed by many of the friends of the system, 
that, after the period of nine and a half years, 
the most of our manufactures will be sufficiently 
grown to be able to support themselves under a 
duty of twenty per cent., if properly laid ; but 
that, under a system of foreign valuation, such 
would not be the case. They say that it would 
be more detrimental to their interests than the 
lowest scale of duties that could be imposed ; and 
you propose to fix a standard of duties. They 
are wiUing to take you at your word, provided 
you regulate this in a way to do them justice. 

■■' Mr. Smith opposed the amendment, on the 
ground that it would be an increase of duties ; 
that it had been tried before ; that it would be 
impracticable, unequal, unjust, and productive 
of confusion, inasmuch as imported goods were 
constantly varying in value, and were well known 
to be, at all times, cheaper in New-York than iu 
the commercial cities south of it. This would 
have the effect of drawing all the trade of the 
United States to New- York. 

" Mr. Clay said he did not think it expedient, 
in deciding this question, to go forward five or 
six years, and make that an obstacle to the pas- 
sage of a great national measure, which is not 
to go into operation until after that period. The 
honorable senator from JMaryland said that the 
measure would be impracticable. \V"ell, sir, if 



so, it will not be adopted. We do not adopt 
it now, said Mr. C. ; we only adopt the princi- 
ple, leaving it to future legislation to adjust the 
details. Besides, it would be the restoration of 
an ancient principle, known since the founda- 
tion of the government. It was but at the last 
session that the discriminating duty on goods 
coming from this side, and beyond the Cape of 
Good Hope, ten per cent, on one, and twenty 
per cent, on the other, was repealed. On what 
principle was it, said he, that this discrimination 
ever pi-evailed ? On the principle of the home 
value. Were it not for the fraudulent invoices 
wliich every gentleman in this country was fa- 
miliar with, he would not urge the amendment; 
but it was to detect and prevent these frauds 
that he looked upon the insertion of the clause 
as essentially necessary. 

" Mr. Smith replied that he had not said that 
the measure was impracticable. He only in- 
tended to say that it would be inconvenient and 
unjust. Neither did he say that it would be 
adopted by a future Congress; but he said, if 
the principle was adopted now, it would be an 
entering wedge that might lead to the adoption 
of the measure. We all recollect, said Mr. S., 
that appropriations were made for surveys for 
internal improvements ; and that these operated 
as entering wedges, and led to appropriations 
for roads and canals. The adoption of the prin- 
ple contended for, by the senator from Kentucky, 
would not, in his (Mr. S.'s) opinion, prevent 
frauds in the invoices. That very principle was 
the foundation of all the frauds on the revenue 
of France and Spain, where the duties were as- 
sessed accoi-ding to the value of the goods in the 
ports where entered. He again said that the 
effect of the amendment would be to draw the 
principal commerce of the country to the great 
city of New-Y'ork, where goods were cheaper. 

"Mr. Forsyth understood, from what had 
fallen from the senator from Kentucky, that tliis 
was a vital question, and on it depended the suc- 
cess of this measure of conciliation and compro- 
mise, which was said to settle the distracted con- 
(Ution of the country. In one respect, it was 
said to be a vital question ; and the next was, it 
was useful ; and a strange contradiction follow- 
ed : that the Mg of this measure, to unite the 
jarrings of brother with brother, depended on 
the adoption of a principle which might or might 
not be adopted. He considered the amendment 
wrong in principle, because it would be both 
unequal and unjust in its operation, and because 
it would raise the revenue : as the duties would 
be assessed, not only on the value of the goods 
at the place whence imported, but on their value 
at the place of importation. He would, however, 
vote for the bill, even if the amendment were in- 
corporated in it, provided he had the assurances, 
from the proper quarter, that it would effect the 
conciliation and compromise it was intended for. 

"Mr. Clay had brought forward this measure, 
with the hope that, in the course of its discus- 
sion it \vould ultimately assume such a shape 



324 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



as to reconcile all parties to its adoption, and 
tend to end the agitation of this unsettled ques- 
tion. If there be any member of this Congress 
(Mr. C. said), who says that he will take this 
oill now for as much as it is worth, and that he 
will, at the next Congress, again open the ques- 
tion, for the purpose of getting a better bill, of 
bringing down the tariff to a lower standard, 
without considering it as a final measure of com- 
promise and conciliation, calculated also to give 
stability to a man of business, the bill, in his 
eyes, would lose all its value, and he should be 
constrained to vote against it. 

" It was for the sake of conciliation, of nine 
years of peace, to give tranquility to a disturbed 
and agitated country, that he had, even at this 
late period of the sessicm, introduced this mea- 
sure, \vhich, his respect for the other branch of 
the legislature, now sitting in that building, and 
who had a measure, looking to the same end, be- 
fore them, had prevented him from bringing for- 
ward at an earlier period. But, when he had 
seen the session wearing away, without the 
prospect of any action in that other body, he 
felt himself compelled to come forward, though 
contrary to his wishes, and the advice of some 
of his best friends, with whom he had acted in 
the most perilous times. 

" Mr. Calhoun said, he regretted, exceedingly, 
that the senator from Kentucky had felt it his 
duty to move the amendment. According to his 
present impressions, the objections to it were 
insurmountable ; and, unless these were remov- 
ed, he should be compelled to vote against the 
whole bill, should the amendment be adopted. 
The measure proposed was, in his opinion, un- 
constitutional. Tlie constitution expressly pro- 
vided that no preference should be given, by any 
regulation of commerce, to the ports of one State 
over those of another ; and this would be the 
effect of adopting the amendment. Thus, great 
injustice and inequality must necessarily result 
from it ; for the price of goods being cheaper in 
the Northern than in the Southern cities, a home 
valuation would give to the former a pref(?rence 
in the payment of duties. Again, the price of 
goods being higher at New Orleans and Charles- 
ton than at New-York, the freight and insurance 
also being higher, together with tlie increased 
expenses of a sickly climate, would give such 
advantages in the amount of duties to the Nor- 
thern city, as to draw to it mucli of the trade of 
the Southern ones. In his view of the subject, this 
was not all. He was not merchant enough to 
say what would be the extent of duties under 
this system of home valuation ; but, as he inider- 
stood it, they must, of consequence, be progress- 
ive. For instance, an article is brought into 
New-York, value there lUO d(jllars. Twenty 
per cent, on that would raise the value of the 
article to one hundred and twenty dollars, on 
which value a duty of twenty per cent, would 
be assessed at the next importation, and so on. 
It would, therefore, be impossible to say to what 
extent the duties would run up. He regretted the 



more that the senator from Kentucky had felt it 
his duty to offer this amendment, as he was willing 
to leave the matter to the decision of a future Con- 
gress, though he did not see how they could get 
over the insuperable constitutional objections he 
had glanced at. M% C. appealed to the senator 
from Kentucky, whether, with these views, ho 
would press his amendment, when he had eight 
or nine years in advance before it could take ef- 
fect. He understood the argument of the senator 
from Kentucky to be an admission that the 
amendment was not now absolutely necessary. 
With respect to the apprehension of frauds on 
the revenue, Mr. C. said that every future Con- 
gress would have the strongest disposition to 
guard against them. The very reduction of du- 
ties, he said, would have that effect ; it would 
strike at the root of the evil. Mr. C. said he 
agreed with the senator from Kentucky, that 
this bill will be the final effort at conciliation and 
compromise ; and he, for one, was not disposed, 
if it passed, to violate it by future legislation. 

" Mr. Clayton said that he could not vote for 
this bill without this amendment, nor would he 
admit any idea of an abandonment of the protec- 
tive system ; while he was willing to pass tliis 
measure, as one of concession from the stronger 
to the weaker party, he never could agree that 
twenty per cent, was adequate protection to our 
domestic manufactures. He had been anxious 
to do something to relieve South Carolina from 
her present perilous position ; though he had 
never been driven by the taunts of Southern 
gentlemen to do that, which he now did, for the 
sake of conciliation. I vote for this bill, said 
Mr. C, only on the ground that it may save 
South Carolina from herself. 

" Here Mr. C. yielded the floor to Mr. Calhoun, 
who said. He hoped the gentleman would not 
touch that question. He entreated him to be- 
lieve that South Carolina had no fears for her- 
self. The noble and disinterested attitude she 
had assumed was intended for the whole nation, 
while it was also calculated to relieve herself, as 
well as them, from oppressive legislation. It 
was not for them to consider the condition of 
South Carolina only, in passing on a measure of 
this importance. 

" Mr. Clapton resumed. Sir, said he, I must 
be permitted to explain, in ray own wa}', the 
reasons which will govern me in the vote I am 
about to give. As I said before, I never have 
permitted the fears of losing the protective sys- 
tem, as expressed by the senator from Georgia, 
when he taunted us with the majority that they 
would have in the next Congress, when tlicy 
would get a better bill, to influence my opinion 
upon this occasion. That we have been driven 
by our fears into this act of concession, I will 
not admit. Sir, I tell gentlemen that they may 
never get such another offer as the present ; for, 
though they may think otherwise, 1 do not be- 
lieve that the people of this country will ever bo 
brought to consent to the abandonment of the 
protective system. 



ANNO 1833. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



S25 



" Does any man believe that fifty per cent, is 
an. adequate protection on woollens 7 No, sir ; 
the protection is brought down to twenty per 
cent. : and when gentlemen come to me and say 
that this is a compromise, I answer, with my 
friend from Maine, that I will not vote for it, un- 
less you will give me the fair twenty per cent. ; 
and this cannot be done without adopting the 
principle of a home valuation. I do not vote for 
this bill because I thmk it better than the 
tariff of 1832, nor because I fear nullification or 
secession ; but from a motive of concession, yield- 
ing my own opinions. But if Southern gentle- 
men will not accept this measure in the spirit 
for which it was tendered, I have no reason to 
vote for it. I voted, said Mr. C, against the bill 
of '32, for the very reason that Southern gentle- 
men declared that it was no concession ; and I 
may vote against this for the same reasons. I 
thought it bad policy to pass the bill of '32. I 
thought it a bad bargain, and I think so now. 
I have no fear of nullification or secession ; I am 
not to be intimidated by threats of Southern 
gentlemen, that they will get a better bill at the 
next session. " Rebellion made young Harry 
Percy's spurs grow cold." I will vote for this 
measure as one of conciliation and compromise ; 
but if the clause of the senator from Kentucky 
is not inserted, I shall be compelled to vote 
against it. The protective system never can be 
abandoned : and I, for one, will not now, or at 
any time, admit the idea. 

" Mr. Dallas was opposed to the proposition from 
the committee, and agreed with Mr. Calhoun. He 
would state briefly his objection to the proposition 
of the committee. Although he was from a State 
strongly disposed to maintain the protective po- 
licy, he labored under an impression, that if any 
thing could be done to conciliate the Southern 
States, it was his duty to go for a measure for 
that purpose ; but he should not go beyond it. 
He could do nothing in this way, as representing 
his particular district of the country, but only 
for the general good. He could not agree to in- 
corporate in the bill any principle which he 
thought erroneous or improper. He would sanc- 
tioil nothing in the bill as an abandonment of 
the princij^le of protection. Mr. D. then made a 
few remarks on home and foreign valuation, to 
show the ground of his objections to the amend- 
ment of Mr. Clay, though it did not prevent his 
strong desire to compromise and conciliation. 

" Mr. Clay thought it was premature to agi- 
tate now the details of a legislation which might 
take place nine years hence. The senator fi-ora 
South CaroUna had objected to the amendment 
on constitutional grounds. He thought he could 
satisfy him, and every senator, that there was 
no objection from the constitution. 

*' He asked if it was probable that a valuation 
in Liverpool could escape a constitutional objec- 
tion, if a home valuation were unconstitutional 1 
There was a distinction in the foreign value, and 
hi the thing valued. An invoice might be made 
of articles at one price in one port of England, 



and in another port at another price. The price, 
too, must vary with the time. But all this could 
not affect the rule. There was a distinction 
which gentlemen did not observe, between the 
value and the rule of valuation ; one of these 
might vary, while the other continued always 
the same. The rule was uniform with regard to 
direct taxation ; yet the value of houses and 
lands of the same quality are very different in 
different places. One mode of home valuation 
was, to give the government, or its officers, the 
right to make the valuation after the one which 
the importer had given. It would prevent fraud, 
and the rule would not violate the constitution. 
It was an error that it was unconstitutional ; 
the constitution said notliing about it. It was 
absurd that all values must be established in 
foreign countries ; no other country on earth 
should assume the right of judging. Objections 
had been made to leaving the business of valua- 
tion in the hands of a few executive officers ; but 
the objections were at least equally great to leav- 
ing it in the hands of foreigners. He thought there 
was nothing in the constitutional objection, and 
hoped the measure would not be embarrassed by 
such objections. 

" Mr. Calhoun said that he listened with great 
care to the remarks of the gentleman from Ken- 
tucky, and other gentlemen, who had advocated 
the same side, in hopes of having his objection to 
the mode of valuation proposed in the amend- 
ment removed ; but he must say, that the diffi- 
culties he first expressed still remained. Pas- 
ing over what seemed to him to be a constitu- 
tional objection, he would direct his observation 
to what appeared to him to be its unequal opera- 
tion. If by the home valuation be meant the 
foreign price, with the addition of freight, insur- 
ance, and other expenses at the port of destina- 
tion, it is manifest that as these are unequal be- 
tween the several ports in the Union — for in- 
stance, between the ports New-York and New 
Orleans — the duty must also be unequal in the 
same degree, if laid on value thus estimated. 
But if, by the home valuation be meant the prices 
current at the place of importation, then, in ad- 
dition to the inequality already stated, there 
would have to be added the additional inequality 
resulting from the different rates of profits, and 
other circumstances, which must necessarily 
render prices very unequal in the several porta 
of this widely-extended country. There would, 
in the same view, be another and a stronger ob- 
jection, which he alluded to in his former re- 
marks, which remained unanswered — that the 
duties themselves constitute part of the elements 
of the current prices of the imported articles ; 
and that, to impose a duty on a valuation ascer- 
tained by the current prices, would be to impose, 
in I'eality, a duty upon a duty, and must neces- 
sarily produce that increased progression in 
duties, which he had already attempted to illus- 
trate. 

" He knew it had been stated, in reply, that 
a system which would produce such absurd re- 



326 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



suits could not be contemplated ; that Congress, 
under the power of regulating, reserved in the 
an>endment, would adopt some mode that would 
obviate these objections ; and, if none such could 
be devised, that the provisions of the amendment 
would be simply useless. His difhculty was not 
removed by the answer to the objection. lie 
was at a loss to understand what mode could be 
devised free from objection ; and, as he wished 
to be candid and explicit, he felt the dilficulty, 
as an honest man, to assent to a general measure, 
which, in all the modifications under which he 
had viewed it, was objectionable. He again re- 
peated, that he regretted the amendment had 
been oflei-ed, as he felt a solicitude that the pre- 
sent controversy should be honorably and fairly 
terminated. It was not his wish that there 
should be a feeling of victory on either side. 
But, in thus expressing his solicitude for an ad- 
justment, he was not governed by motives de- 
rived from the attitude which South Carolina 
occupied, and which the senator from Delaware 
stated to influence him. He wished that senator, 
as well as all others, to understand that that gal- 
lant and patriotic State was far from considering 
her situation as one requiring sympath)% and 
was equally far from desiring that any adjust- 
ment of this question should take place with tlie 
view of relieving her, or with any other motive 
than a regard to the general interests of the 
country. So far from requiring coiumiseration, 
she regarded her position with very opposite 
light, as one of high responsibility, and exposing 
her to no inconsiderable danger ; but a position 
|Voluntarily and lirml}' assumed, with a liill view 
of consequences, and which she was determined 
to maintain till the oppression under which she 
and the other Southern States were suffering 
was removed. 

'■ In wishing, then, to see a termination to 
the present state of things, he turned not his eyes 
to South Carolina, but to the general interests 
of the country. He did not believe it was pos- 
sible to maintain our institutions and our hber- 
ty, under the continuance of the controversy 
which had for so long a time distracted us, and 
brought into conflict the two great sections of 
the country. He was in the last stage of mad- 
ness who did not see, if not terminated, that this 
admirable system of ours, reared by the wisdom 
and virtue of our ancestors — virtue, he feared, 
which had fled forever — would fall under its 
shocks. It was to arrest tliLs catastrophe, if pos- 
sible, by restoring peace and harmony to the 
Union, that governed him in desiring to see an 
adjustment of the question. 

"Mr. Clayton said, this point had been dis- 
cussed in the committee ; and it was because 
this amendment was not adopted that he liad 
withheld his assent from the bill. They had 
now but seven business days of this session re- 
maining ; and it would recjuire the greatest unani- 
mity, both in that body and in the other House, 
to pass any bill on this subject. "Were gentle- 
men coming from the opposite extremes of the 1 



Union, and representing opposite interests, to 
agree to combine together, there would hardly 
be time to pass this bill into a law ; yet if he 
saw that it could be done, he would gladly go on 
with the consideration of the bill, and with the 
determination to do all that could be done. The 
honorable member from Soutli Carolina had 
found insuperable obstacles where he (Mr. C.) 
had found none. On their part, if they agreed 
to this bill, it would only be for the sake of con- 
ciliation ; if South Carolina would not accept the 
measure in that light, then their motive for ar- 
rangement was at an end. He (Mr. C.) appre- 
hended, however, that good might result from 
bringing the proposition forward at that time. 
It would be placed before the view of the people, 
who would have time to reflect and make up 
their minds upon it against the meeting of the 
next Congress, He did not hold any man as 
pledged by their action at this time. If the ar- 
rangement was found to be a proper one, the 
next Congress might adopt it. But, for the 
reasons he had already stated, he had little hope 
that any bill would be passed at this session ; 
and, to go on debating it, day after day, would 
only have the effect of defeating the many pri- 
vate bills and other business which were waiting 
the action of Congress. He would therefore 
propose to lay the bill for the pi-esent on the 
table ; if it were found, at a future period, before 
the expiration of the session, that there was a 
prospect of overcoming the difficulties which now 
presented themselves, and of acting upon it, the 
bill might be again taken up. If no other gen- 
tleman wished to make any observations on the 
amendment, he would move to ky the bill on the 
table. 

" Mr. Bibb requested the senator from Dela- 
ware to withdraw his motion, whilst he (Mr. B.) 
oflered an amendment to the amendment, having 
for its object to get rid of that interminable 
series of duties of which gentlemen had spoken. 

•' Mr. Clayton withdi-ew his motion. 

" Mr. Bibb proceeded to say, that his design 
was to obviate the objection of the gix?at increase 
that would arise from a system of home valua- 
tion. He hoped that something satisfactory 
would be done this session yet. He should vote 
for every respectable proposition calculated to 
settle the difficulty. lie hoped there would be 
corresponding concessions on both sides ; he 
wished much for the harmony of the country. 
It was well known that he (Mr. B.) was opposed 
to any tariff sj-stem other than one for revenue, 
and such incidental protection as that might 
afford. His hope was to strike out a middle 
course ; otherwise, he would concur in the mo- 
tion that had been made by tlio senator from 
Delaware [Mr. Clayton]. Mr. B. then submitted 
liis amendment, to insert the words ' before pay- 
ment of,' &c. 

" Mr. Clay was opposed to the amendment, 
and he hoped his worthy colleague would with- 
draw it. If one amendment were offered and 
debated, another, and another would follow j and 



ANNO 1833. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



327 



thus, the remaining time would be wasted. To 
fix any precise system would be extremely diffi- 
cult at present. He only wished the principle 
to be adopted. 

" Mr. Bibb acceded to the wish of the senator 
from Kentucky, and withdrew his amendment 
accordingly. 

" Mr. Tyler was opposed to the principle of 
this home valuation. The duties would be taken 
into consideration in making the valuations ; and 
thus, after going down hill for nine and a half 
years, we would as suddenly rise up again to 
prohibition. He complained that there were not 
merchants enough on this floor from the South ; 
and, in this respect, the Northern States had the 
advantage. But satisfy me, said Mr. T.. that 
the views of the senator from South Carolina 
[Mr, Calhoun] are not correct, and I shall vote 
for the proposition. 

" Mr. Moore said he would move an amend- 
ment which he hoped would meet the views 
of the gentlemen on the other side ; it was to 
this effect : 

" Provided^ That no valuation be adopted that 
will operate unequally in different ports of the 
United States. 

" ]Mr. Calhoun also wished that the amend- 
ment would prevail, though he felt it would be 
ineffectual to counteract the inequality of the 
system. But he would raise no cavilling ob- 
jections ; he wished to act in perfect good 
faith ; and he only wished to see what could 
be done. 

" Mr. Moore said he had but two motives in 
offering the amendment to the amendment of 
the senator. The first was, to get rid of the 
constitutional objections to the amendment of 
the senator from Kentuckj^ ; and the second 
was, to do justice to those he had the honor to 
represent. The honorable gentleman said that 
Mobile and New Orleans would not pay higher 
duties, because the goods imported there would 
be of more value ; and this was the very reason, 
Mr. M. contended, why the duties would be 
higher. Did not every one see that if the same 
article was valued in New- York at one hundred 
dollars, and in Mobile at one hundred and thirty- 
five dollars, the duty of twenty per cent, would 
be higher at the latter place ? He had nothing 
but the spirit of compromise in view, and hoped 
gentlemen would meet him in the same spirit. 
He would now propose, with the permission of 
the senator from Maine, to vary his motion, and 
offer a substitute in exact conformity with the 
language of the constitution. This proposition 
being admitted by general consent, Mr. Moore 
modified his amendment accordingly. (It was 
an affirmation of the constitution, that all duties 
ghould be uniform, &c). 

' Mr. Forsyth supported the amendment of the 
senator from Alabama, and hoped it woxdd meet 
the approbation of the Senate. It would get rid 
of all difficulty about words. No one, he pre- 
sumed, wished to violate the constitution ; and 
if the measure of the senator from Kentucky was 



consistent with the constitution, it would prevail ; 
if not, it would not be adopted. 

" Mr. Holmes moved an adjournment. 

" Mr. Moore asked for the yeas and nays on 
the motion to adjourn, and they were accord- 
ingly ordered, when the question was taken and 
decided in the affirmative — Yeas 22, nays 19, as 
follows : 

" Yeas. — Messrs. Bell, Clayton, Dallas, Dick- 
erson, Ewing, Foot, Frclinghuysen, Holmes, 
Johnston, Kane. Knight, Naudain, Prentiss, 
Bobbins, Robinson, Silsbee, Smith, Tipton, Tom - 
Unson, Waggaman, Webster, Wilkins. — 22. 

" Nays. — Messrs. Bibb, Black, Buckner, Cal- 
houn. Clay, Dudley, Grundy, Hendricks, Hill, 
King, Miller, Moore, Poindexter, Sprague, Rives, 
Troup, Tyler, White, Wright.— 19. 

" The Senate then, at half-past four o'clock, 
adjourned. 

'■'■Friday, February 22. 

" Mr. Smith (of Md.) said, the motion to amend 
by the word ' uniform ' was unnecessary. That 
was provided for by the constitution. 'All 
duties must be uniform.' An addition to the 
cost of goods of forty, fifty, or sixty per cent, 
would be uniform, but would not prevent fraud, 
nor the certainty of great inequality in the valu- 
ation in the several ports. The value of goods 
at New Orleans particularly, and at almost every 
other port, will be higher than at New- York. 
I have not said that such mode was unconstitu- 
tional, nor have I said that it was impracticable ; 
few things are so. But I have said, and do novr 
say, that the mode is open to fraud, and mora 
so than the present. At present the merchant 
enters his goods, and swears to the truth of his 
invoice. One package in every five or ten is sent 
to the public warehouse, and there carefully 
examined by two appraisers on oath. If they 
find fraud, or suspect fraud, then all the goods 
belonging to such merchants are sent to the ap- 
praisers ; and if frauds be discovered, the goods 
are forfeited. No American merchant has ever 
been convicted of such fraud. Foreigners have 
even been severely punished by loss of their 
property. The laws are good and sufficiently 
safe as they now stand on our statutes. I wish 
no stronger ; we know the one, we are ignorant 
how the other will work. Such a mode of 
valuation is unknown to any nation except 
Spain, where the valuation is arbitrary ; and the 
goods are valued agreeably to the amount of the 
bribe given. This is perfectly understood and 
practised. It is in the nature of such mode of 
valuation to be arbitrary. No rule can be es- 
tablished that will make such mode uniform 
throughout the Union, and some of the small 
ports will value low to bring business to their 
towns. A scene of connivance and injustice will 
take place that no law can prevent. 

" The merchant will be put to great inoon- 
venience by the mode proposed. All his goods 
must be sent to the public warehouses, and there 
opened piece by piece ; by wliich process they 



328 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



will sustain essential injury. The goods -will 
be detained from the owners for a week or a 
montli. or still more, unless you have one or two 
hundred appraisers in New-York, and propor- 
tionately in other ports ; thus increasing patron- 
age ; and with such a host, can we expect either 
uniformit}' or equalit}' in the valuation ? All 
will not be honest, and the Spanish mode will 
be adopted. One set of appraisers, who value 
low, will have a priority. In fact, if this mode 
should ever be adopted, it will cause great dis- 
content, and must soon be changed. As all 
understand the cause to be to flatter the manu- 
facturers with a plan which they think will be 
beneficial to them, but which, we all know, can 
never be realized, it is deception on its face, as 
is almost the whole of the bill now under our 
consideration. 

" Remember, Mr. President, that the senators 
from Kentucky and South Carolina []\Ir. Clay 
and ]Mr. Calhoun], have declared this bill (if it 
should become a law), to be permanent, and 
that no honorable man who shall vote for it can 
ever attempt a change; yet, sir, the pressure 
against it will be such at the next session that 
Congress will be compelled to revise it ; and as 
the storm may then have passed over Congress, 
a new Congress, with better feelings, will be 
able to act with more deliberation, and may 
pass a law that M-ill be generally approved. 
Nearly all agree that this bill is a bad bill. A 
similar opinion prevailed on the passage of the 
tariflfof 1828. and yet it passed, and caused all 
our present danger and difficulties. All admit 
that the act of 1828, as it stands on our statutes, 
is constitutional. But the senator [Mr. Cal- 
houn] has said that it is unconstitutional, be- 
cause of the motive under which it passed ; and 
he said that that motive was protection to the 
manufacturers. How, sir, I ask, are we to know 
the motives of men ? I thought then, and think 
now, that the approaching election for President 
tended greatly to the enactments of the acts of 
1 824 and 1 828 ; many of my friends thought so 
at the time. I have somewhere read of the 
minister of a king or emperor in Asia, who was 
anxious to be considered a man of truth, and al- 
ways boasted of his veracity. He hypocritical- 
ly prayed to God that he might always speak 
the truth. A genii appealed and told him that 
his prayer had been heard, touched him with 
his spear, and said, hereafter you will speak 
truth on all occasions. The next day he waited 
on his majesty and said, Sire, I intended to 
have assassinated you yesterday, but was pre- 
vented by the nod of the officer behind you, 
who is to kill you to-morrow. The result I 
will not mention. Now, Mr. President, if the 
same genii was to touch with his spear each of 
the senators who voted for the act of 1828, and 
an interrogator was appointed, he would ask, 
what induced you to give that vote ? ^Vhy, sir, 
I acted on .sound principles. I believe it is the 
duty of every good government to promote the 
manufactures of the nation j all historians eulo- 



gize the kings who have done so, and censure 
those kings who have neglected them. I refer 
you to the history of Alfred. It is known that 
the staple of England was wool, which was sent 
to Flanders to be exchanged for cloths. The 
civil wars, by the invasions of that nation, kept 
them long dependent on the Flemings for the 
cloths they wore. At length a good king gov- 
erned ; and he invited Flemish manufacturers 
to England, and gave them great privileges. 
They taught the youth of England, the manu- 
facture succeeded, and now England supphes all 
the world with woollen cloth. The interroga- 
tor asked another the same question. His an- 
swer might have been, that he thought the pass- 
ing of the law would secure the votes of the 
manufacturers in favor of his friend who want- 
ed to be the President. Another answer might 
have been, a large duty was imposed on an ar- 
ticle which my constituents raised ; and I voted 
for it, although I disliked all the residue of the 
bill. Sir, the motives, no doubt, were different 
that induced the voting for that bill, and were, 
as we all know, not confined to the protective 
system. Many voted on political grounds, as 
many will on this bill, and as the}^ did on the 
enforcing bill. We cannot declare a bill uncon- 
stitutional, because of the motives that may gov- 
ern the voters. It is idle to assign such a cause 
for the part that is now acting in South Caroli- 
na. I know, Mr. President, that no argument 
will have any effect on the passage of this bill. 
The high contracting parties have agreed. But 
I owed it to myself to make these remarks. 

"Mr. Webster said, that he held the home 
valuation to be, to any extent, impracticable; 
and that it was unprecedented, and unknown in 
any legislation. Both the home and foreign 
valuation ought to be excluded as far as possi- 
ble, and specific duties should be resorted to. 
This keeping out of view specific duties, and 
turning us back to the principle of a valuation 
was, in his yiew, the great vice of this bill. In 
England five out of six, or nine out of ten arti- 
cles, pay specific duties, and the valuation is on 
the remnant. Among the articles which ptiy 
ad t-alorem duties in England arc silk goods, 
which are imported either from India, whence 
they are brought to one port only ; or fiom Eu- 
rope, in which case there is a specific and an ad 
valorem duty ; and the officer has the option to 
take either the one or the other. He suggested 
that the Senate, before they adopted the ad va- 
lorem principle, should look to the effects on 
the importation of the country. 

" He took a view of the iron trade, to show 
that evil would result to that branch from a 
substitution of the ad. valorem for the sjiecific 
system of duties. He admitted himself to bo 
luiable to compix^hend the elements of a home 
valuation, and mentioned cases where it would 
be impossible to find an accurate standard of 
valuation of this character. The plan was im- 
practicable and illusory. 

"Mr. Clayton said, I would go for this bill 



AlfNO 1833. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



329 



only for the sake of concession. The senator 
from South CaroUna can tell whether it is like- 
ly to be received as such, and to attain the ob- 
ject proposed ; if not, I have a plain course to 
pursue ; I am opposed to the bill. Unless I can 
obtain for the manufacturers the assurance that 
the principle of the bill will not be disturbed, 
and that it will be received in the light of a con- 
cession, I shall oppose it. 

" Mr. Benton objected to the home valuation, 
as tending to a violation of the constitution of 
the United States, and cited the following 
clause : ' Congress shall have power to lay and 
collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises ; but 
all duties, imposts, and excises shall be miiform 
throughout the United States.' All uniformity 
of duties and imposts, he contended, would be 
destroyed by this amendment. No human judg- 
ment could fix the value of the same goods at 
the same rate, in all the various ports of the 
United States. If the same individual valued 
the goods in every port, and every cargo in 
every port, he would commit innumerable er- 
rors and mistakes in the valuation ; and, accord- 
ing to the diversity of these errors and mis- 
takes, would be the diversity in the amount of 
duties and imposts laid and collected in the dif- 
ferent ports. 

" Mr. B. objected to the home valuation, be- 
cause it would be injurious and almost fatal to 
the southern ports. He confined his remarks 
to New Orleans. The standard of valuation 
would be fifteen or twenty per cent, higher in 
New Orleans than in New- York, and other 
northern ports. All importers will go to the 
northeastern cities, to evade high duties at New 
Orleans ; and that great emporium of the West 
will be doomed to sink into a mere exporting 
city, while all the money which it pays for ex- 
ports must be carried ofl" and expended elsewhere 
for imports. Without an import trade, no city 
can flourish, or even furnish a good market for 
exports. It will be drained of its effective cash, 
and deprived of its legitimate gains, and must 
languish far in the rear of what it would bo, if 
enriched with the profits of an import trade. 
As an exporter, it will buy ; as an importer, it 
will sell. All buying, and no selling, must im- 
poverish cities as well as individuals. New Or- 
leans is now a great exporting city; she exports 
more domestic productions than any city in the 
Union; her imports have been increasing, for 
some 3'ears ; and, with fair play, would soon be- 
come next to New- York, and furnish the whole 
valley of the Mississippi with its immense sup- 
plies of foreign goods ; but, under the influence 
of a home valuation, it must lose a greater part 
of the import trade which it now possesses. In 
that loss, its wealth must decline; its capacity 
to purchase produce for exportation must de- 
sline ; and as the western produce must go there, 
at all events, every western farmer will sulfer a 
iecline in the value of his own productions, in 
proportion to the decline of the ability of New 
Orleans to purchase it. It was as a western 



citizen that he pleaded the cause of New Orleans, 
and objected to this measure of home valuation, 
which was to have the most baneful effect upon 
her prosperity. 

" Mr. B. further objected to the home valuation, 
on account of the great additional expense it 
would create ; the amount of patronage it would 
confer ; the rivalry it would beget between im- 
porting cities ; and the injury it would occasion 
to merchants, from the detention and handling 
of their goods ; and concluded with saying, that 
the home valuation was the most obnoxious 
feature ever introduced into the tariff" acts; that 
it was itself equivalent to a separate tariff" of ten 
per cent. ; that it had always been resisted, and 
successfully resisted, by the anti-tariff" interest, 
in the highest and most palmy days of the Ameri- 
can system, and ought not now to be introduced 
when that system is admitted to be nodding to 
its fall ; when its death is actually fixed to the 
30th day of June, 1842, and when the restora- 
tion of harmonious feelings is proclaimed to be 
the whole object of this bill. 

" Mr. B. said this was a strange principle to 
bring into a bill to reduce duties. It was an in- 
crease, in a new form — an indefinable form — 
and would be tax upon tax, as the whole cost of 
getting the goods ready for a market valuation 
here, would have to be included : original cost, 
freight, insurance, commissions, duties here. It 
was new protection, in a new form, and in an 
extraordinary form, and such as never could be 
carried before. It had often been attempted, as 
as a part of the American system, but never re- 
ceived countenance before. 

" Mr. Calhoun rose and said : 

"As the question is now about to be put on 
the amendment offered by the senator from 
Kentucky, it became necessary for him to de- 
termine whether he should vote for or against 
it. He must be permitted again to express his 
regret that the senator had thought proper to 
move it. His objection still remained sti'ong 
against it ; but, as it seemed to be admitted, on 
all hands, that the fate of the bill de^jended on 
the fate of the amendment, feeling, as he did, a 
solicitude to see the question terminated, he had 
made up his mind, not, however, without much 
hesitation, not to interpose his vote against the 
adoption of the amendment ; but, in voting for 
it, he wished to be distinctly understood, he did 
it upon two conditions: first, that no valuation 
would be adopted that should come in conllict 
with the provision in the constitution which de- 
clares that duties, excises, and imposts shall be 
uniform ; and, in the next place, that none would 
be adopted which would make the duties them- 
selves a part of the element of a home valuation. 
He felt himself justified in concluding that none 
such would be adopted ; as it had been declared 
by the supporters of the amendment, that no 
such regulation was contemplated ; and, in fact, 
he could not imagine that any such could be 
contemplated, whatever interpretation might be 
attempted hereafter to be given to the expression 



330 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



of the home market. The first could scarcely 
be contemplated, as it would be iu violation of 
the constitution itself; nor the latter, as it 
would, by necessary consequence, restore the 
very duties, which it was the object of this bill 
to reduce, and would involve the glaring ab- 
surdity of imposing duties on duties, taxes on 
taxes. He wished the reporters for the public 
press to notice particularly what he said, as he 
intended his declaration to be part of the pro- 
ceedings. 

"Believing, then, for the reasons which he had 
stated, that it was not contemplated that any 
regulation of the home valuation should come 
in conflict with the provisions of the constitution 
which he hacT cited, nor involve the absurdity 
of laying taxes upon taxes, he had made up his 
mind to vote in favor of the amendment. 

"i\Ir. Smith said, any declaration of the views 
and motives, under which any individual senator 
might now vote, could have no influence, in 
1842 ; they would be forgotten long before that 
time had arrived. The law must rest upon the 
interpretation of its words alone. 

" Mr. Calhoun said he could not help that ; he 
should endeavor to do his duty. 

" Mr. Clayton said there was certainly no am- 
biguity whatever in the phraseology- of the amend- 
ment. In advocating it, he had desired to de- 
ceive no man ; he sincerely hoped no one would 
suffer himself to be deceived by it. 

"^Ir. AYilkins said, if it had been his intention 
' to have voted against the amendment, he should 
have remained silent ; but. after the explicit de- 
claration of the honorable gentleman from South 
Carolina [Mr. Calhoun] of the reason of his 
vote, and believing, himself, that the amend- 
ment would have a different construction from 
that given it by the gentleman, he [Mr. W.] 
would as expressly state, that he would vote on 
the question, with the impression that it would 
not hereafter be expounded by the declaration 
of any senator on this floor, but by the plain 
meaning of the words in the text. 

" The amendment of Mr. Clay, fixing the prin- 
ciple of home valuation as a part of the bill, was 
then adopted, by the following vote : 

"Yeas.— Messrs. Bell, Black, Bibb, Calhoun, 
Chambers, Clay, Clayton, Ewing, Foot, Freling- 
huysen, Ilill, Holmes, Johnson, King, Knight, 
Miller, iMoore, Naudain, Poindextcr, Prentiss, 
Rives, Bobbins, Sprague, Tomlinson, Tyler, Wil- 
kins.— 2(3. 

"Nays. — Messrs. Benton, Buckner, Dallas, 
Dickerson, Dudley, Forsyth, Grimdy, Kane, 
llobinson, Seymour, Silsbee, Smith, Waggaman, 
Webster, White, Wright.— IG." 

And thus a new principle of protection, never 
before engrafted on the American system, and 
to get at which the constitution had to be vio- 
lated in the article of the imiformity of duties, 
was established ! and established by the aid of 
those who declared all protection to be uncon- 



stitutional, and just cause for the secession of a 
State from the Union ! and were then acting on 
that assumption. 



CHAPTER LXXXIII. 

REVENUE COLLECTION, OR FORCE BILL. 

The President in his message on the South 
Carolina proceedings had recommended to Con- 
gress the revival of some acts, heretofore in force, 
to enable him to execute the laws in that State ; 
and the Senate's committee on the Judiciary 
had reported a bill accordingly early in the ses- 
sion. It was immediately assailed by several 
members as violent and unconstitutional, tending 
to civil war, and denounced as " the bloody bill " 
— " the force bill," &c. Mr. Wflkins of Penn- 
sylvania, the reporter of the bill, vindicated it 
from this injurious character, showed that it 
was made out of previous laws, and contained 
nothing novel but the harmless contingent au- 
thority to remove the ofiBce of the customs from 
one building to another in the case of need. He 
said : 

" The Judiciary Committee, in framing it, had 
been particularly anxious not to introduce any 
novel principle — any which could not be found 
on the statute book. The only novel one which 
the bill presented was one of a very simple 
nature. It was that which authorized the Pres- 
ident, under the jtarticular circumstances which 
were specified in the bill, to remove the custom- 
house. This was the only novel principle, and 
care was taken that in providing for such re- 
moval no authority was given to use force. 

" The committee were apprehensive that some 
collision might take place after the 1st of Feb- 
ruary, either between the conflicting parties of 
the citizens of South Carolina, or between the 
officers of the federal government and the 
citizens. And to remove, as far as possible, all 
chance of such collision, provision was made 
that the collector might, at the moment of im- 
minent danger, remove the custom-house to fi 
place of security ; or, to use a plain pin-ase, put 
it out of harm's way. He admitted the inqjort- 
ancc of this bill ; but he viewed its importance 
as arising not out of the provisions of the bill 

\ itself, but out of the state of affairs in South 
Carolina, to which the bill had reference. In 

I this view, it was of paramount importance. 
" It had become necessary to legislate on this 
subject ; whether it was necessary to pass the 

. bill or not, he would not say ; but legislation, in 



ANNO 1833. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



331 



reference to South Carolina, previous to the 1st 
of February, had become necessary. Something 
must be done ; and it behooves the government 
to adopt every measure of precaution, to pre- 
vent those awful consequences which all must 
foresee as necessarily resulting from the position 
which South Carolina has thought proper to 
assume. 

" Here nullification is declaimed, on one hand, 
unless we abolish our revenue system. We 
consenting to do this, they remain quiet. But 
if we go a hair's breadth towards enforcing that 
system, they present secession. We have seces- 
sion on one hand, and nullification on the other. 
The senator from South Carolina admitted the 
other day that no such thing as constitutional 
secession could exist. Then civil war, disunion, 
and anarchy must accompany secession. No 
one denies the right of revolution. That is a 
natural, indefeasible, inherent right — a right 
which we have exercised and held out, by our 
example, to the civilized world. Who denies 
it 7 Then we have revolution by force, not con- 
stitutional secession. That violence must come 
by secession is certain. Another law passed by 
the legislature of South Carolina, is entitled a 
bill to provide for the safety of the people of 
South Carolina. It advises them to put on their 
armor. It puts them in military array ; and 
for what purpose but for the use of force ? The 
provisions of these laws are infinitely worse than 
those of the feudal system, so far as they apply 
to the citizens of Carohna. But with its opera- 
tions on tlieir own citizens he had nothing to 
do. Resistance was just as inevitable as the 
arrival of the day on the calendar. In addition 
to these documents, what did rumor say — ru- 
mor, which often falsifies, but sometimes utters 
truth. If we judge by newspaper and other 
reports, more men were now ready to take up 
arms in Carolina, than there were during the re- 
volutionary struggle. The whole State was at 
this moment in arms, and its citizens are ready to 
be embattled the moment any attempt was made 
to enforce the revenue laws. The city of Charles- 
ton wore the appearance of a military depot." 

The Bill was opposed with a vehemence rarely 
witnessed, and every effort made to render it 
odious to the people, and even to extend the 
odium to the President, and to all persons in- 
strumental in bringing it forward, or urging it 
through. Mr. Tyler of Virginia, was one of its 
warmest opposers, and in the course of an elabo- 
rate speech, said : 

"In the course of the examination I have 
made into this subject, I have been led to analyze 
certain doctrines which have gone out to the 
world over the signature of the President. I 
know that my language may be seized on by 
those who are disposed to carp at my course 
and to misrepresent me. Since I have held a 
place on this floor, I have not courted the smiles 



of the Executive; but whenever he had done 
any act in violation of the constitutional rights 
of the citizen, or trenching on the rights of the 
Senate, I have been found in opposition to him. 
When he appointed corps of editors to oflBce, I 
thought it was my duty to oppose his course. 
When he appointed a minister to a foreign court 
without the sanction of the law, I also went 
against him, because, on my conscience, I be- 
lieved that the act was wrong. Such was my 
course, acting, as I did, under a sense of the 
duty I owed to my constituents ; and I will now 
say, I care not how loudly the trumpet may be 
sounded, nor how low the priests may bend their 
knees before the object of their idolatry, I wiU 
be at the side of the President, crying in his ear, 
' Remember, Philip, thou art mortal ! ' 

" I object to the first section, because it con- 
fers on the President the power of closing old 
ports of entry and establishing new ones. It 
has been rightly said by the gentleman from 
Kentucky [Mr. Bibb] that tliis was a prominent 
cause which led to the Revolution. The Boston 
port hill, which removed the custom-house from 
Boston to Salem, first roused the people to re- 
sistance. To guard against this very abuse, the 
constitution had confided to Congress the power 
to regulate commerce ; the establishment of 
ports of entry formed a material part of this 
power, and one which required legislative enact- 
ment. Now I deny that Congress can deputize 
its legislative powers. If it may one, it may all ; 
and thus, a majority here can, at their pleasure, 
change the very character of the government. 
The President might come to be invested with 
authority to make all laws which his discretion 
might dictate. It is vain tp tell me (said Mr. 
T.) that I imagine a case which wiU never exist, 
I tell you, sir, that power is cumulative, and that 
patronage begets power. The reasoning is un- 
answeralale. If you can part with your power 
in one instance, you may in another and another. 
You may confer upon the President the right to 
declare war ; and this very provision may fairly 
be considered as investing him with authority 
to make war at his mere will and pleasure on 
cities, towns, and villages. The prosperity of a 
city depends on the position of its custom-house 
and port of entry. Take the case of Norfolk, 
Richmond, and Fredericksburg, in my own 
State; who doubts but that to remove the 
custom-house from Norfolk to Old Point Com- 
fort, of Richmond to the mouth of Chickahominy, 
or of Fredericksburg to Tappahannock or Ur- 
banna, would utterly annihilate those towns ? 
I have no tongue to express my sense of the pro- 
bable injustice of the measure. Sir, it involves the 
innocent with the guilty. Take the case of 
Charleston ; what if ninety-nine merchants were 
ready and willing to comply with your revenue 
laws, and that but one man could be found to 
resist them ; would you run the hazard of 
destroying the niucty-nine in order to punish 
one ? Trade is a delicate subject to touch ; 
once divert it out of its regular channels, and 



332 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



nothing is more difficult than to restore it. 
This measure may involve the actua. property 
of every man, woman, and child in that city ; 
and this, too, when you have a redundancy of 
millions in your treasury, and when no interest 
can sustain injury by awaiting the actual occur- 
rence of a case of resistance to your laws, before 
you would have an opportunity to legislate. 

'• He is further empowered to employ the land 
and naval forces, to put down all 'aiders and 
abettors.' How far will this authority extend ? 
Suppose the legislature of South Carolina should 
happen to be in session : I will not blink the 
question, suppose the legislature to be in session 
at the time of any disturbance, passing laws in 
furtherance of the ordinance which has been 
adopted by the convention of that State; might 
they not be considered by the President as aiders 
and abettors ? The President might not, per- 
haps, march at the head of his troops, with a 
flourish of drums and trumpets, and with bayo- 
nets fixed, into the state-house yard, at Colum- 
bia ; but, if he did so, he would find a precedent 
for it in English history. 

" There was no ambiguity about this measure. 
The prophecy had already gone forth ; the Pre- 
sident has said that the laws will be obstructed. 
The President had not only foretold the coming 
difficulties, but he has also assembled an army. 
The city of Charleston, if report spoke true, was 
now a beleagiued city; the cannon of Fort 
Pincki^'y are pointing at it ; and although they 
are now quietly sleeping, they are ready to open 
their thunders whenever the voice of authority 
shall give the command. And shall these ter- 
rors be let loose because some one man may re- 
fuse to pay some small modicum of revenue, 
which Congress, the day after it came into the 
treasury, might vote in satisfaction of some un- 
founded claim ? Shall we set so small a value 
upon the lives of the people ? Let us at least wait 
to see the course of measures. We can never 
be too tardy in commencing the work of blood. 

"If the majoritjr shall pass this bill, they 
must do it on their own responsibility ; I will 
have no part in it. "When gentlemen recount 
the blessings of union ; when they dwell upon 
the past, and sketch out, in bright perspective, 
the future, they awaken in my breast all the 
pride of an American ; my pulse beats respon- 
sive to theirs, and I regard union, next to free- 
dom, as the greatest of l)lcssings. Yes, sir. 'the 
federal Union must be preserved.' But how? 
Will you seek to preserve it by force ? Will 
you appease the angry spirit of discord by an 
oblation of blood ? S\ippose that the proud 
and haughty spirit of South Carolina shall not 
bend to your high edicts in token of fealty ; that 
you make war upon her, hang her Governor, her 
legislators, and judges, as traitors, and reduce 
her to the condition of a conquered province — 
have you preserved the Union ? This Union I 
consists of twenty-four States ; would you have ' 
preserved the Union by striking out one of the , 
States — one of the old thirteen ? Gentlemen | 



had boasted of the flag of our country, with its 
thirteen stars. When the light of one of these 
stars shall have been extinguislied, will the flag 
wave over us, under which our fiithers fought ? 
If we are to go on striking out star after star, 
what will finally remain but a central and a 
burning sun, blighting and destioying every 
germ of liberty? The flag which I wish to 
wave over me, is that which floated in triumph 
at Saratoga and Yorktown. It bore upon it 
thirteen States, of which South Carolina was 
one. Sir, there is a great difference between pre- 
serving Union and preserving government ; the 
Union may be annihilated, yet government pre- 
served ; but, under such a government, no man 
ought to desire to live." 

Mr. Webster, one of the committee which re- 
ported the bill, justly rebuked all this vitupera- 
tion, and justified the bill, both for the equity 
of its provisions, and the necessity for enacting 
them. He said : 

" The President, charged by the constitution 
with the duty of executing the laws, has sent 
us a message, alleging that powerful combina- 
tions are forming to resist their execution ; that 
the existing laws are not sufficient to meet the 
crisis ; and recommending sundrj^ enactments 
as necessary for the occasion. The message be- 
ing referred to the Judiciary Committee, that 
committee has reported a bill in compliance with 
the President's recommendation. It has not 
gone beyond the message. Every thing in the 
bill, every single proyision, which is now com- 
plained of, is in the message. Yet the whole 
war is raised against the bill, and against the 
committee, as if the committee had originated 
the whole matter. Gentlemen get up and ad- 
dress us, as if they were arguing against some 
measure of a factious opposition. They look 
the same way, sir, and speak with the same ve- 
hemence, as they used to do when they raised 
their patriotic voices against what they called a 
' coalition.' 

" Now, sir, let it be known, once for all, that 
this is an administration measure ; that it i^ 
the President's own measure ; and I pray gen- 
tlemen to have the goodness, if they call it hard 
names, and talk loudly against its friends, not 
to overlook its source. Let them attack it, if 
they choose to attack it. in its origin. 

"Let it be known, also, that a majority of the 
committee reporting the bill are friends and 
supporters of the administration ; and that it is 
maintained in this house by those who are 
among his steadfast friends, of long standing. 

" It is, sir, as I have already said, the Presi- 
dent's own measure. Let those who t)ppose it, 
oppose it as such. Let them fairly acknowledge 
its origin, and meet it accordingly. 

"The honorable member from Kentucky, who 
spoke first against the bill, said he found in it 
another Jersey prison-ship ; let him state, then, 



ANNO 1833. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



333 



saj's, too, that 

sedition law. 

flower except 



that the President has sent a message to Con- 
gress, recommending a renewal of the sufferings 
and horrors of the Jersey prison-ship. He 
the bill snuff's of the alien and 
But the bill is fragrant of no 
the same which perfumes the 
message. Let him, then, say, if he thinks so, 
that General Jackson advises a revival of the 
principles of the alien and sedition laws. 

" The honorable member from Virginia [Mr. 
Tyler], finds out a resemblance between this 
bill and the Boston port bill. Sir, if one of 
these be imitated from the other, the imitation 
is the President's. The bill makes the Presi- 
dent, he says, sole judge of the constitution. 
Does he mean to say that the President has 
recommended a measure wliich is to make him 
sole judge of the constitution 1 The bill, he de- 
clares, sacrifices every thing to arbitrary power 
— he will lend no aid to its passage — he would 
rather " be a dog, and bay the moon, than such 
a Roman.' He did not say 'the old Roman.' 
Yet the gentleman well knows, that if any thing 
is sacrificed to arbitrary power, the sacrifice 
has been demanded by the ' old JRoman,' as he 
and others have called him ; by the President 
whom he has supported, so often and so ably, 
for the chief magistracy of the country. He 
says, too, that one of the sections is an English 
Botany Bay law, except that it is much worse. 
This section, sir, whatever it may be, is just 
what the President's message recommended. 
Similar observations are applicable to the re- 
marks of both the honorable gentlemen from 
North Carolina. It is not necessary to particu- 
larize those remarks. They were in the same 
strain. 



be understood, let it be 



" Therefore, sir, let it 
known, that the war wlfich these gentlemen 
choose to wage, is waged against the measures 
of the administration, against the President of 
their own choice. The controversy has arisen 
between him and them, and, in its progress, 
they will probably come to a distinct under- 
standing. 

" Mr. President, I am not to be understood as 
admitting that these charges against the bill are 
just, or that they would be just if made against 
the message. On the contrary, I think them 
wholly unjust. No one of them, in my opinion, 
can be made good. I think the bill, or some 
similar measure, had become indispensable, and 
that the President could not do otherwise than 
to recommend it to the consideration of Con- 
gress. He was not at liberty to look on and 
be silent, while dangers threatened the Union, 
which existing laws were not competent, in his 
judgment, to avert. 

"Mr. President, I take this occasion to say, 
that I support this measure, as an independent 
member of the Senate, in the discharge of the 
dictates of my own conscience. I am no man's 
leader ; and, on the other hand, I follow no lead, 
but that of public duty, and tiie star of the con- 
stitution. I believe the country is in consider- 



able danger ; I believe an unlawful combination 
threatens the integrity of the Union. I believe 
the crisis calls for a mild, temperate, forbearing, 
but inflexibly firm execution of the laws. And, 
under this conviction, I give a hearty support 
to the administration, in all measures which I 
deem to be fair, just, and necessary. And in 
supporting these measures, I mean to take my 
fair share of responsibility, to support them 
frankly and fairly, without reflections on the 
past, and without mixing other topics in their 
discussion. 

"Mr. President, I think I understand the 
sentiment of the country on this subject. I 
think public opinion sets with an irresistible 
force in favor of the Union, in favor of the 
measures recommended by the President, and 
against the new doctrines which threaten the 
dissolution of the Union. I think the people 
of the United States demand of us, who are in- 
trusted with the government, to maintain that 
government ; to be just, and fear not ; to make 
all and suitable provisions for the execution of 
the laws, and to sustain the Union and the 
constitution against whatsoever may endanger 
them. For one, I obey this public voice ; I 
comply with this demand of the people. I sup- 
port the administration in measures which I 
believe to be necessary ; and, while pursuing 
this course, I look unhesitatingly, and with the 
utmost confidence, for the approbation of the 
country. 

The support which Mr. Webster gave to all \ 
the President's measures in relation to South ' 
Carolina, and his exposure of the doctrine of 
nullification, being the first to detect and de- 
noimce that heresy, made him extremely obnox- 
ious to Mr. Calhoun, and his friends ; and must 
have been the main cause of his exclusion from 
the confidence of Mr. Clay and Mr. Calhoun in 
the concoction of their bill, called a compromise. 
His motives as well as his actions were attacked, 
and he was accused of subserviency to the Presi- 
dent for the sake of future favor. At the same 
time all the support which he gave to these 
measures was the regular result of the principles i 

which he laid down in his first speeches against 
nullification in the debate with Mr. Hayne, and 
he could not have done less without being dere- 
lict to his own principles then avowed. It was 
a proud era in his life, supporting with tran- 
scendent ability the cause of the constitution 
and of the country, in the person of a chief 
magistrate to whom he was politically opposed 
bursting the bonds of party at the call of duty, 
and displaying a patriotism worthy of admira- 
tion and imitation. General Jackson felt the 
debt of gratitude and admiration which he 



334 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



owed him ; the country, without distinction of 
party, felt the same ; and the universality of 
the feeling was one of the grateful instances of 
popular applause and justice when great talents 
are seen exerting themselves for the good of 
the country. He was the colossal figure on the 
political stage during that eventful time ; and 
his labors, splendid in their day, survive for the 
benefit of distant posterity. 



CHAPTER LXXXIV. 

MR. CALHOUN'S NULLIFICATION RESOLUTIONS. 

Simultaneously with the commencement of the 
discussions on the South Carolina proceedings, 
was the introduction in the Senate of a set of 
resolutions by Mr. Calhoun, entitled by him, 
'■'■Resolutions on the powers of the government ; " 
but all involving the doctrine of nullification ; 
and the debate upon them deriving its point and 
character from the discussion of that doctrine. 
The following were the resolutions : 

'^Resolved, That the people of the several 
States composing these United States are united 
as parties to a constitutional compact, to which 
the people of each State acceded as a separate 
sovereign community, each binding itself by its 
own particular ratification ; and that the Union, 
of which the said compact is the bond, is a union 
between the States ratifying the same. 

^'■Resohtd, That the people of the several 
States, thus united by the constitutional com- 
pact, in forming that instrument, and in creating 
a general government to carry into effect the 
objects for which they were formed, delegated 
to that government, for that purpose, certain 
definite powers, to be exercised jointly, reserving 
at the same time, each State to itself, the residu- 
ary mass of powers, to be exercised by its own 
separate government; and that whenever the 
general government assumes the exercise of 
powers not delegated by the compact, its acts 
are unauthorized, and are of no cflect ; and that 
the same government is not made the final 
judge of the powers delegated to it, since that 
would make its discretion, and not the constitu- 
tion, the measure of its powers ; but that, as in 
all other cases of compact among sovereign par- 
ties, without any common judge, each has an 
equal right to judge for itself, as well as of the 
infraction as of the mode and measure of redress. 

^'Resolved. That the assertions that the people 
of these United States, taken collectively as in- 



dividuals, are now, or ever have been, united on 
the principle of the social compact, and as such 
are now formed into one nation or people, or 
that they have ever been so united in any one 
stage of their political existence ; that the people 
of the several States composing the Union have 
not, as members thereof, retained their sovereign- 
ty ; that the allegiance of their citizens has been 
transferred to the general government ; that 
they have parted with the right of punishing 
treason through their respective State govern- 
ments ; and that they have not the right of judg- 
ing in the last resort as to the extent of the 
powers reserved, and, of consequence, of those 
delegated ; are not only without foundation in 
truth, but are contrary to the most certain and 
plain historical fxcts, and the clearest deductions 
of reason ; and that all exercise of power on the 
part of the general government, or any of its 
departments, claiming authority from so erro- 
neous assumptions, must of necessity be uncon- 
stitutional, must tend directly and inevitably to 
subvert the sovereignty of the States, to destroy 
the federal character of the Union, and to rear 
on its ruins a consolidated government, without 
constitutional check or limitation, and which 
must necessarily terminate in the loss of liberty 
itself." 

To which Mr. Grundy offered a counter set, 
as follows : 

"1. Resolved, That by the constitution of the 
United States, certain powers are delegated to 
the general government, and those not delega- 
ted, or prohibited to the States, are reserved 
to the States respectively, or to the people. 

"2. Resolved, That one of the powers express- 
ly granted by the constitution to the general 
government, and prohibited to the States, is 
that of lajnng duties on imports. 

" 3. Resolved, That the power to lay imposts is 
by the constitution wholly transferred from the 
State authorities to the general government, 
without any reservation of power or right on 
the part of the State. 

"4. Resolved, That the tariff laws of 1828 
and 1832 are exercises of the constitutional 
power possessed by the Congress of the United 
States, whatever various opinions may exist as 
to their policy and justice. 

" 5. Resolved, That an attempt on the part of 
a State to annul an act of Congress passed up- 
on any subject exclusively confided by the con- 
stitution to Congress, is an encroachment on the 
rights of the general government. 

"6. Resolved, That attempts to obstruct or 
prevent the execution of the several acts of Con- 
gress imposing duties on imports, whether by 
ordinances of conventions or legislative enact- 
ments, are not warranted by the constitution, 
and are dangerous to the poUtical institutions of 
the countrj'." 

It was in the discussion of these resolutions, 



ANNO 1833. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



335 



and the kindred subjects of the "force bill" and 
the " revenue collection bill," that Mr. Calhoun 
first publicly revealed the source from which 
he obtained the seminal idea of nullification as 
a remedy in a government. The Virginia reso- 
lutions of '98-'99, were the assumed source of 
the power itself as applicable to our federal and 
State governments ; but the essential idea of nul- 
lification as a peaceful and lawful mode of arrest- 
ing a measure of the general government by the 
action of one of the States, was derived from the 
veto power of the tribunes of the people in the 
Roman government. I had often heard him talk 
of that tribunitian power, and celebrate it as the 
perfection of good government — as being for the 
benefit of the weaker part, and operating nega- 
tively to prevent oppression, and not positively to 
do injustice — but I never saw him carry that idea 
uito a pubhc speech but once, and that was on 
the discussion of his resolutions of this session ; 
for though actually delivered while the " force 
bill" was before the Senate, yet all his doctrinal 
argument on that bill was the amplification of 
his nullification resolutions. On that occasion 
he traced the Roman tribimitian power, and con- 
sidered it a cure for all the disorders to which 
the Roman state had been subject, and the cause 
to which all her subsequent greatness was to be 
attributed. This remarkable speech was deliver- 
ed February 15th, 1833, and after depicting a 
government of the majority — a majority uncheck- 
ed by a right in the minority of staying their 
measures — to be unmitigated despotism, he then 
proceeded to argue in favor of the excellence of the 
veto and the secession power ; and thus deliver- 
ed himself: 

" He might appeal to history for the truth of 
these remarks, of which the Roman furnished 
the most familiar and striking. It was a well- 
known feet, that, from the expulsion of the Tar- 
quins, to the time of the establishment of the 
tribunitian power, the government fell into a 
state of the greatest disorder and distraction, 
and, he might add, corruption. How did this 
happen 1 The explanation will throw important 
light on the subject under consideration. The 
community was divided into two parts, the pa- 
tricians and the plebeians, with the powers of 
the state principally in the hands of the former 
without adequate check to protect the rights of i 
the latter. The result was as might be expected. 
The patricians converted the powers of the go- 
vernment into the means of making money, to 
enrich themselves and their dependants. They * 
in a word, had their American system, growing 
out of the peculiar character of the government 



and condition of the country. This requires 
explanation. At that period, according to the 
laws of nations, when one nation conquered an- 
other, the lands of the vanquished belonged to 
the victors ; and, according to the Roman law 
the lands thus acquired were divided into parts, 
one allotted to the poorer class of the people, 
and the other assigned to the use of the trea- 
sury, of which the patricians had the distribu- 
tion and administration. The patricians abused 
their power, by withholding from the people 
that which ought to have been allotted to them, 
and by converting to their own use that which 
ought to have gone to the treasury. In a word, 
they took to themselves the entire spoils of vic- 
tory, and they had thus the most powerful mo- 
tive to keep the state perpetuall}^ involved in 
war, to the utter impoverishment and oppression 
of the people. After resisting the abuse of power, 
by all peaceable means, and the oppression be- 
coming intolerable, the people at last withdrew 
from the city ; they, in a word, seceded ; and, 
to induce them to reunite", the patricians con- 
ceded to the plebeians, as the means of protect- 
ing their separate interests, the very power which 
he contended is necessary to protect the rights 
of the States, but which is now represented as 
necessarily leading to disunion. They granted 
to the people the right of choosing three tri- 
bunes from among themselves, whose persons 
should be sacred, and who should have the 
right of interposing their veto, not only against 
the passage of laws, but even against their exe- 
cution ; a power which those who take a shal- 
low insight into human nature would pronounce 
inconsistent with the strength and unity of the 
state, if not utterly impracticable. Yet, so far 
from that being the effect, from that day the 
genius of Rome became ascendant, and victory 
followed her steps till she had established an 
almost universal dominion. 

" How can a result so contrary to all antici- 
pation be explained ? The explanation appear- 
ed to him to.be simple. No measure or move- 
ment could be adopted without the concurring 
consent of both the patricians and plebeians, 
and each thus became dependent on the other, 
and, of consequence, the desire and objects of 
neither could be effected without the concur- 
rence of the other. To obtain this concurrence, 
each was compelled to consult the good will of 
the other, and to elevate to office not simply 
those who might have the confidence of the or- 
der to which he belonged, but also that of the 
other. The result was, that men possessing 
those qualities which would naturally command 
confidence, moderation, wisdom, justice, and pa- 
triotism, were elevated to office ; and these, by 
the weight of their autliority and the prudence 
of their counsel, together ^vitli tliat spirit of 
unanimity necessarily resulting from the con- 
curring assent of the two orders, furnishes the 
real explanation of the power of the Roman 
state, and of that extraordinary wisdom, mode- 
ration, and firmness, which in so remarkable a 



336 



THIRTY TEARS' VIEW. 



degree characterized her public men. He might 
ilhistratc the truth of the position which he liad 
laid down, by a reference to the history of all 
free states, ancient and modern, distinguished 
for their power and patriotism ; and conclusive- 
ly show not only that there was not one which 
had not some contrivance, under some form, by 
which the concurring assent of the different 
portions of the community was made necessary 
in the action of government, but also that the 
virtue, patriotism, and strength of the state 
were in direct proportion to the strength of the 
means of securing such assent. In estimating 
the operation of this principle in our system, 
which depends, as he had stated, on the right 
of interposition on the part of the State, we 
must not omit to take into consideration the 
amending power, by which new powers may be 
granted, or any derangement of the system be 
corrected, by the concurring assent of three- 
fourths of the States ; and thus, in the same 
degree, strengthening the power of repairing 
any derangement occasioned by the executive 
action of a State. In fact, the power of inter- 
position, foirly understood, may be considered 
in the light of an appeal against the usurpations 
of the general government, the joint agent of all 
the States, to the States themselves, to be de- 
cided, under the amending power, aflBrmatively, 
in favor of the government, by the voice of 
three-fourths of the States, as the highest power 
known under the S3^stem. 

"Mr. 0. said that he knew the difficulty, in 
our country, of establishing the truth of the 
principle for which he contended, though rest- 
ing upon the clearest reason, and tested by the 
universal experience of free nations. He knew 
that the governments of the several States would 
be cited as an argument against the conclusion 
to which he had arrived, and which, for the 
most part, were constructed on the principle of 
the absolute majority ; but, in his opinion, a 
satisfactory answer could be given ; that the 
objects of expenditure which fell within the 
sphere of a State government were few and in- 
considerable ; so that, be their action ever so 
irregular, it could occasion but little derange- 
ment. If, instead of being members of this 
great confederacy, they formed distinct commu- 
nities, and were compelled to raise armies, and 
incur other expenses necessary for their defence, 
the laws which he had laid down as necessarily 
controlling the action of a State, where the will 
of an absolute and unchecked majority prevailed, 
would speedily disclose themselves in faction, 
anarchy, and corruption. Even as the case is, 
the operation of the causes to which he had re- 
ferred were perceptible in some of the larger 
and more populous members of the Union, whose 
governments had a powerful central action, and 
which already showed a strong tendency to that 
moneyed action which is the invariable forerun- 
ner of corruption and convulsions. 

" But to return to the general government ; 
we have now sufficient experience to ascertain 



that the tendency to conflict in this action is 
between Southern and other sections. The lat- 
ter, having a decided majority, must habitually 
be possessed of the powers of the government, 
both in this and in the other House ; and, being 
governed by that instinctive love of power so 
natural to the human breast, they must become 
the advocates of the power of government, and 
in the same degree opposed to the limitations ; 
while the other and weaker section is as neces- 
sarily thrown on the side of the limitations. In 
one word, the one section is the natural guar- 
dian of the delegated powers, and the other of 
the reserved ; and the struggle on the side of 
the former will be to enlarge the powers, while 
that on the opposite side will be to restrain 
them within their constitutional limits. The 
contest will, in fact, be a contest between power 
and liberty, and such he considered the present ; 
a contest in which the weaker section, with its 
peculiar labor, productions, and situation, has at 
stake all that can be dear to freemen. Should 
they be able to maintain in their full vigor their 
reserved rights, liberty and prosperity will be 
their portion ; but if they yield, and permit the 
stronger interest to consolidate within itself all 
the powers of the government, then will its fate 
be more wretched than that of the aborigines 
whom they have expelled, or of their slaves. 
In this great struggle between the delegated and 
reserved powers, so far from repining that his lot 
and that of those whom he represented is cast on 
the side of the latter, he rejoiced that such is tho 
fiict ; for though we participate in but few of 
the advantages of the government, we are com- 
pensated, and more than compensated, in not 
being so much exposed to its corruption. Nor 
did he repine that the duty, so difficult to be 
discharged, as the defence of the reserved powers 
against, apparently, such fearfid odds, had been 
assigned to them. To discharge successfully 
this high duty requires the highest qualities, 
moral and intellectual ; and, should you perform 
it with a zeal and ability in proportion to its 
magnitude, instead of being mere planters, oui 
section will become distinguished for its patriots 
and statesmen. But, on the other hand, if we 
prove unworthy of this high destiny, if we yield 
to the steady encroachment of power, the se- 
verest and most debasing calamity and corrup- 
tion will overspread the land. Evcrj' Southern 
man, true to the interests of his section, and 
faitliful to the duties which Providence has 
allotted him, will be for ever excluded from the 
honors and emoluments of this government, 
which will be reserved for those only who have 
qualified themselv-es, by political prostitution, 
for admission into the Magdalen Asylum." 

In this extract from that remarkable speech, 
the first one in which Mr. Calhoun defended 
nullification and secession in the Senate, and in 
which every word bears the impress of intense 
thought, there is distinctly to be seen his opin- 



ANNO 1833. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



3'^ 



Ot 



ion of the defects of our duplicate form of go- 
vernment (State and federal), and of the remedy 
for those defects. I say, in our form of govern- 
ment ; for his speech had a practical application 
to ourselves, and was a defence, or justification 
of the actual measures of the State he represented. 
And this defect was, the unchecked authority 
of a majorily ; and the remedy was, an au- 
thority in the minoHty to check that majority^ 
and to secede. This clearly was an absolute 
condemnation of the fundamental principle upon 
which the administration of the federal consti- 
tution, and of the State constitutions rested. 
But he did not limit himself to the benefits of 
the veto and of secession, as shown in Roman 
history ; he had recourse to the Jewish for the 
same purpose — and found it — not in a veto in 
each of the twelve tribes, but in the right of 
secession ; and found it, not in the minority, but 
the majority, in the reign of Jeroboam, when 
ten tribes seceded. That example is thus intro- 
duced : 

" Among the few exceptions in the Asiatic 
nations, the government of the twelve tribes of 
Israel, in its early period, was the most striking. 
Their government, at first, was a mere confedera- 
tion, without any central power, till a military 
chieftain, with the title of king, was placed at 
its head, without, however, merging the original 
organization of the twelve distinct tribes. This 
was the commencement of that central action 
among that peculiar people, which, in three 
generations, terminated in a permanent division 
of their tribes. It is impossible even for a care- 
less reader to peruse the history of that event 
without being forcibly struck with the analogy 
in the causes which led to their separation, and 
those which now threaten us with a similar 
calamity. With the estabhshmeut of the central 
power in the king commenced a system of tax- 
ation, which, under king Solomon, was greatly 
increased, to defray the expense of rearing the 
temple, of enlarging and embellishing Jerusalem, 
the seat of the central government, and the other 
profuse expenditures of his magnificent reign. 
Increased taxation was followed by its natural 
consequences — discontent and complaint, which 
before his death began to excite resistance. On 
the succession of his son, Eehoboam, the ten 
tribes, headed by Jeroboam, demanded a re- 
duction of the taxes ; the temple being finished, 
and the embellishment of Jerusalem completed, 
and the money which had been raised for that 
purpose being no longer required, or, in other 
words, the debt being paid, they demanded a 
reduction of the duties — a repeal of the tai'iff. 
The demand was taken under consideration, and, 
after consulting the old men (the counsellors of 
'98), who advised a reduction, he then took the 

Vol. L— 22 



opinion of the younger politicians, who had since 
grown up, and knew not the doctrines of their 
fathers. He hearkened unto their counsel, and 
refused to make the reduction ; and the secession 
of the ten tribes, under Jeroboam, followed. 
The tribes of Judah and Benjamin, which had 
received the disbursements, alone remained to 
the house of David." 

This example also had a practical application, 
and a squint at the Virginia resolutions of '98- 
'99, and at the military chieftain then at the 
head of our government, with a broad intimation 
of what was to happen if the taxes were not 
reduced ; and that happened to be secession. And 
all this, and the elaborate speech from which it 
is taken, and many others of the same character 
at the same time, was delivered at a time when 
the elections had decided for a reduction of the 
taxes — when a bill in the House was under con- 
sideration for that purpose — and when his own 
" compromise " bill was in a state of concoction, 
and advanced to a stage to assure its final pass- 
ins:. Strong must have been Mr. Calhoun's 
desire for his favorite remedy, when he could 
contend for it under such circumstances — under 
circumstances which showed that it could not 
be wanted for the purpose which he then avowed. 
Satisfied of the excellence, and even necessity in 
our system, of this remedy, the next question 
was to create it, or to find it ; create it, by an 
amendment to the constitution ; or find it already 
existing there ; and this latter was done by a 
new reading of the famous Virginia resolutions 
of '98-'99. The right in any State to arrest an 
act of Congress, and to stay it until three fourths 
of the States ordered it to proceed, and with a 
right forcibly to resist if any attempt was made 
in the mean time to enforce it, with the correla- 
tive right of secession and permanent separation, 
were all found by him in these resolutions — the 
third especially, which was read, and conuiiented 
upon for the purpose. Mr. Rives, of Virginia, 
repulsed that interpretation of the act of his 
State, and showed that an appeal to public opin- 
ion was all that was intended ; and quoted the 
message of Governor ^Monroe to show that the 
judgment of the federal court, under one of the 
acts declared to be unconstitutional, was carried 
into efiect in the capital of Virginia with the 
order and tranquillity of any other judgment. 
He said : 

" But, sir, the proceedings of my State, on 
another occasion of far higher importance, have 



\ 



338 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



been so frequently referred to, in the course of 
this debate, as an example to justify the present 
proceedings of South Carolina, that I may be 
excused for sa3'in<i; somethinfj; of them. What, 
then, was the conduct of Virginia, in the me- 
morable era of '98 and '99 ? She solemnly pro- 
tested against the alien and sedition acts, as ' pal- 
pable and alarming infractions of the constitu- 
tion ; ' she communicated that protest to the 
other States of the Union, and earnestly appealed 
to them to unite with her in a like declaration, 
that this deliberate and solemn expression of the 
opinion of the States, as parties to the constitu- 
tional compact, should have its proper effect on 
the councils of the nation, in procuring a revi- 
sion and repeal of the obnoxious acts. This 
was 'the head and front of her offending' — no 
more. The whole object of the proceedings was, 
by the peaceful force of public opinion, embodied 
through the organ of the State legislatures, to 
obtain a repeal of the laws in question, not to 
oppose or arrest their execution, while thej' re- 
mained unrepealed. That this was the true 
spirit and real purpose of the proceeding, is 
abundantly manifested by the whole of the able 
debate which took place in the legislature of the 
State, on the occasion. All the speakers, who 
advocated the resolutions which were finally 
adopted, distinctly placed them on that legiti- 
mate, constitutional ground. I need only refer 
to the emphatic declaration of John Taylor, of 
Caroline, the distinguished mover and able 
champion of the resolutions. He said ' the ap- 
peal was to public opinion ; if that is against 
us, we must yield.' The same sentiment was 
avowed and maintained by every friend of the 
resolutions, throughout the debate. 

"But, sir, the real intentions and pohcy of 
Viipnia were proved, not by declarations and 
speeches merely, but by facts. If there ever 
was a law odious to a whole people, by its 
daring violation of the fundamental guaranties 
of public liberty, the freedom of speech and free- 
dom of the press, it was the sedition law to the 
people of Virginia. Yet, amid all this indignant 
dissatisfaction, after the solemn protest of the 
legislature, in '98, and the renewal of that pro- 
test, in '99, this most odious and arbitrary law 
was peaceably carried into execution, in the 
capital of the State, by the prosecution and pun- 
ishment of Callender, who was fined and im- 
prisoned for daring to canvass the conduct of 
our public men (as Ljon and Cooper had been 
elsewhere), and was still actually imprisoned, 
when the legislature assembled, in December, 
1800. Notwithstanding the excited sensibility 
of the public mind, no popular tumult, no legis- 
lative interference, disturbed, in any manner, the 
full and peaceable execution of the law. The 
Senate will excuse me, I trust, for calling their 
attention to a most forcible commentary on the 
true character of the Virginia proceedings of '98 
and '99 (as illustrated in this transaction), which 
was contained in the official communication of 
Mr. Monroe, then Governor of the State, to the 



legislature, at its assembling, in December, 1800. 
After referring to the distribution which had 
been ordered to be made among the people, of 
Mr. Madison's celebrated report, of '99, he says : 
' In connection with this subject, it is proper to 
add, that, since your last session, the sedition 
law, one of the acts complained of, has been car- 
ried into effect, in this commonwealth, by the 
decision of a federal court. I notice this event, 
not with a view of censuring or criticising it. 
The transaction has gone to the world, and the 
impartial will judge of it as it deserves. I no- 
tice it for the purpose of remarking that the 
decision was executed with the same order and 
tranquil submission, on the part of the people, 
as could have been shown by them, on a similar 
occasion, to any the most necessary, constitu- 
tional, and popular acts of the government.' " 

Mr. Webster, in denying the derivation of nul- 
lification and secession from the constitution, 
said : 

" The constitution does not provide for events 
which must be preceded by its own destruction. 
Secession, therefore, since it must bring these 
consequences with it, is revolutionary. And 
nullification is equally revolutionary. What is 
revolution ? Whj^, sir, that is revolution which 
overturns, or controls, or successfully resists the 
existing public authority ; that which arrests 
the exercise of the siipreme power ; that which 
introduces a new paramount authority into the 
rule of the state. Now, sir, this is the precise 
object of nuUification. It attempts to supersede 
the supreme legislative authority. It arrests 
the arm of the Executive Magistrate. It inter- 
rupts the exercise of the accustomed judicial 
power. Under the name of an ordinance, it de- 
clares null and void, within the State, all the 
revenue laws of the United States. Is not this 
revolutionary ? Sir, so soon as this ordinance 
shall be carried into effect, a revolution will have 
commenced in South Carohna. She will have 
thrown off" the authority to which her citizens 
have, heretofore, been subject. She will have 
declared her own opinions and her own will to 
be above the laws, and above the power of those 
who are intrusted with their administration. 
If she makes good these declarations, she is re- 
volutionized. As to her, it is as distinctly a 
change of the supreme power as the American 
Revolution, of 1770. That revolution did not 
subvert government, in all its forms. It did not 
subvert local laws and municipal administra- 
tions. It only threw off the dominion of a power 
claiming to be superior, and to have a right, in 
many important respects, to exercise legislative 
authority. Thinking this authority to have 
been usurped or abused, the American colonies, 
now the United States, bade it defiance, and 
freed themselves from it, by means of a revolu- 
tion. But that revolution left them with their 
own municipal laws still, and the forijis of local 
govenunent. If Carohna now shall effectually 



ANNO 1833. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESmENT. 



339 



resist the laws of Congress — if she shall be her 
own judge, take her remedy into her own hands, 
obey the laws of the Union when she pleases, 
and disobey tliem when she jileases — she will 
relieve herself from a paramount power, as dis- 
tinctly as did the American colonies, in 1776. 
In other words, she will achieve, as to herself, a 
revolution." 

The speaker then proceeded to show what 
nullification was, as reduced to practice in the 
ordinance, and other proceedings of South Caro- 
lina ; and said : 

" But, sir, while practical nullification in 
South Carolina would be, as to herself, actual 
and distinct revolution, its necessary tendency 
must also be to spread revolution, and to break 
up the constitution, as to all the other States. 
It strikes a deadly blow at the vital principle of 
the whole Union. To allow State resistance to 
the laws of Congress to be rightful and proper, 
to admit nullification in some States, and yet 
not expect to see a dismemberment of the en- 
tire government, appears to me the wildest illu- 
sion and the most extravagant folly. The gen- 
tleman seems not conscious of the direction or 
the rapidity of his own course. The current of 
his opinions sweeps him along, he knows not 
whither. To begin with nullification, with the 
avowed intent, nevertheless, not to proceed to 
secession, dismemberment, and general revolu- 
tion, is as if one were to take the plunge of 
Niagara, and cry out that he would stop half- 
way down. In the one case, as in the other, 
the rash adventurer must go to the bottom of 
the dark abyss below, were it not that that 
abyss has no discovered bottom. 

" Nullification, if successful, arrests the power 
of the law, absolves citizens from their duty, 
subverts the foundation both of protection and 
obedience, dispenses with oaths and obligations 
of allegiance, and elevates another authority to 
supreme command. Is not this revolution ? 
And it raises to supreme command four-and- 
twenty distinct powers, each professing to be 
under a general government, and yet each set- 
ting its laws at defiance at pleasure. Is not 
this anarchy, as well as revolution ? Sir, the 
constitution of the Umted States was received 
as a whole, and for the whole country. Kit 
cannot stand altogether, it cannot stand in 
parts ; and, if the laws cannot be executed 
every where, they cannot long be executed any 
where. The gentleman very well knows that 
all duties and imposts must be uniform through- 
out the country. He knows that we camiot 
have one rule or one law for South Carolina, 
and another for other States. He must see, 
therefore, and does see — every man sees — that 
the only alternative is a repeal of the laws 
throughout the whole Union, or their execution 
in Carolina as well as elsewhere. And this re- 
peal is demanded, because a single State inter- 
poses her vetOj and threatens resistance ! The 



result of the gentleman's opinions, or rather the 
very text of his doctrine, is, that no act of Con- 
gress can bind all the States, the constitutionali- 
ty of which is not admitted by all ; or, in other 
words, that no single State is bound, against its 
own dissent, by a law of imposts. This was 
precisely the evil experienced under the old 
confederation, and for remedy of which this 
constitution was adopted. The leading object 
in estabUshing this government, an object forced 
on the country, by the condition of the times, 
and the absolute necessity of the law, was to 
give to Congress power to lay and collect im- 
posts without the consent of particular States. 
The revolutionary debt remained unpaid; the 
national treasury was bankrupt ; the country 
was destitute of credit ; Congress issued its 
requisitions on the States, and the States neg- 
lected them ; there was no power of coercion 
but war; Congress could not lay imposts, or 
other taxes, by its own authority ; the whole 
general government, therefore, was little more 
than a name. The articles of confederation, as 
to purposes of revenue and finance, were nearly 
a dead letter. The country sought to escape 
from this condition, at once feeble and disgrace- 
ful, by constituting a government which should 
have power of itself to lay duties and taxes, and 
to pay the public debt, and provide for the gen- 
eral welfare ; and to lay these duties and taxes 
in all the States, without asking the consent 
of the State goverments. This was the very 
power on which the new constitution was to de- 
pend for all its ability to do good ; and, without 
it, it can be no government, now or at any time. 
Yet, sir, it is precisely against this power, so 
absolutely indispensable to the very being of 
the government, that South Carolina directs her 
ordinance. She attacks the government in its 
authority to raise revenue, the very mainspring 
of the whole system ; and, if she succeed, every 
movement of that system must inevitably cease. 
It is of no avail that she declares that she does 
not resist the law as a revenue law, but as a 
law for protecting manufactures. It is a reve- 
nue law ; it is the very law by force of which 
the revenue is collected ; if it be arrested in any 
State, the revenue ceases in that State ; it is, in 
a word, the sole reliance of the government for 
the means of maintaining itself and performing 
its duties." 

Mr. Webster condensed into four brief and 
pointed propositions his opinion of the nature 
of our federal government, as being a Union 
in contradistinction to a League, and as acting 
upon INDIVIDUALS in contradistinction to States, 
and as being, in these features discriminated 
from the old confederation. 

" 1. That the constitution of the United States 
is not a league, confederacy, or compact, between 
the people of the several States in their sove- 
reign capacities j but a government proper, 



340 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



founded on the adoption of the people, and 
creatine: direct relations between itself and in- 
dividuals. 

'• 2. That no State authority has power to dis- 
solve these relations ; that nothing can dissolve 
them but revolution ; and that, consequently, 
there can be no such thing as secession without 
revolution. 

" 3. That there is a supreme law, consisting 
of the constitution of the United States, acts of 
Congress passed in pursuance of it, and trea- 
ties ; and that, in cases not capable of assuming 
the character of a suit in law or equity. Con- 
gress must judge of, and finally interpret, this 
supreme law, so often as it has occasion to pass 
acts of legislation ; and, in cases capable of as- 
suming, and actually assuming, the character of 
a suit,"the Supreme Court of the United States 
is the final interpreter. 

" 4. That an attempt by a State to abrogate, 
annul, or nullify an act of Congress, or to arrest 
its operation within her limits, on the ground 
that, in her opinion, such law is unconstitu- 
tional, is a direct usurpation on the just powers 
of the general government, and on the equal 
rights of other States ; a plain violation of the 
constitution, and a proceeding essentially revo- 
lutionary in its character and tendency." 

Mr. "Webster concluded his speech, an elabo- 
rate and able one, in Avhich he appeared in the 
high character of patriot still more than that of 
orator, in which he intimated that some other 
cause, besides the alleged one, must be at the 
bottom of this desire for secession. He was 
exphcit that the world could hardly beheve in 
such a reason, and that we ourselves who hear 
and see all that is said and done, could not be- 
lieve it. He concluded thus : 

" Sir, the woi-ld will scarcely believe that this 
wkole controversy, and all the desperate mea- 
SBres which its support requires, have no other 
foundation than a diiierence of opinion, upon a 
provision of the constitution, between a majori- 
ty of the people of South Carolina, on one side, 
and a vast majority of the whole people of the 
United States on the other. It will not crecht 
the fact, it will not admit the possibility, that, 
in an enlightened age, in a free, popular repub- 
lic, under a government where the people gov- 
ern, as they must always govern, under such 
systems, by majorities, at a time of unprece- 
dented happiness, without practical oppression, 
without evils, such as may not only be pretend- 
ed, but felt and experienced ; evils not slight or 
temporary, but deep, permanent, and intolera- 
ble ; a single State should rush into conllict 
with all the rest, attempt to put down tlie 
power of the Union by her own laws, and to 
support those laws by her military power, and 
thus break up and destroy the world's last 
hope. And well the world may be incredulous. 



TVe, who hear and see it, can ourselves hardly 
yet believe it. Even after all that had preced- 
ed it, this ordinance struck the country with 
amazement. It was incredible and inconceiva- 
ble, that South Carolina should thus plunge 
headlong into resistance to the laws, on a mat- 
ter of opinion, and on a question in which the 
preponderance of opinion, both of the present 
day and of all past time, was so overwhelming- 
ly against her. The ordinance declares that 
Congress has exceeded its just power, by laying 
duties on imports, intended for the protection 
of manufactures. This is the opinion of South 
Carolina ; and on the strength of that opinion 
she nullifies the laws. Yet has the rest of the 
country no right to its opinions also 1 Is one 
State to sit sole arbitress ? She maintains that 
those laws are plain, deliberate, and palpable 
violations of the constitution ; that she has a 
sovereign right to decide this matter ; and, that, 
having so decided, she is authorized to resist 
their execution, by her own sovereign power ; 
and she declares that she will resist it, though 
such resistance should shatter the Union into 
atoms." 

Mr. Davis, of Massachusetts, had been still 
more exphcit, in the expression of the belief 
already given (in the extract from his speech 
contained in this work), that the discontent in 
South Carolma had a root deeper than that of 
the tariff; and General Jackson intimated the 
same thing in his message to the two Houses on 
the South Carolina proceedings, and in which 
he alluded to the ambitious and personal feelings 
which might be involved in them. Certainly it 
was absolutely incomprehensible that this doc- 
trine of nullification and secession, prefigured in 
the Roman secession to the sacred mount, and 
the Jewish disruption of the twelve tribes, should 
be thus enforced, and impressed, for that cause 
of the tariff alone ; when, to say nothing of the 
intention of the President, the Congress and the 
country to reduce it, Mr. Calhoun himself had 
provided for its reduction, satisfactorily to him- 
self, in the act called a " compromise ; " to which 
he was a full contracting party. It was impos- 
sible to believe in the soleness of that reason, in 
the presence of circumsttmccs which annulled it ; 
and Mr. Calhoun himself, in a part of his speech 
which had been quoted, seemed to reveal a 
glimpse of two others — slavery, about which 
there was at that time no agitation — and the 
prssidency, to which patriotic Southern men 
could not be elected. The glimpse exhibited of 
the first of these causes, was in this sentence : 
" The contest (between the North and the 
South) will, in fact, be a contest between power 



ANNO 1833. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



341 



and liberty^ and such he considered the pre- 
sent; a contest in which the weaker section^ 
with its pecidiar labor, productions and situ- 
ation, has at stake all tJicit is dear to freemen." 
Here is a distinct declaration that there was 
then a contest between the two sections of the 
Union, and that that contest was between power 
and Uberty, in which the freedom and the slave 
property of the South were at stake. This de- 
claration at the time attracted but little atten- 
tion, there being then no sign of a slavery 
agitation ; but to close observers it was an 
ominous revelation of sometliing to come, and an 
apparent laying an anchor to windward for a 
new agitation on a new subject, after the tariff 
was done with. The second intimation which 
he gave out, and which referred to the exclusion 
of the patriotic men of the South from the presi- 
dency was in this sentence : " Every Southern 
man, true to the interests of his section, and 
faithful to the duties lohich Providence has 
allotted him, will he forever excluded from the 
honors and emoluments of this government, 
which will he reserved for those only who have 
qualified themselves, by political py^ostilution, 
for admission into the Magdalen asylum." 
This was bitter ; and while revealing his own 
feelings at the prospect of liis own failure for 
the presidency (which from the brightness of 
the noon-day sun was dimning down to the 
obscurity of dark night), was, at the same time, 
unjust, and contradicted by all history, previous 
and subsequent, of our national elections ; and 
by his own history in connection with them. 
The North had supported Southern men for 
President — a long succession of them — and even 
twice concurred in dropping a Northern Presi- 
dent at the end of a single term, and taking a 
Southern in his place He himself had had 
signal proofs of good will from the North in his 
two elections to the vice-presidency ; in which 
he had been better supported in the North than 
in the South, getting the whole party vote in 
the former while losing part of it in the latter. 
It was evident then, that the protective tariff 
was not the sole, or the main cause of the South 
Carolina discontent ; that nullification and seccs- 
Kion were to continue, though their ostensible 
cause ceased ; that resistance was to continue on 
a new ground, upon the same principle, until a 
ucw and impossible point was attained. This 
was declared by Mr. Calhoun in his place, on the 



day of the passage of the " compromise '' bilL 
and on hearing that the " force bill " had finally 
passed the House of Representatives. He then 
stood up, and spoke thus : 

" He had said, that as far as this subject was 
concerned, he believed that peace and harmony 
would follow. But there is another connected 
with it, which had passed this House, and which 
had just been reported as having passed the other, 
which would prevent the return of quiet. He 
considered the measure to which he referred as 
a virtual repeal of the constitution ; and, in fact, 
worse than a positive and direct repeal ; as it 
would leave the majority without any shackles 
on its power, while the minority, hoping to shel- 
ter itself under its protection, and having still 
some respect left for the insti'ument, would be 
trammelled without being protected by its pro- 
visions. It would be idle to attempt to disguise 
that the bill will be a practical assertion of one 
theory of the constitution against another — the 
theory advocated by the supporters of the bill, 
that ours is a consolidated government, in which 
the States have no rights, and in which, in fact, 
they bear the same relation to the whole ccMn- 
munity as the counties do to the States ; and 
against that view of the constitution which con- 
siders it as a compact formed by the States as 
separate communities, and binding between the 
States, and not between the individual citizens. 
No man of candor, who admitted that our con- 
stitution is a compact, and was formed and is 
binding in the manner he had just stated, but 
must acknowledge that this bill utterly over- 
throws and prostrates the constitution ; and 
that it leaves the government under the control 
of the will of an absolute majority. 

" If the measure be acquiesced in, it will be 
the termination of that long controversy which 
began in the convention, and which has been 
continued under various fortunes until the pre- 
sent day. But it ought not — it will not — it 
cannot be acquiesced in — unless the South is 
dead to the sense of her liberty, and blind to 
those dangers which surround and menace them j 
she never will cease resistance until the act is 
erased from the statute book. To suppose that 
the entire power of the Union may be placed in 
the hands of this government, and that all the 
various interests in this widely extended country 
may be safely placed under the will of an un- 
checked majority, is the extreme of folly and 
madness. The result would be inevitable, that 
power would be exclusively centered in the 
dominant interest north of this river, and that 
all the south of it would be held as subjected 
provinces, to be controlled for the exclusive 
benefit of the stronger section. Such a state of 
things could not endure ; and the constitution 
and liberty of the country would fall in the con- 
test, if permitted to continue. 

" He trusted that that would not be the case, 
but that the advocates of liberty every where, 



342 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



as well in the North as in the South ; that those 
who maintained the doctrines of '98, and the 
sovereignties of the States ; that the republican 
party throughout the country would rally against 
this attempt to establish, by law, doctrines which 
must subvert the principles on vvliich free insti- 
tutions could be maintained." 

Here was a new departure, upon a new point, 
as violent as the former complaint, looking to 
the same remedy, and unfounded and impossible. 
This force bill, which was a repeal of the con- 
stitution, in the eyes of Mr. Calhoun, was a 
mere revival of formerly existing statutes, and 
could have no operation, if resistance to the tariff 
laws ceased. Yet, nullification and secession 
were to proceed until it was erased from the 
statute book ; and all the morbid views of the 
constitution, and of the Virgmia resolutions of 
'98 and '99, were to hold their places in Mr. Cal- 
houn's imagination, and dominate his conduct in 
all his political action, imtil this statute was 
erased. But it is due to many of his friends 
and followers, to say that, while concurring in 
his complaints against the federal government, 
and in his remedies, they dissented from his 
source of derivation of these remedies. He 
fourd them in the constitution, shown to be 
there by the '98-'99 Virginia resolutions; the 
manly sense of McDufSe, and some others, re- 
jected that sophistry, and foimd their justifica- 
tion wholly in the revolutionary right of self- 
defence from mtolerable oppression. 



CHAPTER LXXXV. 

SECRET UISTOKY OF THE " COMPROMISE" OF 1S33. 

, Mb. Calhoun and Mr. Clay were early, and 
long, rival aspirants for the Prcsidenc}', and an- 
tagonistic leaders in opposite political systems; 
and the coalition between them in 1833 was 
only a hollow truce (embittered by the humilia- 
tions to which Mr. Calhoun was subjected in the 
protective features of the " compromise ") and 
only kept alive for a few years by their mutual 
interest with respect to General Jackson and Mr. 
Van Buren. A rupture was foi-eseen by every 
observer ; and in a few years it took place, and 
in open Senate, and in a way to give the key to 
the secret motives which led to that compromise. 



It became a question between them which had 
the upper hand of the other — in their own lan- 
guage — which was master of the other — on that 
occasion. Mr. Calhoun declared that he had 
Mr. Clay down — had him on his back — was his 
master. Mr. Clay retorted : He my master ! I 
would not own him for the meanest of my slaves. 
Of course, there were calls to order about that 
time ; but the question of mastery, and the 
causes which produced the passage of the act, 
were still points of contestation between them, 
and came up for altercation in other forms. ^Ir. 
Calhoun claimed a controling influence for the 
miUtary attitude of South Carolina, and its in- 
timidating effect upon the federal government. 
Mr. Clay ridiculed this idea of intimidation, and 
said the little boys that muster in the streets with 
their tiny wooden swords, had as well pretend 
to terrify the grand army of Bonaparte : and 
afterwards said he would tell how it happened, 
wliich was thus : His friend from Delaware (Mr. 
John M. Clayton), said to him one day — these 
South Carolinians act very badly, but they are 
good fellows, and it is a pity to let Jackson hang 
them. This was after Mr. Clay had brought in 
his bill, and while it lingered without the least 
apparent chance of passing — paralyzed by the 
vehement opposition of the manufacturers : and 
he urged Mr. Clay to take a new move with his 
bill — to get it referred to a committee — and by 
them got into a shape in which it could pass. 
Mr. Clay did so — had the reference made — and 
a committee appointed suitable for the measure 
— some of strong will, and earnest for the bill, 
and some of gentle temperament, inclined to easy 
measures on hard occasions. They were: 
Messrs. Clay, Calhoun, Clayton, Dallas, Grundy, 
Rives. 

This was the movement, and the inducing 
cause on one side : now for the cause on the 
other. Mr. Letcher, a representative from Ken- 
tucky, was the first to conceive an idea of some 
compromise to release South Carolina from her 
position ; and communicated it to Mr. Clay ; 
who received it at first coolly and doubtfully. 
Afterwards, beginning to entertain the idea, he 
mentioned it to Mr. Webster, who repulsed it 
entirely, saying— 'It would be yielding great 
principles to faction; and that the time had 
come to test the strength of the constitution 
and the government." After that he was no 
more consulted. Mr. Clay drew up his bill, and 



ANNO 1833. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



343 



sent it to ^Ir. Calhoun through ]\Ir. Letcher — 
he and Mr. Calhoun not being on speaking terms. 
He objected decidedly to parts of the bill ; and 
said, if Mr. Clay knew his reasons, he certainly 
would yield the objectionable parts. JMr. Letch- 
er undertook to arrange an interview ; — which 
was effected — to take place in Mr. Clay's room. 
The meeting was cold, distant and civil. Mr. 
Clay rose, bowed to his visitor, and asked him 
to take a seat. Mr. Letcher, to relieve the em- 
barrassment, immediately opened the business of 
the interview: which ended without results. 
Mr. Clay remained inflexible, saying that if he 
gave up the parts of the bill objected to, it could 
not be passed ; and that it would be better to 
give it up at once. In the mean time Mr. Let- 
cher had seen the President, and sounded him 
on the subject of a compromise : the President 
answered, he would have no negotiation, and 
would execute the laws. This was told by Mr. 
Letcher to Mr. McDuffie, to go to Mr. Calhoun. 
Soon after, Mr. Letcher found himself required 
to make a direct communication to Mr. Calhoun. 
Mr. Josiah S. Johnson, senator from Louisiana, 
came to his room in the night, after he had gone to 
bed — and informed him of what he hadjust learnt: 
—which was, that General Jackson would ad- 
mit of no further delay, and was determined to 
take at once a decided course with Mr. Calhoun 
(an arrest and trial for high treason being 
understood). Mr. Johnson deemed it of the 
utmost moment that Mr. Calhoun should be 
instantly warned of his danger; and urged Mr. 
Letcher to go and apprise him. He went — found 
Mr.. Calhoun in bed — was admitted to him — in- 
formed him. "He was evidently disturbed." 
Mr. Letcher and Mr. Clay were in constant com- 
munication with Mr. Clayton. 

After the committee had been appointed, Mr. 
Clayton assembled the manuf;icturers, for with- 
out their consent nothing could be done ; and 
in the meeting with them it was resolved to 
pass the bill, provided the Southern senators, 
including the nullifiers. should vote both for the 
amendments which should be proposed, and for 
the passage of the bill itself— the amendments be- 
ing the same afterwards offered in the Senate 
by Mr. Clay, and especially the home valuation 
feature. When these amendments, thus agreed 
upon by the friends of the tariff, were proposed in 
the committee, they were voted down ; and not 
being able to agree upon any thing, the bill was 



carried back to the senate without alteration. 
But Mr. Clayton did not give up. Moved by a 
feehng of concern for those who were in peril, 
and for the state of the country, and for the 
safety of the protective system of which he was 
the decided advocate, he determined to have the 
same amendments, so agreed upon by the friends 
of the tariff and rejected by the committee, 
offered in the Senate ; and, to help Mr. Clay with 
the manufacturers, he put them, into his hands 
to be so offered — notifying Mr. Calhoun and 
Mr. Clay that unless the amendments were 
adopted, and that by the Southern vote, every 
nullilier inclusively, that the bill should not 
pass — that he himself would move to lay it on 
the table. His reasons for making the nul- 
hfication vote a sine qua non both on the 
amendments and on the bill, and for them all, 
separately and collectively, was to cut them off 
from pleading their imconstitutionahty after they 
were passed ; and to make the authors of dis- 
turbance and armed resistance, after resistance, 
parties upon the record to the measures, and 
every part of the measures, which were to pacify 
them. Unless these leaders were thus bound, 
he looked upon any pacification as a hollow truoe, 
to be succeeded by some new disturbance in a 
short time ; and therefore he was peremptory 
with both IMw. Clay and Mr. Calhoun, denounc- 
ing the sacrifice of the bill if his terms were not 
complied with ; and letting them know that he 
had friends enough bound to his support. They 
wished to know the names of the senators who 
were to stand by him in this extreme course — 
which he refused to give ; no doubt restrained 
by an injunction of secrecy, there being many 
men of gentle temperaments who are unwilling 
to commit themselves to a measure until they 
see its issue, that the eclat of success may con- 
secrate what the gloom of defeat would damn. 
Being inexorable in his claims, Mr. Clay and 
Mr. Calhoun agreed to the amendments, and all 
voted for them, one by one, as Mv. Cla}' offered 
them, until it came to the last — that revolting 
measure of the home valuation. As soon as it 
was proposed, Mr. Calhoun and his friends met 
it with violent opposition, declaring it to be 
unconstitutional, and an insurmountable obstacle 
to their votes for the bill if put into it. It was 
then late in the day, a7id the last day but one 
of the session, and Mr. Clayton found himself 
in the predicament which required the execu- 



344 



THIRTY TEARS' VIEW. 



tion of his threat. He executed it, and moved 
to lay it on the table, with the declaration that 
it was to lie there. Mr. Clay went to him and 
besought him to withdraw the motion ; but in 
vain. He remained inflexible ; and the bill then 
appeared to be dead. In *his extremity, the 
Calhoim wing retired to the colonnade behind 
the Vice-President's chair, and held a brief con- 
gultation among themselves : and presently Mr. 
Bibb, of Kentucky, came out, and went to IVIr. 
Clayton and asked him to withdraw his motion 
to give him time to consider the amendment. 
Seeing this sign of yielding, Mr. Clayton with- 
drew his motion — to be renewed if the amend- 
ment was not voted for. A friend of the parties 
immediately moved an adjournment, which was 
carried ; and that night's reflections brought 
them to the conclusion that the amendment 
must be passed ; but still with the belief, that, 
there being enough to pass it without him, Mr. 
(Jalhoun should be spared the humiliation of 
appearing on the record in its favor. This was 
told to Mr. Clayton, who declared it to be im- 
possible — that Mv. Calhoun's vote was indis- 
pensable, as nothing would be considered secured 
by the passage of the bill unless his vote appeared 
for every amendment separately, and for the 
whole bill collectively. When the Senate met, 
and the bill was taken up, it was still unknown 
what he would do ; but his friends fell in, one 
after the other, yielding their objections upon 
dificrent grounds, and giving their assent to this 
most flagrant instance (and that a new one), of 
that protective legislation, against which they 
were then raising troops in South Carolina ! and 
limiting a day, and that a short one, on which 
she was to be, ipso facto, a seccder from the 
Union. Mr. Calhoun remained to the last, and 
only rose when the vote was ready to be taken, 
and prefaced a few remarks with the ver}- notable 
declaration that he had then to " determine " 
which way he would vote. He then declared 
m favor of the amendment, but upon conditions 
which he desired the reporters to note ; and 
which being futile in themselves, only showed 
the desperation of his condition, and the stiite 
of impossibility to which he was reduced. Sev- 
eral senators let him know immediately the 
futility of his conditions ; and without saying 
more, he voted on ayes and noes for the amend- 
ment ; and afterwards for the whole bill. And 
this concluding .scene appears quite correctly 



reported in the authentic debates. And thus 
the question of mastery in this fiimous " com- 
promise," mooted in the Senate by Mr. Clay and 
Mr. Calhoun as a problem between themselves, 
is shown by the inside view of this bit of history, 
to belong to neither of them, but to Mr. John 
M. Clayton, under the instrumentality of Gen. 
Jackson, who, in the presidential election, had 
unhorsed Mr. Clay and all his systems ; and, in 
his determination to execute the laws upon Mr 
Calhoun, had left him without remedj^, except 
in the resource of this "compromise." Upon 
the outside history of this measure which I have 
compiled, like a chronicler, from the documentary 
materials, Mr. Calhoun and Mr. Clay appear as 
master spirits, appeasing the storm which they 
had raised ; on the inside view they appear as 
subaltern agents dominated by the necessities 
of their condition, and providing for themselves 
instead of their country — Mr. Clay, in saving 
the protective policy, and preserving the support 
of the manufacturers ; and IMr. Calhoun, in sav- 
ing himself from the perils of his condition : and 
both, in leaving themselves at liberty to act to- 
gether in future against General Jackson and 
Mr. Van Buren. 



CHAPTEE LXXXTI. 

COMPROMISE LEGISLATION ; AND THE ACT, 80 
CALLED, OF 1833. 

This is a species of legislation which wears a 
misnomer — which has no foundation in the con- 
stitution — and which generally begets more mis- 
chief than it assumes to prevent ; and which, 
nevertheless, is very popular — the name, though 
fictitious, being generally accepted for the reali- 
ty. There are compromises in the constitution, 
founded upon what gives them validity, namely, 
mutual consent ; and they are sacred. All com- 
promises are agreements, made voluntarily by 
independent parties — not imposed by one upon 
another. They may be made by compact — not 
by votes. The majority cannot subject the mi- 
nority to its will, except in the present decision 
— cannot bind future Congresses — cannot claim 
any sanctity for their acts bej'ond that which 
grows out of the circumstance.^ in which they 
originate, and which address themselves to the 



ANIfO 1833. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



345 



moral sense of their successors, and to reasons 
of justice or policy which should exempt an act 
from the inherent fate of all legislation. The 
act of 1820, called the Missouri Compromise, is 
one of the most respectable and intelligible of 
this species of legislation. It composed a na- 
tional controversy, and upon a consideration. 
It divided a great province, and about equal- 
ly, between slaveholding and non-slaveholding 
States. It admitted a State into the Union; 
and that State accepted that admission upon the 
condition of fidelity to that compromise. And 
being founded in the material operation of a line 
drawn upon the earth under an astronomical 
law, subject to no change and open to all obser- 
vation, visible and tangible, it became an object 
susceptible of certainty, both in its breach and 
in its observance. That act is entitled to re- 
spect, especially from the party which imposed 
it upon the other ; and has been respected ; for 
it has remained inviolate for thirty years — 
neither side attempting to break or abolish it — 
each having the advantage of it — and receiving 
all the while, like the first magna charta, many 
confirmations from successive Congresses, and 
from State legislatures. 

The act of 1833, called a " compromise," was 
a breach of all the rules, and all the principles 
of legislation — concocted out of doors, managed 
by politicians dominated by an outside 'it,erest 
— kept a secret — passed by a majority pledged 
to its support, and pledged against any amend- 
ment except from its managers ; — and issuing 
from the conjunction of rival politicians who 
had lately, and long, been in the most violent 
state of legislative as well as political antago- 
nism. It comprised every title necessary to 
ctamp a vicious and reprehensible act — bad in 
the matter — foul in the manner — full of abuse — 
«tnd carried through upon the terrors of some, 
the interests of others, the political calculations 
of many, and the dupery of more ; and all upon 
a plea which was an outrage tfpor representa- 
tive government — upon the actual government 
— and upon the people of the States. That plea 
was, that the elections (presidential and con- 
gressional), had decided the fate of the protec- 
tive system — had condemned it — had sentenced 
it to death — and charged a new Congress with 
the execution of the sentence ; and, therefore, 
that it should be taken out of the hands of tliat 
pew Congress, withdrawn from it before it met 



— and laid away for nine years and a half under 
the sanction of a, so called, compromise — intan- 
gible to the people — safe in its existence during 
all that time ; and trusting to the chapter of ac- 
cidents, and the skill of management, for its 
complete restoration at the end of the term. 
This was an outrage upon popular representa- 
tion — an estoppel upon the popular will — the 
arrest of a judgment which the people had given 
— the usurpation of the rights of ensuing Con- 
gresses. It was the conception of some rival 
politicians who had lately distracted the coun- 
try by their contention, and now undertook to 
compose -t by their conjunction ; and having 
failed in the game of agitation, threw it up for 
the game of pacification ; and, in this new char- 
acter, undertook to settle and regulate the af- 
fairs of their country for a term only half a year 
less than the duration of the siege of Troy ; and 
long enough to cover two presidentir.l elections. 
This was a bold pretension. Rome had existed 
above five hundi od years, and citizens had be- 
come masters of armies, and the people humbled 
to the cry of panem et cir censes — bread and 
the circus — before two or three rivals could go 
together in a corner, and arrange the affairs of 
the republic for five years : now this was done 
among us for double that time, and in the forty- 
fourth year of our age, and by citizens neither 
of whom had headed, though one had raised, an 
army. And now how could this be eflfected, 
and in a country so vast and intelligent ? I 
answer : The inside view which I have given of 
the transaction explains it. It was an operation 
upon the best, as well as upon the worst feelings 
of our nature — upon the patriotic alarms of 
many, the political calculations of others, the 
interested schemes of more, and the proclivity 
of multitudes to be deceived. Some political 
rivals finding tarifi" no longer available for po- 
litical elevation, either in its attack or defence ; 
and, from a ladder to climb on, become a stum- 
bhng-block to fall over, and a pit to foil into, 
agree to lay it aside for the term of two presi- 
dential elections ; upon the pretext of quieting 
the country which they liad been disturbing; 
but in reality to get the crippled hobby out of 
the way, and act in concert against an old foe 
in power, and a new adversary, lately supposed 
to have been killed oil" but now appearing high 
in the political firmament, and verging to its ze- 
nith. That new adversary was Mr. Yan Buren, 



346 



TPIIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



just elected Vice-President, and in the line of 
old precedents for the presidency; and the main 
object to be able to work against him, and for 
themselves, with preservation to the tariff, and 
extrication of Mr. Calhoun. The masses were 
alarmed at the cry of civil war, concerted and 
spread for the purpose of alarm ; and therefore 
ready to hail any scheme of deliverance from 
that calamity. The manufacturers saw their 
advantage in saving their high protecting duties 
from immediate reduction. The friends of Mr. 
Clay believed that the title of pacificator, which 
he was to earn, would win for him a return of 
the glory of the Missouri compromise. Mi: 
Calhoun's friends saw, for him, in any arrange- 
ment, a release from his untenable and perilous 
position. Members of gentle temperaments in 
both Houses, saw relief in middle courses, and 
felt safety in the very word " compromise," no 
matter how fictitious and fallacious. The friends 
of Mr. Van Buren saw his advantage at getting 
the tariff out of his way also ; and General 
Jackson felt a positive relief in being spared 
the dire necessity of enforcing the laws by the 
sword and by criminal prosecutions. All these 
parties united to pass the act ; and after it was 
passed, to praise it ; and so it passed easily, and 
was ushered into life in the midst of thundering 
applause. Only a few of the well-known sena- 
tors voted against it — Mr. Webster, IMr. Dick- 
erson, General Samuel Smith, Mr. Benton. 

My objections to this bill, and its mode of 
being passed, were deep and abiding, and went 
far beyond its own obnoxious provisions, and all 
the transient and temporary considerations con- 
nected with it. As a friend to popular repre- 
sentative government, I could not see, without 
insurmountable repugnance, two citizens set 
themselves up for a power in the State, and 
imdertake to regulate, by their private agree- 
ment (to be invested with the forms of law), 
the public affairs for years to come. I admit no 
man to stand for a power in our country, and to 
assume to be able to save the Union. Its safety 
does not depend upon the bargains of any two 
men. Its safety is in its own constitution — in 
its laws — and in the affections of the people ; 
and all that is wanted in public men is to ad- 
minister the constitution in its integrity, and to 
enforce the laws without fear or affection. A 
compromise made with a State in anns, is a 
capitulation to that State ; and in this light, Mr. 



Calhoun constantly presented the act of 1833 ; 
and if it had emanated from the government, he 
would have been right in his fact, and in his 
inductions; and all discontented States would 
have been justified, so far as successful precedent 
was concerned, in all future interpositions of its 
Jiat to arrest the action of the federal govern- 
ment. But it did not emanate from the govern- 
ment. It (the government) was proceeding 
wisely, justly, constitutionally in settling with 
South Carolina, by removing the cause of her 
real grievance, and by enforcing the laws against 
their violators. It (the constituted government) 
was proceeding regularly in this way, with a 
prospect of a successful issue at the actual ses- 
sion, and a certainty of it at the next one, when 
the whole subject was taken out of its hands by 
an arrangement between a few members. The 
injury was great then, and of permanent e\il 
example. It remitted the government to the 
condition of the old confederation, acting upon 
sovereignties instead of individuals. It violated 
the feature of our Union which discriminated it 
from all confederacies which ever existed, and 
which was wisely and patriotically put into the 
constitution to save it from the fate wliich had 
attended all confederacies, ancient and modern. 
All these previous confederacies in their general, 
or collective capacity, acted upon communities, 
and met organized resistance as often as they 
decreed any thing disagreeable to one of its strong 
members. This opposition could only be sub- 
dued by force ; and the application of force has 
always brought on civil war ; which has ended 
in the destruction of the confederacy. The 
framers of our constitutional Union knew all 
this, and had seen the danger of it in history, 
and felt the danger of it in our confederation ; 
and therefore established a Umon instead of a 
League — to be sovereign and independent within 
its sphere, acting upon persons through its own 
laws and courts, instead of acting on communi- 
ties through persuasion or force. It was the 
crowning wisdom of the new constitution ; and 
the effect of this compromise legislation, was to 
destroy that great feature of our Union — to bring 
the general and State governments into conflict 
— and to substitute a sovereign State for an of- 
fending individual as often as a State chose to 
make the cause of that individual her own. A 
State cannot commit treason, but a citizen can, 
and that against the laws of the United States ; 



ANNO 1833. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



347 



and so, if a citizen commits treason against the 
United States he may (if this interposition be 
admitted), be shielded by a State. Our whole 
frame of government is unhinged when the 
federal government shifts from its foundation, 
and goes to acting upon States instead of indi- 
viduals ; and, therefore, the " compromise," as 
it was called, with South Carolina in 1833 was 
in violation of the great Union principle of our 
government — remitting it to the imbecility of 
the old confederation, giving inducement of the 
Nashville convention of the present year (1850) ; 
and which has only to be followed up to see Ihe 
States of this Union, like those of the Mexican 
republic, issuing their pronunciamientos at 
every discontent ; and bringing the general 
government to a fight, or a capitulation, as 
often as they please. 

I omit all consideration of the minor vices of 
the act — great and flagrant in themselves, but 
subordinate in comparison to the mischiefs done 
to the frame of our government. At any other 
time these vices of matter, and manner, would 
have been crushing to a bill. No bill containing 
a tithe of the vices, crowded into this one, could 
ever have got through Congress before. The 
overthrow of the old revenue principle, that 
duties were to be levied on luxuries, and not on 
necessaries — substitution of universal ad valo- 
I rems to the exclusion of all specific duties — the 
substitution of the home for the foreign valuation 
— the abolition of all discrimination upon articles 
in the imposition of duties — the preposterous 
stipulation against protection, while giving pro- 
tection, and even in new and unheard of forms ; 
all these were flagrant vices of the bill, no one 
of which could ever have been carried through 
in a bill before ; and which perished in this one 
before they arrived at their period of operation. 
The year 1842 was to have been the jubilee of 
all these inventions, and set them all off in their 
career of usefulness ; but that year saw all these 
fine anticipations fail ! saw the high protective 
policy re-estabhshcd, more burthensome than 
ever : but of this hereafter. Then the vices in 
the passage of the bill, being a political, not a 
legislative action — dominated by an outside in- 
terest of manufacturers^rrand openly carried in 
the Senate by a douceur to some men, not in 
"Kendal Green," but Kendal cottou. Yet it 
was received by the country as a deliverance, 
and the ostensible authors of it greeted as public 



benefactors ; and their work declared by legis- 
latures to be sacred and inviolab'e, and every 
citizen doomed to political outlawry that did not 
give in his adhesion, and bind himself to the 
perpetuity of the act. I was one of those who 
refused this adhesion — who continued to speak 
of the act as I thought — and who, in a few years, 
saw it sink into neglect and oblivion — die with- 
out the solace of pity or sorrow — and go into 
the grave without, mourners or witnesses, or a 
stone to mark the place of its interment. 



CHAPTER LXXXVII. 

VIRGINIA EES0LUTI0N8 OF '9S-'99-DI8ABUSED OF 
THEIR SOUTH CAROLINA INTERPRETATION— 1. 
UPON THEIR OWN WORDS— 2. UPON CONTEM 
PORANEOUS INTERPRETATION. 

The debate in the Senate, in 1830, on !Mr. Foot's 
resolutions, has been regarded as the dawn of 
those ideas which, three years later, under the 
name of " nullification," but with the character 
and bearing the seeds of disorganization and 
civil war, agitated and endangered the Union, 
In that debate, Mr. Hayne, as heretofore stated, 
quoted the third clause of the Virginia resolu- 
tions of 1798, as the extent of the doctrines he 
intended to avow. Though Mr. Webster, at the 
time, gave a different and more portentous in- 
terpretation to Mr. Hayne's course of argument, 
I did not believe that Mr. Hayne purposed to use 
those resolutions to any other effect than that 
intended by their authors and adopters ; and 
they, I well knew, never supposed any right in 
a State of the Union, of its own motion, to annul 
an act of Congress, or resist its operation. Soon 
after the discussion of 1830, however, nullifica- 
tion assumed its name, with a clear annunciation 
of its purpose, namely, to maintain an inherent 
right in a State to annul the acts of the federal 
government, and resist their operation, in any 
case in which the State might judge an act of 
Congress to exceed the limits of the constitution. 
And to support this disorganizing doctrine, tho 
resolutions of 1798, were boldly and persever- 
ingly appealed to, and attempted to be wrested 
from their real intent. Nor is this effort yet 
abandoned ; nor can we expect it to be whilst 
nullification still exists, either avowed or covert. 



\Bcj^ 



348 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



The illustrious authorsliip of the Resolutions of 
1798 J the character and reputation of the legis- 
lators who adopted thcni ; their general accept- 
ance by the republican party ; the influence 
they exercised, not only on questions of the day, 
but on the fate of parties, and in shaping the 
government itself, all combine to give them im- 
portance, and a high place in public esteem ; and 
would go far to persuade the country that nulli- 
fication was right, if they were nullification. In 
connection, therefore, with the period and events 
in which nullification had its rise, the necessity 
is imposed of an examination into the scope and 
objects of those resolutions ; and the same rea- 
sons that have made, and make, the partisans 
of nullification so urgent to identify their fal- 
lacies with the resolutions, must make every 
patriot solicitous for the vindication of them and 
their author and adopters from any such afiinity. 
Fortunately, the material is at hand, and 
abundant. The resolutions are vindicated on 
their text alone ; and contemporaneous authen- 
tic interpretation, and the reiterated, earnest — 
even indignant — disclaimers of the illustrious 
author himself, utterly repudiate the intent 
that nullification attempts to impute to them. 
I propose, therefore, to treat them in these three 
aspects : 

I. Vindicated on their text. 

The clause of the resolutions, chiefly relied on 
as countenancing nullification, is the third reso- 
lution of the series, and is as follows : 

" That this assembly doth explicitly aud per- 
emptorily declare that it views the powers of the 
federal government, as resulting from the com- 
pact, to which the States arc parties, as limited 
by the plain sense and intention of the instru- 
ment constituting tliat compact ; and that, in 
case of a deliberate, palpable, and dangerous ex- 
ercise of other powers not granted by the said 
compact, the States, who are the parties thereto, 
have the right, and are in duty bournl, to inter- 
pose for arresting the progress of the evil, and 
for maintaining, within tlieir respective limits, 
the authorities, rights, and liberties appertaining 
to them." 

The right and duty of interposition is cer- 
tainly here claimed for the States, in case of a 
" deliberate, palpable, and dangerous assumption 
of powers, by the federal government ; " but, 
looking alone to the words of the text, it is an 
unreasonable inference, that forcible or nullify- 
ing interposition is meant. The word does not 



import resistance, but rather the contrary ; and 
can only be understood in a hostile sense, when 
the connection in which it is used necessarily 
implies force. Such is not the case in this reso- 
lution ; and no one has a right to suppose that, 
if its authors had intended to assert a principle 
of such transcendent importance, as that the 
States were severally possessed of the right to 
annul an act of Congress, and resist its execu- 
tion, they would not have used words to declare 
that meaning explicitly, or, that they would in- 
timate covertly a doctrine they dared not avow. 

The constitution itself suggests several modes 
of interposition, competent for either the States 
or the people. It provides for the election (by 
a mixed system, popular and State), at brief in- 
tervals, of all the functionaries of the federal 
government ; and hence, the interposition of the 
will of the States and people to effect a change 
of rulers ; hence, of policy. It provides that 
freedom of speech and the press, shall not be 
abridged, which is equivalent to a provision that 
those powerful means be perpetually interposed 
to affect the public conscience and sentiment — 
to counsel and alarm the public servants ; to 
influence public policy — to restrain and remedy 
government abuses. It recognizes the right, 
and provides that it shall not be abridged, of the 
people " to assemble and petition the govern- 
ment for the redress of grievances ; " hence, con- 
templating that there may be grievances on the 
part of the government, and suggesting a means 
of meeting and overcoming them. Finally, it 
provides that, on the application of a designated 
proportion of the States, Congress shall cause a 
convention to be called, to provide, in the con- 
stitution itself, should it be judged necessary, 
additional securities to the States and the peo- 
ple, and additional restraints on the govern- 
ment. 

To act on the sentiments of the country 
then ; to bring to their aid the potent engines 
of the press aud public harangues ; to move 
the people to petition and remonstrance against 
the obnoxious measures ; to draw the attention 
of other States to the abuses complained of, and 
to the latitudinous construction the federal au- 
thorities were giving to their powers ; and thus 
bring those States, in like manner, to act on 
their senators and representatives, and on the 
public voice, so as to produce an immediate 
remedy, or to co-operate in calling a convention 



ANNO 1833. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



349 



to provide further securities — one or both ; these 
alone are the modes of " interposition " the Vir- 
ginia resolutions of 1798 contemplated ; all they 
professed ; all they attempted ; all that the re- 
solutions, or their history, warrant to be im- 
puted to them. These modes of interposition 
are all consistent with peace and order ; with 
obedience to the laws, and respect to the law- 
ful authorities; the very means, as was well 
argued by the supporters of the resolutions, 
to prevent civil strife, insubordination, or revo- 
lution ; in all respects, the antipodes of nulli- 
fication. 

To enlarge somewhat on the force of the 
words of the resolutions: The right and duty 
of " the States" to interpose, certainly does not 
mean the right of "a State" to nullify and set at 
nought. The States— less than the whole num- 
ber — have a right to interpose, secured, as al- 
ready shown, in the constitution ; and this, not 
only persuasively, but peremptorily ; to compel 
the action they may desire ; and it is demon- 
strable, that it was this constitutional provision 
that the Virginia legislature had in mind, as a 
last resort. The resolutions do not speak any 
where of the right of a State ; but use the plural 
number, States. Virginia exercises the right 
that pertains to a State — all the right that, in 
the premises, she pretends to — in passing the 
resolutions, declaring her views, and mviting the 
like action of her co-States. Instead, therefore, 
of the resolutions being identical with nullifi- 
cation, the two doctrines are not merely hostile, 
but exactly opposites ; the sum of the Virginia 
doctrine being, that it belongs to a State to 
take, as Virginia does in this instance, the initia- 
tive in impeaching any objectionable action of 
the federal government, and to ask her co-States 
to co-operate in procuring the repeal of a law, 
a change of policy, or an amendment of the 
constitution — according as one or the other, or 
all, may be required to remedy the evil com- 
plained of; whereas, nullification claims, that a 
single State may, of its own motion, nullify any 
act of the federal government it objects to, and 
stay its operation, until three fourths of all the 
States come to the aid of the national authority, 
and re-enact the nullified measure. One submits 
to the law, till a majority repeal it, or a conven- 
tion provides a constitutional remedy for it ; the 
other undertakes to annul the law, and suspend 
Hs operation, so long as three fourths of the 



States are not brought into active co-operation 
to declare it valid. The resolutions maintain 
the government in all its functions, only seeking 
to call into use the particular function of repeal 
or amendment: nullification would stop the 
functions of government, and arrest laws indefi- 
nitely ; and is incapable of being brought to ac- 
tual experiment, in a single instance, without a 
subversion of authority, or civil war. To this 
essential, radical, antagonistic degree do the Vir- 
ginia resolutions and the doctrine of nullification 
differ, one from the other ; and thus unjustly 
are the Virginia repubficans, of 1798, accused of 
planting the seeds of dissolution — a " deadly 
poison," as Mr. Madison, himself, emphatically 
calls the doctrine of nullification — in the insti- 
tutions they had so labored to construct. 

II. Upon their contemporaneous interpreta- 
tion. 

The contemporaneous construction of the reso- 
lutions is found in the debates on their adoption ; 
in the responses to them of other State legisla- 
tures ; and in the confirmatory report prepared 
by the same author, and adopted by the Virginia 
general assembly, in January, 1800 ; and by the 
conduct of the State, in the case of Callender. 
And it is remarkable (when we consider the 
uses to which the resolutions have subsequently 
been turned), that, while the friends of the reso- 
lutions nowhere claim more than a declaratory 
right for the legislature, and deny all idea of 
force or resistance, their adversaries, in the heat 
of debate, nor the States which manifested the 
utmost bitterness in their responses, have not 
attributed to the resolutions any doctrine like 
that of nullification. Both in the debates and 
in the State responses, the opponents of the re- 
solutions denounce them as inflamatory, and 
"tending" to produce insubordination, and what- 
ever other evil could then be thought of, con- 
cerning them ; but no one attributes to them 
the absurdity of claiming for the State a right 
to arrest, of its own motion, the operation of the 
acts of Congress. 

The principal speakers, in the Virginia legisla- 
ture, in opposition to the resolutions, were: 
Mr. George Keith Taylor, Mr. Magill, Mr. Brooke, 
Mr. Cowan, Gen. Henry Lee, and Mr. Cureton. 
Nearly the whole debate turned, not on the ab- 
stract propriety or expediency of such resolu- 
tions, on the question whether the acts of Con- 



350 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW, 



gress, which were specially complained of, were, 
in fact, unconstitutional. It was admitted, in- 
deed, by Gen. Lee, who spoke elaborately and 
argumcntatively against the resolutions, that, if 
the acts were unconstitutional, it was " proper 
to interfere ; " but the extreme notions of the 
powers of the federal government that then 
prevailed in the federal party, led them to con- 
tend that those powers extended to the acts in 
question, though, at this day, they are univer- 
sally acknowledged to be out of the pale of fede- 
ral legislation. Beyond the discussion of this 
point, and one or two others not pertinent to 
the present matter, the speakers dwelt only on 
the supposed " tendency " of such declarations 
to excite the people to insubordination and non- 
submission to the law. 

Mr. George K. Taylor complained at the com- 
mencement of his speech, that the resolutions 
" contained a declaration, not of opinion, but of 
fact ; " and he apprehended that " the conse- 
quences of pursuing the advice of the resolutions 
would be insurrection, confusion, and anarchy ; " 
but the legal effect and character that he at- 
tributed to the resolutions, is shown in his 
concluding sentence, as follows : 

" The members of that Congress which had 
passed those laws, had been, so far as he could 
understand, since generally re-elected ; therefore 
he thought the people of the United States had 
decided in fovor of their constitutionality, and 
that such an attempt as they were then making 
to induce Congress to repeal the laws would 
be nugatory." 

Mr. Brooke thought resolutions " declaring 
laws which had been made by the government 
of the United States to be unconstitutional, null 
and void," were " dangerous and improper ; " 
that they had a " tendency to inflame the pub- 
lic mind ; " to lessen the confidence that ought 
to subsist between the representatives of the 
people in the general government and their 
constituents ; and to " sap the very foundations 
of the government, by producing resistance to 
its laws." But that he did not apprehend the 
resolutions to be, or to intend, any thing beyond 
an expression of sentiment, is evident from his 
further declaration, that he was opposed to the 
resolutions, and equally opposed to any modifi- 
cation of them, that should be " intended as an 
expression of the general sentiment on the sub- 
ject, hecjiiise he conceived 't to be an improper 



mode by which to express the wishes of the 
people of the State on the subject." 

General Lee thought the alien and sedition 
laws " not unconstitutional ; " but if they were 
unconstitutional he •' admitted the right of in- 
terposition on the part of the general assembly." 
But he thought these resolutions showed " in- 
decorum and hostility," and were " not the 
likeliest way to obtain a repeal of the laws." 
He " suspected," in fact, that " the repeal of the 
laws was not the leading point in view," but 
that they " covered" the objects of " promotion 
of disunion and separation of the States." The 
resolutions "struck him as recommending resist- 
ance. They declared the laws null and void. 
Our citizens thus thinking would disobey the 
laws." His plan would be, if he thought the 
laws unconstitutional, to let the people petition, 
or that the legislature come forward at once, 
" with a proposition for amending the doubtful 
parts of the constitution ; " or with a " respectful 
or friendly memorial, urging Congress to repeal 
the laws." But he " admitted " the only right 
which the resolutions assert for the State, 
namely, the right " to interpose." The remarks 
of the other opponents to the resolutions were 
to the same effect. 

On behalf of the resolutions, the principal 
speakers were, Mr. John Taylor, of Caroline, 
who had introduced them, Mr. Ruffin, ]\Ir. Mer- 
cer, Mr. Pope, Mr. Foushee, Mr. Daniel, Mr. 
Peter Johnston, Mr. Giles, Mr. James Barbour. 

They obviated the objection of the speakers 
on the other side, that the resolutions " contained 
a declaration, not of opinion, but of fact," by 
striking out the words which, in the original 
draft, declared the acts in question to be " null, 
void, and of no force or effect ; " so as to make 
it manifest, as the advocates of the resolutions 
maintained, that they intended nothing beyond 
an expression of sentiment. They obviated 
another objection which appeared in the original 
draft, which asserted the States alone to be the 
parties to the constitution, by striking out the 
word "alone." They thoroughly and successful- 
ly combated both the "suspicion" that they hid 
any ulterior object of dissension or disunion, and 
the "apprehension" that the resolutions would 
encourage insubordination among the people. 
They acceded to and affirmed, that their object 
was to obtain a repeal of tlie oifensive measures ; 
that the resolutions might ultimately lead to a 



ANNO 1833. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



351 



convention for amending the constitution, and 
that they were intended both to express and to 
affect public opinion ; but nothing more. 
Says Mr. Taylor, of Caroline : 

" If Congress should, as was certainly possible, 
legislate unconstitutionally, it was evident that 
in theory they have done wrong, and it only 
remained to consider whether the constitution 
is so defective as to have established limitations 
and reservations, without the means of enforcing 
them, in a mode by which they could be made 
practically useful. Suppose a clashing of opin- 
ion should exist between Congress and the 
States, respecting the true limits of their consti- 
tutional territories, it was easy to see, that if 
the right of decision had been vested in either 
party, that party, deciding in the spirit of party, 
would inevitably have swallowed up the other. 
The constitution must not only have foreseen 
the possibility of such a clashing, but also the 
consequence of a preference on either side as 
to its construction. And out of this foresight 
must have arisen the fifth article, by which two 
thu'ds of Congress may call upon the States for 
an explanation of any such controversy as the 
present ; and thus correct an erroneous construc- 
tion of its own acts by a minority of the States, 
whilst two thirds of the States are also allowed 
to compel Congress to call a convention, in 
case so many should think an amendment neces- 
sary for the purpose of checking the unconsti- 
tutional acts of that body Congress 

is the creature of the States and the people •, but 
neither the States nor the people are the creatures 
of Congress. It would be eminently absurd, 
that the creature should exclusively construe 
the instrument of its own existence ; and there- 
fore this construction was reserved indiscrimi- 
nately to one or the other of those powers, of 
which Congress was the joint work ; namely, 
to the people whenever a convention was re- 
sorted to, or to the States whenever the operation 
should be carried on by three fourths." 

" Mr. Taylor then proceeded to apply these 
obsei-vations to the threats of war, and the 
apprehension of civil commotion, ' towards which 
the resolutions were said to have a tendencj^' 
Are the republicans, said he, possessed of fleets 
and armies 1 If not, to what could they appeal 
for defence and support ? To nothing, except 
public opinion. If that should be against them, 
they must yield; if for them, did gentlemen 
mean to say, that public Avill should be assailed 
by force? .... And against a State 
which was pursuing the only possible and or- 
dinary mode of ascertaining the opinion of two 
thirds of the States, by declaring its own and 
asking theirs ? " 

" He observed that the resolutions had been ob- 
jected to, as couched in language too strong and 
offensive ; whilst it had also been said on the same 
side, that if the laws were unconstitutional, the 
people ought to fly to arms and resist them. To 



this he replied that he was not surprised to hear 
the enemies of the resolutions recommending 
measures which were either feeble or rash. Tim- 
idity only served to invite a repetition of injury, 
whilst an unconstitutional resort to arms would 
not only justly exasperate all good men, but 
invite those who differed from the friends of the 
resolutions to the same appeal, and produce a 
civil war. Hence, those who wished to preserve 
the peace, as well as the constitution, had re- 
jected both alternatives, and chosen the middle 
way. They had uttered what they conceived to 
be truth, and they had pursued a system which 
was only an appeal to public opinion ; because 
that appeal was warranted by the constitution 
and by principle." 

Mr. Mercer, in reply to Mr. G. K. Taylor, 

said". 

" The gentleman from Prince George had told 
the committee that the resolutions were cal- 
culated to rouse the people to resistance, to 
excite the people of Virginia against the federal 
government. Mr. Mercer did not see how 
such consequences could result from their adop- 
tion. They contained nothing more than the 
sentiment which the people in many parts of 
the State had expressed, and which had been 
conve3^ed to the legislature in their memorials 
and resolutions then lying on the table. He 
would venture to say that an attention to the 
resolutions from the committee would prove 
that the qualities attempted to be attached to 
them by the gentleman could not be found." 

" The right of the State government to inter- 
fere in the manner proposed by the resolutions, 
Mr. Mercer contended was clear to his mind. 

The State believed some of its 

rights had been invaded by the late acts of the 
general government, and proposed a remedy 
whereby to obtain a repeal of them. The plan 
contained in the resolutions appeared to Mr. 
Mercer the most advisable. Force was not 

thought of by any one The States 

were equally concerned, as their rights had 
been equally invaded ; and nothing seemed more 
likely to produce a temper in Congress for a 
repeal." 

"The object (of the friends of the resolutions), 
in addressing the States, is to obtain a similar 
declaration of opinion, with respect to several 
late acts of the general government, .... 
and thereby to obtain a repeal." 

Mr. Barbour, likewise, in reply to Mr. G. K. 

Taylor, said : 

" The gentleman from Prince George had re- 
marked that those resolutions invited the people 
to insurrection and to arms ; but, if he could 
conceive that the consequences foretold would 
grow out of the measure, he would become its 

bitterest enemy." The resolutions 

were " addressed, not to the people but to the 



352 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



sister States ; praying, in a pacific way, their 
co-operation, in arresting the tendency and effect 
of unconstitutional laws. 

" For his part, he was for using no violence. 
It was the peculiar blessing of the American 
people to have redress within their reach, b}^ 
constitutional and peaceful means." 

On the same point, Mr. Daniel spoke as fol- 
lows : 

" If the other States think, with this, that the 
laws are unconstitutional, the laws will be re- 
pealed, and the constitutional question will be 
settled by this declaration of a majority of the 

States." " If, on the contrary, a 

sufficient majority of the States should declare 
their opinion, that the constitution gave Con- 
gress authority to pass these laws, the constitu- 
tional question would still be settled ; but an 
attempt might be made so to amend the consti- 
tution as to take from Congress this authority." 

And, finally, Mr. Taylor of Caroline, in clos- 
ing the debate, and in explanation of his former 
remarks in respect to calling a convention, said : 

" lie would explain, in a few words, what he 
had before said. That the plan proposed by the 
resolutions would not eventuate in war, but 
might in a convention. He did not admit, or 
contemplate, that a convention would be called. 
He onl}' said, that if Congress, upon being ad- 
dressed to have these laws repealed, should per- 
sist, they might, by a concurrence of three 
fourths of the States, be compelled to call a con- 
vention." 

It is seen, then, by these extracts, that the 
opposers of the resolutions did not charge upon 
them, nor their sujjporters in any manner con- 
tend for, any principle like that of nullification ; 
that, on the contrary, the supporters of the re- 
solutions, so far from the absurd proposition 
that each State could, for itself, annul the acts 
of Congress, and to that extent stop the opera- 
tion of the federal government, they did not re- 
cognize that power in a majority of the States, 
nor even in all the States together, by any extra- 
constitutional combination or process, or to an- 
nul a law otherwise than through the prescribed 
forms of legislative repeal, or constitutional 
amendment. 

The resolutions were, however, vigorously 
assailed by the federal party throughout the 
Union, especially in the responses of several of 
the States ; and at the ensuing session of the 
Virginia legislature, those State responses were 
sent to a committee, who made an elaborate ex- 
amination of the resolutions, and of the objec- 



tions that had been made to them, concluding 
by a justification of them in all particulars, 
and reiterating their declarations. This re- 
port was adopted by the general assembly, 
and is a part of the contemporaneous and au- 
thentic interpretation of the resolutions. The 
report says : 

" A declaration that proceedings of the federal 
government are not warranted by the constitu- 
tion, is a novelty neither among the citizens, 
nor among the legislatures of the States. 

" Nor can the declarations of either, whether 
afiirming or denying the constitutionality of 
measures of the federal government, or whether 
made before or after judicial decisions thereon, 
be deemed, in any point of view, an assump- 
tion of the office of judge. The declarations, 
in such cases, are expressions of opinion, unac- 
companied by any other effect than what they 
may produce on opinion, by exciting reflection. 
The expositions of the judiciary, on the other 
hand, are carried into immediate effect by force." 

Again : " In the example given by the State, 
of declaring the alien and sedition acts to be 
unconstitutional, and of communicating the dec- 
laration to other States, no trace of improper 
means has appeared. And if the other States 
had concurred in making a like declaration, sup- 
ported too, by the numerous applications flow- 
ing immediately from the people, it can scarcely 
be doubted, that these simple means would 
have been as sufficient, as they are unexcep- 
tionable. 

" It is no less certain that other means might 
have been employed, which are strictly within 
the limits of the constitution. The legislatures 
of the States might have made a direct represen- 
tation to Congress, with a view to obtain a re- 
scinding of the two offensive acts ; or they 
might have represented to their respective sena- 
tors in Congress their wish, that two-thirds 
thereof would propose an explanatory amend- 
ment to the constitution ; or two-thirds of 
themselves, if such had been their option, might, 
by an application to Congress, have obtained a 
convention for the same object. 

" These several means, though not equally 
eligible in themselves, nor probably to the 
States, were all constitutionally open for con- 
sideration. And if the general assembly, after 
declaring the two acts to be imconstitutional, 
the first and most obvious proceeding on the 
subject, did not undertake to point out to the 
other States a choice among the farther mea- 
sures that might become necessary and proper, 
the resource will not be misconstrued by liberal 
minds into any culpable imputation." 

These extracts are valuable, not only for 
their positive testimony that the Resolutions 
of 1798, nor their authors, had ever contem- 
plated such a doctrine as Nullification ; but 



ANNO 1833. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



353 



also for their precise definition and enumera- 
tion of the powers wliich, in the premises, 
were really claimed for the States, by the State- 
Rights Hepublicans of that day. They are all 
distinctly laid down : 

1. By a solemn declaration of opinion, calcu- 
lated to operate on the public sentiment, and to 
induce the co-operation of other States in hke 
declarations. 

2. To make a direct representation to Con- 
gress, with a view to obtain a repeal of the acts 
complained of. 

3. To represent to their respective senators 
their wish that two-thirds thereof would pro- 
pose an explanatory amendment to the consti- 
tution. 

4. By the concurrence of two-thirds of the 
States to cause Congress to call a convention 
for the same object. 

These are the entire list of the remedial 
powers suspected, by the Resolutions of 1798, 
and their author and adopters, to exist in the 
States with reference to federal enactments. 
Their variant character from the peremptory 
arrest of acts of Congress proposed by nullifica- 
tion, is well illustrated in the comparison made 
in the report between expressions of opinion 
like those of the resolutions, and the compul- 
sory operation of a judicial process. Supposing, 
says the report, "that it belongs to the judicia- 
ry of the United States, and not the State legis- 
latures, to declare the meaning of the federal 
constitution," yet the declarations either of a 
State, or the people, " whether aflSrming or de- 
nying the constitutionahty of measures of the 
federal government, or whether made before or 
after judicial decisions thereon," cannot "be 
deemed in any point of view an assumption of 
the office of the judge ;" because, " the declara- 
tions in such cases are expressions of opinions 
unaccompanied with any other effect than 
what they may produce on opinion, by excit- 
ing reflection ; " — whereas, " the expositions of 
the judiciary are carried into immediate efiect 
by force." 

The Republicans who adopted the Resolu- 
tions of 1798, never contemplated carrying their 
expositions into eflect by force ; never contemplat- 
ed imparting to them the character of decisions, 
or decrees, or the legal determination of a ques- 
tion ; or of arresting by means of them the ope- 
ration of the acts they condemned. The worst 

Vol. I.— 23 



the enemies of the resolutions undertook to say 
of them, was that they were intemperate, and 
might mislead the people into disobedience of 
the laws. This was successfully combated ; 
but had it been true — had the authors of the 
resolutions even intended any thi^ so base, it 
would still have been nothing comparable to 
the crime of State nullification ; of placing tlie 
State itself in hostile array to the federal gov- 
ernment. Insubordination of individuals may 
usually be overcome by ordinary judicial pro- 
cess, or by the posse of the county where it oc- 
curs ; or even if so extensive as to require the 
peace-officers to be aided by the military, it is 
still but a matter of police, and in our country 
cannot endanger the existence of the govern- 
ment. But the array of a State of the Union 
against the federal authority, is wai — a war be- 
tween powers — both sovereign in their respec- 
tive spheres — and that could only terminate in 
the destruction of the one, or the subjugation 
and abasement of the other. 

But neither the one or the other of these crimes 
was contemplated by the authors of the Resolu- 
tions of 1798. The remedies they claimed a 
right to exercise are all pointed out in the con- 
stitution itself; capable of application without 
disturbing the processes of the law, or suggesting 
an idea of insubordination ; remedies capable of 
saving the liberties of the people and the rights 
of the States, and bringing back the federal gov- 
ernment to its constitutional track, without a 
jar or a check to its machinery ; remedies felt 
to be sufficient, and by crowning experience 
soon proven to be so. It is due to the memory 
of those men and those times that their acts 
should no longer be misconstrued to cover a 
doctrine synonymous with disorganization and 
civil war. The conduct both of the government, 
and the people, on the occasion of these resolu- 
tions, show how far they were from any nuUify- 
ing or insubordinate intention; and this fur- 
nishes us with another convincing proof of the 
contemporaneous interpretation of the resolu- 
tions. So far (as Mr. Madison justly says,)* 
was the State of Virginia from countenancing the 
nullifying doctrine, that the occasion was viewed 
as a proper one for exemplifying its devotion to 
pubhc order, and acquiescence in laws which it 
deemed unconstitutional, while those laws were 
not repealed. The language of the Governor of 
* Selections from the correspondence of Madison, p. 899. 



354 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



the State (Mr. James Monroe), in a letter to Mr. 
Madison, in May and June of 1800, will attest 
the principles and feelings which dictated the 
course pursued on the occasion, and whether the 
people understood the resolutions in any inflam- 
matory or flcious sense. 

On the 15th l\Iay, 1800, Governor Monroe 
writes to Mr. Madison as follows : 

" Besides, I think there is cause to suspect the 
sedition law will be carried into eflect in tliis 
State at the approaching federal court, and I 
ought to be there (Richmond) to aid in prevent- 

mg trouble I think it possible an idea 

may be entertained of opposition, and by means 
whereof the fair prospect of the republican party 
may be overcast. But in this they are deceived, 
as certain characters in Richmond and some 
neighboring counties are already warned of 
their danger, so that an attempt to excite a hot- 
water insurrection will fail." 

And on the 4th of June, 1800, he wrote again, 
as follows : 

" The conduct of the people on this occasion 
was exemplary, and does them the highest 
honor. They seemed aware that the crisis de- 
manded of them a proof of their respect for law 
and order, and resolved to show they were equal 
to It. I am satisfied a different conduct was ex- 
pected from them, for every thing that could 
was done to provoke it. It only remains that 
this business be closed on the part of the people, 
as it has been so far acted ; that the judge, after 
finishing his career, go oft" in peace, without ex- 
periencing the slightest insult from any one; 
and that this will be the case I have no doubt." 

Governor Monroe was correct in the supposi- 
tion that the sedition law would be carried into 
effect, at the approaching session of the federal 
court, and he was also right in the anticipation 
that the people would know how to distinguish 
between the exercise of means to procure the 
repeal of an act, and the exercise of violence to 
stop its operation. The act was enforced ; was 
" carried into eftect " in their midst, and a fel- 
low-citizen incarcerated under its odious pro- 
visions, without a suggestion of ofiBcial or other 
interference. Thus we have the contemporane- 
ous interpretation of the resolutions exemplified 
and set at rest, by the most powerful of argu- 
ments: by the impressive fact, that when the 
public indignation was at its height, subsequent 
to the resolutions of 1798, and subsequent to the 
report of '99, and when both had been univer- 
sally disseminated and read, and they had had, 
with the debates upon them, their entire influ- 



ence on the public mind ; that at that moment, 
the act of Congress against which the resolutions 
were chiefly aimed, and the indignation of the 
community chiefly kindled, was then and there 
carried into execution, and that in a form — the 
unjust deprivation of a citizen of his liberty — 
the most obnoxious to a free people, and the most 
likely to rouse their opposition ; yet quietly and 
peaceably done, by the simple, ordinary process 
of the federal court. This fact, so creditable to 
the people of Virginia, is thus noted in the an- 
nual message of Governor Monroe, to the gene- 
ral assembly, at their next meeting, December, 
1800: 

" In connection with this subject [of the reso- 
lutions] it is proper to add, that, since your last 
session, the sedition law, one of the acts com- 
plained of. has been carried into effect in this 
commonwealth by the decision of a federal court. 
I notice this event, not with a view of censuring 
or criticising it. The transaction has gone to 
the world, and the impartial will judge of it as 
it deserves. I notice it for the purpose of re- 
marking that the decision was executed with the 
same order and tranquil submission on the part 
of the people, as could have been shown by them 
on a similar occasion, to any the most necessary, 
constitutional and popoular acts of the govern- 
ment." 

Governor Monroe then adds his ofiicial and 
personal testimony to the proper intent and 
character of the proceedings of '98, '9, as follows : 

" The general assembly and the good people 
of this commonwealth have acquitted themselves 
to their own consciences, and to their brethren 
in America, in support of a cause which they 
deem a national one, by the stand which they 
made, and the sentiments they expressed of 
these acts of the general government ; but they 
have looked for a change in that respect, to a 
change in the public opinion, which ought to be 
free ; not to measures of violence, discord and 
disunion, which they abhor." 



CHAPTER LXXXVIII. 

VIKGINU RESOLUTIONS OF 1T9S:— DISABUSED OF 
NULLIFICATION, BY THEIR AUTHOR. 

Vindicated upon their words, and upon con- 
temporaneous interpretation, another vindica- 
tion, superfluous in point of proof, but due to 
those whose work has been perverted, awaits 
these resolutions, derived from the words of 



ANNO 1833. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



355 



theii' author (after seeing their perversion) ; and 
to absolve himself and his associates from the 
criminal absurdity attributed to them. 

The contemporary opponents of the Resolu- 
tions of 1798 said all the evil of them, and re- 
presented them in every odious light, that per- 
severing, keen and enlightend opposition could 
discover or imagine. Their defenders success- 
fully repelled the charges then made against 
them ; but could not vindicate them from intend- 
ing the modern doctrine of Nullification, because 
that doctrine had not then been invented, and 
the ingenuity of their adversaries did not conceive 
of that ground of attack. Their venerable au- 
thor, however — the illustrious Madison* — was 
still alive, when this new perversion of his reso- 
lutions had been invented, and when they were 
quoted to sustain doctrines synonymous with 
disorganization and disunion. He was still alive, 
in retirement on his farm. His modesty and 
sense of propriety hindered him from carrying 
the prestige and influence of his name into the 
politics of the day ; but his vigorous mind still 
watched with anxious and patriotic interest the 
current of pubhc affairs, and recoiled vdth in- 
stinctive horror both from the doctrine and at- 
tempted practice of Nullification, and the attempt- 
ed connection of his name and acts with the ori- 
gination of it. He held aloof from the public 
contest; but his sentiments were no secret. His 
private correspondence, embracing in its range 
distinguished men of all sections of the Union 
and of all parties, was full of the subject, from 
the commencement of the Nullification excite- 
ment down to the time of his death : sometimes 
at length, and argumentatively ; sometimes with 
a brief indignant disclaimer; always earnestly 
and unequivocally. Some of these letters, al- 
though private, were published during Mr. 
Madison's lifetime, especially an elaborate one to 
Mr. Edward Everett ; and many of the remain- 
der have recently been put into print, through 
the liberality of a patrotic citizen of Washington 
(Mr. J. Maguire), but only for private distribu- 
tion, and hence not accessible to the public. 
They are a complete storehouse of material, not 

* Mr. Madison did not introduce the Resolutions into the 
Virginia legislature. He was not a member of that body in 
1T98. The resolutions were reported by John Taylor, of Caro- 
line. Mr. Madison, however, was always reputed to bo their 
author, and in a letter to Mr. James Robertson, written in 
March, 1831, ho distinctly avows it. He wa.s botli the author 
and reporter of the Report and Resolution of 1799-lSOO. 



only for the vindication of Madison and his com- 
peers, from the doctrine of Nullification, but oi 
argument and reasons against Nullification and 
every kindred suggestion. 

From the letter to Mr. Everett, published in 
the North American Review, shortly after it 
was written (August, 1830), the following ex- 
tracts are taken : 

" It (the constitution of the United States) was 
formed by the States, that is. by the people in 
each of the States, acting in their highest sove- 
reign capacity ; and formed consequently by the 
same authority which formed the State consti- 
tutions. 

" Being thus derived from the same source as 
the constitutions of the States, it has, within 
each State, the same authority as the constitution 
of the State, and is as much a constitution m the 
strict sense of the term within its prescribed 
sphere, as the constitutions of the States are 
within their respective spheres ; but with this 
obvious and essential difference, that being a 
compact among the States in their highest 
sovereign capacity, and constituting the people 
thereof one people for certain purposes, it cannot 
be altered or annulled at the will of the States 
individually, as the constitution of a State may 
be at its individual will." 

" Nor is the government of the United States, 
created by the constitution, less a government 
in the strict sense of the term, within the sphere 
of its powers, than the governments created by 
the constitutions of the States are, within their 
several spheres. It is like them organized into 
legislative, executive and judiciary departments. 
It operates, like them, directly on persons and 
things. And, like them, it has at command a 
physical force for executing the powers com- 
mitted to it. 

"Between these different constitutional go- 
vernments, the one operating in all the States, 
the others operating separately in each, with the 
aggregate powers of government divided between 
them, it could not escape attention, that contro- 
versies would arise concerning the boundaries 
of jurisdiction." 

'• That to have left a final decision, in such 
cases, to each of the States, could not foil to 
make the constitution and laws of the United 
States different in different States, was obvious, 
and not less obvious that this diversity of inde- 
pendent decisions, must altogether distract tlie 
government of the Union, and speedily put au 
end to the Union itself." 

"To have made the decision under the au- 
thority of the individual States, co-ordinate in 
all cases, with decisions under the authority of 
the United States, would unavoidably produce 
collisions incompatible with the peace of so- 
ciety." 

"To have referred every clashing decision, 
under the two authorities, for a final decision, to 



356 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



the States as parties to the constitution, would 
be attended with delays, with inconveniences 
and expenses, amounting to a prohibition of 
the expedient." 

" To have trusted to ' negotiation ' for adjust- 
ing disputes between the government of the 
United States and the State governments, as 
between independent and separate sovereignties, 
would have lost sight altogether of a constitu- 
tion and government of the Union, and opened 
a direct road, from a failure of that resort, to the 
ultima ratio^ between nations wholly indepen- 
dent of, and alien to each other 

Although the issue of negotiation might some- 
times avoid this extremity, how often would it 
happen among so many States, that an unac- 
commodating spirit in some would render that 
resource imavailing ? " 

After thus stating, with other powerful rea- 
sons, why all those fanciful and impracticable 
theories were rejected in the constitution, the 
letter proceeds to show what the constitution 
does adopt and rely on, " as a security of the 
rights and powers of the States," namely : 

" 1, The responsibility of the senators and 
representatives in the legislature of the United 
States to the legislatures and people of the 
States : 2. The responsibility of the President 
to the people of the United States ; and, 3. The 
liability of the executive and judicial function- 
aries of the United States to impeachment by 
the representatives of the people of the States 
in one branch of the legislature of the United 
States, and trial by the representatives of the 
States, in the other branch." 

And then, in order to mark how complete 
these provisions are for the security of the 
States, shows that while the States thus hold 
the functionaries of the United States to these 
several responsibilities, the State functiona- 
ries, on the other hand, in their appointment 
and responsibility, are " altogether indepen- 
dent of the agency or authority of the United 
States." 

Of the doctrine of nullification, "the expedient 
lately advanced," the letter says : 

" The distinguished names and high authorities 
which appear to have asserted and given a prac- 
tical scope to this doctrine, entitle it to a respect 
which it might be difficult otherwise to feel 
for it." 

" The resolutions of Virginia, as vindicated in 
the report on them, will be found entitled to an 
exposition, showing a consistency in their parts, 
and an inconsistency of the whole with the 
doctrine under consideration." 

" That the legislature could not have intend- 
ed to sanction any such doctrine is to be infer- 



red from the debates in the House of Delegates. 
The tenor of the debates, whicli were ablj^ con- 
ducted, discloses no reference whatever to a 
constitutional right in an individual State to ar- 
rest by force a law of the United States." 

" If any further light on the subject could be 
needed, a very strong one is reflected in the an- 
swers to the resolutions, by the States which 

protested against them Had the 

resolutions been regarded as avowing and main- 
taining a right, in an individual State, to an-est 
by force the execution of a law of the United 
States, it must be presumed that it would have 
been a conspicuous object of their denuncia- 
tion." 

In a letter to Mr. Joseph C. Cabell, May 31, 
1830, Mr. Madison says : 

"I received yesterday yours of the 26th. 
Having never concealed my opinions of the nul- 
Ufying doctrines of South Carolina, I did not 
regard the allusion to it in the Whig, especially 
as the raannei »f the alhision showed that I did 

not obtrude it I have latterly 

been drawn into a correspondence with an ad- 
vocate of the doctrine, which led me to a review 
of it to some extent, and particularly to a vin- 
dication of the proceedings of Virginia in 1798, 
'99, against the misuse made of them. That 
you may see the views I have taken of the aber- 
rations of South Carolina, I enclose j'ou an ex- 
tract." 

And in a letter to Mr. Daniel Webster, writ- 
ten a few days previously, he uses nearly the 
same language ; as also in a letter in February, 
1830, to Mr. Trist. 

To Mr. James Robertson, March 27, 1831, 
Mr. Madison writes as follows : 

" The veil which was orignally over the draft 
of the resolutions offered in 1798 to the Virginia 
Assembly having been long since removed, I 
may say, in answer to your inquiries, that it 
was penned by me." 

" With respect to the terms following the 
term ' unconstitutional,' viz., ' not law, but null, 
void, and of no force or effect,' which were 
stricken out of the seventh resolution, my 
memory cannot say positively whether they 
were or were not in the original draft, and no 
copy of it appears to have been retained. On 
the presumption tliat they were in the draft as 
it went from me, I am confident that the}' nmst 
have been regarded onl}' as giving accumulated 
emphasis to the declaration, that the alien and 
sedition acts had, in the opinion of the assem- 
bly, violated the constitution of the United 
States, and not that the addition of them could 
annul tlie acts or sanction a resistance of them. 
The resolution was expressly declaratory, and, 
proceeding from tlie legislature only, which was 
not even a party to the constitution, could bo 
j declaratory of opinion onlj'." 



ANNO 1833. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



357 



To Joseph C. Cabell, Sept, 



16, 1831 



" I congratulate you on the event which re- 
stores you to the public councils, where your 
services will be valuable, particularly in defend- 
ing the constitution and Union against the false 
doctrines which assail them. That of nullifica- 
tion seems to be generally abandoned in Vir- 
ginia, by those who had most leaning towards 
it. But it still flourishes in the hot-bed where 
it sprung up." 

" I know not whence the idea could proceed 
that I concurred in the doctrine, that although 
a State could not nullify a law of the Union, it 
had a right to secede from the Union. Both 
spring from the same poisonous root." 

To Mr. N. P. Trist, December, 1831 : 

"* I cannot see the advantage of this perse- 
verance of South Carohua in claiming the au- 
thority of the Virginia proceedings in 1798, '99, 
as asserting a right in a single State to nullify 
an act of the United States. Where, indeed, is 
the fairness of attempting to palm on Virginia 
an intention which is contradicted by such a 
variet}^ of contradictory proofs ; which has at 
no intervening period, received the slightest 
countenance from her, and which with one voice 
she now disclaims ?" 

" To view the doctrine in its true character, 
it must be recollected that it asserts a right in a 
single State to stop the execution of a federal 
law, until a convention of the States could be 
brought about by a process requiring an uncer- 
tain time ; and, finally, in the convention, when 
formed, a vote of seven States, if in favor of the 
veto, to give it a prevalence over the vast ma- 
jority of seventeen States. For this prepos- 
terous and anarchical pretension there is not a 
shadow of countenance in the constitution ; and 
well that there is not, for it is certain that, with 
such a deadly poison in it, no constitution could 
be sure of lasting a year." 

To Mr. C. E. Haynes, August 26, 1832 : 

" In the very crippled and feeble state of my 
health, I cannot undertake an extended answer to 
your inquiries, nor should I suppose it necessary 
if you have seen my letter to Mr. Everett, ia 
Aygust, 1830, in which the proceedings of Vir- 
ginia, in 1798-99, were explained, and the novel 
doctrine of nullification adverted to. 

" The distinction is obvious between such 
interpositions on the part of the States against 
unjustifiable acts of the federal government as 
are within the provisions and forms of the con- 
stitution. These provisions and forms certainly 
do not embrace the nullifying process pro- 
claimed in South Carolina, which begins with a 
single State, and ends witli the ascendency of a 
minority of States over a majority; of seven 
over seventeen ; a federal law, during the pro- 
cess, being arrested within the nullifying State ; 
and. if a revenue law. frustrated through all the 
States." 



To Mr. Trist, December 23, 1832: 

" If one State can, at will, withdraw from the 
others, the others can, at will, withdraw from 
her. and turn her nolentein volentcm out of the 
Union. Until of late, there is not a State that 
would have abhorred such a doctrine more than 
South Carolina, or more dreaded an application 
of it to herself. The same may be said of the 
doctrine of nullification which she now preaches as 
the only faith by wliich the Union can be saved." 

In a letter to Mr. Joseph C. Cabell, December 
28, 1832 : 

" It is not probable that (in the adoption of 
the resolutions of 1798), such an idea as the 
South Carolina nuUification had ever entered 
the thoughts of a single member, or even that 
of a citizen of South Carolina herself." 

To Andrew Stevenson, February 4, 1833 : 

" I have received your communication of the 
29th »ltimo. and have read it with much plea- 
sure. It presents the doctrine of nullification 
and secession in lights that must confound, if 
failing to convince their patrons. You have 
done well in rescuing the proceedings of Vir- 
ginia in 1798-'99, from the many misconstruc- 
tions and misapplications of them." 

" Of late, attempts are observed to shelter the 
heresy of secession under the case of expatriation, 
from which it essentially differs. The expatria- 
ting party removes only his person and his mov- 
able property, and does not incommode those 
whom he leaves. A seceding State mutilates 
the domain, and disturbs the whole system from 
which it separates itself. Pushed to the extent 
in which the right is sometimes asserted, it 
might break into fragments every single com- 
munity." 

To Mr. Stevenson, February 10, 1833, in refer- 
ence to the South Carolina nullifying ordinance : 

" I consider a successful resistance to the laws 
as now attempted, if not immediately mortal 
to the Union, as at least a mortal wound to it." 

To " a Friend of the Union and State rights," 
1833: 

"It is not usual to answer communications 
without proper names to them. But the ability 
and motives disclosed in the essays induce me 
to say, in compliance with the wish expressed, 
that I do not consider the proceedings of Vir- 
ginia, in 1798-'99, as countenancing the doctrine 
that a St^atc may, at will, secede from its con- 
stitutional compact with the other States." 

To Mr. Joseph C. Cabell, April 1, 1833 : 

" The attempt to prove me a nuUifier, by a 
misconstruction of the resolutions of 1798-99, 



358 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



though so often and so lately corrected, was, I 
observe, renewed some days ago in the ' Rich- 
mond Whig,' by an inference from an erasure 
in the House of Delegates from one of those 
resolutions, of the words ' are null, void and of 
no effect,' which followed the word ' unconsti- 
tutional.' These words, though synonymous 
with 'unconstitutional,' were alleged by the 
critic to mean nuUitication ; and being, of course, 
ascribed to me, I was, of course, a nullifier. It 
seems not to have occurred, that if the insertion 
of the words could convict me of being a nulli- 
fier, the erasure of them (unanimous, I believe), 
by the legislature, was the strongest of protests 

against the doctrine The vote, in 

that case seems not to have engaged the attention 
due to it. It not merely deprives South Caro- 
lina of the authority of Virginia, on which she 
has relied and exulted so much in support of 
her cause, but turns that authority pointedly 
against her." 

From a memorandum " On Nullification," 
written in 1835-'36 : 

" Although the legislature of Virginia declared, 
at a late session, almost unanimously, that South 
Carohna was not supported in her doctrine of 
nullification by the resolutions of 1798, it ap- 
pears that those resolutions are still appealed 
to as expressly or constructively favoring the 
doctrine." 

" And what is the text in the proceedings of 
Virginia which this spurious doctrine of nullifi- 
cation claims for its patronage ? It is found in 
the third of the resolutions of 1798." 

" Now is there any thing here from which a 
' single ' State can infer a right to arrest or 
annul an act of the general government, which 
it may deem unconstitutional ? So far from it, 
that the obvious and proper inference precludes 
such a right." 

" In a word, the nullifying claims, if reduced 
to practice, instead of being the conservative 
principle of the constitution, would necessarily, 
and it may be said, obviously, be a deadly 
poison." 

" The true question, therefore, is, whether 
there be a ' constitutional ' right in a single State 
to nullify a law of the United States ? We have 
seen the absurdity of such a claim, in its naked 
and suicidal form. Let us turn to it, as modified 
by South Carolina, into a right in ever}' State 
to resist within itself the execution of a federal 
xaw, deemed by it to be unconstitutional, and to 
demand a convention of the States to decide the 
question of constitutionaUty, the annulment of 
the law to continue in the mean time, and to be 
permanent unless three fourths of the States 
concur in overruling the annulment. 

'' Thus, during the temporary nullification of 
the law, the results would be the same as those 
proceeding from an unqualified nullification, and 
the result of a convention might be that seven 
out of twenty-four States might make the tem- 



porary results permanent. It follows, that any 
State which could obtain the concurrence of six 
others, might abrogate any law of the United 
States whatever, and give to the constitution, 
constructively, any shape they pleased, in oppo- 
sition to the construction and will of the other 
.seventeen.* Every feature of the constitution 
might thus be successive!)- changed ; and after 
a scene of unexampled confusion and distraction, 
what had been unanimously agreed to as a 
whole, would not, as a whole, be agreed to by a 
single party." 

To this graphic picture of the disorders which 
even the first stages of nullification would neces- 
sarily produce, drawn when the graphic limner 
was in the eighty-sixth and last year of his life, 
the following warning pages, written only a few 
months earlier, may be properly appended : 

" What more dangerous than niillification, or 
more evident than the progress it continues to 
make, either in its original shape or in the dis- 
guises it assumes ? Nullification has the effect 
of putting powder under the constitution and 
Union, and a match in the hand of every party 
to blow them up, at pleasure. And for its pro- 
gress, hearken to the tone in which it is now 
preached ; cast your eyes on its increasing mi- 
norities in most of the Southern States, without 
a decrease in any one of them. Look at Vir- 
ginia herself, and read in the gazettes, and in 
the proceedings of popular meetings, the figure 
which the anarchical principle now makes, in 
contrast with the scouting reception given to it 
but a short time ago. 

" It is not probable that this oflspring of the 
discontents of South Carolina will ever approach 
success in a majority of the States. But a sus- 
ceptibility of the contagion in the Southern 
States is visible ; and the danger not to be con- 
cealed, that the sympathy arising from known 
causes, and the inculcated impression of a per- 
manent incompatibility of interests between the 
South and the North, may put it in the power 
of popular leaders, aspiring to the highest sta- 
tions, to unite the South, on some critical occa- 
sion, in a course that will end in creating a new 
theatre of great though inferior extent. In 
pursuing this course, the first and most obvious 
step is nullification, the next, secession, and the 
last, a farewell separation, llow near has this 
course been lately exemphfied ! and the danger 
of its recurrence, in the same or some other 
quarter, may be increased by an increase of rest- 
less aspirants, and by the increasing impracti- 

* The above was written wben Uie number of tbe Slates was 
twenty-four. Now, when there are thirty-one States, tlie pro- 
portion would bo eight to twenty-three ! that is, that a single 
State nullifying, the nullification would bold good till a con- 
vention were called, and then if the nullifying State could 
procure seven others to join, the nuUilicalion would becoma 
absolute— the eight Stales overruling tbe twenty-three. 



ANNO 1833. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



359 



cability of retaining in the Union a large and 
cemented section against its will. It may, in- 
deed, happen, that a return of danger from 
abroad, or a revived apprehension of danger at 
home, may aid in binding the States in one poli- 
tical system, or that the geographical and com- 
mercial ligatures may have that effect, or that 
the present discord of interests betvreen the 
North and the South may give way to a less 
diversity in the application of labor, or to the 
mutual advantage of a safe and constant inter- 
change of the different products of labor in dif- 
ferent sections. All this may happen, and with 
the exception of foreign hostility, hoped for. 
But, in the mean time, local prejudices and am- 
bitious leaders may be but too successful in 
finding or creating occasions for the nullifying 
experiment of breaking a more beautiful China 
vase* than the British empire ever was, into 
parts which a miracle only could reunite." 

Incidentally, Mr. Madison, in these letters, 
vindicates also his compeers, Mr. Jefferson and 
Mr, Monroe. In the letter to Mr. Cabell, of 
May 31, 1830, he says : 

" You will see, in vol. iii., page 429, of Mr. 
Jefferson's Correspondence, a letter to W. C. 
Nicholas, proving that he had nothing to do with 
the Kentucky resolutions, of 1799, in which the 
word ' nullification ' is found. The resolutions 
of that State, in 1798, which were drawn by 
him, and have been republished with the pro- 
ceedmgs of Virginia, do not contain this or any 
equivalent word." 

In the letter to Mr. Trist, of December, 1831, 
after developing at some length the inconsisten- 
cies and fatuity of the "nullification preroga- 
tive," Mr. Madison says : 

" Yet this has boldly sought a sanction, under 
the name of Mr. Jefferson, because, in his letter 
to Mr. Cartwright, he held out a convention of 
the States as, with us, a peaceful remedy, in 
cases to be decided in Europe by intestine wars. 
Who can beUeve that Mr. Jefferson referred to 
a convention summoned at the pleasure of a 
single State, with an interregnum during its de- 
liberations ; and, above all, with a rule of deci- 
sion subjecting nearly three fourths to one 
fourth ? No man's creed was more opposed to 
such an inversion of the republican order of 
things." 

In a letter to Mr. Townsend of South Caro- 
lina, December 18, 1831 : 

" You ask ' whether Mr. Jefferson was really 
the author of the Kentuck}-- resolutions, of 
1799;' [in which the word 'nullify' is used 
though not in the sense of South Carolina nul- 
lification.] The inference that he was not is 

• See Franklui's letter to Lord Howe, in 1T76. 



as conclusive as it is obvious, from his letter to 
Col. Wilson Cary Nicholas, of September 5, 
1799, in which he expressly declines, for reasons 
stated, preparing any thing for the legislature 
of that year. 

" That he (Mr. Jefferson) ever asserted a 
right in a single State to arrest the execution 
of an act of Congress — the arrest to be valid 
and permanent, unless reversed by three fourths 
of the States — is countenanced by nothing known 
to have been said or done by him. In his letter 
to Major Cartwright, he refers to a convention 
as a peaceable remedy for conflicting claims of 
power in our compound government ; but, 
whether he alluded to a convention as prescribed 
by the constitution, or brought about by any 
other mode, his respect for the will of majori- 
ties, as the vital principle of republican govern- 
ment, makes it certain that he could not have 
meant a convention in which a minority of seven 
States was to prevail over seventeen, either in 
amending or expounding the constitution." 

In the letter (before quoted) to Mr. Trist, De- 
cember 23, 1832 : 

" It is remarkable how closely the nullifiers, 
who make the name of Mr. Jefferson the pedes- 
tal for their colossal heresy, shut their eyes 
and lips whenever his authority is ever so clearly 
and emphatically against them. You have no- 
ticed what he says in his letters to Monroe and 
Carrington, pages 43 and 302, vol. ii., with re- 
spect to the powers of the old Congress to coerce 
delinquent States, and his reasons for preferring 
for the purpose a naval to a miJitary force ; and, 
moreover, that it was not necessary to find a 
right to coerce in the federal articles, that being 
inherent in the nature of a compact." 

In another letter to Mr. Trist, dated August 
25, 1834 : 

" The letter from Mr. Monroe to Mr. Jeffer- 
son, of which you inclose an extract, is impor- 
tant. I have one from Mr. Monroe, on the same 
occasion, more in detail, and not less emphatic 
in its anti-nuUifying language." 

In the notes " On Nullification," written in 
1835-'6 : 

" The amount of this modified right of nulli- 
fication is, that a single State may arrest the 
operation of a law of the United States, and in- 
stitute a process which is to terminate in tlie 
ascendency of a minority over a large majority. 
And this new-fangled theory is attempted to be 
fathered on Mr. Jefferson, the apostle of repub- 
licanism, and whose own words declare, that 
'acquiescence in the decision of the majority is 
the vital principle of it.' Well may the friends 
of Mr. Jefferson disclaim any sanction to it, or 
to any constitutional right of nullification from 
his opinions." 



360 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



In a paper drawn by Mr. Madison, in Septem- 
ber. 1829, when his anxieties began first to be 
disturbed liy the i)ortentous approach of the 
nullification doctrine, he concludes with this 
earnest admonition, appropriate to the time 
when it was written, and not less so to the pre- 
"sent time, and to posterity : 

" Tn all the views that may be taken of ques- 
tions between the State governments and the 
general government, the awful consequences of 
a final rupture and dissolution of the Union 
should never for a moment be lost sight of. 
Such a prospect must be deprecated — must be 
shuddered at by every friend of his country, to 
liberty, to the happiness of man. For, in the 
event of a dissolution of the Union, an impos- 
sibility of ever renewing it is brought home to 
every mind by the difficulties encountered in es- 
tablishing it. The propensity of all communi- 
ties to divide, when not pressed into a unity by 
external dangers, is a truth well understood. 
There is no instance of a people inhabiting even 
a small island, if remote from foreign danger, 
and sometimes in spite of that pressure, who 
arc not divided into alien, rival, hostile tribes. 
The happy union of these States is a wonder ; 
their constitution a miracle ; their example the 
hope of liberty throughout the world. Wo to 
the ambition that would meditate the destruc- 
tion of either." 

These extracts, voluminous as they are, are 
far from exhausting the abundant material which 
these admirable writings of Mr. Madison contain, 
on the topic of nullification. They come to us, 
for our admonition and guidance, with the so- 
lemnity of a voice from the grave ; and I leave 
them, without comment, to be pondered in the 
hearts of liis countrymen. Notwithstanding 
the advanced age and growing bodily infirmities 
of Mr. Madison, at the time when these letters 
were written, his mind was never more vigorous 
nor more luminous. Every generous mind must 
sympathize ^\^th him, in this necessity, in which 
he felt himself in his extreme age, and when 
done, not only with the public affairs of the 
country, but nearly done with all the affairs of 
the world, to defend himself and associates from 
the attempt to fasten upon him and them, in 
spite of his denials, a criminal and anarchical 
design — wicked in itself, and subversive of the 
government which he had labored so hard to 
found, and utterly destructive to that particular 
feature considered the crowning merit of the 
jonstitution ; and which wise men and patriotic 
had specially devised to save our Union from 
the fate of all leagues. "We sympathize with 



him in such a necessity. We should feel fo, 
any man, in the most ordinary case, to whose 
words a criminal intention should be imputed 
in defiance of his disclaimers ; but, in the case 
of Mr. Madison — a man so modest, so pure, sfl 
just — of such dignity and gravity, both for his 
age, his personal qualities, and the exalted ofBces 
which he had held ; and in a case which went 
to civil war, and to the destruction of a govern- 
ment of which he was one of the most faithful 
and zealous founders — in such a case, an attempt 
to force upon such a man a meaning which he 
disavows, becomes not only outrageous and 
odious, but criminal and impious. And if, after 
the authentic disclaimers which he has made in 
his advanced age, and which are now published, 
any one continues to attribute this heresy to 
him, such a person must be viewed by the pub- 
lic as having a mind that has lost its balance ! 
or, as having a heart void of social duty, and 
fatally bent on a crime, the guilt of which must 
be thro^vn upon the tenants of the tomb — 
speechless, but not helpless ! for, every just man 
must feel their cause his own ! and rush to a 
defence which public duty, private honor, patri- 
otism, filial afiection, and gratitude to benefac- 
tors impose on every man (born wheresoever 
he may have been) that enjoys the blessings of 
the government which their labors gave us. 



CHAPTER LXXXIX. 

THE AUTHORS OWN VIEW OP THE NATURE OF 
OUR GOVERNMENT, AS BEING A UNION IN CON- 
TRADISTINCTION TO A LEAGUE: PRESENTED 
IN A SUBSEQUENT SPEECH ON MISSOURI RESO- 
LUTIONS. 

I DO not discuss these resolutions at this time. 
That discussion is no part of my present object. 
I speak of the pledge which they contain, and 
call it a mistake ; and say, that whatever may 
be the wishes or the opinions of the people of 
INIissouri on the subject of the extension or non- 
extention of slavery to the Territories, they 
have no idea of resisting any act of Congress on 
the subject. They abide the law, when it comes, 
be it what it may, subject to the decision of the 
ballot-box and the judiciary. 

I concur with the people of Missouri in tliis 
view of their duty, and believe it to be thje only 



ANNO 1833. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



361 



course consistent with the terms and intention 
of our constitution, and the only one which can 
save this Union from the fate of all the confed- 
eracies which have successively appeared and 
disappeared in the history of nations. Anarchy 
among the members, and not tyranny in the 
head, has been the rock on which all such con- 
federacies have split. The authors of our present 
form of government knew the danger of this 
rock, and they endeavored to provide agamst it. 
They formed a Union — not a league — a federal 
legislature to act upon persons, not upon States; 
and they provided peaceful remedies for all the 
questions which could arise between the people 
and the government. They provided a federal 
judiciary to execute the federal laws when found 
to be constitutional ; and popular elections to re- 
peal them when found to be bad. They formed a 
government in which the law and the popular will, 
and not the sword, was to decide questions ; and 
they looked upon the first resort to the sword 
for the decision of such questions as the death 
of the Union. 

The old confederation was a league, with a 
legislature acting upon sovereignties, without 
power to enforce its decrees, and without union 
erxcept at the will of the parties. It was power- 
less for government, and a rope of sand for 
union. It was to escape from that helpless and 
tottering government that the present constitu- 
tion was formed ; and no less than ten numbers of 
the federalist — from the tenth to the twentieth 
— were devoted to this defect of the old system, 
and the necessity of the new one. I will read 
some extracts from these numbers — the joint 
product of Hamilton and Madison — to show the 
difference between the league which we abandon- 
ed and the Union which we formed — the dangers 
of the former and the benefits of the latter — that 
it may be seen that the resolutions of the gene- 
ral assembly of Missouri, if carried out to their 
conclusions, carry back this Union to the league 
of the confederation — make it a rope of sand 
and the sword the arbiter between the federal 
head and its members. 

Mr. B. then read as follows : 

" The great and radical vice, in the structure 
of the existing confederation, is in the principle 
of legislation for States or governments, in their 
corporate or collective capacities, and as contra- 
distinguished from the individuals of which they 
consist. Though this principle does not run 



through all the powers delegated to the Union, 
yet it prevades and governs those on which the 
efficacy of the rest depends. The consequence 
of this is, that, though in theory constitutionally 
binding on the members of the Union, yet in 
practice they are mere recommendations, which 
the States observe or disregard at their option. 
Government implies the power of making laws. 
It is essential to the idea of a law that it be at- 
tended with a sanction, or, in other words, a 
penalty or punishment for disobedience. This 
penalty, whatever it may be, can only be inflict- 
ed in two ways — by the agency of the courts 
and ministers of justice, or by military force; by 
the coercion of the magistracy, or by the co- 
ercion of arms. The first kind can evidently 
apply only to men ; the last kind must of ne- 
cessity be employed against bodies politic, or 
communities, or States. It is evident there is 
no process of a court by which their observance 
of the laws can, in the last resort, be enforced. 
Sentences may be denounced against them for 
violations of their duty ; but these sentences can 
only be carried into execution by the sword. In 
an association where the general authority is 
confined to the collective bodies of the commu- 
nities that compose it, every breach of the laws 
must involve a state of war ; and military execu- 
tion must become the only instrument of civil 
obedience. Such a state of things can certainly 
not deserve the name of government, nor would 
any prudent man choose to commit his happi- 
ness to it." 

Of the certam destruction of the Union when 
the sword is once drawn between the members 
of a Union and their head, they speak thus : 

" "When the sword is once drawn, the passions 
of men observe no bounds of moderation. The 
suggestions of wounded pride, the instigations 
of irritated resentment, would be apt to carry 
the States, against which the arms of the Union 
were exerted, to any extremes necessary to 
I avenge the afiront, or to avoid the disgrace of sub- 
mission. The first war of this kind would pro- 
bably terminate in a dissolution of the Union." 

Of the advantage and facility of the working 
of the federal S3'stem, and its peaceful, efficient, 
and harmonious operation — if the federal laws 
are made to operate upon citizens, and not upon 
States — they speak in these terms : 

" But if the execution of the laws of the na- 
tional government should not require the inter* 



362 



THIRTT YEAKS' VIEW. 



vention of the State legislatures; if they were 
to pass into immediate operation upon the citi- 
zens themselves, the particular governments 
could not interrupt their progress without an 
open and violent exertion of unconstitutional 
power. They would be obliged to act, and in 
such manner as would leave no doubt that they 
had encroached on the national rights. An ex- 
periment of tliis nature would always bo hazard- 
ous in the face of a constitution in any degree 
competent to its own defence, and of a people 
enlightened enough to distinguish between a 
legal exercise and an illegal usurpation of au- 
thority. The success of it would require not 
merely a factious majority in the legislature, but 
the concurrence of the courts of justice, and of 
the body of the people. If the judges were not 
embarked in a conspiracy with the legislature, 
they would pronounce the resolutions of such a 
majority to be contrary to the supreme law of 
the land, unconstitutional and void. If the peo- 
ple were not tainted with the spirit of their State 
representatives, they, as the natural guardians 
of the constitution, would throw their weight 
into the national scale, and give it a decided 
preponderance in the contest." 

Of the ruinous effects of these civil wars 
among the members of a republican confedera- 
cy, and their disastrous influence upon the cause 
of civil liberty itself throughout the world, they 
thus speak : 

" It is impossible to read the history of the 
petty republics of Greece and Italy, without 
feeling sensations of disgust and horror at the 
distractions with which they were continually 
agitated, and at the rapid succession of revolu- 
tions by which they were kept continually vi- 
brating between the extremes of tyranny and 
anarchy. From the disorders whicn disfigure 
the annals of those republics, the advocates of 
despotism have drawn arguments, not only 
against the forms of republican government, 
but against the very principles of civil liberty. 
They have decried all free government as incon- 
sistent with the order of society, and have in- 
dulged themselves iu malicious exultation over 
its friends and partisans." 
And again they say : 

"It must carry its agency to the persons of 
the citizens. It must stand in need of no inter- 
mediate legislation ; but must itself be empow- 
ered to employ the arm of the ordinary magis- 



trate to execute its own resolutions. The ma- 
jesty of the national authority must be mani- 
fested through the medium of the courts of jus- 
tice." 

After reading these extracts, Mr. B. said : 
It was to get rid of the evils of the old confed- 
eration that the present Union was formed ; 
and, having formed it, they who formed it un- 
dertook to make it perpetual, and for that pur- 
pose had recourse to all the sanctions held 
sacred among men — commands, prohibitions, 
oaths. The States were forbid to form com- 
pacts or agreements with each other ; the con- 
stitution and the laws made in pursuance of it, 
Avere declared to be the supreme law of the 
land ; and all authorities, State and federal, 
legislative, executive, and judicial, were to be 
sworn to support it. The resolutions which 
have been read contradict all this ; and the Gen- 
eral Assembly mistook their own powers as 
much as they mistook the sentiments of the 
people of Missouri when they adopted them. 



CHAPTER XC. 

PUBLIC LANDS :— DISTEIBUTION OF PROCEEDS. 

Mr. Clay renewed, at this session, 1832-'33, the 
bill which he had brought in the session before, 
and which had passed the Senate, to divide the 
net proceeds of the sales of public lands among 
the States, to be applied to such purposes as the 
legislatures of the respective States should think 
proper. His principal arguments, in favor of 
the bill, were : first, the aid wliich the distribu- 
tion would give to the States, in developing 
their resources and promoting their prosperity ; 
secondly, the advantage to the federal govern- 
ment, in settling the question of the mode of 
disposing of the piibhc lands. He explained his 
bill, which, at first, contained a specification of 
the objects to which the States should apply the 
dividends they received, which was struck out, 
in the progress of the bill, and stated its provi- 
sions to be : 

"To set apart, for the benefit of the new 
States, twelve and a half per cent., out of the 
aggregate proceeds, in addition to the five per 
cent., which was now allowed to them by com- 
pact, before any division took place among the 



ANNO 1833. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESmENT. 



363 



States generally. It was thus proposed to as- 
sign, in the first place, seventeen and a half per 
cent, to the new States, and then to divide the 
whole of the residue among the twenty-four 
States. And, in order to do away any inequality 
among the new States, grants are specifically 
made by the bill to those who had not received, 
heretofore, as much lands as the rest of the new 
States, from the general government, so as to 
put all the new States on an equal footing. This 
twelve and a half per cent., to the new States, 
to be at their disposal, for either education or 
internal improvement, and the residue to be at 
the disposition of the States, subject to no other 
limitation than this : that it shall be at their 
option to apply the amount received either to 
the purposes of education, or the colonization of 
free people of color, or for internal improve- 
ments, or in debts which may have been con- 
tracted for internal improvements. And, with 
respect to the duration of this scheme of distri- 
bution proposed by the bill, it is limited to five 
years, unless hostilities shall occur between the 
United States and any foreign power ; m which 
event, the proceeds are to be applied to the car- 
rying on such war, with vigor and effect, against 
any common enemy with whom we may be 
brought in contact. After the conclusion of 
peace, and after the discharge of the debt created 
by any such war, the aggregate funds to return 
to that peaceful destination to which it was the 
intention of the bill that they should now be 
directed, that is, to the improvement of the moral 
and physical condition of the country, and the 
promotion of the public happiness and pros- 
perity." 

He then spoke of the advantages of settling 
the question of the manner of disposing of the 
public lands, and said : 

" The first remark which seemed to him to be 
called for, in reference to this subject, was as to 
the expediency, he would say the necessity, of 
its immediate settlement. On this point, he was 
happy to believe that there was a unanimous 
concurrence of opinion in that body. However 
they might differ as to the terms on which the 
distribution of these lands should be made, they 
all agreed that it was a question which ought to 
be promptly and finally, he hoped amicably, ad- 
justed. No time more favorable than the pre- 
sent moment could be selected for the settlement 
of this question. The last session was much 
less favorable for the accoraphshment of this 
object ; and the reasons were sufficiently obvi- 
ous, without any waste of time in their specifi- 
cation. If the question were not now settled 
but if it were to be made the subject of an an- 
nual discussion, mixing itself up with all the 
measures of legislation, it would be felt in its 
influence upon all, would produce great dissen- 
sions both in and out of the House, and afiect 
extensively all the great and important objects 
which might be before that body. They had 



had, in the several States, some experience on 
that subject; and, without going into any de- 
tails on the subject, he would merely state that 
it was known, that, for a long period, the small 
amount of the public domain possessed by some 
of the States, in comparison with the quantity 
possessed by the general government, had been 
a cause of great agitation in the public mind, 
and had greatly influenced the course of legisla- 
tion. Persons coming from the quarter of the 
State in which the public land was situated, 
united in sympathy and interest, constituted al- 
ways a body who acted together, to promote 
their common object, either by donations to 
settlers, or reduction in the price of the public 
lands, or the relief of those who are debtors for 
the public domain ; and were always ready, as 
men always will be, to second all those measures 
which look towards the accomplishment of the 
main object which they have in view. So, if 
this question were not now settled, it would be 
a source of inexpressible difficulty hereafter, in- 
fluencing all the great interests of the country, 
in Congress, affecting great events without, and 
perhaps adding another to those unhappy causes 
of division, which unfortimately exist at this 
moment." 

In his arguments in support of his bill, Mr. 
Clay looked to the lands as a source of revenue 
to the States or the federa' government, from 
their sale, and not from >heir settlement and 
cultivation, and the revenue to be derived from 
the wealth and population to which their settle- 
ment would give rise ; and, concluding with an 
encomium on his bill under the aspect of revenue 
from sales, he said : 

" He could not conceive a more happy dispo- 
sition of the proceeds of the public lands, than 
that which was provided by this bill. It was 
supposed that five j^cars would be neither too 
long nor too short a period for a fair experiment. 
In case a war should break out, we may with- 
draw from its peaceful destination a sum of from 
two and a half to three and a half millions of 
dollars per annum, and apply it to a vigorous 
prosecution of the war — a sum which would pay 
the interest on sixty millions of dollars, which 
might be required to sustain the war, and a sum 
which is constantly and progressively increasing. 
It proposes, now that the general government 
has no use for the money, now that the surplus 
treasure is really a source of vexatious embar- 
rassment to us, and gives rise to a succession of 
projects, to supply for a short time a fund to 
the States which want our assistance, to advance 
to them that which we do not want, and which 
they will apply to great beneficial national pur- 
poses ; and, should war take place, to divert it 
to the vigorous support of the war ; and, when 
it ceases, to apply it again to its peaceful pup- 
poses. And thus we may grow, from time to 



364 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



time, with a fund which will endure for cen- 
turies, and which will augment with the growth 
of the nation, aiding the States in seasons of 
peace, and sustaining the general government in 
periods of war." 

Mr. Calhoun deprecated this distribution of 
the land money as being dangerous in itself and 
unconstitutional, and as leading to the distribu- 
tion of other revenue — in which he was pro- 
phetic. He said : 

" He could not yield his assent to the mode 
which this bill proposed to settle the agitated 
question of the public lands. In addition to 
several objections of a minor character, he had 
an insuperable objection to the leading i)rinciple 
of the bill, which proposed to distribute the 
proceeds of the lands among the States. He 
believed it to be both dangerous and unconsti- 
tutional. He could not assent to the principle, 
that Congress had a right to denationalize the 
public funds. He agreed that the objection was 
not so decided in case of the proceeds of lands, as 
in that of revenue collected from taxes or duties. 
The senator from Ohio had adduced evidence 
from the deed of cession, which certainly coun- 
tenanced the idea that the proceeds of the lands 
might be subject to the distribution proposed 
in the bill ; but he was far from being satisfied 
that the argimicnt was solid or conclusive. If 
the principle of distribution could be confined to 
the proceeds of the lands, he would acknowledge 
tliat his objection to the principle would be 
weakened. 

'• He dreaded the force of precedent, and he 
foresaw that the time would conic when the 
example of the distribution of the proceeds of 
the public lands would be urged as a reason for 
distributing the revenue derived from other 
sources. Nor would the argument be devoid of 
plausibility. If we, of the Atlantic States, insist 
that the revenue of the West, derived from lands, 
should be equally cUstributed among all the 
States, we must not be surprised if the interior 
States should, in like manner, insist to distribute 
the proceeds of the customs, the great source of 
revenue in the Atlantic States. Should such a 
movement be successful, it must l>e obvious to 
every one, who is the least acquainted with the 
workings of the human heart, and the nature of 
government, that nothing would more certainly 
endanger the existence of the Union. The re- 
venue is the power of the State, and to distribute 
its revenue is to dissolve its power into its 
original elements." 

Attempts were made to postpone .the bill to 
the next session, which failed ; and it passed the 
Senate by a vote of 24 to 20. 

Yeas.— Messrs. Bell, Chambers, Clay, Clay- 
ton, Dallas. Dickerson, Dudley, Ewing, Foot, 
Freliughuysen, Hendricks, Hohnes, Johnston, 



Knight, Poindexter, Prentiss, Robbins, Ruggles, 
Seymour, Silsbec, Sprague, Tomlinson, Wagga- 
man, Wilkins — 24. 

Nays. — Messrs. Benton, Black. Brown, Buck- 
ner, Calhoun, Forsyth, Grundy, Hill, Kane, King, 
Mangum. Miller, Moore, Hives, Ilobinson. Smith, 
Tipton, Tyler, White, Wright— 20. 

The bill went to the House and received 
amendments, which did not obtain the concur- 
rence of the Senate until midnight of the first 
of March, which, being the short session, was 
within twenty-four hours of the constitutional 
termination of the Congress, which was limited 
to the 3d — which falling this year on Sunday, 
the Congress would adjourn at midnight of the 
2nd. Further efforts were made to postpone 
it, and upon the ground that, in a bill of that 
magnitude and novelty, the President was en- 
titled to the full ten days for the consideration 
of it which the constitution allowed him, and 
he would have but half a day ; for if passed 
that night it could only reach him in the fore- 
noon of the next day — leaving him but half a 
day for his consideration of the measure, where 
the constitution allowed him ten ; and that half 
day engrossed with all crowded business of an 
expiring session. The next evening, the Presi- 
dent attended, as usual, in a room adjoining the 
Senate chamber, to be at hand to sign bills and 
make nominations. It was some hours in the 
night when the President sent for me, and with- 
drawing into the recess of a window, told me 
that he had a veto message ready on the land 
bill, but doubted about sending it in, lest there 
should not be a full Senate ; and intimated his 
apprehension that Mr. Calhoun and some of his 
friends might be absent, and endanger the bill : 
and wished to consult me upon that point. I 
told him I would go and reconnoitre the chamber, 
and adjacent rooms ; did so — found that Mr. 
Calhoun and his immediate friends were absent 
— returned and informed him, when he said he 
would keep the bill until the next session, and 
then return it with a fully considered message 
— his present one being brief, and not such as 
to show his views fully. I told him I thought 
he ought to do so— that such a measure ought 
not to be passed in the Jast hours of a session, 
in a thin Senate, and upon an imperfect view of 
his objections ; and that the public good required 
it to be held up. It was so ; and during the 
long vacation of nine months which intervened 
before the next session, the opposition presses 



ANNO 1833. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



365 



and orators kept the country filled with denun- 
ciations of the enormity of his conduct in ^^pock- 
eting " the bill — as if it had been a case of " flat 
burglary," instead of being the exercise of a 
constitutional right, rendered most just and 
proper under the extraordinaiy circumstances 
which had attended the passage, and intended 
return of the bill. At the commencement of 
the ensuing session he returned the bill, with his 
well-considered objections, in an ample message, 
which, after going over a full history of the 
derivation of the lands, came to the following 
conclusions : 

" 1. That one of the fundamental principles, 
on which the confederation of the United States 
was originally based, was, that the waste lands 
of t'he West, within their limits, should be the 
common property of the United States. 

" 2. That those lands were ceded to the United 
States by the States which claimed them, and 
the cessions Avere accepted, on the express con- 
dition tliat they should be disposed of for the 
c^mon benefit of the States, according to their 
respective proportions in the general charge and 
expenditure, and for no other purpose what- 
soever. 

" 3. That, in execution of these solemn com- 
pacts, the Congress of the United States did, 
under the confederation, proceed to sell these 
lands, and put the avails into the common trea- 
sury ; and, under the new constitution, did re- 
peatedly pledge them for the payment of the 
public debt of the United States, by which 
pledge each State was expected to profit in pro- 
portion to the general charge to be made upon 
it for that object. 

" These are the first principles of this whole 
subject, which, I think, cannot be contested by 
any one who examines the proceedings of the 
revolutionary Congress, the sessions of the 
several States, and the acts of Congress, under 
the new constitution. Keeping them deeply im- 
pressed upon the mind, let us proceed to exam- 
ine how far the objects of the cessions have been 
completed, and see whether those compacts are 
not still obligatory upon the United States. 

" The debt, for which these lands were pledged 
by Congress, may be considered as paid, and 
they are consequently released from that lien. 
But that pledge formed no part of the compacts 
with the States, or of the conditions upon which 
the cessions were made. It was a contract be- 
tween new parties — between the United States 
and their creditors. Upon payment of the debt, 
the compacts remain in full force, and the obli- 
gation of the United States to dispose of the 
lands for the common benefit, is neither des- 
troyed nor impaired. As they cannot now be 
executed in that mode, the only legitimate ques- 
tion which can arise is, in what other way are 
these lands to be hereafter disposed of for the 



common benefit of the several States, ' according 
to their respective and usual proportion in th? 
general charge and expenditure 1 ' The cessions 
of Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia, in ex- 
press terms, and all the rest impliedly, not onlj 
provide thus specifically the proportion, accord- 
ing to which each State shall profit by the pro- 
ceeds of the land sales, but they proceed to de- 
clare that they shall be 'faithfully and bona 
fide disposed of for that purpose, and for no 
other use or purpose whatsoever.' This is the 
fundamental law of the land, at this moment, 
growing out of compacts which are older than 
the constitution, and formed the corner stone 
on which the Union itself was erected. 

" In the practice of the government, the pro- 
ceeds of the public lands have not been set 
apart as a separate fund for the payment of the 
public debt, but have been, and are now, paid 
into the treasury, where they constitute a part 
of the aggregate of revenue, upon which the 
government draws, as well for its current ex- 
penditures as for payment of the public debt. 
In this manner, they have heretofore, and do 
now, lessen the general charge upon the people 
of the several States, in the exact proportions 
stipulated in the compacts. 

'' These general charges have been composed, 
not only of the public debt and the usual ex- 
penditures attending the civil and military ad- 
ministrations of the government, but of the 
amounts paid to the States, with which these 
compacts were formed ; the amounts paid the In- 
dians for their right of possession ; the amounts 
paid for the purchase of Louisiana and Florida ; 
and the amounts paid surveyors, registers, re- 
ceivers, clerks, &c., emploj-ed in preparing for 
market, and selling, the western domain. From 
the origin of the land system, down to the 30th 
September, 1832, the amount expended for all 
these purpose has been about ^49,701,280 and 
the amount received from the sales, deducting 
payments on account of roads, &c., about $38,- 
386,624. The revenue arising from the public 
lands, therefore, has not been sufficient to meet 
the general charges on the treasury, which have 
grown out of them, by about $11,314,656. Yet, 
in having been applied to lessen those charges, 
the conditions of the compacts have been thus 
far fulfilled, and each State has profited accord- 
ing to its usual proportion in the general charge 
and expenditure. The annual proceeds of land 
sales have increased, and the charges have dimin- 
ished ; so that, at a reduced price, those lands 
would now defray all cui-rent charges growing 
out of them, and save the treasury from further 
advances on their account. Their original intent 
and object, therefore, would be accomplished, as 
fully as it has hitherto been, by reducing the 
price, and hereafter, as heretofore, bringing the 
proceeds into the treasury". Indeed, as this is 
the only mode in which the objects of the origi- 
nal compact can be attained, it may be consi- 
dered, for all practical purposes, that it is one of 
their requirements. 



366 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



" The bill before me begins with an entire sub- 
version of every one of the compacts by which 
the United States became possessed of their 
western domain, and treats the subject as if 
they never had existence, and as if the United 
States were the original and unconditional own- 
ers of all the public lands. The first section 
direct s~"~ 

« ' That, from and after the 31st day of De- 
cember, 1832, there shall be allowed and paid 
to each of the States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, 
Alabama, Missouri, Mississippi, and Louisiana, 
over and above what each of the said States is 
entitled to by the terms of the compacts entered 
into between them, respectively, upon their ad- 
mission into the Union and the United States, 
the sum of twelve and a half per centum upon 
the net amount of the sales of the public lands, 
which, subsequent to the day afosesaid, shall be 
made within the several limits of the said States ; 
which said sum of twelve and a half per centum 
shall be applied to some object or objects of in- 
ternal improvement or education, within the 
said States, under the direction of their several 
legislatures.' 

" This twelve and a half per centum is to be 
taken out of the net proceeds of the land sales, 
before any apportionment is made; and the same 
seven States, which are first to receive this pro- 
portion, are also to receive their due proportion 
of the residue, according to the ratio of general 
distribution. 

" Now, waiving all considerations of equity 
or policy, in regard to this provision, what more 
need be said to demonstrate its objectionable 
character, than that it is in direct and undis- 
guised violation of the pledge given by Congress 
to the States, before a single cession was made ; 
that it abrogates the condition upon which some 
of the States came into the Union ; and that it 
sets at nought the terms of cession spread upon 
the face of every grant under which the title to 
that portion of the public land is held by the 
federal government ? 

" In the apportionment of the remaining seven 
eighths of the proceeds, this bill, in a manner 
equally undisguised, violates the conditions upon 
wliich the United States acquired title to the 
ceded lands. Abandoning altogether the ratio 
of distribution, according to the general charge 
and expenditure provided by the compacts, it 
adopts that of the federal representative popu- 
lation. Virginia, and other States, which ceded 
their lands upon the express condition that they 
should receive a benefit from their sales, in pro- 
portion to their part of the general charge, are, 
by the bill, allowed only a portion of seven 
eighths of their proceeds, and that not in the 
proportion of general charge and expenditure, 
but in the ratio of their federal representative 
population. 

"The constitution of the United States did 
not delegate to Congress the power to abrogate 
these compacts. On the contrary, by declaring 
tliat nothing in it ' shall be 60 construed as to 



prejudice any claims of the United States, or of 
any particular State,' it virtually provides that 
these compacts, and the rights they secure, shall 
remain untouched by the legislative power, which 
shall only make all ' needful rules and regula- 
tions 'for carrying them into effect. 'All be- 
yond this, would seem to be an assumption of 
undelegated power. 

" These ancient compacts are invaluable monu- 
ments of an age of virtue, patriotism, and disin- 
terestedness. They exhibit the price that great 
States, which had won hberty, were willing to 
pay for that Union, without which, they plainly 
saw, it covild not be preserved. It was not for 
territory or State power that our revolutionary 
fathers took up arms; it was for individual 
liberty, and the right of self-government. The 
expulsion, from the continent, of British armies 
and British power was to them a barren con- 
quest, if, through the coUisions of the redeemed 
States, the individual rights for which they 
fought should become the prey of petty military 
tyrannies established at home. To avert such 
consequences, and throw around liberty the 
shield of union, States, whose relative strength, 
at the time, gave them a preponderating power, 
magnanimously sacrificed domains which womd 
have made them the rivals of empires, only 
stipulating that they should be disposed of for 
the common benefit of themselves and the other 
confederated States. This enlightened policy 
produced union, and has secured liberty. It has 
made our waste lands to swarm with a busy 
people, and added many powerful States to our 
confederation. As well for the fruits which 
these noble works of our ancestors have pro- 
duced, as for the devotedness in which they 
originated, we should hesitate before we demol- 
ish them. 

" But there are other principles asserted in 
the bill, which would have impelled me to with- 
hold my signature, had I not seen in it a viola- 
tion of the compacts by which the United States 
acquired title to a large portion of the public 
lands. It reasserts the principle contained in 
the bill authorizing a subscription to the stock 
of the INIaysville, Washington, Paris, and Lex- 
ington Turnpike Boad Company, from which I 
was compelled to withhold my consent, for rea- 
sons contained in my message of the 27th May 
1830, to the House of Representatives. The 
leading principle, then asserted, was, that Con- 
gress possesses no constitutional power to ap- 
propriate any part of the moneys of the United 
States for objects of a local character within the 
States. That principle, I cannot be mistaken in 
supposing, has received the unequivocal sanction 
' of the American people, and all subsequent re- 
■ flection has but satisfied mc more thoroughly 
' that the interests of our people, and the purity 
I of our government, if not its existence, depend 
on its observance. The public lands are the 
common property of the United States, and the 
moneys arising from their sales are a part of the 
pubhc revenue. This bill proposes to raise fi-om, 



ANNO 1833. ANDREW JACKSON", PRESIDENT. 



367 



and appropriate a portion of, this public revenue 
to certain States, providing expressly that it 
shall ' be applied to objects of internal improve- 
ment or education within those States,' and then 
proceeds to appropriate the balance to all the 
States, with the declaration that it shall be ap- 
plied ' to such purposes as the legislatures of 
the said respective States shall deem proper.' 
The former appropriation is expressly for inter- 
nal improvements or education, without qualifi- 
cation as to the kind of improvements, and, 
therefore, in express violation of the principle 
maintained in my objections to the turnpike 
road bill, above referred to. The latter appro- 
priation is more broad, and gives the money to 
be applied to any local purpose whatsoever. It 
will not be denied, that, under the provisions of 
the bill, a portion of the money might have been 
applied to making the very road to which the 
bill of 1830 had reference, and must, of course, 
come within the scope of the same principle. 
If the money of the United States cannot be ap- 
plied to local purposes through its own agents, 
as little can it be permitted to be thus expended 
through the agency of the State governments. 

" It has been supposed that, with all the reduc- 
tions in our revenue which could be speedily 
effected by Congress, without injury to the sub- 
stantial interests of the couutry, there might be, 
for some years to come, a surplus of monej-s in 
the treasury ; and that there was, in principle, 
no objection to returning them to the people by 
whom they were paid. As the literal accom- 
plishment of such an object is obviously imjrrac- 
ticable, it was thought admissible, as the nearest 
approximation to it, to hand them over to the 
State governments, the more immediate repre- 
sentatives of the people, to be by them applied 
to the benefit of those to whom they properly 
belonged. The principle and the object was, to 
return to the people an unavoidable surplus of 
revenue which might have been paid by them 
under a system which could not at once be aban- 
doned ; but even this resource, which at one time 
seemed to be almost the only alternative to save 
the general government from grasping unlimited 
power over internal improvements, was suggest- 
ed with doubts of its constitutionality. 

" But this bill assumes a new principle. Its 
object is not to return to the people an unavoidable 
surplus of revenue paid in by them, but to create 
a surplus for distribution among the States. It 
seizes the entire proceeds of one source of reven- 
ue, and sets them apart as a surplus, making it 
necessary to raise the money for supporting the 
government, and meeting the general charges, 
from other sources. It even throws the entire 
land system upon the customs for its support, 
and makes the public lands a perpetual charge 
upon the treasury. It does not return to the 
people moneys accidentally or unavoidably paid 
by them to the government by which they are 
not wanted; but compels the people to pay 
moneys into the treasury for the mere purpose 
of creating a surplus for distribution to their 



State governments. If this principle be once 
admitted, it is not diflBcult to perceive to what 
consequences it may lead. Already this bill, by 
thi'owing the land system on the revenues from 
imports for support, virtually distributes among 
the States a part of those revenues. The pro- 
portion may be increased from time to time, 
without any departure from the principle now 
asserted, until the State governments shall de- 
rive all the funds necessary for their support 
from the treasury of the United States ; or, if a 
sufficient supply should be obtained by some 
States and not by others, the deficient States 
might complain, and, to put an end to all fur- 
ther difficulty, Congress, without assuming any 
new principle, need go but one step further, and 
put the salaries of all the State governors, judg- 
es, and other officers, with a sufficient sum for 
other expenses, in their general appropriation bill. 

" It appears to me that a more direct road to 
consolidation cannot be devised. Money is 
power, and in that government which pays all 
the public officers of the States, will all political 
power be substantially concentrated. The State 
governments, if governments they might be call- 
ed, would lose all their independence and digni- 
ty. The economy which now distinguishes them 
would be converted into a profusion, hmited only 
by the extent of the supply. Being the depen- 
dants of the general govei'ument, and looking to 
its treasuiy as the source of all their emolu- 
ments, the State officers, under whatever names 
they might pass, and by whatever forms their 
duties might be prescribed, would, in effect, be 
the mere stipendaries and instruments of the 
central power. 

" I am quite sure that the intelligent people 
of our several States will be satisfied^ on a little 
reflection, that it is neither wise nor safe to re- 
lease the members of their local legislatures from 
the responsibility of levying the taxes necessary 
to support their State govei-nments, and vest it 
in Congress, over most of whose members they 
have no control. They will not think it ex- 
pedient that Congress shall be the tax-gatherer 
and paymaster of all their State governments, 
thus amalgamating all their officers into one mass 
of common interest and common feeling. It is 
too obvious that such a course would subvert 
our well-balanced system of government, and 
ultimately deprive us of the blessings now do- 
rived from our happy union. 

" However willing I might be that any un- 
avoidable surplus in the treasury should be re- 
turned to the people through their State govern- 
ments, I cannot assent to the pi-incipk^ that a 
surplus ma}'^ be created for the purjjosc of dis- 
tribution. Viewing this bill as, in eltect, assum- 
ing the right not only to create a surplus for 
that purpose, but to divide the contents of the 
treasury among the States ^\ithout limitation, 
from whatever soui'ce they may be derived, and 
asserting the power to raise and appropriate 
money for the support of every State govern- 
ment and institution, as well as for making every 



368 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



local improvement, however trivial, I cannot give 
it my assent. 

"It is difficult to perceive what advantages 
would accrue to the old States or the new from 
the system of distribution which this bill pro- 
poses, if it were otherwise unobjectionable. It 
requires no argument to prove, that if tliree mil- 
lions of dollars a year, or any other sum, shall be 
taken out of the treasury by this bill for distribu- 
tion, it must be replaced by the same sum collect- 
ed from the people through some other means. 
The old States will receive annually a sum of 
money from the treasury, but they will pay in 
a larger sura, together with the expenses of col- 
lection and distribution. It is only their pro- 
portion of seven eights of the proceeds of land 
sales which they are to receive, but they must 
pay their due proportion of the whole. Disguise 
it as we may, the bill proposes to them a dead 
loss in the ratio of eight to seven, in addition to 
expenses and other incidental losses. This as- 
sertion is not the less true because it may not 
at first be palpable. Their receipts will be in 
large sums, but their payments in small ones. 
The governments of the States will receive seven 
dollars, for which the people of the States will pay 
eight. The large sums received will be palpable 
to the senses ; the small sums paid, it requires 
thought to identify. But a little consideration 
will satisfy the people that the effect is the same 
as if seven hundred dollars were given them from 
the public treasury, for which they were at the 
same time required to pay in taxes, direct or in- 
direct, eight hundred. 

" I deceive myself greatly if the new States 
would find their interests promoted by such a 
system as this bill proposes. Their true policy 
consists in the rapid settling and improvement 
of the waste lands within their hmits. As a 
means of hastening those events, they have long 
been looking to a reduction in the price of public 
lands upon the final payment of the national 
debt. The etfect of the proposed S3"stem would 
be to prevent that reduction. It is true, the bill 
reserves to Congress the power to reduce the 
price, but the etfect of its details, as now ar- 
ranged, would probably be forever to prevent its 
exercise. 

"With the just men who inhabit the new 
States, it is a sufficient reason to reject this 
system, that it is in violation of the fundamental 
laws of the repubhc and its constitution. But 
if it were a mere question of interest or expe- 
diency, they would still reject it. They would 
not sell their bright prospect of increasing wealth 
and growing power at such a price. They 
would not place a sum of money to be paid into 
their treasuries, in competition with the settle- 
ment of their waste lands, and the increase of 
their population. They would not consider a 
small or large annual sum to be paid to their 
governments, and immediately expended, as an 
equivalent for that enduring wealth which is 
composed of flocks and herds, and cultivated 
farms. No temptation will allure them from 



that object of abiding interest, the settlement of 
their waste lands, and the increase of a hardy 
race of free citizens, their glory in peace and 
their defence in war. 

" On the whole, I adhere to the opinion ex- 
pressed by me in my annual message of 1832, 
that it is our true policy that the public lands 
shall cease, as soon as practicable, to be a source 
of revenue, except for the payment of those gen- 
eral charges which grow out of the acquisition 
of the lauds, their survey, and sale. Although 
these expenses have not been met by the pro- 
ceeds of sales heretofore, it is quite certain they 
will be hereafter, even after a considerable reduc- 
tion in the price. By meeting in the treasury po 
much of the general charge as arises from that 
source, they will be hereafter, as they have been 
heretofore, disposed of for the common bene- 
fit of the United States, according to the com- 
pacts of cession. I do not doubt that it is the 
real interest of each and all the States in the 
Union, and particularly of the new States, that 
the price of these lands shall be reduced and 
graduated ; and that, after they have been ofier- 
ed for a certain number of years, the refuse, re- 
maining unsold, shall be abandoned to the States, 
and the machinery of our land system entirely 
withdrawn. It cannot be supposed the com- 
pacts intended that the United States should 
retain forever a title to lands within the States, 
which are of no value ; and no doubt is en- 
tertained that the general interest would be 
best promoted by surrendering such lands to 
the States. 

" This plan for disposing of the public lands 
impairs no principle, violates no compact, and 
deranges no system. Already has the price of 
those lands been reduced from two dollars per 
acre to one dollar and a quarter ; and upon the 
will of Congress, it depends whether there shall 
be a further reduction. While the burdens of 
the East are diminishing by the reduction of the 
duties upon imports, it seems but equal justice 
that the chief burden of the West should be 
lightened in an equal degree at least. It would 
be just to the old States and the new, conciliate 
every interest, disarm the subject of all its dan- 
gers, and add another guaranty to the perpetu- 
ity of our happy Union." 

Slatevicnt respecting the revenue derived from 
the public lands, accompanying the Presi- 
dent's Message to the Senate, December 4th, 
1833, stating his reasons for not approving 
the Land Bill : 

Statement of the amount of money which has 
been paid by the United States for the title to 
the public lands, including the payments made 
under the Louisiana and Florida treaties; the 
compact with Georgia ; the settlement with the 
Yazoo claimants; the contracts witli tlie Indian 
tribes ; and the expenditures for compensation 
to commissioners, clerks, surveyors, and other 
officers, employed by the United States for tho 



ANNO 1833. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



369 



management and sale of the Western domain ; 
the gross amount of money received into the 
treasury, as the proceeds of public lands, to the 
30th of September, 1832; also, the net amount, 
after deducting five per cent., expended on ac- 
count of roads within, and leading to the West- 
ern States, &c., and sums refunded on account 
of errors in the entries of public lands. 

Payment on account of the purchase of Louis- 
iana: 

Principal, $14,934,872 28 

Interest on $11,250,000 8,529,353 43 

$23,514,225 71 

Payment on account of the purchase of Florida; 

Principal, $4,985,599 82 

Interest to 30th September, 1832, 1,489.768 66 

' $6,475,368 4S 

Payment of compact with Georgia, - - - . 1,065,484 06 
Payment of the settlement with the Yazoo 

claimants, 1,830,808 04 

Payment of contracts with thoseverallndian 

tribes (all expenses onacconntof Indians), 13,064,677 45 
Payment of commi^^sioners, clerks, and other 

officers, employed by the United States for 

the management and sale of the Western 

domain, 3,750,716 43 

$49,701,280 17 

Amount of money received into the treasury 
as the proceeds of public lands to 30th Sep- 
tember, 1832, $39,614,000 07 

Deduct payments from the treasury on ac- 
count of roads, &c., 1,227,-375 94 

$38,.386,624 13 

. T. L. Smith, Heg. 
Treasury Department. ) 
Register's Office, March 1, 1833. \ 

Such was this ample and weU-considered 
message, one of the wisest and most patriotic 
ever delivered by any President, and presenting 
General Jackson under the aspect of an immense 
elevation over the ordinary arts of men who run 
a popular career, and become candidates for 
popular votes. Such arts require addresses to 
popular interests, the conciliation of the interest- 
ed passions, the gratification of cupidity, the 
favoring of the masses in the distribution of 
money or property as well as the enrichment of 
classes in undue advantages. General Jackson 
exhibits himself as equally elevated above all 
these arts — as far above seducing the masses 
with agrarian laws as above enriching the few 
with the plundering legislation of banks and 
tariffs ; and the people felt tliis elevation, and 
did honor to themselves in the manner in which 
they appreciated it. Far from losing his popular- 
ity, he increased it, by every act of disdain 
which he exhibited for the ordinary arts of con- 
ciliating popular favor. His veto message, on 
this occasion was an exemplification of all the 

Vol. I.— 24 



high qualities of the public man. He sat out 
with showing that these lands, so far as they 
were divided from the States, were granted as 
a common fund, to be disposed of for the benefift 
of all the States, according to their usual respect- 
ive proportions in the general charge and ex- 
penditure, and for no other use or purpose what- 
soever ; and that by the principles of our gov- 
ernment and sound policy, those acquired from 
foreign governments could only be disposed of 
in the same manner. In addition to these great 
reasons of principle and policy, the message 
clearly points out the mischief which any scheme 
of distribution will inflict upon the new States 
in preventing reductions in the price of the 
public lands — in preventing donations to settlers 
— and in preventing the cession of the unsalable 
lands to the States in which they lie ; and re- 
curs to his early messages in support of the 
policy, now that the public debt was paid, of 
looking to settlement and population as the chief 
objects to be derived from these lands, and for 
that purpose that they be sold to settlers at cost. 



CHAPTER XCI. 

COMMENCEMENT OF THE TWENTY-THIRD CON- 
GRESS.— THE MEMBERS, AND PRESIDENT'S MES- 
SAGE. 

On the second day of December, 1833, com- 
menced the first session of the Twenty-third 
Congress, commonly called the Panic session — 
one of the most eventful and exciting which the 
country had ever seen, and abounding with high 
talent. The following is the list of members : 

SENATE. 

Maine — Peleg Sprague, Ether Shepley. 

New Hampshire — Samuel Bell, Isaac Hill. 

Massachusetts — Daniel Webster, Nathaniel 
Silsbee. 

Rhode Island — Nehemiah R. Knight, Asher 
Robbins. 

Connecticut — Gideon Tomlinson, Nathan 
Smith. 

Vermont — Samuel Prentiss, Benjamin Swift. 

New York— Sila.s AVright, N. P. 'Tallmadge. 

New Jersey — Theodore Frelinghuysen, S. L. 
Southard. 

Pennsylvania — William Wilkins. Samuel 
McKean. 

Delaware — John M. Clayton, Arnold Nau- 
daiu. 



370 



THIRTY YEARS' VIE"\^. 



Maryland — Ezckiel F. Chambers, Joseph 
Kent. 

Virginia — Wm. C. Rives, John Tyler. 

North Carolina — Bedford Brown, W. P. 
Mangum. 

South Carolina — J. C. Calhoun, Wilham 
C. Preston. 

GEOKfiiA — John Forsyth, John P. King. 

Kentucky — George M. Bibb, Henry Clay. 

Tennessee — Felix Grundy, Hugh L. AYhite. 

Ohio — Thomas Ewing, Thomas Morris. 

Louisiana — G. A. Waggaman, Alexander 
Porter. 

Indiana — Wra. Hendricks, John Tipton. 

Mississippi — George Poindexter, .John Black. 

Illinois — Elias K. Kane, John M. Robinson. 

Alabama — William R. King, Gabriel Moore. 

Missouri — Thomas H. Benton, Lewis F. Linn. 

HOUSE OF EEPEESENTATIVES. 

Maine — George Evans, Joseph Hall, Leonard 
Jarvis, Edward Kavanagh, Moses Mason, Rnfus 
Mclntyrc, Gorham Parks, Francis 0. J. Smith. 

New Hampshire — Benning M. Bean, Robert 
Burns, Joseph M. Harper, Henry Hubbard, 
Franklin Pierce. 

Massachusetts — John Quincy Adams, Isaac 
C. Bates, William Baylies, George N. Briggs, 
Rufus Choate, John Davis, Edward Everett, 
Benjamin Gorham, George Grennell, jr., Gayton 
P. Osgood. John Reed. 

Rhode Island — Tristam Surges, Dutea J. 
Pearce. 

Connecticut — Noyes Barber, William W. 
Ellsworth, Samuel A. Foot, Jabez W. Hunting- 
ton, Samuel Tweedy, Ebenezer Young. 

Vermont — Ileman Allen, Benjamin F. Dem- 
ing, Horace Everett, Hiland Hall, William Slade. 

New York — -John Adams. Samuel Beardsley, 
Abraham Bockee, Charles Bodle, John W. 
Brown. Churchill C. Cambreleng, Samuel Clark, 
/ohn Cramer, Rowland Day, John Dickson, 
milliard Fillmore, Philo C. Fuller, William K. 
Fuller, Ransom H. Gillet, Nicoll Ilalsey, Gideon 
Hard, Samuel C. Hathaway, Abner Hazeltine, 
Edward Howell, Abel Huntington. Noadiah 
Johnson, Gerrit Y. Lansing, Cornelius W. Law- 
rence, George W. Lay, Abijah Mann, jr., Henry 
C. Martindale, Charles McYcan, Henry Mitchell, 
Sherman Page, Job Pierson, Dudley Selden, 
William Taylor. Joel Turrill, Aaron Vanderpoel, 
Isaac B. Van Houten, Aaron Ward, Daniel 
Wardwell, Revil)en AVhallon, Campbell P. White, 
Frederick Whittlesey. 

New Jersey — Pliilcmon Dickerson, Samuel 
Fowler, Thomas Lee, James Parker. Ferdinand 
S. Schenck, William N. Shinn. 

Pennsylvania — .Joseph B. Anthony, John 
Banks, Charles A. Barnitz, Andrew Beaumont, 
Horace Binuey, George Burd. George Cham- 
bers, William Clark, Richard Coulter. Edwaid 
Darlington, Harmar Denny, John Galbraith, 
Jajnes Harper. Samuel S. Harrison, William 
Hicster, Joseph Henderson, Henry King, John 



Laporte, Joel K. Mann, Thomas M. T. IMcKennan, 
Jesse Miller, Henry A. Muhlenberg, David 
Potts, jr., Robert Ramsay, Andrew Stewart, 
Joel B. vSutherland, David E. Wagoner, John G- 
Watmough. 

Delaware — John J. INIilligan. 

Maryland — Richard B. Carmichael, Littleton 
P. Dennis, James P. Heath, William Cost .John- 
son, Isaac McKim, John T 
Thomas, James Turner. 

Virginia — John J. Allen, William S.Archer. 
James M. II. Beale, Thomas T. Bouldin, Joseph 
W. Chinn, Nathaniel H. Claiborne, Thomas 
Davenport, John H. Fulton, James II. Gholson. 
William F. Gordon, George Loyall, Edward 
Lucas, John Y "' 
Charles F. Mercer. 



Stoddcrt, Francis 



Mason, William McComas, 
', Samuel McDowell Moore, 
John M. Patton, Andrew Stevenson, William 
P. Taylor, Edgar C. Wilson, Henry A. Wise, 

North Carolina — Daniel L. Barringer, Jesse 
A. Bynum, Henry W. Connor, Edmund Deberry, 
James Graham, Thomas H. Hall, Micajah T. 
Hawkins, James J. McKay, Abraham Rencher, 
William B. Shepard, Augustine H. Shepperd. 
Jesse Speight, Lewis Williams. 

South Carolina — James Blair, William K. 
Clowney, Warren R. Davis, John M. Felder, 
William J. Grayson, John K. GriflBn, George 
McDutfie, Henry L. Pinckney. 

Georgia — Augustine S. Cla)rton, John Cofifee. 
Thomas F. Foster. Roger L. Gamble, George R. 
Gilmer. Seaborn Jones, William Schley, James 
M. Wayne, Richard H. Wilde. 

Kentucky — Chilton Allan, Martin Beaty, 
Thomas Chilton, Amos Davis, Benjamin Hardin, 
Albert G. Hawes, Richard M. Johnson. James 
Love, Chittenden Lyon, Thomas A. Marshall. 
Patrick H. Pope, Christopher Tompkins. 

Tennessee — John Bell, John Blair, Samuel 
Bunch, David Crockett, David W. Dickinson, 
William C. Dunlap, John B. Forester, William 
M. Inge, Cave Johnson, Luke Lea, Balie Peyton, 
James K. Polk, James Standifer. 

Ohio — William Allen, James M. Bell, John 
Chaney, Thomas Corwin, Joseph II. Crane, 
Thomas L. Ilamer, Benjamin Jones, Henry H. 
Leavitt, Robert T. Lytic, Jeremiah McLean, 
Robert Mitchell, William Patterson, Jonathan 
Sloane, David Spangler, John Thomson, Joseph 
Vance, Samuel F. Vinton, Taylor Webster, 
EUsha Whittlesey. 

Louisiana — Philemon Thomas, Edward D. 
White. 

Indiana — Ratliff Boon, John Carr, John 
Ewing, Edward A. Ilannegan, Cireorge L. Kin- 
nard, Amos Lane. Jonathan ^McCarty. 

Mississippi — Harry Cage, Franklin E. Plumer. 

Illinois — Zadok Casey, Joseph Duncan, 
Charles Slade. 

Alabama — Clement C. Clay, Dixon H. Lewis, 
Samuel W. Mardis, John Mckinley, John Uut- 

Missouri — William II. Ashley, John Bull. 
Lucius Lyon also appeared as the delegate from 
the territory of Michigan. 



ANNO 1833. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



371 



Ambrose H. Sevier also appeared as the dele- 
gate from the territory of Arkansas, — Joseph 
M. White from Florida. 

Mr. Andrew Stevenson, who had been chosen 
Speaker of the House for the three succeeding 
Congresses, was re-elected by a great majority 
— indicating the administration strength, and 
his own popularit}^. The annual message was 
immediately sent in, and presented a gratifying 
view of our foreign relations — all nations being 
in peace and amity with us, and many giving 
fresh proofs of friendship, either in new treaties 
formed, or indemnities made for previous injuries. 
The state of the finances was then adverted to, 
and shown to be in the most favorable condition. 
The message said : 

'•It gives me great pleasure to congratulate 
you upon the prosperous condition of the finan- 
ces of the country, as will appear from the report 
which the Secretary of the Treasury will, in due 
time, lay before you. The receipts into the 
Treasury during the present year will amount 
to more than thirty-two millions of dollars. 
The revenue derived from customs will, it is be- 
lieved, be more than twenty-eight millions, and 
the public lands will yield about three millions. 
The expenditures within the year, for all objects, 
including two millions five hundred and seventy- 
two thousand two hundred and forty dollars 
and ninety-nine cents on account of the public 
debt, will not amount to twenty-five millions, 
and a large balance will remain in the Treasury 
after satisfjaug all the appropriations chargeable 
on the revenue for the present year." 

The act of the last session, called the " com- 
promise," the President recommended to ob- 
servance, " unless it should be found to produce 
more revenue than the necessities of the govern- 
ment required." The extinction of the pubhc 
debt presented, in the opinion of the President, 
the proper occasion for organizing a system of 
expencUture on the principles of the strictest 
economy consistent with the public interest; 
and the passage of the message in yelation to 
that point was particularly grateful to the old 
friends of an economical administration of the 
government. It said: 

'■ But, while I forbear to recommend any fur- 
ther reduction of the duties, beyond that already 
provided for by the existing laws, I mu.st eai-- 
nestly and respectfully press upon Congress the 
importance of abstaining from all appropriations 
which are not absolutely required for the public 
interests, and authorized by the powers clearly 
delegated to the United States. We are begin- 



ning a new era in our government. The national 
debt, which has so long been a burden on the 
Treasury', will be finally discharged in the course 
of the ensuing year. No more money will 
afterwards be needed than what may be necessary 
to meet the ordinary expenses of the government. 
Now then is the proper moment to fix our sys- 
tem of expenditure on firm and durable prin- 
ciples ; and I cannot too strongly urge the 
necessity of a rigid economy, and an inflexible 
determination not to enlarge the income beyond 
the real necessities of the government, and not 
to increase the wants of the government by 
unnecessary and profuse expenditures. If a 
contrary course should be pursued, it may hap- 
pen that the revenue of 1834 will fall short of 
the demands upon it ; and after reducing the 
tariif in order to hghten the burdens of the 
people, and providing for a still further reduction 
to take effect hereafter, it would be much to be 
deplored iJ^ at the end of another year, we should 
find ourselves obliged to retrace our steps, and 
impose additional taxes to meet unnecessary 
expenditures." 

The part of the message, however, which gave 
the paper uncommon emphasis, and caused it to 
be received with opposite, and violent emotions 
by different parts of the community, was that 
which related to the Bank of the United States — 
its believed condition — and the consequent re- 
moval of the public deposits from its keeping. 
The deposits had been removed — done in vaca- 
tion by the order of the President — on the 
ground of insecurity, as well as of misconduct 
in the corporation : and as Congress, at the pre- 
vious session had declared its belief of their safe- 
ty, this act of the President had already become 
a point of vehement newspaper attack upon him 
— destined to be continued in the halls of Con- 
gress. HLs conduct in tliis removal, and the 
reasons for it, were thus communicated : 

" Since the last adjournment of Congress, the 
Secretary of the Treasury has directed the 
money of the United States to be deposited in 
certain State banks designated by him, and he 
will immediately lay before you his reasons for 
this direction. I concur with him entirely in 
the view he has taken of the subject ; and. some 
months before the removal, I urged upon the de- 
partment the propriety of taking that step. The 
near approach of the day on which the charter 
will expire, as well as the conduct of the bank, 
appeared to me to call for this measure upon the 
high considerations of public interest and public 
duty. The extent of its misconduct, however, 
although known to be great, was not at that 
time fully developed by proof. It was not until 
late in the month of August, that I received 
from the government directors an official report, 



372 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



establishing beyond question that this great and 
powerful institution had been actively engaged 
in attemping to influence the elections of the 
public officers by means of its money ; and that, 
in violation of the express provisions of its char- 
ter it had, by a formal resolution, placed its 
funds at the disposition of its President, to be 
employed in sustaining the political power of the 
bank. A copy of this resolution is contained in 
the report of the government directors, before 
referred to ; and however the object may be dis- 
guised by cautious language, no one can doubt 
that this money was in truth intended for elec- 
tioneering purposes, and the particular uses to 
which it was proved to have been applied, abun- 
dantly show that it was so understood. Not 
only was the evidence complete as to the past 
application of the money and power of the bank 
to electioneering purposes, but that the resolu- 
tion of the board of directors authorized the 
same course to be pursued in future. 

" It being thus established, by unquestionable 
proof, that the Bank of the United States was 
converted into a permanent electioneering engine, 
it appeared to me that the path of duty which 
the Executive department of the government 
ought to pursue, was not doubtful. As by the 
terms of the bank charter, no officer but the 
Secretary of the Treasury could remove the de- 
posits, it seemed to me that this authority 
ought to be at once exerted to deprive that great 
corporation of the support and countenance of 
the government in such a use of its funds, and 
such an exertion of its power. In this point of 
the case, the question is distinctly presented, 
whether the people of the United States are to 
govern through representatives chosen by their 
unbiassed sulirages, or whether the money and 
power of a great corporation are to be secretly 
exerted to influence their judgment, and con- 
trol their decisions. It must now be determin- 
ed whether the bank is to have its candidates 
for all oHices in the country, from the highest to 
the lowest, or whether candidates on both sides 
of political questions shall be brought forward 
as heretofore, and supported by the usual means. 
" At this time, the efforts of the bank to con- 
trol pubUc opinion, through the distresses of 
some and the fears of others, are equally appar- 
ent, and, if possible, more objectionable. By a 
curtailment of its accommodations, more rapid 
than any emergency requires, and even while it 
retains specie to an almost unprecedented amount 
in its vaults, it is attempting to produce great 
embarra.'^smcnt in one portion of the community, 
while, through presses known to have been sus- 
tained by its money, it attempts, by unfounded 
alarms, to create a panic in all. 

" These are the means by which it seems to 
expect that it can force a restoration of the de- 
posits, and, as a necessary consequence, extort 
from Congress a renewal of its charter. I am 
huppv to know that, through the good sense of 
our people, the effort to get up a panic has 



hitherto failed, and that, through the mcreased 
accommodations which the State banks have 
been enabled to aflbrd, no public distress has 
followed the exertions of the bank ; and it can- 
not be doubted tha^ the exercise of its power, 
and the expenditure of its money, as well as its 
efforts to spread groundless alarm, will be met 
and rebuked as they deserve. In my own sphere 
of duty, I should feel -myself called on, by the 
facts disclosed, to order a scire facias against 
the bank, with a ^iew to put an end to the char- 
tered rights it has so palpably violated, were it 
not that the charter itself will expire as soon as 
a decision would probably be obtained from the 
court of last resort. 

" I called the attention of Congress to this 
subject in my last annual message, and informed 
them that such measures as were within the 
reach of the Secretary of the Treasury, had been 
taken to enable him to judge whether the pub- 
lic deposits in the Bank of the United States 
were entirely safe ; but that as his single powers 
might be inadequate to the object, I recom- 
mended the subject to Congress, as worthy of 
their serious investigation : declaring it as my 
opinion that an inquiry into the transactions of 
that institution, embracing the branches as well 
as the principal bank, was called for by the ci'cdit 
which was given throughout the country to 
many serious charges impeaching their character, 
and which, if true, might justly excite the ap- 
prehension that they were no longer a safe de- 
pository for the public money. The extent to 
which the examination, thus recommended, was 
gone into, is spread upon your journals, and is 
too well known to require to be stated. Such 
as was made resulted in a report from a major- 
ity of the Committee of AY ays and Means, touch- 
ing certain specified points only, concluding with 
a resolution that the government deposits might 
safely be continued in the Bank of the United 
States. This resolution was adopted at the close 
of the session, by the vote of a majority of the 
House of Representatives." 



The message concluded with renewing the re- 
commendation, which the President had annually 
made since his first election, in favor of so 
amending the constitution in the article of the 
presidential and vice-presidential elections, as 
to give the choice of the two first officers of the 
"•overnment to a direct vote of the people, and 
that " every intermediate agency in the election 
of those officers should be removed." This re- 
commendation, like all which preceded it, remain- 
ed without practical results. For ten years 
committees had reported amendments, and mem- 
bers had supported them, but without obtaining 
in Congress the requisite two thirds to refer the 
proposition of amendment to the vote of the 



ANNO 1833. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



373 



people. Three causes combined always to pre- 
vent the concurrence of that majority : 1. The 
conservative spirit of many, who are unwilling, 
under any circumstances, to touch an existing 
institution. 2. The enemies of popular elections, 
who deem it unsafe to lodge the high power of 
the presidential election, directly in the hands of 
the people. 3. The intrigiiers, who wish to 
manage these elections for then- own benefit, 
and have no means of doing it except through 
the agency of intermediate bodies. The most 
potent of these agencies, and the one in fact 
which controls all the others, is the one of 
latest and most spontaneous growth, called 
" conventions " — originally adopted to supersede 
the caucus system of nominations, but which 
retains all the evils of that system, and others 
peculiar to itself. They are still attended by 
members of Congress, and with less responsi- 
bility to their constituents than when acting in 
a Congress caucus. A large proportion of the 
delegates are either self-appointed or so intri- 
guingly appointed, and by such small numbers, 
as to constitute a burlesque upon popular repre- 
sentation. Delegates even transfer their func- 
tions, and make proxies — a prerogative only al- 
lowed to peers of the realm, in England, in their 
parliamentary voting, because they are legisla- 
tors in their own right, and represent, each one, 
himself, as his own constituent body, and owing 
responsibility to no one. They meet in taverns, 
the delegates of some of the large States, at- 
tended by one or two thousand backers, sup- 
plied with money, and making all the public ap- 
pliances of feasting and speaking, to conciliate 
or control votes, which ample means and deter- 
mined zeal can supply, in a case in which a per- 
sonal benefit is expected. The minority rules, 
that is to say, baffles the majority until it yields, 
and consents to a " compromise," accepting for 
that purpose the person whom the minority has 
held in reserve for that purpose ; and this mi- 
nority of one third, which governs two thirds, 
is itself usually governed by a few managers. 
And to complete the exclusion of the people from 
all efficient control, in the selection of a presi- 
dential candidate, an interlocutory committee 
is generally appointed out of its members to 
act from one convention to another — during the 
whole interval of four years between their period- 
ical assemblages — to guide and conduct the pub- 



lic mind, in the different States, to the support of 
the person on whom they have secretly agreed. 
After the nomination is over, and the election 
effected, the managers in these nominations 
openly repair to the new President, if they have 
been successful, and demand rewards for their 
labor, in the shape of offices for themselves and 
connections. This is the way that presidential 
elections are now made in the United States ; 
for, a party nomination is an election, if the 
party is strong enough to make it ; and, if one 
is not, the other is ; for, both parties act alike, 
and thus the mass of the people have no more 
part in selecting the person who is to be their 
President than the subjects of hereditary mon- 
archs have in begetting the child who is to rule 
over them. To such a point is the greatest of 
our elections now sunk by the arts of " interme- 
diate agencies ; " and it may be safely assumed, 
that the history of free elective governments 
affords no instance of such an abandonment, on 
the part of legal voters, of their great constitu- 
tional privileges, and quiet sinking down of the 
millions to the automaton performance of deli- 
vering their votes as the few have directed. 



CHAPTER XCII. 

KEMOVAL OP THE DEPOSITS FROM THE BANK 
OF THE UNITED STATES. 

The fact of this removal was communicated to 
Congress, in the annual message of the Presi- 
dent ; the reasons for it, and the mode of doing 
it, were reserved for a separate communication ; 
and especially a report from the Secretary of 
the Treasury, to whom belonged the absolute 
right of the removal, without assignment of any 
reasons except to Congress, after the act was 
done. The order for the removal, as it was 
called — for it was only an order to the collectors 
of revenue to cease making their deposits in 
that bank, leaving the amount actually in it, to 
be drawn out of intervals, and in different sums, 
according to the course at the government dis- 
bursements — was issued the 22d of September, 
and signed by Roger B. Taney, Esq., the new 
Secretary of the Treasury, appointed in place of 
Mr. AVin. J. Duane, who, refusing to make the re- 



374 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



moval, upon the request of the President, was 
himself removed. This measure (the ceasing to 
deposit the pubhc moneys with the Bank of the 
United States) was the President's o\Yn mea- 
sure, conceived by him, carried out by him, de- 
fended by liim, and its fate dependent upon him. 
He had coadjutors in every part of the business, 
but the measure was his own ; for this heroic 
civil measure, hke a heroic military resolve, had 
to be the offspring of one great mind — self-act- 
ing and poised — seeing its way through all diffi- 
culties and dangers ; and discerning ultunate 
triumph over all obstacles in the determmation 
to conquer them, or to perish. Councils are 
good for safety, not for heroism — ^good for es- 
capes from perils, and for retreats, but for ac- 
tion, and especially high and daring action, but 
one mind is wanted. The removal of the depo- 
sits was an act of that kind — high and daring, 
and requiring as much nerve as any enterprise 
of arms, in which the President had ever been 
engaged. His military exploits had been of his 
own conception ; his great civil acts were to be 
the same : more impeded than promoted by 
councils. And thus it was in this case. The 
majority of his cabinet was against him. His 
Secretary of the Treasury refused to execute 
his will. A few only — a fraction of the cabinet 
and some friends — concurred heartily in the 
act : Mr. Taney, attorney general, Mr. Kendall, 
Mr. Francis P. Blair, editor of the Globe; and 
some few others. 

He took his measures carefully and deliber- 
ately, and with due regard to keeping himself 
demonstrably, as well as actually right. Obser- 
vation had only confirmed his opinion, commu- 
nicated to the previous Congress, of the miscon- 
duct of the institution, and the insecurity of the 
public moneys in it : and the almost unanimous 
TOte of the House of Representatives to the 
contrary, made no impression upon liis strong 
conviction. Denied a legislative examination 
into its affairs, he determined upon an executive 
one, through inquiries put to the government 
directors, and the researches into the state of 
the books, which the Secretary of the Trea- 
sury had a right to make. Four of those di- 
rectors, namely, Messrs. Henry D. Gilpin, John 
T. Sullivan, Peter Wager, and Hugh McEldery, 
made two reports to the President, according to 
the duty assigned them, in which they showed 



great misconduct in its management, and a great 
perversion of its funds, to undue and political 
purposes. Some extracts from these reports 
will show the nature of this report, the names 
of persons to whom money was paid being omit- 
ted, as the only object, in making the extracts, 



is to show the conduct of the bank, and not to 
disturb or affect any individuals. 

" On the 30th November, 1830, it is stated on 
the minutes, that ' the president submitted to 
the board a copy of an article on banks and cur- 
rency, just published in the American Quarterly 
Review of this city, containing a favorable no- 
tice of this institution, and suggested the expe- 
diency of making the views of the author more 
extensively known to the public than they can 
be by means of the subscription list.' Where- 
upon, it was, on motion, '■Resolved, That the 
president be authorized to take such measures, 
in regard to the circulation of the contents of 
the said article, either in whole or in part, as he 
may deem most for the interests of the bank.' 
On the 11th March, 1831, it again appears by 
the minutes that 'the president stated to the 
board, that, in consequence of the general de- 
sire expressed by the directors, at one of their 
meetings of the last year, subsequent to the ad- 
journment of Congress, and a verbal understand- 
ing with the board, measures had been taken by 
him, in the course of that year, for furnishing 
numerous copies of the reports of General Smith 
and Mr. McDuffie on the subject of this bank, 
and for widely disseminating their contents 
through the United States ; and that he has 
since, by virtue of the authority given him by 
a resolution of this board, on the 30th day of 
November last, caused a large edition of ^Mr. 
Gallatin's essay on banks and currency to bo 
published and circulated, in like manner, at the 
expense of the banlc. He suggested, at the same 
time, the propriety and expediency of extending 
still more widely'a knowledge of the concerns 
of this institution, by means of the republica- 
tion of other valuable articles, which had issued 
from the daily and periodical press.' Where- 
upon, it was, on motion, ^Resolved, That the 
president is hereby authorized to cause to be 
prepared and circulated, such doa^iments and 
papers as may conmmnicate to the peoj)le infor- 
mation, in regard to the nature and operations 
of the bank.' 

" In pursuance, it is presumed, of these reso- 
lutions, the item of stationary and printing wa.s 
increased, during the first half year of 1831. to 
the enormous sum of $29,979 92. exceeding that 
of the previous half year by $23,000, and ex- 
ceeding the semi-annual expenditure of 1829, 
upwards of $26,000. The expense account it- 
self, as made up in the book which was submit- 
ted to us, contained very httle mformation rela- 



ANNO 1833. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



375 



tive to the particulars of this expenditure, and 
we are obliged, in order to obtain them, to re- 
sort to an inspection of the vouchers. Among 
other sums, was one of $7,801, stated to have 
been paid on orders of the president, under the 
resolution of 11th March, 1831, and the orders 
themselves were the only vouchers of the expen- 
diture which we found on file. Some of the or- 
ders, to the amount of about $1,800, stated that 
the expenditure was for distributing General 
Smith's and Mr. McDuflBe's reports, and Mr. 
Gallatin's pamphlet ; but the rest stated gene- 
rally that it was made under the resolution of 
11th of March, 1831. There were also numer- 
ous bills and receipts for expenditures to indi- 
viduals : $1,300 for distributing Mr. Gallatin's 
pamphlet ; $1,675 75 for 5,000 copies of General 
Smith's and Mr. McDuflBe's reports, &c. ; $440 
for 11,000 exti'a papers ; of the American Sen- 
tinel, $125 74 for printing, folding, packing, and 
postage on 3,000 extras ; $1,830 27 for upwards 
of 50,000 copies of the National Gazette, and 
supplements containing addresses to members 
of State legislatures, reviews of Mr. Benton's 
speech, abstracts of Mr. Gallatin's article from 
the AmericoM Quarterly Review, and editorial 
article on the project of a Treasury Bank; 
$1,447 75 for 25,000 copies of the reports of 
Mr. McDuffie and General Smith, and for 25,000 
copies of the address to members of the State 
legislatures, agreeably to order ; $2,850 for 
01,000 copies of ' Gallatin on Banking,' and 
2,000 copies of Professor Tucker's article. 

" During the second half year of 1831, the 
item of stationery and printing was $13,224 87, 
of which $5,010 were paid on orders of the 
president, and stated generally to be under the 
resolution of 11th March, 1831, and other sums 
were paid to individuals, as in the previous ac- 
count, for printing and distributing documents. 

" During the first half year of 1832, the item 
of stationery and printing was $12,134 16, of 
which $2,150 was stated to have been paid on 
orders of the president, under the resolution of 
11th March, 1831. There are also various in- 
dividual payments, of which we noticed $106 38 
for one thousand copies of the review of Mr. 
Benton's speech ; $200 for one thousand copies 
of the Saturday Courier ; $1,176 for twenty 
thousand copies of a pamphlet concerning the 
bank, and six thousand copies of the minority 
report relative to the bank; $1,800 for three 
hundred copies of Clarke & Hall's bank book. 
During the last half year of 1832, the item of 
stationery and printing rose to $26,543 72, of 
which $6,350 are stated to have been paid on 
orders of the president, under the resolution of 
11th March, 1831. Among the specified charges 
we observe $821 78 for printing a review of the 
veto ; $1,371 04 for four thousand copies of Mr. 
Ewing's speech, bank documents, and review of 
the veto; $4,106 13 for sixty-three thousand 
copies of Mr. Webster's speech, Mr. Adams's 
and Mr. McDuffie's reports, and the majority 



and minority reports ; $295 for fourteen thoiv 
sand extras of The Protector, containing bank 
documents ; $2,583 50 for printing and distri- 
buting reports, Mr. Webster's speech, &c. 
$150 12 for printing the speeches of Messrs. 
Clay, Ewing, and Smith, and Mr. Adams's re- 
port ; $1,512 75 to Mr. Clark, for printing Mr. 
Webster's speech and articles on the veto, and 
$2,422 65 for fifty-two thousand five hundred 
copies of Mr. Webster's speech. There is also 
a charge of $4,040 paid on orders of the presi- 
dent, stating that it is for expenses in measures 
for protecting the bank against a run on the 
Western branches. 

" During the first half year of 1833, the item 
of stationery and printing was $9,093 59, of 
which $2,600 are stated to have been paid on 
orders of the president, under the resolution of 
11th March, 1831. There is also a charge of 
$800 for printing the report of the exchange 
committee." 

These variovis items, amounting to about 
$80,000, all explain themselves by their names 
and dates — every name of an item referring to 
a political purpose, and every date correspond- 
ing with the impending questions of the re- 
charter and the presidential election ; and all 
charged to the expense account of the bank — a 
head of account limited, by the nature of the 
institution, so far as printing was concerned, to 
the printing necessary for the conducting of its 
own business ; yet in the whole sum, making 
the total of $80,000, there is not an item of that 
kind included. To expose, or correct these 
abuses, the government directors submitted the 
following resolution to the board : 

" Whereas, it appears by the expense account 
of the bank for the years 1831 and 1832, that 
upwards of $80,000 were expended and charged 
under the head of stationery and printing dur- 
ing that period ; that a large proportion of this 
sum was paid to the proprietors of newspapers 
and periodical journals, and for the printing, 
distribution, and postage of immense numbers 
of pamphlets and newspapers ; and that about 
$20,000 were expended under the resolutions 
of 30th November, 1830, and 11th ^Nlarch, 1831, 
witlirout any account of the manner in which, 
or the persons to whom, they were disbursed : 
and whereas it is expedient and pi'oper that the 
particulars of this expenditure, so large and 
unusual, which can now be ascertained only by 
the examiuaton of numerous bills and receipts, 
should be so stated as to be readily submitted 
to. and examined by, the board of directors and 
the stockholders : Therefore, Resolved, That the 
cashier furnish to the board, at as early a day 
as possible, a full and particular statement of 
all these expenditures, designating the sums of 



376 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



money paid to each person, the quantity and 
names of the documents furnished by liim, and 
his charires for tlio distribution and postage of 
the same ; together with as full a statement as 
may be of the expenditures under tiie resolu- 
tions of 30th November, 1830, and 11th March, 
1831. Tliat he ascertain whether expenditures 
of the same character have been made at any of 
the offices, and if so, procure similar statements 
thereof, with the authority on which they were 
made. That the said resolutions be rescinded, 
and no further expenditures made under the 
same." 

This resolution was rejected by the board, 
and in place of it another was adopted, declar- 
mg perfect confidence in the president of the 
bank, and directing him to continue his expen- 
ditures under the two resolves of November 
and March according to his discretion ; — thus 
continuing to him the power of irresponsible 
expenditure, both in amount and object, to 
any extent that he pleased. The reports also 
showed that the government directors were 
treated with the indignity of being virtually 
excluded, both from the transactions of the 
bank, and the knowledge of them ; and that 
the charter was violated to effect these outrages. 
As an instance, this is given : the exchange 
committee was in itself^ and even confined to its 
proper duties, that of buying and selling ex- 
change, was a very important one, having the 
application of an immense amount of the funds 
of the bank. While confined to its proper du- 
ties, it was changed monthly, and the directors 
served upon it by turns ; so that by the process 
of rotation and speedy renewal, every member 
of the directory was kept well informed of the 
transactions of this committee, and had their 
due share in all its great operations. But at 
this time — (time of the renewed charter and 
the presidential election) — both the duties of 
the committee, and its mode of appointment 
were altered ; discounting of notes was permit- 
ted to it, and the appointment of its members 
was invested in Mr. Biddle ; and no govern- 
ment director was henceforth put upon it. 
Thus, a few directors made the loans in the 
committee's room, which by the charter could 
only be made by seven directors at the board ; 
and the government directors, far from having 
any voice in these exchange loans, were igno- 
rant of them until afterwards found on the 
books. It was in this exchange committee that 



most of the loans to members of Congress wer« 
made, and under whose operations the greatest 
losses were eventually incurred. The report of 
the four directors also showed other great mis- 
conduct on the part of the bank, one of which 
was to nearly double its discounts at the ap- 
proaching termination of the charter, running 
them up in less than a year and a half from 
about forty -two and a half to about seventy and 
a half millions of dollars. General Jackson was 
not the man to tolerate these illegalities, cor- 
ruptions and indignities. He, therefore, deter- 
mined on ceasing to use the institution any 
longer as a place of deposit for the public 
moneys ; and accordingly communicated his in- 
tention to the cabinet, all of whom had been 
requested to assist him in his deliberations on 
the subject. The major part of them dissented 
from his design ; whereupon he assembled them 
on the 22nd of September, and read to them a 
paper, of which the following are the more es- 
sential parts : 

" Having carefully and anxiously considered 
all the facts and arguments whicli have been 
submitted to him, relative to a removal of the 
public deposits from the Bank of the United 
States, the President deems it his duty to com- 
municate in this manner to his cabinet the final 
conclusions of his own mind, and the reasons 
on which they are founded, in order to put 
them in durable form, and to prevent miscon- 
ceptions. 

" The President's convictions of the dangerous 
tendencies of the Bank of the United States, 
since signally illustrated by its own acts, were 
so overpowering when he entered on the duties 
of chief magistrate, that he felt it his duty, not- 
withstanding the objections of the friends hy 
whom he was surrounded, to avail himself of 
the first occasion to call the attention of Con- 
gress and the people to the question of its re- 
charter. The ojjinions expressed in his annual 
message of December, 1829, were reiterated in 
those of December, 1830 and 1831, and in that 
of 1830, he threw out for consideration some 
suggestions in relation to a substitute. At the 
session of 1831-'32 an act was passed b}- a ma- 
jority of both Houses of Congress rechartering 
the present bank, upon which the President felt 
it his duty to put his constitutional veto. In 
his message, returning that act, he repeated and 
enlarged upon the principles and views briefly 
asserted in his aunual messages, declaring the 
bank to bo, in his opinion, both inexpedient and 
unconstitutional, and announcing to his country- 
men, very unequivocally, his hrm determination 
never to sanction, by his approval, the continu* 



ANNO 1833. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



377 



ance of that institution or the establishment of 
any other upon similar principles. 

" There are strong reasons for believing that 
the motive of the bank in asking for a recharter 
at that session of Congress, was to make it a 
leading question in the election of a President of 
the United States the ensuing November, and 
all steps deemed necessary were taken to pro- 
cure from the people a reversal of the President's 
decision. 

" Although the charter was approaching its 
termination, and the bank was aware that it was 
the intention of the government to use the public 
deposit as fast as it has accrued, in the pay- 
ment of the public debt, yet did it extend its 
loans from January, 1831. to May, 1832, from 
$42,402,304 24 to $70,428,070 72, being an in- 
crease of $28,025,766 48, in sixteen months. 
It is confidently believed that the leading object 
of this immense extension of its loans was to 
bring as large a portion of the people as possible 
under its power and influence ; and it has been 
disclosed that some of the largest sums were 
granted on very unusual terms to the conductors 
of the public press. In some of these cases, the 
motive was made manifest by the nominal or 
InsuflBcient security taken for the loans, by the 
arge amounts discounted, by the extraordinary 
time allowed for payment, and especially by the 
subsequent conduct of those receiving the ac- 
commodations. 

"Having taken these preliminary steps to 
obtain control over public opinion, the bank 
came into Congress and asked a new charter. 
The object avowed by many of the advocates of 
the bank, was to put the President to the test, 
that the country might know his final determina- 
tion relative to the bank prior to the ensuing 
election. Many documents and articles were 
printed and circulated at the expense of the bank, 
to bring the people to a favorable decision upon 
its pretensions. Those whom the bank appears 
to have made its debtors for the special occasion, 
were warned of the ruin which awaited them, 
should the President be sustained, and attempts 
were made to alarm the whole people bj'- paint- 
ing the depression in the price of property and 
produce, and the general loss, inconvenience, and 
distress, which it was represented would imme- 
diately follow the re-election of the President in 
opposition to the bank. 

'• Can it now be said that the question of a 
recharter of the bank was not decided at the 
election which ensued? Had the veto been 
equivocal, or had it not covered the whole 
ground— if it had merely taken exceptions to 
the details of the bill, or to the time of its passage 
— if it had not met the Avhole ground of consti- 
tutionalitjr and expediency, then there might 
have been some plausibility for the allegation 
that the question was not decided by the people. 
It was to compel the President to take his stand, 
that the question was brought forward at that 
particular time. He met the challenge, willingly 
took the position into which his adversaries 



sought to force him, and frankly declared his 
imalterable opposition to the bank as being both 
unconstitutional and inexpedient. On thjtt 
ground the case was argued to the people, and 
now that the people have sustained the Presi- 
dent, notwithstanding the array of influence and 
power which was brought to bear upon him, it 
is too late, he confidently thinks, to say that 
the question has not been decided. Whatever 
ma}^ be the opinions of others, the President con- 
siders his re-election as a decision of the people 
against the bank. In the concluding paragraph 
of his veto message he said : 

" ' I have now done my duty to my country. 
If sustained by my fellow-citizens, I shall be 
grateful and happy ; if not, I shall find in the 
motives which impel me, ample grounds for con- 
tentment and peace.' 

" He was sustained by a just people, and he 
desires to evince his gratitude by carrj'ing into ef- 
fect their decision, so far as it depends upon him. 

" Of all the substitutes for the present bank, 
which have been suggested, none seems to have 
united any considerable portion of the public in 
its fiivor. Most of them are liable to the same 
constitutional objections for which the present 
bank has been condemned, and perhaps to all 
there are strong objections on the score of ex- 
pediency. In ridding the country of an irre- 
sponsible power which has attempted to control 
the government, care must be taken not to unite 
the same power with the executive branch. To 
give a President the conti'ol over the currency 
and the power over individuals now possessed 
by the Bank of the United States, even with the 
material difference that he is responsible to the 
people, would be as objectionable and as danger- 
ous as to leave it as it is. Neither the one nor 
the other is necessary, and therefore ought not 
to be resorted to. 

" But in the conduct of the bank may be found 
other reasons, very imperative in their character, 
and which require prompt action. Developments 
have been made from time to time of its fiiith- 
lessness as a public agent, its misapplication of 
public funds, its interference in elections, its 
efforts, by the machinery of committees, to de- 
prive the government directors of a full know- 
ledge of its concerns, and above all, its flagrant 
misconduct as recently and unexpectedly dis- 
closed, in placing all the funds of the bank, 
including the money of the government, at the 
disposition of the president of the bank, as means 
of operating upon public opinion and procuring 
a new charter without requiring him to render 
a voucher for their disbursement. A brief reca- 
pitulation of the f\icts which justify those charges 
and which have come to the knowledge of the 
public and the President, will, he thinks, remove 
every reasonable doubt as to the course which 
it is now the duty of the President to pursue. 

" We have seen that in sixteen months, ending 
in INIay, 1832. the bank had extended its loans 
more than $28,000,000, although it knew the 
government intended to appropriate most of ita 



378 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



large deposit during that year in payment of 
the public debt. It was in May, 1832, that its 
loans arrived at the maximum, and in the pre- 
ceding March, so sensible was the bank that it 
would not be able to pay over the public deposit 
when it would be required by the government, 
that it commenced a secret negotiation without 
the approbation or knowledge of the government, 
with the agents, for about ^2,700,000 of the 
three per cent, stocks held in Ilolland, with a 
view of in<lucing them not to come forward for 
payment for one or more years after notice should 
be given byN^he Treasury Department. This 
arrangement wmild have enabled the bank to 
keep and use during that time the public money 
set apart for the payment of these stocks. 

"Although the charter and the rules of the 
bank, both, declare that ' not less than seven di- 
rectors ' shall be necessary to the transaction of 
business, yet. the most important business, even 
that of granting discounts to any extent, is in- 
trusted to a committee of five members who do 
not report to the board. 

'■ To cut off all means of communication with 
the government, in relation to its most important 
acts, at the commencement of the present year, 
not one of the government directors was placed 
on any one committee. And although since, by 
an unusual remodelling of those bodies, some 
of those directors have been placed on some of 
the committees, they are yet entirely excluded 
from the committee of exchange, through which 
the greatest and most objectionable loans have 
been made. 

•'When the government directors made an 
effort to bring back the business of the bank 
to the board, in obedience to the charter and 
the existing regidations, the board not only over- 
ruled their attempt, but altered the rule so as 
to make it conform to the practice, in direct vio- 
lation of one of the most important provisions 
of the charter which gave them existence. 

" It has long been known that the president 
of the bank, by his single will, originates and 
executes many of the most important measures 
connected with the management and credit of 
the bank, and that the committee, as well as the 
board of directors, are left in entire ignorance 
of many acts done, and correspondence carried 
on, in their names, and apparently under their 
authority. The fact has been recently disclosed, 
that an unlimited discretion has been, and is now, 
vested in the president of the bank to expend 
its funds in payment for preparing and circulat- 
ing articles, and purchasing pamphlets and news- 
papers, calculated by their contents to operate 
on elections and secure a renewal of its charter. 

" AS^ith these facts before him, in an official 
report from the government directors, the Pre- 
sident woTild feel that he was not onl}' responsi- 
ble lor all the abuses and corruptions the bank 
has committed, or may commit, but almost an 
accomplice in a conspiracy against that govern- 
ment which he has sworn honestly to administer, 
if he did not take every step, within his consti- 



tutional and legal power, likely to be efficient 
in putting an end to these enormities. Ff it be 
possible, within the scope of human affairs, to 
find a reason for removing the government de- 
posits, and leaving the bank to its own resource 
for the means of effecting its criminal designs, 
we have it here. Was it expected, when the 
moneys of the United States were directed to lie 
placed in that bank, that they would be put 
under the control of one man, empowered to 
spend millions without rendering a voucher or 
specifying the object ? Can they be considered 
safe, with the evidence before us that tens of 
thousands have been spent for highly improper, 
if not corrupt, purposes, and that the same mo- 
tive may lead to the expenditure of hundreds 
of thousands and even millions more ? And 
can we justify ourselves to the people by longei' 
lending to it the money and power of the govern- 
ment, to be employed for such purposes ? 

" In conclusion, the President must be per- 
mitted to remark that he looks upon the pend- 
ing question as of higher consideration than the 
mere transfer of a sum of money from one bank 
to another. Its decision may affect, the charac- 
ter of our government for ages to come. Should 
the bank be suffered longer to use the public 
moneys, in the accomplishment of its purposes, 
with the proof of its faithlessness and coiTup- 
tion before our eyes, the patriotic among our 
citizens will despair of success in struggling 
against its power ; and we shall be responsible 
for entailing it upon our country for ever. View- 
ing it as a question of transcendent importance, 
both in the principles and consequences it in- 
volves, the President could not, injustice to the 
responsibility which he owes to the country, 
refrain from pressing upon the Secretary of the ■ 
Treasuiy his view of the considerations which 
impel to immediate action. Upon him has been 
devolved, by the constitution and the suffrages 
of the American people, the duty of supenn- 
tending the operation of the Executive depart- 
ments of the governments, and .seeing that the 
laws are faithfully executed. In the perform- 
ance of this high trust, it is his undoubted right 
to express to those whom the laws and his own 
choice have made his a.ssociates in the adminis- 
tration of the government, his opinion of their 
duties, under circumstances, as they ari.se. It 
is this right which he now exercises. Far be it 
from him to expect or require that any member 
of the cabinet should, at his request, ordei", or 
dictation, do any act which he believes milaw- 
ful, or in his conscience condemns. From them, 
and from his fellow-citizens in general, he de- 
sires only that aid and support which their rea- 
son approves and their conscience sanctions. 

" The President again repeats that he begs his 
cabinet to consider the proposed measure as his 
own. in the support of which he sliall require 
no one of them to make a sacrifice of opinion or 
principle. Its responsibility has been assumed, 
after the most mature deliberation and reflec- 
tion, as necessary to preserve the morals of the 



ANNO 1833. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



379 



people, the freedom of the press, and the purity 
of the elective franchise, without which, all will 
jnite in saying that the blood and treasure ex- 
pended by our forefathers, in the establishment 
of our happy system of government, will have 
been vain and fruitless. Under these convictions, 
he feels that a measure so important to the Ame- 
rican people cannot be commenced too soon ; 
and he, therefore, names the first day of October 
next as a period proper for the change of the 
deposits, or sooner, provided the necessary ar- 
rangements with the State banks can be made." 

I was in the State of Virginia, when the Globe 
newspaper arrived, towards the end of Septem- 
ber, bringing this " paper," which the President 
had read to his cabinet, and the further informa- 
tion that he had carried his announced design 
into effect, I felt an emotion of the moral sub- 
lime at beholding such an instance of civic hero- 
ism. Here was a President, not bred up in the 
political profession, taking a great step upon his 
own responsibility from which many of his ad- 
visers shrunk ; and magnanimously, in the act 
itself, releasing all from the peril that he en- 
countered, and boldly taking the whole upon 
himself. I say peril ; for if the bank should 
conquer, there was an end to the political pros- 
pects of every public man concurring in the re- 
moval. He believed the act to be necessary ; 
and believing that, he did the act — leaving the 
consequences to God and the country. I felt 
that a great blow had been struck, and that a 
great contest must come on, which could only 
be crowned with success by acting up to the 
spirit with which it had commenced. And I 
repaired to Washington at the approach of the 
session with a full determination to stand by 
the President, which I believed to be standing 
by the country; and to do my part in justify- 
ing his conduct, and in exposing and resisting 
the powerful combination which it was certain 
would be formed against him. 



CHAPTER XCIII. 

BANK PROCEEDINGS, ON SEEING THE DECISION 
OF THE PEESIDENT, IN PvELATION TO THt RE- 
MOVAL OF THE DEPOSITS. 

Immediately on the publication in the Globe 
of the " Paper read to the Cabinet," the bank 
took it into consideration in all the forms of a 



co-ordinate body. It summoned a meeting of 
the directors — appointed a committee — referred 
the President's " Paper" to it — ordered it to re- 
port — held another meeting to receive the re- 
port — adopted it (the government directors, 
Gilpin, "Wager, and Sullivan voting against it) — 
and ordered five thousand copies of the report 
to be printed. A few extracts from the report, 
entitled a Memorial to Congress, are here given, 
for the purpose of showing. First, The temper 
and style in which this moneyed corporation, 
deriving its existence from the national Con- 
gress, indulged itself, and that in its corporate 
capacity, in speaking of the President of the 
United States and his cabinet ; and, next, to 
show the lead which it gave to the proceedings 
which were to be had in Congress. Under the 
first head, the following passages are given : 

" The committee to whom was referred on the 
24th of September, a paper signed 'Andrew Jack- 
son,' purporting to have been read to a cabinet on 
the 18th, and also another paper signed ' H. D. 
Gilpin, John T. Sullivan, Peter Wager, and Hugh 
McEldery,' bearing date August 19th, 1833 — 
with instructions to consider the same, and re- 
port to the board ' whether any, and what steps 
may be deemed necessary on the part of the 
board in consequence of the publication of said 
letter and report,' beg leave to state — 

'' To justify this measure is the purpose of the 
paper signed ' Andrew Jackson.' Of the paper 
itself, and of the individual who has signed it, 
the committee find it difficult to speak with the 
plainness by which alone such a document, from 
such a source, should be described, without 
wounding their own self-respect, and violating 
the consideration which all American citizens 
must feel for the chief magistracy of their coun- 
try. Subduing, however, their feelings and their 
language down to that respectful tone which is 
due to the office, they will proceed to examine 
the history of this measure, its character and 
the pretexts offered in palliation of it. 

" 1st. It would appear from its contents and 
from other sources of information, that the Pre- 
sident had a meeting of what is called the cabi- 
net, on Wednesday, the 18 th September, and 
there read this paper. Finding that it made no 
impression on the majority of persons assembled, 
the subject was postponed, and in the mean time 
this document was put into the newspapers. It 
was obviously published for two reasons. The 
first was to infiucnco the members of the cabinet 
by bringing to bear upon their immediate decis- 
ion the first public impression excited by misre- 
presentations, which the objects of them could 
not refute in time — the second was, by the same 
excitement, to aft'ect the approaching elections in 
Pennsylvania. Maryland and New Jersey. Its 



380 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



assailants are what are called politicians (i. e., 
the assailants of the bank)." 

Svich is the temper and style in which the 
President of the United States is spoken of by 
this great moneyed corporation, in a memorial 
addressed to Congress. Erecting itself into a co- 
ordinate body, and assuming in its corporate 
capacity an authority over the President's act, 
it does not even condescend to call him President. 
It is " Andrew Jackson," and the name alwaj^s 
placed between inverted commas to mark the 
higher degree of contempt. Then the corporation 
shrinks from remarking on the " paper " itself, 
and the " individual " who signed it, as a thing 
injurious to their own self-respect, and only to be 
done in consideration of the " office " which he 
fills, and that after " subduing " their feelings — 
and this was the insolence of the moneyed power 
in defeat, when its champion had received but 
forty-nine votes for the Presidency out of two 
hundred and eighty-eight given in ! What 
would it have been in victory 1 The lead which 
it gave to the intended proceedings in Congress, 
is well indicated in these two paragraphs, and 
the specifications under them : 

" The indelicacy of the form of those proceed- 
ings corresponds well with the substance of 
them, which is equally in violation of the rights 
of the bank and the laws of the country. 

'• The committee willingly leave to the Con- 
gress of the United States, the assertion of their 
own constitutional power, and the vindication of 
the principles of our government, against the most 
violent assault they have ever yet encountered ; 
and will now confine themselves to the more limit- 
ed jjurpose of showing that the reaso'hs assigned 
for this measure are as unfounded as the object 
itself is illegal." 

The illegality of the proceeding, and the vin- 
dication of the constitution, and the principles 
of the government, from a most violent assault, 
are the main objects left by the bank to the Con- 
gress ; the invalidity of the reasons assigned for 
the removal, are more limited, and lest the Con- 
gress might not discover these violations of law 
and constitution, the corporation proceeds to 
enumerate and establish them. It says : 

" Certainly since the foundation of this gov- 
ernment, nothing has ever been done which 
more deepl)^ wounds the spirit of our free insti- 
tutions. It, in fact, resolves itself into this — that 
whenever the laws prescribe certain duties to an 
officer, if that officer, acting under the sanctions 
of his official oath and his private character, re- 



fuses to violate that law, the President of the 
United States may dismiss him and appoint 
another ; and if he too should prove to be a "re- 
fractory subordinate,' to continue his removals 
until he at last discovers in the descending scale 
of degradation some irresponsible individual fit 
to be the tool of his designs. Unliiiijpily, there 
are never wanting men who will think as their 
superiors wish them to think — men who regard 
more the compensation than the duties of their 
office — men to whom daily bread is sufficient 
consolation for daily shame. 

"The present state of this question is a fearful 
illustration of the danger of it. At this moment 
the whole ]-evenue of this country is at the dis^ 
posal — the absolute, uncontrolled disposal — of 
the President of the United States. The laws 
declare that the public funds shall be placed in 
the Bank of the United States, unless the Secre- 
tary of the Treasury forbids it. The Secretary 
of the Tx'easury will not forbid it. The Presi- 
dent dismisses him, and appoints somebody who 
will. So the laws declare that no money shall 
be drawn from the Treasury, except on warrants 
for appropriations made by law. If the Treas- 
urer refuses to draw his warrant for any dis- 
bursement, the President may dismiss him and 
appoint some more flexible agent, who will not 
hesitate to gratify his patron. The text is in the 
official gazette, announcing the fate of the dis- 
missed Secretary to all who follow him. ' The 
agent cannot conscientiously perform the service, 
and refuses to co-operate, and desires to remain 
to thwart the President's measures. To put an 
end to this difficulty between the head and the 
hands of the executive department, the constitu- 
tion arms the chief magistrate with authority 
to remove the refractory subordinate.' The 
theory thus avowed, and the recent practice un- 
der it, convert the whole free institutions of this 
country into the mere absolute will of a single 
individual. They break down all the restraints 
which the framers of the government hoped they 
had imposed on arbitrary power, and place 
the whole revenue of the United States in the 
hands of the President. 

" For it is manifest that this removal of the 
deposits is not made by the order of the Secretary 
of the Treasury. 1 1 is a pervei'sion of language so 
to describe it. On the contrary, the reverse is 
openly avowed. The Secretary of the Treasury re- 
fused to remove them, believing, as his published 
letter declares, that the removal was ' unneces- 
sary, unwise, vindictive, arbitrary and unjust.' 
He was then dismissed because he would not re- 
move them, and another was appointed because 
he would remove them. Now tliis is a palpable 
violation of the charter. The bank and Congress 
agr -e upon certain terms, whicii no one can 
change but a particular officer; who, although 
necessarily nominated to the Senate by tlie Pre- 
sident, was designated by the bank and by Con- 
gress as the umpire between them. Both Con- 
gress and the bank have a right to the free and 
honest and impartial judgment of that officer, 



AlTNO 1833. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



381 



whoever he may be — the bank, because the re- 
moval may injure its interests — the Congress, 
because the removal n*«,y greatly incommode 
and distress their constituents. In this case, 
they are deprived of it by the unlawful interfer- 
ence of the President, who ' assumes the respon- 
sibility,' which, being interpreted, means, usurps 
the power of the Secretary. 

" The whole structure of the Treasury shows 
that the design of Congress was to make the 
Secretary as independent as possible of the Pre- 
sident. The other Secretaries are merely execu- 
tive oflBcers ; but the Secretary of the Treasury, 
the guardian of the public revenue, comes into 
more immediate sympathy with the representa- 
tives of the people who pay that revenue ; and 
although, according to the general scheme of ap- 
pointment, he is nominated by the President to 
itie Senate, yet he is in fact the officer of Con- 
gress, not the officer of the President. 

" This independence of the Secretary of the 
Treasury — if it be true in general — is more 
especially true in regard to the bank. It was 
in fact the leading principle in organizing the 
bank, that the President should be excluded 
from all control of it. The question which most 
divided the House of Representives was, whether 
there should be a^iy government directors at all ; 
and although thii was finally adopted, yet its 
tendency to create executive influence over the 
bank was qualified by two restrictions: first, 
that no more than three directors should be ap- 
pointed from any one State ; and, second, that 
the president of the bank should not be, as was 
originally designed by tJie Secretary of the 
Treasury, chosen from among the government 
directors. Accordingly, by the charter, the 
Secretary of the Treasury ia every thing — the 
President comparatively nothing. The Secretary 
has the exclusive supervision of all the relations 
of the bank with the government." 

These extracts are sufficient to show that the 
corporation charged the President with illegal 
and unconstitutional conduct, subversive of the 
principles of our government, and dangerous to 
our liberties in causing the deposits to be re- 
moved — that they looked upon this illegal, un- 
constitutional, and dangerous conduct as the 
principal wrong — and left to Congress the as- 
sertion of its own constitutional power, and the 
vindication of the principles of the government 
from the assault which they had received. And 
this in a memorial addressed to Congress, of 
which five thousand copies, in pamphlet form, 
were printed, and the members of Congress 
Uberally supplied with copies. It will be seen, 
when we come to the proceedings of Congress 
how far the intimations of the memorial in 
showing what ought to be done, and leaving 



Congress to do it, was complied with by that 
body. 



CHAPTEK XCIV. 

EEPOET OF THE SECEETART OF THE TEEASIfEY 
TO CONGKESS ON THE EEMOVAL OF THE DE- 
POSITS. 

By the clause in the charter authorizing the 
Secretary of the Treasury to remove the de- 
posits, that officer was required to communicate 
the fact immediately to Congress, if in session, 
if not, at the first meeting ; together with his 
reasons for so doing. The act which had been 
done was not a " removal," in the sense of that 
word ; for not a dollar was taken from the 
Bank of the United States to be deposited else- 
where ; and the order given was not for a " re- 
moval," but for a cessation of deposits in that 
institution, leaving the public moneys which 
were in it to be drawn out in the regular course 
of expenditure. An immediate and total re- 
moval might have been well justified by the 
misconduct of the bank ; a cessation to deposit 
might have been equally well justified on the 
ground of the approaching expiration of the 
charter, and the propriety of providing in time 
for the new places of deposit which that expira- 
tion would render necessary. The two reasons 
put together made a clear case, both of justifi- 
cation and of propriety, for the order which had 
been given ; and the secretary, Mr. Taney, well 
set them forth in the report which he made, 
and which was laid before Congress on the day 
after its meeting. The following are extracts 
from it : 

" The Treasury department being intrusted 
with the administration of the finances of the 
country, it was always the duty of the Secreta- 
ry, in the absence of any legislative provision on 
the subject, to take care that the public money 
was deposited in safe keeping, in the hands of 
faithful agents, and in convenient places, ready 
to be applied according to the wants of the gov- 
ernment. The law incorporating the bank has 
reserved to him, in its full extent, the power he 
before possessed. It does not confer on him a 
new power, but reserves to liim his former au- 
thority, without any new limitation. The obli- 
gation to assign the reasons for his direction to 
deposit the money of the United States else- 
where, cannot be considered as a restriction of 



382 



raiRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



the power, because the right of the Secretary to 
designate the place of deposit was alwaj^s neces- 
sarily subject to the control of Congress. And 
as the Secretary of the Treasury presides over 
one of the executive departments of the govern- 
ment, and his power over this subject forms a 
part of the executive duties of his office, the 
manner in which it is exercised must be subject 
to the supervision of the officer to whom the 
constitution has confided the whole executive 
power, and has required to take care that the 
laws be faithfully executed. 

" The fiiith of the United States is, however, 
pledged, according to the terms of the section 
above stated, that the public money shall be de- 
posited in this bank, unless 'the Secretary of 
the Treasury shall otherwise order and direct.' 
And as this agreement has been entered into by 
Congress, in behalf of the United States, the 
place of deposit could not be changed by a 
legislative act, without disregarding a pledge, 
which the legislature has given ; and the money 
of the United States must therefore continue to 
be deposited in the bank, until the last hour of 
its existence, unless it shall be otherwise ordered 
by the authority mentioned in the charter. The 
power over the place of deposit for the public 
money would seem properly to belong to the 
legislative department of the government, and it 
is difficult to imagine why the authority to with- 
draw it from this bank was confided exclusively 
to the Executive. But the terms of the charter 
appear to be too plain to admit of question ; and 
although Congress should be satisfied that the 
public money was not safe in the care of the 
bank, or should be convinced that the interests 
of the people of the United States imperiously 
demanded the removal, yet the passage of a law 
directing it to be done, would be a breach of the 
agreement into which they have entered. 

"In deciding upon the course which it was my 
duty to pursue in relation to the deposits, I did not 
feel myself justified in anticipating the renewal 
of the charter on either of the above-mentioned 
grourtds. It is very evident that the bank has 
no claim to renewal, founded on the justice of 
Congress. For. independently of the many seri- 
ous and insurmountable objections, which its 
own conduct has furnished, it cannot be supposed 
that the grant to this corporation of exclusive 
privileges, at the expense of the rest of the com- 
munity, for twenty years, can give it a right to 
demand the still further enjoyment of its profit- 
able monopoly. Neither could I act upon the 
assumption that the public interest required the 
rechartcr of the bank, because I am firmly per- 
suaded that the law which created this corpora- 
tion, in many of its provisions, is not warranted 
by the constitution, and that the existence of 
such a powerful moneyed monopoly, is danger- 
ous to the liberties of the people, and to the 
purity of our political institutions. 

" The manifestations of public opinion, instead 
of being favorable to a renewal, *have been decid- 
edly to the contrary. And I have always regard- 



ed the result of the last election of the President 
of the United States, as the declaration of a ma- 
jority of the people that the charter ought not to 
be renewed. It is not necessary to state here, 
what is now a matter of history. The question 
of the renewal of the charter was introduced 
into the election by the corporation itself Its 
voluntary application to Congress for the renew- 
al of its charter four years before it expired, and 
upon the eve of the election of President, was un- 
derstood on all sides <as bringing forward that 
question for incidental decision, at the then ap- 
proaching election. It was accordingly argued 
on both sides, before the tribunal of the people, 
and their verdict pronounced against the bank, 
by the election of the candidate who was known 
to have been always inflexibly opposed to it. 

" The monthly statement of the bank, of the 
2d September last, before referred to, shows that 
the notes of the bank and its branches, then in 
circulation, amounted to $18,413,287 07, and 
that its discounts amounted to the sum of 
iS}!G2,653,359 59. The immense circulation above 
stated, pervading every part of the United States, 
and most commonly used in the business of com- 
merce between distant places, must all be with- 
drawn from circulation when the charter ex- 
pires. If any of the notes then remain in the 
hands of individuals, remote from the branches 
at which they are payable, their immediate de- 
preciation will subject the holders to certain loss. 
Those payable in the principal commercial cities 
would, perhaps, retain nearly their nominal val- 
ue ; but this would not be the case with the notes 
of the interior branches, remote from the great 
marts of trade. And the statements of the bank 
will show that a great part of its circulation is 
composed of notes of this description. The bank 
would seem to have taken pains to introduce in- 
to common use such a description of paper as it 
could depreciate, or raise to its par value, as best 
suited its own views ; and it is of the first impor- 
tance to the interests of the public that these 
notes should all be taken out of circulation, be- 
fore they depreciate in the hands of the individ- 
uals who hold them ; and they ought to be with- 
drawn gradually, and their places supplied, as 
they retire, by the currency which will become 
the substitute for them. How long will it re 
quire, for the ordinary operations of commerce, 
and the reduction of discounts by the bank, to 
withdraw the amount of circulation before men- 
tioned, without giving a shock to the currency, 
or producing a distressing pressure on the com- 
munity ? I am convinced that the time which 
remained for the charter to run, after the 1st of 
October (the day on which the first order for 
removal took eilect), was not more than was 
proper to accomplish the object with safety to 
the community. 

" There is, however, another view of the sub- 
ject, which in my opinion, made it impossible 
further to postpone the removal. About the 1st 
of December. 1832, it had been ascertained that 
the present Cliief Magistrate was re-elected. 



4lNN0 1833. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



383 



that his decision against the bank had thus been 
sanctioned by the people. At that time the dis- 
counts of the bank amounted to $61,571,625 66. 
Althougli the issue which the bank took so much 
pains to frame had now been tried, and the de- 
cision pronounced against it, yet no steps were 
taken to prepare for its approaching end. On 
the contrary, it proceeded to enlarge its discounts, 
and, on the 2d of August, 1833, they amounted 
to l|64,160,349 14, being an increase of more 
than two and a half millions in the eight months 
immediately following the decision against them. 
And so far from preparing to arrange its affairs 
with a view to wind up its business, it seemed 
from this course of conduct, to be the design 
of the bank to put itself in such an attitude, 
that, at the close of its charter, the country 
would be compelled to submit to its renewal, or 
to bear all the consequences of a currency sud- 
denly deranged, and also a severe pressure for the 
immense outstanding claims which would then 
be due to the corporation. While the bank was 
thus proceeding to enlarge its discounts, an agent 
was appointed by the Secretary of the Treasury 
to inquire upon what terms the State banks 
would undertake to perform the services to the 
government which have heretofore been render- 
ed by the Bank of the United States ; and also to 
ascertain their condition in four of the principal 
commercial cities, for the purpose of enabling tlie 
department to judge whether they would be safe 
and convenient depositories for the public money. 
It was deemed necessary that suitable fiscal 
agents should be prepared in due season, and it 
was proper that time should bo allowed them to 
make arrangements with one another throughout 
the country, in order that they might perform 
their duties in concert, and in a manner that 
would be convenient and acceptable to the pub- 
lic. It was essential that a change so important 
in its character, and so extensive in its operation 
upon the financial concerns of the covmtry, 
should not be introduced without timely prepara- 
tion. 

" The United States, by the charter, reserved 
the right of appointing five directors of the bank. 
It was intended by this means not only to pro- 
fide guardians for the interests of the public in 
the general administration of its affairs, but also 
to have faithful officers, whose situation would 
enable them to become intimately acquainted 
with all the transactions of the institution, and 
whose duty it would be to apprize the proper 
authorities of any misconduct on the part of the 
corporation likely to affect the public interest. 
The fourth fundamental article of the constitu- 
tion of the corporation declares that not less 
than seven directors shall constitute a board for 
the transaction of business. At these meetings 
of the board, the directors on the part of the 
United States had of course a right to be pre- 
sent ; and, consequently, if the business of the 
corporation had been transacted in the manner 
which the law requires, there was abundant se- 
curity that nothing could be doae, injuriously 



affecting the interests of the people, without be- 
ing immediately communicated to the public 
servants, who were authorized to apply the re- 
medy. And if the corporation has so arranged 
its concerns as to conceal from the public direc- 
tors some of its most important operations, and 
has thereby destroyed the safeguards which 
were designed to secure the interests of the 
United States, it would seem to be very clear 
that it has forfeited its claim to confidence, and 
is no longer worthy of trust. 

"Instead of a board constituted of at least 
seven directors, according to the charter, at 
which those appointed by the United States 
have a right to be pi'esent, many of the most 
important money transactions of the bank have 
been, and still are, placed under the control of a 
committee, denominated the exchange commit- 
tee, of which no one of the public directors has 
been allowed to be a member since the com- 
mencement of the present year. This commit- 
tee is not even elected by the board, and the 
public directors have no voice in their appoint- 
ment. They are chosen by the president of the 
bank, and the business of the institution, which 
ought to be decided on by the board of direc- 
tors, is, in many instances, transacted by this 
committee ; and no one had a right to be pre- 
sent at their pi'oceedings but the president, and 
those whom he shall please to name as members 
of this committee. Thus, loans are made, un- 
known at the time to a majority of the board, 
and paper discounted which might probably be 
rejected at a regular meeting of the directors. 
The most important operations of the bank are 
sometimes resolved on and executed by this 
committee ; and its measures are, it appears, 
designedly, and by regular system, so arranged, 
as to conceal from the officers of the govern- 
ment transactions in which the public interests 
are deeply involved. And this fact alone fur- 
nishes evidence too strong to be resisted, that 
the concealment of certain important operations 
of the corporation from the officers of the gov- 
ernment is one of the objects which is intended 
to be accomplished by means of this committee. 
The plain words of the charter are violated, in 
order to deprive the people of the United States 
of one of the principal securities wliich the law 
had provided to guard their interests, and to 
render more safe the public money intrusted to 
the care of the bank. Would any individual 
of oi'dinary discretion continue his money in the 
hands of an agent who violated his instructions 
for the purpose of hiding from him the manner 
in which he was conducting the business confid- 
ed to his charge ? Would he continue his prop- 
erty in his hands, when he had not only ascer- 
tained that concealment had been practised to- 
wards him, but when the agent avowed his de- 
termination to continue in tlie same course, and 
to withhold from him, as far as he could, all 
knowledge of the manner in which he was cm- 
ploying his funds 1 If an individual would not 
be expected to continue his confidence under 



384 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



such circumstances, upon what principle could a 
different line of conduct be required from the 
officers of the United States, charged with the 
care of the public interests ? The public money 
is surely entitled to the same care and protec- 
tion as that of an individual ; and if the latter 
would be bound, in justice to himself, to with- 
draw his monc}^ from the hands of an agent 
thus regardless of his dut}"", the same principle 
requires that the money of the United States 
should, under the like circumstances, be with- 
drawn from the hands of their fiscal agent. 

Having shown ample reasons for ceasing to 
make the public deposits in the Bank of the 
United States, and that it was done, the Secre- 
tary proceeds to the next division of his subject, 
naturally resulting from his aathority to re- 
move, though not expressed in the charter ; and 
that was, to show where he had ordered them 
to be placed. 

" The propriety of removing the deposits being 
thus evident, and it being consequently my duty 
to select the places to which they were to be 
removed, it became necessary that arrangements 
should be immediately made with the new de- 
positories of the public money, which would not 
only render it safe, but would at the same time 
secure to the government, and to the community 
at large, the convcniencies and facilities that 
were intended to be obtained by incorporating 
the Bank of the United States. Measures were 
accordingly taken for that purpose, and copies 
of the contracts which have been made with the 
selected banks, and of the letters of instructions 
to them from this department, are herewith sub- 
mitted. The contracts with the banks in the 
interior are not precisely the same with those 
in the Atlantic cities. The difference between 
them arises from the nature of the business 
transacted by the banks in these different places. 
The State banks selected are all institutions of 
high character and undoubted strength, and are 
under the management and control of persons 
of unquestioned probity and intelligence. And, 
in order to insure the safety of the public money, 
each of them is required, and has agreed, to give 
securit}^ whenever the amount of the deposit 
shall exceed the half of the amount of the capital 
actually paid in ; and this department has re- 
served to itself the right to demand security 
whenever it may think it advisable, although 
the amount on deposit may not be equal to the 
sum above stated. The banks selected have also 
severally engaged to transmit money to any 
point at which it may be required by the direc- 
tion of this department for the public service, 
and to perform all the services to the government 
which were heretofore rendered by the Bank of 
the United States. And, by agreements among 
themselves to honor each other's notes and 
drafts, they are providing a general currency at 
least as sound as tliat of the Bank of the United 



States, and will afford facilities to'commerce and 
in the business of domestic exchange, quite equal 
to any which the community heretofore enjoyed. 
There has not been yet sufficient time to perfect 
these arrangements, but enough has already 
been done to show that, even on the score of ex- 
pediency, a Bank of the United States is not 
necessary, either for the fiscal operations of the 
government, or the public convenience ; and 
that every object which the charter to the present 
bank was designed to attain, may be as effectually 
accomplished by the State banks. And, if this 
can be done, nothing that is useful will be lost 
or endangered by the change, while much that 
is desirable will be gained by it. For no one 
of these corporations will possess that absolute 
and almost unlimited dominion over the property 
of the citizens of the United States which the 
present bank holds, and which enables it at any 
moment, at its own pleasure, to bring distress 
upon any portion of the community whenever it 
may deem it useful to its interest to make its 
power felt. The influence of each of the State 
banks is necessarily limited to its own imme- 
diate neighborhood, and they will be kept in 
check by the other local banks. They will not, 
therefore, be tempted by the consciousness of 
power to aspire to political influence, nor likely 
to interfere in the elections of the public servants. 
They will, moreover, be managed by persons 
who reside in the midst of the people who are 
to be immediately affected by their measures 5 
and they cannot be insensible or indifferent to the 
opinions and peculiar interests of those by whom 
they are daily surrounded, and with whom they 
are constantly associated. These circumstances 
always furnish strong safeguards against an 
oppressive exercise of power, and forcibly re- 
commend the employment of State banks in pre- 
ference to a Bank of the United States, with its 
numerous and distant branches. 

" In the selection, therefore, of the State banks 
as the fiscal agents of the government, no disad- 
vantages appear to have been incurred on the 
score of safety or convenience, or the general 
interests of the country, while much that is 
valuable will be gained by the change. I am, 
however, well aware of the vast power of the 
Bank of the United States, and of its ability to 
bring distress and suffering on the country. 
This is one of the evils of chartering a bank 
with such an amount of capital, with the right 
of shooting its branches into every part of the 
Union, so as to extend its influence to every 
neighborhood. The immense loan of more than 
twenty-eight millions of dollars suddenly poured 
out, chiefly in the Western States, in 1831, and 
the first four months in 1832, sufficiently attests 
that the bank is sensible of the powrr wliich its 
money gives it, and has placed itself in an atti- 
tude to make the people of the United States 
feel the weight of its resentment, if they presume 
to disappoint the wishes of the corporation. By 
a severe curtailment it has already made it pro- 
per to withdraw a portion of the money it held 



ANNO 1833. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



385 



on deposit, and transfer it to the custody of the 
new fiscal agents, in order to shield the com- 
munity from the injustice of the Bank of the 
United Siates. But i have not supposed that 
the course of the government ought to be regu- 
lated by the fear of the power of the bank. If 
such a motive could be allowed to influence the 
legislation of Congress, or the action of the ex- 
ecutive departments of the government, there is 
an end to the sovereignty of the people ; and the 
liberties of the country are at once surrendered 
at the feet of a moneyed corporation. They may 
now demand the possession of the public money, 
or the renewal of the charter ; and if these ob- 
jects are yielded to them from apprehensions 
of their power, or from the suffering which rapid 
curtailments on their part are inflicting on the 
community, what may they not next require ? 
Will submission render such a corporation more 
forbearing in its course ? What law may it not 
hereafter demand, that it will not, if it pleases, 
be able lo enforce by the same means ? " 

Thus the keeping of the public moneys went 
to the local banks, the system of an independent 
treasury being not then established; and the 
notes of these banks necessarily required their 
notes to be temporarily used in the federal 
payments, the gold currency not being at that 
time revived. Upon these local banks the fede- 
ral government was thrown— ;^rsf, for the safe 
keeping of its public moneys ; secondly, to sup- 
ply the place of the nineteen millions of bank 
notes which the national had in circulation; 
thirdly, to relieve the community fi'om the 
pressure which the Bank of the United States 
had already commenced upon it, and which, it 
was known, was to be pushed to the ultimate 
point of oppression. But a difHculty was ex- 
perienced in obtaining these local banks, which 
would be incredible without understanding the 
cause. Instead of a competition among them to 
obtain the deposits, there was holding off, and 
an absolute refusal on the part of many. Local 
banks were shy of receiving them — shy of re- 
ceiving the greatest possible apparent benefit to 
themselves — shy of receiving the aliment upon 
which they lived and grew ! and why this so 
great apparent contradiction ? It was the fear 
of the Bank of the United States ! and of that 
capacity to destroy them to which IMr. Biddle 
had testified in his answers to the Senate's 
Finance Committee; and which capacity was 
now known to be joined to the will ; for the 
bank placed in the same category all who should 
be concerned in the removal — both the govern- 
ment that ordered it, and the local banks which 

Vol. I.— 25 



received what it lost. But a competent number 
were found ; and this first attempt to prevent a 
removal, by preventing a reception of the de- 
posits elsewhere, entirely failed. 



CHAPTER XCV. 

NOMINATION OF GOVERNMENT DIEECTOKS, AND 
THEIR REJECTION. 

By the charter of the bans.^ the government was 
entitled to five directors, to be nominated an- 
nually by the President, and confirmed by the 
Senate. At the commencement of the session 
of 1833-'34, the President nominated the five, 
four of them being the same who had served 
during the current year, and who had made the 
report on which the order for the removal of the 
deposits was chiefly founded. This drew upon 
them the resentment of the bank, and caused 
them to receive a large share of reproach and 
condemnation in the report which the committee 
of the bank drew up, and which the board of 
directors adopted and published. When these 
nominations came into the Senate it was soon 
perceived that there Avas to be opposition to 
these four ; and fbr the purpose of testing the 
truth of the objections. ]\Ir, Kane, of Illinois, 
submitted the following resolution : 

" Resolved, That the nominations of H. D. 
Gilpin, John T. Sullivan, Peter Wager, and 
Hugh McEldery, be recommitted to the Com- 
mitte on Finance, with instructions to inquire 
into their several qualifications and fitness for the 
stations to which they have been nominated ; 
also into the truth of all charges preferred by 
them against the board of directors of the Bank 
of the United States, and into the conduct of 
each of the said nominees during the time he may 
have acted as director of the said bank ; and that 
the said nominees have notice of the times and 
places of meetings of said conuuittee. and have 
leave to attend the same." 

Which was immediately rejected by the fol- 
lowing vote : 

" Yeas. — Messrs. Benton, Brown, Forsyth, 
Grundy, Hendricks, Hill, Kane, King of Alaba- 
ma, Linn, McKean, JNIoor, Morris, Rives, Robin- 
son, Shepley, Tallmadge, Tipton, White, Wil- 
kins, Wright.— 20. 

" Nays.— Messrs. Bell, Bibb, Black, Calhoun, 
Chambers. Clay, Clayton, Ewing, Frelinghuysen, 



386 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW 



Kent, King of Georgia, Knight, Mangum, Nau- 
dain, Poindexter, Porter, Prentiss, Robbins, 
Silsbee, Smith, Soutliard, Sprague, Swift, Tom- 
linson, Tyler, Waggaman, Webster. — 27. 

And this resolution being rejected, requiring 
a two-fold examination — one into the character 
and qualifications of the nominees, the other in- 
to the truth of their representations against the 
bank, it was deemed proper to submit another, 
limited to an inquiry into the character and fit- 
ness of the nominees ; which was rejected by the 
same vote. The nominations were then voted 
upon separately, and each of the four was reject- 
ed by the same vote which applied to the first 
one, to wit, Mr. Gilpin : and which was as fol- 
lows: 

"Yeas. — Messrs. Benton, Black, Brown, For- 
.syth, Grundy, Hendricks, Ilill, Kane, King of 
Alabama, Linn, McKean, Moore, IMorris, Robin- 
son, Shepley, Tallmadge, Tipton, Wliite, Wil- 
kins, Wright. — 20. 

" Nays. — Messrs. Bell, Bibb, Calhoun, Cham- 
bers, Clay. Ewing, Frclinghuysen, Kent, Knight, 
Mangum. Naudain, Poindexter, Porter, Prentiss, 
Preston. Bobbins, Silsbee, Smith, Sprague, Swift, 
TomUnson, Tyler. Waggaman, Webster. — 24. 

These rejections being communicated to the 
President, he immediately felt that it presented 
a new case for his energy and decision of conduct. 
The whole of the rejected gentlemen had been 
confirmed the year before — had all acted as di- 
rectors for the current year — and there was no 
complaint against them except from the Bank of 
the United States ; and that limited to their 
conduct in giving information of transactions in 
the bank to President Jackson at his written 
request. Their characters and fitness were above 
question. That was admitted by the Senate, 
both by its previous confirmation for the same 
places, and its present refusal to inquire into 
those points. The information which they had 
given to the President had been copied from the 
books of the bank, and the transactions which 
they communicated had been objected to by them 
at the time as illegal and improper ; and its truth, 
unimpeachable in itself, was unimpcached by the 
Senate in their refusal to inquire into their con- 
duct while directors. It was evident then that 
they had been rejected for the report which they 
made to the President ; and this brought up the 
question, whether it was right to punish them 
for that act ? and whether the bank should have 
the virtual nomination of the government direc- 



tors by causing tho.se to be rejected which thft 
government nominated ? and permitting none jO 
serve but those whose conduct should be subor- 
dinate to the views and policy of the bank ? 
These were questions, first, for the Senate, and 
then for the country ; and the President deter- 
mined to bring it before both in a formal ines 
sage of re-nomination. He accordingly sent back 
the names of the four rejected nominations in a 
message which contained, among others, these 
passages : 

" I disclaim all pretension of right on the part 
of the President officially to inquire into, or call 
in question, the reasons of the Senate for reject- 
ing any nomination Avhatsoever. As the Presi- 
dent is not responsible to them for the reasons 
which induce him to make a nomination, so they 
are not responsible to him for the reasons which 
induce them to reject it. In these respects, each 
is independent of the other and both responsible 
to their respective constituents. Nevertheless, 
the attitude in which certain vital interests of the 
country arc placed by the rejection of the gen- 
tlemen now re-nominated require of me. frankly, 
to communicate my views of the consequences 
which must necessarily follow this act of the 
Senate, if it be not reconsidered. 

" The characters and standing of these gentle- 
men are well known to the community, and 
eminently qualify them for the offices to which 
I propose to appoint them. Their confirmation 
by the Senate at its last session to tlic same offi- 
ces is proof that such was the opinion of them 
entertained by the Senate at that time ; and un- 
less some thing has occurred since to change it. 
this act may now be referred to as evidence that 
their talents and pursuits justified their selec- 
tion. 

" The refusal, however, to confirm their nomi- 
nations to the same ofiices, shows that there is 
something in the conduct of these gentlemen 
during the last year which, in the opinion of the 
Senate, disqualifies them ; and as no charge has 
been made against them as men or citizens, no- 
thing which impeaches the fair private cliaracter 
they possessed when the Senate gave them their 
sanction at its last session, and as it moreover 
appears from the journal of the Senate recently 
ti-ansmitted for mj' inspection, that it was deem- 
ed ininecessary to inquire into their qualifications 
or character, it is to be inferred that the change 
in the opinion of the Senate has arisen from the 
official conduct of these gentlemen. The only 
circmnstances in their official conduct which 
have been deemed of sufficient importance to at- 
tract public attention are the two reports made 
by them to the executive department of the gov- 
ernment, the one bearing date the 22d day of 
Ai)ril, and the other the 19th day of August last ; 
both of which reports were communicated to the 
, Senate by the Secretary of the Treasury with 
I his reasons for removing the deposits. 



AKXO 1833. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



387 



" The truth of the facts stated in these reports, 
is not, I presume, questioned by any one. The 
high cliaracter and standing of the citizens by 
whom they were made prevent any doubt upon 
the subject. Indeed the statements have not 
been denied by the president of the bank, and 
the other directors. On the contrary, they have 
insisted that they were authorized to use the 
money of the bank in the manner stated in the 
two reports, and have not denied that the charges 
there made against the corporation are substan- 
tially true. 

" It must be taken, therefore, as admitted that 
the statements of the public directors, in the re- 
ports above mentioned, are correct: and they 
disclose the most alarming abuses on the part 
of the corporation, and the most strenuous ex- 
ertions on their part to put an end to them. 
They prove that enormous sums were secretly 
lavished in a manner, and for purposes that 
cannot be justified ; and that the whole of the 
immense capital of the bank has been virtually 
placed at the disposal of a single individual, to be 
used, if he thinks proper, to corrupt the press, 
and to control the proceedings of the government 
by exercising an undue influence over elections. 

" The reports were made in obedience to my 
official directions ; and I herewith transmit 
copies of my letter calling for information of 
the proceedings of the bank. Were they bound 
to disregard the call ? Was it their duty to re- 
main silent while abuses of the most injurious 
and dangerous character were daily practised ? 
Were they bound to conceal from the constitut- 
ed authorities a course of measures destructive 
to the best interests of the country, and intend- 
ed, gradually and secretly, to subvert the foun- 
dations of our government, and to transfer its 
powers from the hands of the people to a great 
moneyed corporation ? Was it their dutj^ to 
sit in silence at the board, and witness all these 
abuses without an attempt to correct them ; or, 
in case of failure there, not to appeal to higher 
authoi-ity ? The eighth fundamental rule au- 
thorizes any one of the directors, whether elect- 
ed or appointed, who may have been absent 
when an excess of debt was created, or who 
may have dissented from the act, to exonerate 
himself from personal responsibihty by giving 
notice of the fact to the President of the United 
States ; thus recognizing the propriety of com- 
municating to that officer the proceedings of the 
board in such cases. But, independently of any 
argument to be derived from the principle re- 
cognized in the rule referred to, I cannot doubt 
for a moment that it is the right and the duty 
of every director at the board to attempt to 
correct all illegal jtrocecdings, and in case of 
failure, to disclose them ; and that every one of 
them, whether elected by the stockliolders or 
appointed by the government, who had know- 
ledge of the facts, and concealed them, would be 
justly amenable to the severest censure. 

" But, in the case of the public directors, it 
was their peculiar and official duty to make the 



disclosures ; and the call upon them for infor- 
mation could not have been disregarded without 
a flagrant breach of their trust. The directors 
appointed by the United States cannot be re- 
garded in the light of the ordinary directors of 
a bank appointed by the stockholders, and 
charged with the care of their pecuniary in- 
terests in the corporation. They have higher 
and more important duties. They are public 
officers. They are placed at the board not 
merely to represent the stock held by the Uni- 
ted States, but to observe the conduct of the 
corporation, and to watch over the public in- 
terests. It was foreseen that this great money- 
ed monopoly might be so managed as to endan- 
ger the interests of the country ; and it was 
therefore deemed necessary, as a measure of 
precaution, to place at the board watchful sen- 
tinels, who should observe its conduct, and 
stand ready to report to the proper officers of 
the goverment every act of the board which 
might affect injuriously the interests of the 
people. 

"It was, perhaps, scarcely necessary to pre- 
sent to the Senate these views of the powers of 
the Executive, and of the duties of the five di- 
rectors appointed by the United States. But 
the bank is believed to be now striving to ob- 
tain for itself the government of the country, 
and is seeking, by new and strained construc- 
tions, to wrest from the hands of the constituted 
authorities the salutary control reserved by the 
charter. And as misrepresentation is one of its 
most usual weapons of attack, I have deemed it 
my duty to put before the Senate, in a manner 
not to be misunderstood, the principles on which 
I have acted. 

"Entertaining, as I do, a solemn conviction 
of the truth of these principles, I must adhere 
to them, and act upon tliem, with constancj' and 
firmness. 

" Aware, as I now am, of the dangerous ma- 
chinations of the bank, it is more than ever my 
duty to be vigilant in guarding the rights of the 
people from the impending danger. And I 
should feel that I ought to forfeit the confi- 
dence with which my countrymen have honored 
me, if I did not require regular and full reports 
of every thing in the proceedings of the bank 
calculated to affect injuriously the public in- 
terests, from the public directors, and if the di- 
rectors should fail to give the information called 
for, it would bo my imperious duty to exercise 
the power conferred on me by the law of remov- 
ing them from office, and of appointing others 
who would discharge their duties with more 
fidelity to the public. I can never suffer any 
one to hold office under me, who would connive 
at corruption, or who should ft\il to give the 
alarm when he saw the enemies of libertj^ en- 
deavoring to sap the foundations of our free in- 
stitutions, and to subject the free people of the 
United States to the dominion of a great mon- 
eyed corporation. 

" Any directors of the bank, therefore, who 



388 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



mif^ht be appointed by the government, would 
be required to report to the Executive cas fully 
as the late directors have done, and more fre- 
quently, because the danger is more imminent ; 
and it "would be my duty to require of them a 
full detail of every part of the proceedings of 
the corporation, or any of its officers, in order 
that I might be enabled to decide whether I 
should exercise the power of ordering a scire 
facias, Avhich is reserved to the President by the 
charter, or adopt such other lawful measures as 
the interests of the country might require. It 
is too obvious to be doubted, that the miscon- 
duct of the corporation would never have been 
brought to light by the aid of a public proceed- 
ing at the board of directors. 

'• The board, when called on by the govern- 
ment directors, refused to institute an inquiry 
or require an account, and the mode adopted by 
the latter was the only one by which the ob- 
ject could be attained. It would be absurd to 
admit the right of the government directors to 
give information, and at the same time deny the 
means of obtaining it. It would be but another 
mode of enabling the bank to conceal its proceed- 
ings, and practice with impunity its corruptions. 
In the mode of obtaining the information, there- 
fore, and in their efforts to put an end to the 
abuses disclosed, as well as in reporting them, 
the conduct of the late directors was judicious 
and praiseworthy, and the honesty, firmness, 
and intelligence, which they have displayed, 
entitle them, in my opinion, to the gratitude of 
the country. 

" If the views of the Senate be such as I have 
supposed, the difficulty of sending to the Senate 
any other names than those of the late directors 
will be at once apparent. I cannot consent to 
place before the Senate the name of any one 
who is not prepared, -with firmness and honesty, 
to discharge the duties of a public director in 
the manner they were fulfilled by those whom 
the Senate have refused to confirm. If, for per- 
forming a duty lawfully required of them b}^ 
the Executive, they are to be punished by the 
subsequent rejection of the Senate, it would 
not only be useless but cruel to place men of 
character and honor in that situation, if even 
such men could be found to accept it. If they 
failed to give the recjuired information, or to 
take proper measures to obtain it, they would 
be removed by the Executive. If they gave the 
information, and took proper measures to ob- 
tain it, they would, upon the next nomination, 
be rejected by the Senate. It would be unjust 
in me to place any other citizens in the predic- 
ament in which this unlocked for decision of 
the Senate has placed the estimable and honor- 
able men who were directors during the last 
year. 

" If I am not in error in relation to the prin- 
ciples upon which these gentlemen have been 
rejected, the necessary consequence will be that 
the bank will hereafter be without government 
directors and the people of the United States 



must be deprived of their chief means of pro. 
tection against its abuses ; for, whatever con- 
flicting opinions may exist as to the right of 
the directors appointed in January, 1833, to 
hold over until new appointments shall be made, 
it is very obvious that, whilst their rejection 
l)y the Senate remains in force, they cannot, 
with propriety, attempt to exercise such a 
power. In the present state of things, there- 
fore, the corporation will be enabled effectually 
to accomplish the object it has been so long 
endeavoring to attain. Its exchange commit- 
tees, and its delegated powers to its president, 
may hereafter be dispensed with, without in- 
ciu-ring the danger of exposing its proceedings 
to the public view. The sentinels which the 
law had placed at its board can no longer appear 
there. 

" Justice to myself, and to the faithful offi- 
cers by whom the public has been so well and 
so honorably served, without compensation or 
reward, during the last year, has required of 
me this full and frank expositionof my motives 
for nominating them again after their rejection 
by the Senate, I repeat, that I do not question 
the right of the Senate to confirm or reject at 
their pleasure ; and if there had been any rea- 
son to suppose that the rejection, in this case, 
had not been produced by the causes to which 
I have attributed it, or of my views of their 
duties, and the present importance of their rigid 
performance, were other than they are, I should 
have cheerfully acquiesced, and attempted to 
find others who would accept the unenviable 
trust. But I cannot consent to appoint direc- 
tors of the bank to be the subservient instru- 

of its abuses and 
honorable men to 



ments, or silent spectators, 

corruptions ; nor can I ask 

undertake the tlianklcss duty, with the certain 

prospect of being rebuked by the Senate for its 

faithful performance, in pursuance of the lawful 

directions of the Executive." 

This message brought up the question, vir- 
tually. Which was the nominating power, in the 
case of the government directors of the bank ? 
was it the President and Senate ? or the bank 
and the Senate? for it was evident that the 
four now nominated were rejected to gratify 
the bank, and for reasons that would apply to 
every director that would discharge his duties 
in the way these four had done — namely, as 
government directors, representing its stock, 
guarding its interest, and acting for the govern- 
ment in all cases which concerned the welfare 
of an institution whose notes were a national 
currency, whose coffers were the depository of 
the public moneys, and in which it had a direct 
interest of seven millions of dollars in its stock. 
It brought up this question : and if negatived, 
virtually decided that the nominating power 



ANNO 1833. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



389 



should be in the bank ; and that the govern- 
ment directors should no more give such infor- 
mation to the President as these four had given. 
And this question it was determined to try, and 
that definitively, in the persons of these four 
nominated directors, with the declared deter- 
mination to nominate no others if they were 
rejected ; and so leave the government without 
representation in the bank. This message of 
re-nomination was referred to the Senate's Com- 
mittee of Finance, of which Mr. Tyler was chair- 
man, and who made a report adverse to the re- 
nominations, and in favor of again rejecting the 
nominees. The points made in the report were, 
jirst^ the absolute right of the Senate to reject 
nominations ; secondly^ their privilege to give 
no reasons for their rejections (which the Pre- 
sident had not asked) ; and, thirdly, against the 
general impolicy of making re-nominations, 
while admitting both the right and the practice 
in extrordinary occasions. Some extracts will 
show its character : thus : 

"The President disclaims, indeed, in terms, 
all right to inquire into the reasons of the Sen- 
ate for rejecting any nomination ; and yet the 
message immediately undertakes to infer, from 
facts and circumstances, what those reasons, 
which influenced the Senate in this case, must 
have been ; and goes on to argue, much at large, 
against the validity of such supposed reasons. 
The committee are of opinion that, if, as the 
President admits, he cannot inquire into the 
reasons of the Senate for refusing its assent to 
nominations, it is still more clear that these 
reasons cannot, with propriety, be assumed, 
and made subjects of comment. 

" In cases in which nominations are rejected 
for reasons affecting the character of the per- 
sons nominated, the committee think that no 
inference is to be drawn except what the vote 
shows ; that is to say, tha : the Senate with- 
holds its advice and consent from the nomina- 
tions. And the Senate, not being bound to 
give reasons for its votes in these cases, it is 
not bound, nor would it be proper for it, as the 
committee think, to give any answer to remarks 
founded on the presumption of what such rea- 
sons must have been in the present case. They 
feel themselves, therefore, compelled to forego 
any response whatever to the message of the 
President, in this particular, as well by the rea- 
sons before assigned, as out of respect to that 
high officer. 

" The President acts upon his own views of 
public policy, in making nominations to the 
Senate ; and the Senate does no more, when it 
confirms or rejects such nominations. 

" For either of these co-ordinate departments 
to enter into the consideration of the motives 



of the other, would not, and could not, fail, in 
the end, to break up all harmonious intercourse 
between them. This your committee would 
deplor* as highly injurious to the best interests 
of the country. The President, doubtless, asks 
himself, in the case of every nomination for 
office, whether the person be fit for the office ; 
whether he be actuated by correct views and 
motives ; and whether he be likely to be influ- 
enced by those considerations which should 
alone govern him in the discharge of his duties 
— is he honest, capable, and faithful ? Being 
satisfied in these particulars, the President sub- 
mits his name to the Senate, where the same 
inquiries arise, and its decision should be pre- 
sumed to be dictated by the same liigh consi- 
derations as those which govern the President 
in originating the nomination. 

" For these reasons, the committee have alto- 
gether refrained from entering into any discus- 
sion of the legal duties and obligations of direc- 
tors of the bank, appointed by the President 
and Senate, which forms the main topic of the 
message. 

" The committee would not feel that it had 
fully acquitted itself of its obligations, if it did 
not avail itself of this occasion to call the at- 
tention of the Senate to the general subject of 
renomination. 

" The committee do not deny that a right of 
renomination exists ; but they are of opinion 
that, in very clear and strong cases only should 
the Senate reverse decisions which it has delib- 
erately formed, and officially communicated to 
the President. ' 

" The committee perceive, with regret, an in- 
timation in tt^ message that the President may 
not see fit to send to the Senate the names of 
any other persons to be directors of the bank, 
except those whose nominations have been al- 
ready rejected. While the Senate will exercise 
its own rights according to its own views of its 
duty, it will leave to other officers of the go- 
vernment to decide for themselves on the man- 
ner they will perform their duties. The com- 
mittee know no reasons why these offices should 
not be filled ; or why, in this case, no further 
nomination should be made, after the Senate 
has exercised its unquestionable right of reject- 
ing particular persons who have been nomi- 
nated, any more than in other cases. The Sen- 
ate will be ready at all times to receive and 
consider any such nominations as the President 
may present to it. 

" The committee recommend that the Senate 
do not advise and consent to the appointment 
of the persons thus renominated." 

While these proceedings were going on in 
the Senate, the four rejected gentlemen were 
paying some attention to their own case ; and, 
in a " memorial " addressed to the Senate and 
to the House of Representatives, answered the 
charges against them in the Directors' Report, 



390 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



and vindicated their own conduct in giving the 
information which the President requested — 
reasserted the truth of that information ; and 
gave further details upon the manner in which 
they had been systematically excluded from a 
participation in conducting the main business 
of the bank, and even from a knowledge of what 
was done. They said : 

" Selected by the President and Senate as 
government directors of the Bank of the United 
States, we have endeavored, during the present 
year, faithfully to discharge the duties of that 
responsible trust. Appointed without solici- 
tation, deriving from the office no emolument, 
we have been guided in our conduct by no views 
but a determination to uphold, so far as was in 
our power, those principles which we believe 
actuated the people of the United States in es- 
tablishing a national bank, and in providing by 
its charter that they should be represented at 
the board of directors. We have regarded 
that institution, not merely as a source of profit 
to individuals, but as an organ of the govern- 
ment, established by the nation for its own 
benefit. We have regarded ourselves, not as 
mere agents of those whose funds have been 
subscribed towards the capital of the bank, but 
as oflBcers appointed on behalf of the American 
people. We have endeavored to govern all our 
conduct as faithful representatives of them. 
We have been deterred from this by no pre- 
concerted system to deprive us of our rights, 
by no impeachment of our motives, by no false 
views of policy, by no course of management 
which might be supposed to promote the inter- 
ests of those concerned in the institution, at 
the danger or sacrifice of the general good. 
We have left the other directors to govern 
themselves as they may think best for the 
interests of those by whom they were chosen. 
For ourselves, we have been determined, that 
where any diflfercnces have arisen, involving on 
the one hand that open and correct course 
which is beneficial to the whole community, 
and, on the other, what are supposed to be the 
interests of the bank, our efforts should be 
steadily directed to uphold the former, our re- 
monstrances against the latter should be re- 
solute and constant ; and, when they proved 
unavailing, our appeal should be made to those 
who were more immediately intrusted with the 
protection of the public welfare. 

" In pursuing this course we have been met 
by an organized system of opposition, on the 
part of the majority. Our efforts have been 
thwarted, our inotives and actions have been 
misrepresented, our rights have been denied, 
and the limits of our duties have been gratu- 
itously pointed out to us, by those who have 
Bought to curtail them to meet their own policy, 
not that which we believe led to the creation 
of the oflBces we hold. Asserting that injury 



has been done to them by the late measure of 
the Secretary of the Treasury, in removing the 
public deposits, an elaborate statement has been 
prepared and widely circulated; and taking 
that as their basis, it has been resolved by the 
majority to present a memorial to the Senate 
and House of Representatives. We have not, 
and do not interfere in the controversy which 
exists between the majoritj' of the board and 
the executive department of the government ; 
but unjustly assailed as we have been in the 
statement to which we have referred, we re- 
spectfully claim the same right of submitting 
our conduct to the same tribunal, and asking 
of the assembled representatives of the Ameri- 
can people that impartial hearing, and that fair 
protection, which all their officers and all 
citizens have a right to demand. We shall 
endeavor to pi'esent the view we have taken of 
the relation in which we are placed, as well 
towards the institution in question as towards 
the government and people of the United States, 
to prove that from the moment we took our 
seats among the directors of the bank, we have 
been the objects of a systematic opposition ; 
our rights trampled upon, our just interfer- 
ence prevented, and our offices rendered utterly 
useless, for all the purposes required by the 
charter ; and to show that the statements by 
the majority of the board, in the document to 
which we refer, convey an account of their pro- 
ceedings and conduct altogether illusory and 
incorrect." 

The four gentlemen then state their opinions 
of their rights, and their duties, as government 
directors — that they were devised as instru- 
ments for the attainment of public objects — 
that they were public directors, not elected by 
stockholders, but appointed by the President 
and Senate — that their duties were not merely 
to represent a moneyed interest and promote 
the largest dividend for stockholders, but also 
to guard all the public and political interest of 
the government in an institution so largely 
sharing its support and so deeply interested in 
its safe and honorable management. And in 
support of this opinion of their duties they 
quoted the authority of Gen. Hamilton, founder 
of the first bank of the United States ; and that 
of Mr. Alexander Dallas, founder of the second 
and present bank ; showing that each of them, 
and at the time of establishing the two banks 
respectively, considered the government direc- 
tors as public officers, bound to watch over the 
operations of the bank, to oppose all malprac- 
tices, and to report them to the government 
whenever they occurred. And they thus quoted 
the opinions of those two gentlemen : 



ANNO 1833. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



391 



" In the celebrated report of Alexander Ha- 
milton, in 1790,' that eminent statesman and 
financier, although then impressed with a per- 
suasion that the government of the covmtry 
might well leave the management of a national 
bank to ' the keen, steady, and, as it were, mag- 
netic sense of their own interest,' existing 
among the private stockholders, yet holds the 
following remarkable and pregnant language : 
' If the paper of a bank is permitted to insinu- 
ate itself into all the revenues and receipts of a 
country ; if it is even to be tolerated as the 
substitute for gold and silver, in all the trans- 
actions of business ; it becomes, in either view, 
a national concern of the first magnitude. As 
such, the ordinary rules of prudence require 
that the government should possess the means 
of ascertaining, whenever it thinks fit, that so 
delicate a trust is executed with fidelity and 
care. A right of this nature is not only desir- 
able, as it respects the government, but it ought 
to be equally so to all those concerned in the 
institution, as an additional title to public and 
private confidence, and as a thing which can 
only be formidable to practices that imply 
mismanagement.' 

"In the letter addressed by Alexander James 
Dallas, the author of the existing bank, to the 
chairman of the committee on a national cur- 
rency, in 1815, the sentiments of that truly 
distinguished and patriotic statesman are ex- 
plicitly conveyed upon this very point. ' Nor 
can it be doubted,' he remarks, ' that the de- 
partment of the government which is invested 
with the power of appointment to all the im- 
portant offices of the State, is a proper depart- 
ment to exercise the power of appointment in 
z-elation to a national trust of incalculable mag- 
nitude. The national bank ought not to be re- 
garded simply as a commercial bank. It will 
not operate on the funds of the stockholders 
alone, but much more on the funds of the na- 
tion. Its conduct, good or bad, will not affect 
the corporate credit and resources alone, but 
much more the credit and resources of the go- 
vernment. In fine, it is not an institution cre- 
ated for the purposes of commerce and profit 
alone, but much more for the purposes of na- 
tional policy, as an auxiliary in the exercise of 
some of the highest powers of the government. 
Under such circumstances, the public interests 
cannot be too cautiously guarded, and the guards 
proposed can never be injurious to the commer- 
cial interests of the institution. The right to 
inspect the general accounts of the bank, may 
be employed to detect the evils of a mal-admin- 
istration, but an interior agency in the direc- 
tion of its affairs will best serve to prevent 
them.' This last sentence, extracted from the 
able document of Secretary Dallas, developes 
at a glance what had been the experience of the 
American government and people, in the period 
which elapsed between the time of Alexander 
Hamilton and that immediately preceding the 
formation of the present bank. Hamilton con- 



ceived that ' a right to inspect the general ac- 
counts of the bank,' would enable government 
'to detect the evils of a mal-administration,' 
and their detection he thought sufficient. He 
was mistaken: at least so thought Congress 
and their constituents, in 1815. Hence the in- 
flexible spirit which prevailed at the organiza- 
tion of a new bank, in establishing ' an interior 
agency in the direction of its affairs,' by the 
appointment of public officers, through whom 
the evils of a mal-administration might be care- 
fully watched and prevented." 

The four gentlemen also showed, in their me- 
morial, that when the bill for the charter of the 
present bank was under consideration in the 
Senate, a motion was made to strike out the 
clause authorizing the appointment of the go- 
vernment directors ; and that that motion was 
resisted, and successfully, upon the ground that 
they were to be the guardians of the public in- 
terests, and to secure a just and honorable ad- 
ministration of the affairs of the bank ; that 
they were not mere bank directors, but govern- 
ment officers, bound to watch over the rights 
and interests of the government, and to secui-e 
a safe and honest management of an institution 
which bore the name of the United States — was 
created by it— and in which the United States 
had so much at stake in its stock, in its depo- 
sits, in its circulation, and in the safety of the 
community which put their faith in it. Having 
vindicated the official quality of their charac- 
ters, and shown their duty as well as their 
right to inform the government of all mal-prac- 
tices, they entered upon an examination of the 
information actually given, showing the truth 
of all that was communicated, and declaring it 
to be susceptible of proof, by the inspection of 
the books of the institution, and by an exami- 
nation of its directors and clerks. 

" We confidently assert that there is in it no 
statement or charge that can be invalidated; 
that every one is substantiated by the books 
and records of the bank ; that no real error has 
been pointed out in this elaborate attack upon 
us by the majority. It is by suppressing facts 
well known to them, by misrepresenting wliat 
we say, by drawing unjust and unfair inferences 
from particular sentences, by selecting insulated 
phrases, and by exhibiting partial statements; 
by making unfounded insinuations, and by un- 
worthily nupeaching our motives, that they en- 
deavor to controvert that which they are un- 
able to ivfute. When the expense account shall 
be truly and fully exhibited to any tribunal, if 
it shall be found that the charges we have 
stated do not exist ; when the minutes of the 



392 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



board shall be laid open, if it shall be found the 
resolutions we have quoted are not recorded ; 
we shall acknowledge that we have been guilty 
of injustice and of error, but not till then. 

" We have thus endeavored to present to the 
assembled representatives -of the American peo- 
ple, a view of the course which, for nearly a 
year, the majority in a large moneyed institu- 
tion, established by them for their benefit, have 
thought proper to pursue towards those who 
have been placed there, to guard their interests 
and to watch and control their conduct. We 
have briefly stated the systematic series of ac- 
tions by which they have endeavored to deprive 
them of eveiy right that was conferred on them 
by the charter, and to assume to themselves a 
secret, irresponsible, and unlimited power. We 
Iiave shown that, in endeavoring to vindicate or 
to save themselves, they have resorted to accu- 
sations against us, which they are unable to 
sustain, and left unanswered charges which, 
were they not true, it would be easy to repel. 
We have been urged to this from no desire to 
enter into the lists with an adversary sustained 
by all the resources which boundless wealth 
atfords. We have been driven to it by the na- 
ture and manner of the attack made upon us, 
in the document on which the intended memo- 
rial to Congress is founded." 

But all their representations were in vain. 
Their nominations were immediately rejected, a 
second time, and the seal of secrecy preserved 
inviolate upon the reasons of the rejection. 
The " proceedings " of the Senate were allowed 
to be published ; that is to say, the acts of the 
Senate, as a body, such as its motions, votes, 
reports, &c., but nothing of what was said 
pending the nominations. A motion was made 
by Mr. Wright to authorize the publication of 
the debates, which was voted down; and so 
differently from what was done in the case of 
Mr. Van Buren. In that case, the debates on 
the nomination were published ; the reasons 
for the rejection were shown; and the public 
were enabled to judge of their validity. In this 
case no publication of debates was allowed ; the 
report presented by Mr. Tyler gave no hint of 
the reasons for the rejection ; and the act re- 
mained where that report put it — on the abso- 
lute right to reject, without the exhibition of 
any reason. 

And thus the nomination cf the government 
directors was rejected by the United States 
Senate, not for the declared, but for the known 
reason of reporting the misconduct of the bank 



to the President, and especially as it related 
to the appointment and the conduct of the ex- 
change committee. A few years afterwards 
a committee of the stockholders, called the 
" Committee of Investigation," made a report 
upon the conduct and condition of the bank, in 
which this exchange committee is thus spoken 
of: "The mode in which the committee of ex- 
change transacted their business, shows that 
there really existed no check whatever upon 
the oflScers, and that the funds of the bank 
were almost entirely at their disposition. That 
committee met daily, and were attended by the 
cashier, and »t times, by the president. They 
exercised the power of making the loans and 
settlements, to full as great an extent as the 
board itself. They kept no minutes of their 
proceedings — no book in which the loans made, 
and business done, were entered ; but their 
decisions and directions were given verbally to 
the ofBcers, to be by them carried into ex- 
ecution. The established course of business 
seems to have been, for the first teller to pay 
on presentation at the counter, all checks, 
notes, or due bills having indorsed the order, 
or the initials, of one of the cashiers, and to 
place these as vouchers in his drawer, for so 
much cash, where they remained, until just 
before the regular periodical courting of the 
cash by the standing committee of the board 
on the state of the bank. These vouchers 
were then taken out, and entered as ' bills re- 
ceivable,' in a small memorandum-book, under 
the charge of one of the clerks. These bills 
were not discounted, but bore interest semi-an- 
nually, and were secured by a pledge of stock, 
or some other kind of property. It is evident- 
ly impossible under such circumstances, to as- 
certain or be assured, in regard to any particu- 
lar loan or settlement, that it was authorized 
by a majority of the exchange committee. It 
can be said, however, with entire certainty, 
that the very large business transacted in 
this way does not appear upon the face of 
the discount books — was never submitted to 
the examination of the members of the board 
at its regular meetings, nor is any where en- 
tered on the minutes as having been reported 
to that body for their information or appro- 
bation." 



ANNO 1833. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



393 



CHAPTER XCVI. 

SECKETAEY'S REPORT ON THE REMOVAL OF 
THE DEPOSITS. 

In the first days of the session Mr. Clay called 
the attention of the Senate to the report of the 
Secretary of the Treasury, communicating the 
fact that he had ordered the public deposits to 
cease to be made in the Bank of the United 
States, and giving his reasons for that act , 
and said : 

" When Congress, at the time of the passage 
of the charter of the bank, made it necessary 
that these reasons should be submitted, they 
must have had some purpose in their mind. It 
must have been intended that Congress should 
look into these reasons, determine as to their 
validity ; and approve or disapprove them, as 
might be thought proper. The reasons had 
now been submitted, and it was the duty of 
Congress to decide whether or not they were 
suflBcient to justify the act. If there was a 
subject which, more than any other, seemed to 
require the prompt action of Congress, it cer- 
tainly was that which had reference to the cus- 
tody and car- of the public treasury. The 
Senate, therefore, could not, at too early a pe- 
riod, enter on the question — what was the ac- 
tual condition of the treasury ? 

" It was not his purpose to go into a discus- 
sion, but he had risen to state that it appeared 
to him to be his duty as a senator, and he 
hoped that other senators took similar views 
of their duty, to look into this subject, and to 
see what was to be done. As the report of the 
Secretary of the Treasury had declared the rea- 
sons which had led to the removal of the pub- 
lic deposits, and as the Senate had to judge 
whether, on investigation of these reasons, the 
act was a wise one or not, he considered that 
it would not be right to refer the subject to 
any committee, but that the Senate should at 
once act on it, not taking it up in the form of a 
report of a committee, but going into an exam- 
ination of the reasons as they had been sub- 
mitted." 

Mr. Benton saw two objections to proceed- 
ing as ]Mr. Clay proposed — one, as to the form 
of his proposition — the other, as to the place 
in which it was made. The report of the Sec- 
retary, charging acts of misconduct as a cause 
of removal, would require an investigation into 
their truth. The House of Representatives 
being the grand inquest of the nation, and 
properly chargeable with all inquiries into 



abuses, would be the proper place for the con- 
sideration of the Secretary's report — though 
he admitted that the Senate could also make 
the inquiry if it pleased j but should do it in 
the proper way, namely, by inquiring into the 
truth of the allegations against the bank. He 
said : 

" He requested the Senate to bear in mind 
that the Secretary had announced, among other 
reasons which he had assigned for the removal 
of the deposits, that it had been caused by the 
misconduct of the bank, and he had gone into 
a variety of specifications, charging the bank 
with interfering with the liberties of the peo- 
ple in their most vital elements — the liberty 
of the press, and the purity of elections, 'fhe 
Secretary had also charged the bank with dis- 
honoring its own paper on several occasions, 
and that it became necessary to compel it to 
receive paper of its own branches. Here, 
then, were grave charges of misconduct, and 
he wished to know whether, in the face of 
such charges, this Congress was to go at once, 
without the previous examination of a commit- 
tee, into action upon the subject ? 

"He desired to know whether the Senate 
were now about to proceed to the considera- 
tion of this report as it stood, and, without re- 
ceiving any evidence of the charges, or taking 
any course to establish their truth, to give back 
the money to this institution ? He thought it 
would be only becoming in the bank itself to 
ask for a committee of scrutiny into its con- 
duct, and that the subject ought to be taken 
up by the House of Representatives, which, on 
account of its numbers, its character as the 
popular branch, and the fact that all money 
bills originated there, was the most proper tri- 
bunal for the hearing of this case. He did not 
mean to deny that the Senate had the power 
to go into the examination. But to fix a day 
now for the decision of so important a case, he 
considered as premature. Were the whole, of 
the charges to be blown out of the paper by 
the breath of the Senate 1 Were they to de- 
cide on the question, each senator sitting there 
as witness and juror in the case ? He did not 
wish to stand there in the character of a wit- 
ness, unless he was to be examined on oath 
either at the bar of the Senate, or before a 
committee of that body, where the evidence 
would be taken down. He wished to know 
the manner in which the examination was to 
be conducted ; for he regarded this motion as 
an admission of the truth of ever}- charge which 
had been made in the report, and as a flight 
from investigation." 

Mr. Clay then submitted two resolutions in 
relation to the subject, the second of which after 
debate, was referred to the committee on finance. 
They were in these words : 



394 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



" 1st. That, by dismissing the late Secretary 
of the Treasury, because he would not, contrary' 
to his sense of his own duty, remove the money 
of the United States in deposit with the Bank 
of the United States and its branches, in con- 
formity with the President's opinion, and by 
appointing his successor to effect such removal, 
which has been done, the President has assumed 
the exercise of a power over the Treasury of 
the United States, not granted to him by the 
constitution and laws, and dangerous to the 
liberties of the people. 

" 2d. That the reasons assigned by the Sec- 
retary of the Treasury for the removal of the 
money of the United States deposited in the 
Bank of the United States and its branches, 
communicated to Congress on the 3d day of 
December, 1833, are unsatisfactory and insuffi- 
cient." 

The order for the reference to the finance 
committee was made in the Senate at four 
o'clock in the afternoon of one day ; and the 
report upon it was made at noon the next day ; 
a very elaborate argumentative paper, the read- 
ing of which by its reporter (Mr. Webster) 
consumed one hour and a quarter of time. It 
recommended the adoption of the resolution i 
and 6000 copies of the report were ordered to 
be printed. Mr. Forsyth, of Georgia, compli- 
mented the committee on their activity in 
getting out a report of such length and la_ 
bor, in so short a time, and in the time usual- 
ly given to the refreshment of dinner and 
sleep. He said : 

" Certainly great credit was due to the com- 
mittee on finance for the zeal, ability, and indus- 
try with which the report had been brought out. 
He thought the reference was made yesterday at 
four o'clock ; and the committee could hardly 
have had time to agree on and write out so long 
a report in the short space of time intervening 
since then. It was possible that the subject 
might have been discussed and well understood 
in the committee before, and that the chairman 
had time to embody the sentiments of the vari- 
ous members of the committee previous to the 
reference. If such was the case, it reminded 
him of what had once happened in one of the 
courts of justice of the State of Georgia. A 
grave question of constitutional law was pre- 
sented before that court, was argued for clays 
with great ability, and when the argument was 
concluded, the judge drew from his coat pocket 
a written opinion, which he read, and ordered 
to be recorded as the opinion of the court. It 
appeared, therefore, that unless the senator 
from jNIassachusetts carried the opinion of the 
committee in his coat pocket, he could nc^t have 
presented his report with the imcxampled dis- 
patch that had been witnessed." 



Mr. Webster, evidently nettled at the sar« 
castic compliment of Mr. Forsyth, replied to 
him in a way to show his irritated feelings, but 
without showing how he came to do so much 
work in so short a time. He said : 

" Had the gentleman come to the Senate this 
morning in his usual good humor, he would 
have been easily satisfied on that point. He 
will recollect that the subject now under dis- 
cussion was deemed, by every body, to be 
peculiarly fitted for the consideration of the 
committee on finance ; and that, three weeks 
ago, I had intimated my ij;itention of moving 
for such a reference. I had, however, delayed 
the motion, from considerations of courtesy to 
other gentlemen, on all sides. But the general 
subject of the removal of the deposits, had been 
refeiTed to the committee on finance, by refer- 
ence of that part of the President's message ; 
and various memorials, in relation to it, had 
also been referred. The subject has undergone 
an ample discussion in committee. I had been 
more than once instructed by the committee to 
move for the reference of the Secretary's letter, 
but the motion was postponed, from time to 
time, for the reasons I have before given. Had 
the gentleman from Georgia been in the Senate 
yesterday, he would have knowTi that this par- 
ticular mode of proceeding was adopted, as was 
then well understood, for the sole purpose of 
facilitating the business of the ^-"nate, and of 
giving the committee an opportunity to express 
an opinion, the result of their consideration. 
If the gentleman had heard what had passed 
yesterday, when the reference was made, he 
would not have expressed surprise." 

The fact was the report had been drawn by 
the counsel for the bank, and differed in no way 
in substance, and but little in form, from the 
report which the bank committee had made on 
the paper, " purporting to have been signed by 
Andrew Jackson, and read to what was called 
a cabinet." But the substance of the resolu- 
tion (No. 2, of Mr. Clay's), gave rise to more 
serious objections than the marvellous activity 
of the committee in reporting upon it with the 
elaboration and rapidity with which they had 
done. It was an empty and inoperative ex- 
pression of opinion, that the Secretary's reasons 
were " unsatisfVictory and insufBcient ; " without 
any proposition to do any thing in consequence 
of that dissatisfaction and insufficiency ; and, 
consequently, of no legislative avail, and of no 
import except to bring the opinion of senators, 
thus imposingly pronounced, against the act of 
the Secretary. The resolve was not practical 
— was not legislative — was not in conformity 



ANNO 1833. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESmENT. 



395 



to any mode of doing business — and led to no 
action ; — neither to a restoration of the deposits 
nor to a condemnation of their keeping by the 
State banks. Certainly the charter, in ordering 
the Secretary to report, and to report at the 
first practicable moment, both the fact of a re- 
moval, and the reasons for it, was to enable 
Congress to act — to do something — to legislate 
upon the subject — to judge the validity of the 
reasons — and to order a restoration if they were 
found to be untrue or insuflBcient ; or to con- 
demn the new place of deposit, if it was deemed 
insecure or improper. All this was too obvious 
to escape the attention of the democratic mem- 
bers who inveighed against the futility and 
irrelevance of the resolve, unfit for a legislative 
hody, and only suitable for a town meeting ; 
and answering no purpose as a senatorial resolve 
but that of political effect against public men. 
On this point Mr. Forsyth said : 

" The subject had then been taken out of the 
hands of the Senate, and sent to the committee 
on finance ; and for what purpose was it sent 
thither? Did anyone doubt what would be 
the opinion of the committee on finance? 
Would such a movement have been made, had 
it not been intended thereby to give strength 
to the course of the opposition ? He was not 
in the Senate when the reference was yesterday 
made, but he had supposed that it was made 
for the purpose of some report in a legislative 
form, but it has come back with an argument, 
and a recommendation of the adoption of the 
resolution of the senator from Kentucky ; and 
when the resolutions were adopted, would they 
not still be sent back to that committee for ex- 
amination ? Why had not the committee, who 
seemed to know so well what would be the 
opinion of the Senate, imbodied that opinion in 
a legislative form ? " 

To the same effect spoke many members, and 
among others, Mr. Silas Wright, of New-York, 
who said : 

" He took occasion to say, that with regard 
to the reference made yesterday, he was not so 
unfortunate as his friend from Georgia, to be 
absent at the time, and he then, while the mo- 
tion was pending, expressed his opinion that a 
reference at four o'clock in the afternoon, to be 
returned with a report at twelve the next daj^-, 
would materially change the aspect of the case 
before the Senate. He was also of opinion, that 
the natural effect of sending this proposition to 
the committee on finance would be, to have it 
returned with a recommendation for some legis- 
lative action. In this, however, he had been 
disappointed, the proposition had been brought 



back to the Senate in the same form as sent to 
the committee, with the exception of the very 
able argument read that morning." 

Mr. Webster felt himself called upon to an- 
swer these objections, and did so in a way to 
intimate that the committee were not " green " 
enough, — that is to say, were too wise — to pro- 
pose any legislative action on the part of Con- 
gress in relation to this removal. He said : 

" There is another thing, sir, to which the 
gentleman has objected. He would have pre- 
ferred that some legislative recommendation 
should have accompanied the report — that some 
law, or joint resolution, should have been re- 
commended. Sir, do we not see what the 
gentleman probably desires ? If not, we must 
be green politicians. It was not my intention, 
at this stage of the business, to propose any 
law, or joint resolution. I do not, at present, 
know the opinions of the committee on this 
subject. On this question, at least, to use the 
gentleman's expression, I do not carry their 
opinions in my coat pocket. The question, 
when it arrives, will be a very grave one — one 
of deep and solemn import — and when the pro- 
per time for its discussion arrives, the gentleman 
from Georgia will have an opportunity to ex- 
amine it. The first thing is, to ascertain the 
judgment of the Senate, on the Secretary's 
reasons for his act." 

The meaning of Mr. Webster in this reply — 
this intimation that the finance committee had 
got out of the sap, and were no longer " green " 
— was a declaration that any legislative mea- 
sure they might have recommended, would 
have been rejected in the House of Representa- 
tives, and so lost its efficacy as a senatorial 
opinion ; and to avoid that rejection, and save 
the effect of the Senate's opinion, it must be a 
«ifigie-and not a joint resolution; and so con- 
fined to the Senate alone. The reply of Mr. 
Webster was certainly candid, but unparlia- 
mentary, and at war with all ideas of legislation, 
thus to refuse to propose a legislative enactment 
because it would be negatived in the other 
branch of the national legislature. Finally, the 
resolution was adopted, and by a vote of 28 to 
18; thus: 

" Yeas. — Messrs. Bibb, Black, Calhoun, Clay, 
Clayton, Ewing, Frclinghuyeen, Hendricks, 
Kent, King of Georgia, Knight, Leigh, Mangum, 
Naudain, Poindexter, Porter, Prentiss, Preston, 
Robbins, Silsbee, Smith, Southard, Sprague, 
Swift, Tomlinson, Tjlcr, Waggaman, Webster. 

"Nays. — Messrs. Benton, Brown, Forsyth, 
Grundy, Hill, Kane, King of Alabama, Linn, 



396 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



McKcan, Moore, Robinson, Shepley, Tallmadge, 
Tipton, White, Wilkins, Wright." 

The futility of this resolve was made manifest 
soon after its passage. It was nugatory, and 
remained naked. It required nothing to be 
done, and nothing was done under it. It be- 
came ridiculous. And eventually, and near 
the end of the session, Mr. Clay proposed it over 
again, with another resolve attached, directing 
the return of the deposits to the Bank of the 
United States ; and making it joint, so as to re- 
quire the consent of both houses, and thus lead 
to legislative action. In submitting his resolu- 
tion in this new form he took occasion to al- 
lude to their fate in the other branch of the 
legislature, where rejection was certain, and to 
intimate censure upon the President for not 
conforming to the opinion of the Senate in its 
resolves ; as if the adverse opinio* of the House 
(from its recent election, its superior numbers, 
and its particular charge of the revenue), was not 
more than a counterpoise to the opinion of 
the Senate. In this sense, he stood up, and said : 

" 'Whatever might be the fate of these reso- 
lutions at the other end of the capitol, or in 
another building, that consideration ought to 
have no influence on the course of this body. 
The Senate owed it to its own character, and 
to the country, to proceed in the discharge of its 
duties, and to leave it to others, whether at the 
other end of the capitol or in another building, 
to perform tlieir own obligations to tlie countrjr, 
according to their own sense of their duty, and 
their own convictions of responsibility. To 
them it ought to be left to determine what was 
their duty, and to discharge that duty as they 
might think best. For himself, he sliould be 
ashamed to return to his constituents without 
havii^ made every lawful effort in his power to 
cause the restoration of the public deposits to 
the United States Bank. AVhile a chance yet 
remained of effecting the restoration of the 
reign of the constitution and the laws, he felt 
that he should not have discharged this duty 
if he failed to make every effort to accomplish 
that desirable object. 

"The Senate, after passing the resolution 
which they had already passed, and waiting two 
months to see whether the Executive would 
conform his course to the views expressed by 
this branch of the legislature ; after waiting all 
this time, and perceiving that the error, as tlie 
Senate had declared it to lx^was still persever- 
ed in, and seeing the wide and rapid sweep of 
ruin over every section of the country, there 
was still one measure left whicli might arrest 
the evil, and that was in the offering of these 
resolutions — to present them to this body ; and, 



if they passed here, to send them to the other 
House ; and, should they pass them, to present 
to the President the plain question, if he will 
return to the constitutional track ; or. in oppo- 
sition to the expressed will of tlie legislature, 
retain the control over the millions of public 
money which are already deposited in the local 
banks, and which are still coming in there." 

:Mr. Benton replied to Mr. Clay, showing the 
propriety of these resolutions if offered at the 
commencement of the session — their inutility 
now, so near its end ; and the indelicacy in the 
Senate, in throwing itself between the bank 
and the House of Representatives, at a moment 
when the bank directors were standing out in 
contempt against the House, refusing to be ex- 
amined by its committee, and a motion actually 
depending to punish them for this contempt. For 
this was then the actual condition of the cor- 
poration ; and, for the Senate to pass a resolu- 
tion to restore the deposits in these circum- 
stances, was to take the part of the bank against 
the House — to justify its contumacy — and to 
express an opinion in favor of its re-charter; 
as all admitted that restoration of the deposits 
was wrong unless a re-charter was granted. 
Mr. B. said : 

" He deemed the present moment to be the 
most objectionable time that could have been 
selected for proposing to restore the public de- 
posits to the United States Bank. Such a pro- 
position might have been a proper proceeding 
at the commencement of the session. A joint 
resolution, at that time, would have been the 
proper mode ; it could have been followed by 
action ; and, if constitutionally passed, would 
have compelled the restoration of these depos- 
its. But tlie course was different. A separate 
resolution was brought in, and passed the Sen- 
ate ; and there it stopped. It was a nugatory 
resolution, leading to no action. It was such 
a one as a State legislature, or a public meeting, 
might adopt, because they had no power to le- 
gislate on the subject. But the Senate had the 
power of legislation ; and, six months ago, when 
the separate resolution was brought in, the 
Senate, if it intended to act legislatively on the 
subject at all, ought to have proceeded by joint 
resolution, or bj^ bill, at that time. But it 
thought otherwise. The separate resolution 
was adopted ; after adoption, no instruction was 
given to a committee to bring in a bill; nothing 
was done to give legislative effect to the deci- 
sion of tlie Senate ; and now, at the end of six 
months, the first attempt is made to move m 
our legislative capacity, and to pass a joint re- 
solution — equivalent to a statute — to compel the 
restoration of tliese deposits. This is the state 
of the proceeding; and, Mr. B. must be permit- 



ANNO 1833. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



397 



ted to say, and to give his reasons for saying, 
that the time selected for this first step, in ovir 
legislative capacity, in a case so long depending, 
is most inappropriate and objectionable. Mr. 
B. would not dwell upon the palpable objections 
to this proceeding, which must strike every 
mind. The advanced stage of the session — the 
propositions to adjourn — the quantity of business 
on hand — the little probability that the House 
and the President would concur with the Sen- 
ate, or that two thirds of the two Houses could 
be brought to pass the resolution, if the Presi- 
dent declined to give it his approbation. These 
palpable objections must strike every mind and 
make it appear to be a useless consumption of 
time for the Senate to pass the resolution. 

" Virtually, it included a proposition to re- 
charter the bank ; for the most confidential 
friends of that institution admitted that it was 
improper to restore the deposits, unless the bank 
charter was to be continued. The proposition 
to restore them, virtually included the propo- 
sition to re-charter; and that was a proposition 
which, after having been openly made on this 
floor, and leave asked to bring in a bill to that 
effect, had been abandoned, under the clear con- 
viction that the measure could not pass. Pass- 
ing from these palpable objections, Mr. B. pro- 
ceeded to state another reason, of a diflerent 
kind, and which he held to be imperative of the 
course which the Senate should now pursue : he 
alluded to the state of the questions at this 
moment depending between the Bank of the 
United States and the House of Representa- 
tives, and the nature of which exacted from the 
Senate the observance of a strict neutrality, and 
an absolute non-interference between those 
two bodies. The House of Representatives had 
ordered an inquiry into the affairs and conduct 
of the bank. The points of inquiry indicated 
misconduct of the gravest import, and had been 
ordered by the largest majority, not less than 
three or four to one. That inquiry was not yet 
finished ; it was still depending ; the committee 
appointed to conduct it remains organized, and 
has only reported in part. That report is be- 
fore the Senate and the public ; and shows that 
the directors of the Bank of the United States 
have resisted the authority of the House — have 
made an issue of power between itself and the 
House — for the trial of which issue a resolution 
is now depending in the House, and is made the 
order of the day for Tuesday next. 

"Here, then, are two questions depending 
between the House and the bank; the first, 
an inquiry into the misconduct of the bank • 
the second, a proposition to compel the bank to 
submit to the authority of the House. Was it 
right for the Senate to interpose between those 
bodies, while these questions were depending ? 
Was it right to interfere on the part of the 
bank? Was it right for the Senate to leap 
into the arena, throw itself between the con- 
tending parties, take sides with the bank, and 
virtually declare to the American people that 



there was no cause for inquiry into the conduct 
of the bank, and no ground of censure for re- 
sisting the authority of the House? Such 
would, doubtless, be the effect of the conduct 
of the Senate, if it should entertain the propo- 
sition which is now submitted to it. That 
proposition is one of honor and confidence to 
the bank. It proceeds upon the assumption 
that the bank is right, and the House is wrong, 
in the questions now depending between them ; 
that the bank has done nothing to merit in- 
quiry, or to deserve censure ; and that the pub- 
lic moneys ought to be restored to her keeping, 
without waiting the end of the investigation 
which the House has ordered, or the decision 
of the resolution which affirms that the bank 
has resisted the authority of the House, and 
committed a contempt against it. This is the 
full and fair interpretation — the clear and speak- 
ing effect — of the measure now proposed to the 
Senate. Is it right to treat the House thus ? 
Will the Senate, virtually, intelligibly, and prac- 
tically, acquit the bank, when the bank will not 
acquit itself? — will not suffer its innocence to 
be tested by the recorded voice of its own books, 
and the living voice of its own directors ? These 
directors have refused to testify; they have 
refused to be sworn ; they have refused to 
touch the book ; because, being directors and 
corporators, and therefore parties, they cannot 
be required to give evidence against themselves. 
And this refusal, the public is gravely told, is 
made upon the advice of eminent counsel. What 
counsel ? The counsel of the law, or of fear ? 
Certainly, no lawyer — not even a junior appren- 
tice to the law — could give such advice. The 
right to stand mute, does not extend to the 
privilege of refusing to be swoi'n. The right 
does not attach until after the oath is taken, 
and is then limited to the specific question, the 
answer to which might inculpate the witness, 
and which he may refuse to answer, because he 
will say, upon his oath, that the answer will 
criminate himself. But these bank directors 
I'efuse to be sworn at all. They refuse to touch 
the book ; and, in that refusal, commit a flagrant 
contempt against the House of Representatives, 
and do an act for which any citizen would be 
sent to jail by any justice of the peace, in Ame- 
rica, And is the Senate to justify the directors 
for this contempt? to get between them and 
the House ? to adopt a resolution beforehand — 
before the day fixed for the decision of the con- 
tempt, which shall throw the weight of tlie 
Senate into the scaie of the directors against 
the House, and virtually declare that they are 
right in refusing to be sworn?" 

The resolutions were, nevertheless, adopted, 
and by the fixed majority of twenty-eight to 
eighteen, and sent to the House of Representa- 
tives for concurrence, where they met the fate 
which all knew they were to receive. The 
House did not even take them up for considera- 



398 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



tion, but continued the course which it had be- 
gan at the commencement of the session ; and 
■which was in exact conformity to the legisla- 
tive course, and exactly contrary to the course 
of the Senate. The report of the Secretary of 
the Treasury, the memorial of the bank, and 
that of the government directors, were all refer- 
red to the Committee of Ways and Means ; and 
b}' that committee a report was made, by their 
chairman, jNIr. Polk, sustaining the action of 
the Secretary, and concluding with the four fol- 
lowing resolutions : 

" 1. Resolved, That the Bank of the United 
States ought not to be re-chartered. 

" 2. Resolved, That the public deposits ought 
not to be restored to the Bank of the United 
States. 

" 3. Resolved, That the State banks ought to 
be continued as the places of deposit of the 
public monej', and that it is expedient for Con- 
gress to make further provision by law, pre- 
scribing the mode of selection, the securities to 
be taken, and the manner and terms on which 
they are to be employed. 

" 4. Resolved, That, for the purpose of ascer- 
taining, as far as practicable, the cause of the 
commercial embarrassment and distress com- 
plained of by numerous citizens of the United 
States, in sundry memorials which have been 
presented to Congress at the present session, 
and of inquiring whether the charter of the 
Bank of the United States has been violated ; 
and, also, what corruptions and abuses have ex- 
isted in its management ; whether it has used 
its corporate power or money to control the 
press, to interfere in politics, or influence elec- 
tions ; and whether it has had any agency, 
through its management or money, in producing 
the existing pressure; a select committee be 
appointed to inspect the books and examine 
into the proceedings of the said bank, who shall 
report whether the provisions of the charter 
have been violated or not; and, also, what 
abuses, corruptions, or malpractices have ex- 
isted in the management of said bank ; and that 
the said committee be authorized to send for 
persons and papers, and to summon and examine 
witnesses, on oath, and to examine into the 
affairs of the said bank and branches ; and they 
are further authorized to visit the principal 
bank, or any of its branches, for the purpose of 
inspecting the books, correspondence, accounts, 
and other papers connected with its manage- 
ment or business ; and that the said committee 
be required to report the result of such inves- 
tigation, together with the evidence they may 
take, at as early a day as practicable." 

These resolutions were long and vehemently 
debated, and eventually, each and every one, 
adopted by decided, and some by a great ma- 



jority. The first one, being that upon the 
question of the recharter, was carried by a 
majority of more than fifty votes — 134 to 82; 
showing an immense difference to the prejudice 
of the bank since the veto session of 1832. The 
names of the voters on this great question, so 
long debated in every form in the halls of 
Congress, the chambers of the State legislatures, 
and in the forum of the people, desei-ve to be 
commemorated — and are as follows : 

•'Yeas. — Messrs. John Adams, William Allen, 
Anthony, Archer, Beale, Bean, Bcardsley, Beau- 
mont, John Bell, John Blair, Bockee, Boon, 
Bouldin, Brown, Bunch, Bynum, Cambreleng, 
Campbell, Carmichael, Carr, Casey, Chaney, 
Chinn, Claiborne, Samuel Clark, Clay, Clayton, 
Clowney, Coflee, Connor, Cramer, W. R. Davis, 
Davenport, Day, Dickerson, Dickinson, Dunlap, 
Felder, Forester, Foster, W. K. Fuller, Fulton, 
Galbraith, Gholson, Gillet, Gilmer, Gordon, 
Grayson, Griffin, Jos. Hall, T. H. Hall, Halsey, 
Hamer, Hannegan, Jos. M. Harper, Harrison, 
Hathaway, Hawkins. Hawes, Heath, Henderson, 
Howell, Hubbard, Abel Huntington, Inge, Jar- 
vis, Richard M. Johnson, Noadiah Johnson, 
Cave Johnson, Seaborn Jones, Benjamin Jones, 
Kavanagh, Kinnard, Lane, Lansing, Laporte, 
Lawrence, Lay, Luke Lea, Thomas Lee, Leavitt, 
Loyall, Lucas, Lyon, Lytle, Abijah Mann, Joel 
K. Mann, Mardis, John Y. Mason, Moses Ma- 
son, Mclntire, McKay, McKinley, McLene, 
McVean, Miller, Henry Mitchell, Robert Mit- 
chell, Muhlenberg, Murphy, Osgood, Page, 
Parks, Parker, Patterson, D. J. Pearce, Pey- 
ton, Franklin Pierce, Pierson, Pinckney, Plum- 
mer, Polk, Rencher, Schenck, Schley, Shinn, 
Smith, Speight, Standifer, Stoddert, Suther- 
land, William Taylor, Wm. P. Taylor, Fran- 
cis Thomas, Thomson, Turner, Turrill, Van- 
derpoel, Wagener, Ward, Wardwell, Wayne, 
Webster, W ballon.— 134. 

" Nays. — JMessrs. John Quincy Adams, John 
J. Allen, Heman Allen, Chilton Allan, Ashley, 
Banks, Barber, Barnitz. Barringer, Baylies, 
Beaty, James M. Bell, Binnej^, Briggs, Bull, 
Burges, Cage, Chambers, Chilton, Choate, Wil- 
liam Clark, Corwin, Coulter, Crane, Crockett, 
Darlington, Amos Davis, Deberry, Deming, 
Denny, Dennis, Dickson, Duncan, Ellsworth, 
Evans, Edward Everett, Horace Everett, Fill- 
more, Foot, Philo C. Fuller, Graham, Grennel, 
Hiland Hall, Hard, Hardin, James Harper, 
Ilazeltine, Jabez W. Huntington, Jackson, 
William C. Johnson, Lincoln. Martindale, INIar- 
shall, McCarty, McComas, McDufBe. McKennan, 
Mercer, Milligan, Moore, Pope. Potts, Reed, 
William B. Shepherd, Aug. H. Shepperd, AVil- 
liam Slade, Charles Slade, Sloane, Spangler 
Philemon Thomas, Tompkins, Tweedy, Vance 
Vinton, AVatmough, Edward D. White, Fred- 
erick AVhittlcsey, Elisha Whittlesey, Wilde 
Williams, Wilson, Young.— 82." 



ANNO 1833. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



399 



The second and third resolutions were carried 
by good majorities, and the fourth overwhehn- 
ingly — 175 to 42. Mr. Polk immediately moved 
the appointment of the committee, and that it 
consist of seven members. It vfas appointed 
accordingly, and consisted of Messrs. Francis 
Thomas of Maryland, chairman ; Everett of 
Massachusetts ; Muhlenberg of Pennsylvania ; 
John Y. Mason of Virginia ; EUsvrorth of Con- 
necticut ; Mann of New-York ; and Lytle of 
Ohio. The proceedings of this committee, and 
the reception it met with from the bank, will 
be the subject of a future and separate chapter. 
Under the third resolution the Committee of 
Ways and INIeans soon brought in a bill in con- 
formity to its provisions, which was passed by 
a majority of 22, that is to say, by 112 votes 
against 90. And thus all the conduct of the 
President in relation to the bank, received the 
full sanction of the popular representation ; and 
presented the singular spectacle of full support 
in one House, and that one specially charged 
with the subject, while meeting condemnation 
in the other. 



CHAPTER XCVII. 

CALL ON THE PRESIDENT FOE A COPT OF THE 
" PAPER READ TO THE CABINET." 

In the first days of the session Mr. Clay sub- 
mitted a resolution, calling on the President to 
inform the Senate whether the " paper," pub- 
lished as alleged by his authority, and purporting 
to have been read to the cabinet in relation to 
the removal of the deposits, " be genuine or 
not;" and if it be "genuine," requesting him 
to cause a copy of it to be laid before the Senate. 
Mr. Forsyth considered this an unusual call, and 
wished to know for what purpose it was made. 
He presumed no one had any doubt of the au- 
thenticity of the published copy. He certainly 
had not. Mr. Clay justified his call on the 
ground that the " paper " had been published — 
had become public — and was a thing of general 
notoriety. If otherwise, and it had remained a 
confidential communication to his cabinet, he 
certainly should not ask for it ; but not an- 
swering as to the use he proposed to make of 
it, Mr. Forsyth returned to that point, and said 



he could imagine that one branch of the legis- 
lature under certain circumstances might have 
a right to call for it ; but the Senate was ndt 
that branch. If the paper was to be the ground 
of a criminal charge against the President, and 
upon which he is to be brought to trial, it 
should come from the House of Representatives, 
with the charges on which he was to be tried. 
Mr. Clay rejoined, that as to the uses which 
were to be made of this "paper " nothing seemed 
to run in the head of the Senator from Georgia 
but an impeachment. This seemed to be the 
only idea he could connect with the call. But 
there were many other purposes for which it 
might be used, and he had never intended to 
make it the ground of impeachment. It might 
show who was the real author of the removal 
of the deposits — whether the President, or the 
Secretary of the Treasury ? and whether this 
latter might not have been a mere automaton. 
Mr. Benton said there was no parliamentary 
use that could be made of it, and no such use 
had been, or could be specified. Only two uses 
can be made of a paper that may be rightfully 
called for — one for legislation ; the other for 
impeachment ; and not even in the latter case 
when self-crimination was intended. No legis- 
lative use is intimated for this one ; and the 
criminal use is disavowed, and is obliged to be, 
as the Senate is the tribunal to try, not the 
inquest to originate impeachments. But this 
paper cannot be rightfully called for. It is a com- 
munication to a cabinet ; and communications to 
the cabinet are the same whether in writing, or 
in a speech. It is all parol. Could the copy of 
a speech made to the cabinet be called for ? 
Could an account of the President's conversation 
with his cabinet be called for ? Certainly not ! 
and there is no difference between the written 
and the spoken communication — between the 
set speech and a conversation — between a thing 
made public, or kept secret. The President may 
refuse to give the copy ; and certainly will consult 
his rights and his self-respect by so refusing. As 
for the contents of the paper, he has given them 
to the country, and courts the judgment of the 
country upon it. He avows his act — gives his 
reasons — and leaves it to all to judge. lie is 
not a man of concealments, or of irresponsibility. 
He gave the paper to the public instantly, and 
authentically, with his name fully signed to it ; 
and any one can say what they please of it. If 



400 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



it is wanted for an invective, or philippic, tliere it 
is ! ready for use, and seeking no shelter for 
vtant of authenticity. It is given to the world, 
and is expected to stand the test of all examina- 
tion. Mr. Forsyth asked the yeas and nays on 
Mr. Clay's call; they were ordered; and the 
resolution passed by 23 to 18. The next day 
the President replied to it, and to the effect that 
was generally foreseen. He declared the Execu- 
tive to be a co-ordinate branch of the government, 
and denied the right of the Senate to call upon 
him for any copies of his communications to his 
cabinet — either written or spoken. Feeling his 
responsibility to the American people, he said 
he should be always ready to explain to them 
his conduct ; knowing the constitutional rights 
of the Senate, he should never withhold from it 
any information in his power to give, and neces- 
sary to the discharge of its duties. This was 
the end of the call ; and such an end was the 
full proof that it ought not to have been made. 
No act could be predicated upon it — no action 
taken on its communication — none upon the re- 
fusal, either of censure or coercion. The Pres- 
ident stood upon his rights ; and the Senate 
could not, and did not, say that he was wrong. 
The call was a wrong step, and gave the Pres- 
ident an easy and a graceful victory. 



CHAPTER XCVIII. 

MISTAKES OF PUBLIC MEN:— GREAT COMBI- 
NATION AGAINST GENERAL JACKSON :— COM- 
MENCEMENT OP THE PANIC. 

In the year 1783, Mr. Fox, the great parlia- 
mentary debater, was in the zenith of his power 
and popularity, and the victorious leader in the 
House of Commons. He gave offence to the 
King, and was dismised from the ministry, and 
immediately formed a coalition with Lord North ; 
and commenced a violent opposition to the acts 
of the government. Patriotism, love of liberty, 
hatred of misrule and oppression, were the 
avowed objects of his attacks; '"but every one 
saw (to adopt the language of history), that 
the real difiBculty was his own exclusion from 
ofBce ; and that his coalition with his old enemy 
and all these violent assaults, were only to force 



himself back into power : and this being seen, 
his efforts became unavailing, and distasteful to 
the public ; and he lost his power and influence 
with the people, and sunk his friends with him. 
More than one hundred and sixty of his support- 
ers in the House of Commons, lost their places 
at the ensuing election, and were sportively call- 
ed " Fox's Martyrs ; " and when they had a pro- 
cession in London, wearing the tails of foxes in 
their hats, and some one wondered where so many 
tails of that animal had come from, Mr. Pitt 
slyly said a great many foxes had been lately 
taken : one, upon an average, in every borough. 
Mr. Fox, young at that time, lived to recover 
from this prostration ; but his mistake was one 
of those of which history is full, and the lesson 
of which is in vain read to succeeding genera- 
tions. Public men continue to attack their ad- 
versaries in power, and oppose their measures, 
while having private griefs of their own to re- 
dress, and personal ends of their own to accom- 
pUsh ; and the instinctive sagacity of the people 
always sees the sinister motive, and condemns 
the conduct founded upon it. 

Mr. Clay, ]\Ir. Calhoun, and ]Mr. Webster were 
now all united against General Jackson, with 
all their friends, and the Bank of the United 
States. The two former had their private griefs : 
Mr. Clay in the results of the election, and Mr. 
Calhoun in the quarrel growing out of the dis- 
covery of his conduct in !RIr. ^Monroe's cabinet ; 
and it would have been difficult so to have con- 
ducted their opposition, and attack, as to have 
avoided the imputation of a personal motive. 
But they so conducted it as to authorize and 
suggest that imputation. Their movements all 
took a personal and vindictive, instead of a legis- 
lative and remedial, nature. Mr. Taney's reasons 
for removing the deposits were declared to be 
" unsatisfactory and insufficient " — being words 
of reproach, and no remedy ; nor was the reme- 
dy of restoration proposed until driven into it. 
The resolution, in relation to Gen. Jackson, was 
still more objectionable. The Senate had notliing 
to do with him personally, yet a resolve was 
proposed against him entirely personal, charging 
him with violating the laws and the constitution ; 
and proposing no remedy for this imputed vio- 
lation, nor for the act of which it was the sub- 
ject. It was purely and simply a personal cen- 
sure — a personal condemnation that was pro- 
posed ; and, to aggravate the proposition, it came 



ANNO 1833. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



401 



from the suggestion of the bank directors' me- 
morial to Congress. 

Tlie combination was formidable. The bank 
itself was a great power, and i^'as able to carry 
distress into all the business departments of the 
country ; the political array against the President 
was unprecedented in point of number, and great 
in point of ability. Besides the three eminent 
chiefs, there were, in the Senate: Messrs. Bibb 
of Kentucky ; Ezekiel Chambers of Maryland ; 
Clayton of Delaware ; Ewing of Ohio ; Fi'ee- 
linghuysen of New Jersey ; Watkins Leigh of 
Virginia ; Mangum of North Carolina ; Poindex- 
ter of Mississippi ; Alexander Porter of Louisi- 
ana; William C. Preston of South Carolina; 
Southard of New Jersey; Tyler of Virginia. 
In the House of Representatives, besides the 
ex-President, Mr. Adams, and the eminent jurist 
from Pennsylvania, Mr. Horace Binney, there 
was a long catalogue of able speakers : Messrs. 
Archer of Virginia ; Bell of Tennessee ; Burgess 
of Rhode Island; Rufus Choate of Massachu- 
setts; Corwin of Ohio; Warren R. Davis of 
South Carolina ; John Davis of Massachusetts ; 
Edward Everett of Massachusetts ; Millard Fill- 
more of New-York, afterwards President ; Ro- 
bert P. Letcher of Kentucky ; Benjamin Hardin 
of Kentucky ; McDuffle of South Carolina ; Pey- 
ton of Tennessee ; Vance of Ohio ; Wilde of 
Georgia ; Wise of Virginia : in all, above thirty 
able speakers, many of whom spoke many times ; 
besides many others of good ability, but with- 
out extensive national reputations. The busi- 
ness of the combination was divided — distress 
and panic the object — and the parts distributed, 
and separately cast to produce the eifect. The 
bank was to make the distress — a thing easy for 
it to do, from its own moneyed power, and its 
power over other moneyed institutions and 
money dealers ; also to get up distress meetings 
and memorials, and to lead the public press : the 
politicians were to make the panic, by the alarms 
wliich they created for the safety of the laws, of 
the constitution, the public liberty, and the pub- 
lic money : and most zealously did each division 
of the combination perform its part, and for the 
long period of three full months. The decision 

Vol. I.— 26 



of the resolution condemning General Jackson, 
on which all this machinery of distress and panic 
was hung, required no part of that time. There 
was the same majority to vote it tlie first day 
as the last ; but the time was wanted to get up 
the alarm and the distress ; and the vote, when 
taken, was not from any exhaustion of the means 
of terrifying and agonizing the country, but for 
the purpose of having the sentence of condem- 
nation ready for the Virginia elections — ready 
for spreading over Virginia at the approach of 
the April elections. The end proposed to them- 
selves by the combined parties, was, for the bank, 
a recharter and the restoiation of the deposits ; 
for the politicians, an ascent to power upon the 
overthrow of Jackson. 

The friends of General Jackson saw the ad- 
vantages which were presented to them in the 
unhallowed combination between the moneyed 
and a political power — in the personal and vin- 
dictive character which they gave to the pro- 
ceedings — the private griefs of the leading as- 
sailants — the unworthy objects to be attained 
— and the cruel means to be used for their at- 
tainment. These friends were also numerous, 
zealous, able, determined ; and ardmated by the 
consciousness that they were on the side of 
their country. They were, in the Senate : — 
Messrs. Forsyth of Georgia ; Grundy of Ten- 
nessee ; Hill of New Hampshire ; Kane of Illi- 
nois ; King of Alabama ; Rives of Virginia ; 
Nathaniel Tallmadge of New York ; Hugh L. 
White of Tennessee ; Wilkins of Pennsylvania ; 
Silas Wright of New-York ; and the author of 
this Thirty Years' View. In the House, 
were : — Messrs. Beardsley of New- York ; Cam- 
breleng of New-York ; Clay of Alabama ; Gil- 
lett of New- York ; Hubbard of New Hamp- 
shire ; McKay of North Carolina ; Polk of 
Tennessee; Francis Thomas of Maryland; Van- 
derpoel of New- York ; and Wayne of Georgia. 

Mr. Clay opened the debate in a prepared 
speech, commencing in the style which the rlie- 
toricians call ex abruptu — being the style of 
opening which the occasion required — that of 
rousing and alarming the passions. It will be 
found (its essential parts) in the next chapter. 




u 



402 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



CHAPTER XCIX. 

MR. CLAYS SPEFXII AGAINST PRESIDENT JACK- 
SON ON THE REMOVAL OF THE DEPOSITS— EX- 
TRACTS. 

" Mr. Clay addressed the Senate as follows : 
We are. said he, in the midst of a revolution, 
hitherto bloodless, but rapidly tending towards 
a total change of the pure i-cpublican character 
of the government, and to the concentration of 
all power in the hands of one man. The powers 
of Congress arc paralj^zcd, except when exerted 
in conformitj' with his will, by frequent and an 
extraordinary exercise of the executive veto, not 
anticipated by the founders of the constitution, 
and not practised by an}- of the predecessors of 
the present Chief Magistrate. And, to cramp 
them still more, a new expedient is springing 
into use, of withholding altogether bills which 
have received the sanction of both Houses of 
Congress, therebj' cutting off all opportunity 
of passing them, even if, after their return, the 
members should be unanimous in their favor. 
The constitutional participation of the Senate 
in the ajipointing power is virtuallj^ abolished, 
by the constant use of the power of removal 
from office without any known cause, and by 
the appointment of the same individual to the 
same office, after his rejection by the Senate. 
IIow often have we, senators, felt that the 
chock of the Senate, instead of being, as the 
constitution intended, a salutary control, was 
an idle ceremony 1 How often, when acting on 
the case of the nominated successor, have we 
felt the injustice of the removal ? IIow often 
have we said to each other, well, wliat can we 
do 1 the office cannot remain vacant without 
prejudice to the public interests ; and, if we re- 
ject the proi)Osed substitute, we cannot restore 
the displaced, and perhaps some more unworthy 
man maj- be nominated. 

'• The judiciary has not been exempted from 
the ])revailing rage for innovation. Decisions 
of the tribunals, deliberately pronounced, have 
been contemptuously disregarded, and the sanc- 
tity of numerous treaties openly violated. Our 
Indian relations, coeval with th# existence of 
the government, and recognized and established 
by numerous laws and treaties, have been sub- 
verted ; the rights of the helpless and unfortu- 
nate aborigines trampled in the dust, and they 
brought under subjection to iniknown laws, in 
which they have no voice, promulgated in an 
unknown language. The most extensive and 
most valuable public domain that ever fell to 
the lot of one nation is threatened with a total 
sacrifice. The general currenc}"^ of the country, 
the life-blood of all its business, is in the most 
imminent danger of xniiversal disorder and con- 
fn.-ion. The jjower of internal improvement lies 
crushed beneath the veto. The system of pro- 



tection of American industry was snatched fron: 
impending destruction at the last session ; but 
we are now cooUj^ told by the Secretary of the 
Treasury-, without a blush, 'that it is understood 
to be conceded on all hands that a tariff for 
protection nierelj' is to be finally abandoned.' 
By the 3d of March, 1837, if the progress of in- 
novation continue, there will be scarcelj- a ves- 
tige remaining of the government and its policy, 
as they existed prior to the 3d of March, 1829! 
In a term of years, a little more than equal to 
that which was required to establish our liber- 
ties, the government will have been transformed 
into an elective monarchy — the worst of all 
forms of government. 

'• Such is a melancholy but faithful picture of 
the present condition of our public affairs. It 
is not sketched or exhibited to excite, here or 
elsewhere, irritated feeling ; I have no such 
purpose. I would, on the contrary, implore the 
Senate and the people to discard all passion and 
prejudice, and to look calmly but resolutely 
upon the actual state of the constitution and 
the countrJ^ Although I bring into the Senate 
the same unabated spirit, and the same firm de- 
termination, which have ever guided me in the 
support of civil liberty, and the defence of our 
constitution, I contemplate the prospect before 
us with feelings of deep humiliation and pro- 
found mortification. 

''It is not among the least unfortunate symp- 
toms of the times, that a large proportion of 
the good and enlightened men of the Union, of 
all parties, are yielding to sentiments of despon- 
dency. There is, unhappily, a feeling of dis- 
trust and insecurity pervading the community. 
INIany of our best citizens entertain serious ap- 
prehensions that our Union and our institutions 
are destined to a speedy overthrow. Sir, I 
trust that the hopes and confidence of the coun- 
tr^^ will revive. There is much occasion for 
manly independence and patriotic vigor, but 
none for despair. Thank God, we are yet free ; 
and, if we put on the chains which are forging 
for us, it will be because we deserve to wear 
them. Wc should never despair of the repub- 
lic. If our ancestors had been capable of sur- 
rendering themselves to such ignoble senti- 
ments, our independence and our liberties 
would never have been achieved. The winter 
of 177C-'77, was one of the gloomiest periods 
of our revolution ; but on this day, lifty-seven 
years ago, the father of his country acliieved a 
glorious victory, which diilused joy. and glad- 
ness, and animation throughout the States. 
Let us cherish the hope that, since he has gone 
from among us. Providence, in the dispensation 
of his mercies, has near at hand, in resen'e for 
us, tliough yet unseen by us, some sure and 
hapjiy deliverance from all" impending dangers. 

'• When we assembled here last year, we were 
full of dreadful forebodings. On the one hand, 
we were menaced with a civil war, which, light- 
ing up in a single State, might spread its flames 
tliioughout one of the largest sections of the 



ANNO 1833. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



403 



Union. On the other, a cherished system of 
policy, essential to the successful prosecution 
of the industry of our countrj^men, was exposed 
to imminent danger of destruction. Means were 
happily applied by Congress to avert both ca- 
lamities, the country was reconciled, and our 
Union once more became a band of friends and 
brothers. And I shall be greatly disappointed, 
if we do not find those who were denounced as 
being imfriendly to the continuance of our con- 
federacy, among the foremost to fly to its pre- 
servation, and to resist all executive encroach- 
ments. 

" Mr. President, when Congress adjourned at 
the termination of the last session, there was 
one remnant of its powers — that over the purse 
— left untouched. The two most important 
powers of civil government are those of the 
sword and purse ; the first, with some restric- 
tions, is confided by the constitution to the 
Executive, and the last to the legislative depart- 
ment. If they are separate, and exercised by 
different responsible departments, civil liberty 
is safe ; but if they are united in the hands of 
the same individual, it is gone. That clear- 
sighted and revolutionary orator and patriot, 
Patrick Henry, justly said, in the Virginia con- 
vention, in reply to one of his opponents, ' Let 
him candidly tell me where and when did free- 
dom exist, when the sword and purse were 
given up from the people ? Unless a miracle 
in human affairs interposed, no nation ever re- 
tained its liberty after the loss of the sword 
and the purse. Can 3'ou prove, by any argu- 
mentative deduction, that it is possible to be 
safe without one of them ? If you give them 
up, you are gone.' 

" Up to the period of the termination of the 
last session of Congress, the exclusive consti- 
tutional power of Congress over the treasury 
of the United States had never been contested. 
Among its earliest' acts was one to establish 
the treasury department, which provided for 
the appointment of a treasurer, who was re- 
quired to give bond and security, in a very 
large amount, ' to receive and keep the moneys 
of the United States, and disburse the same 
upon warrants drawn by the Secretary of the 
Treasury, countersigned by the Comptroller, 
recorded by the Register, and not otherwise.' 
Prior to the establishment of the present Bank 
of the United States, no treasury or place had 
been provided or designated by law for the safe 
keeping of the public moneys, but the treasurer 
was left to his own discretion and responsibili- 
ty. When the existing bank was established, 
it was provided that the public moneys should 
be deposited with it, and, consequently, that 
bank became the treasury of the United States; 
for, whatever place is designated by law for the 
keeping of the public money of the United 
States, under the care of the treasurer of the 
United States, is, for the time being, the trea- 
sury. Its safety was drawn in question by the 
Chief Magistrate, and an agent was appointed 



a little more than a year ago to investigate its 
abilit}^. He reported to the Executive that it 
was perfectly safe. His apprehensions of its 
solidity were communicated by the President 
to Congress, and a committee was appointed to 
examine the subject ; they, also, reported in fa- 
vor of its security. And, finally, among the 
last acts of the House of Representatives, prior 
to the close of the last session, was the adop- 
tion of a resolution, manifesting its entire con- 
fidence in the abilitj^ and solidity of the bank. 

"After all these testimonies to the perfect 
safety of the public monej^s in the place ap- 
pointed by Congress, who could have supposed 
that the place would have been changed ? 
Who could have imagined that, within sixty 
days of the meeting of Congress, and, as it 
were, in utter contempt of its authority, the 
change should have been ordered ? Who 
would have dreamed that the treasurer should 
have thrown away the single key to the trea- 
sury, over which Congress held ample control, 
and accepted, in lieu of it, some dozens of keys, 
over which neither Congress nor he has any 
adequate control ? Yet, sir, all this has been 
done ; and it is now our solemn duty to inquire, 
1st. By whose authority it has been ordered ; 
and, 2d. Whether the order has been given in 
conformity with the' constitution and laws of 
the United States. 

" I agree, sir, and I am very happy whenever 
I can agree with the Pi^esident, as to the im- 
mense importance of these questions. He says, 
in the paper which I hold in my hand, that he 
looks upon the pending question as involving 
higher considerations than the 'mere transfer 
of a sum of monej^ from one bank to another. 
Its decision ma}^ affect the character of our 
government for ages to come.' And, with him, 
I view it as ' of transcendent ipiportance, both 
in the principles and the consequences it in- 
volves.' It is a question of all time, for pos- 
terity as well as for us — of constitutional gov- 
ernment or monarchy — of liberty or slavery. 
As I regard it, I hold the bank as nothing, as 
perfectly insignificant, faithful as it has been in 
the performance of all its duties. I hold a 
sound curi'ency as nothing, essential as it is to 
the prosperity of every branch of business, and 
to all conditions of society, and efficient as the 
agency of the bank has been in providing the 
country with a currency as sound as ever exist- 
ed, and unsurpassed by any in Christendom. I 
consider even the public faith, sacred and invio- 
lable as it ever should be, as comparatively 
nothing. All these questions are merged in 
the greater and mightier question of the consti- 
tutional distribution of the powers of the gov- 
ernment, as affected by the recent executive in- 
novation. The real incjuiry is, shall all the 
barriers which have been erected by the cau- 
tion and wisdom of our ancestors, for the pres- 
ervation of civil liberty, be prostrated and trod- 
den under foot, and the sword and the purse be 
at once united in the hands of one man ? Shall 



404 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



the power of Congress over the treasury of the 
United States, hitherto never contested, be 
wrested from its possession, and be hencefor- 
ward wielded by the Chief Magistrate ? En- 
tertaining these views of the magnitude of the 
question before us, I shall not, at least to-day, 
examine the reasons which the President has 
assigned for his act. If he has no power to 
perform it. no reasons, however cogent, can 
justify the deed. None can sanctify an illegal 
or unconstitutional act. 

"The question is, by virtue of whose will, 
power, dictation, was the removal of the de- 
posits effected ? By whose authority and de- 
termination were they transferred from the 
Bank of the United States, where they were 
required by the law to be placed, and put in 
banks which the law had never designated ? 
And I tell gentlemen opposed to me, that I am 
not to be answered by the exhibition of a 
formal order bearing the signature of R. B. 
Taney, or any one else. I want to know, not 
the amanuensis or clerk who prepared or sign- 
ed the official form, but the authority or the 
individual who dictated or commanded it ; not 
the hangman who executes the culprit, but the 
tribunal which pronounced the sentence. I 
want to know that power in the government, 
that original and controlling authority, which 
required and commanded the removal of the 
deposits. And. I repeat the question, is there 
a senator, or intelligent man in the whole coun- 
try, who entertains a solitary doubt ? 

"Hear what the President himself says in 
his manifesto read to his cabinet: 'The Presi- 
dent deems it his duty to communicate in this 
manner to his cabinet the final conclusions of 
his own mind, and the reasons on which they 
are foxmded.' And, at the conclusion of this pa- 
per, what does he say ? ' The President again 
repeats that he begs his cabinet to consider the 
proposed measure as his own, in the support of 
which he shall require no one of them to make 
a sacrifice of opinion or principle. Its respon- 
sibility has been assumed, after the most ma- 
ture deliberation and reflection, as necessary to 
preserve the morals of the people, the freedom 
of the press, and the purity of the elective fran- 
chise, without which all will unite in gaying 
that the blood and treasure expended by our 
forefathers, in the estaljlishment of our happy 
system of government, will have been vain and 
fruitless. Under these convictions, he feels 
that a measure so important to the American 
people cannot be commenced too soon ; and he 
therefore names the 1st day of October next as 
a period proper for the change of the deposits, 
or sooner, provided the necessary arrangements 
with the State banks can be made.' Sir, is 
there a senator here who will now tell me that 
the removal was not the measure and the act 
of the President ? 

"Thus is it evident that the President, neither 
by the act creating the treasury department, 
nor by the bank charter, has any power over 



the public treasury. Has he any by the con- 
stitution ? None, none. We have already 
seen that the constitution positively forbids 
any money from being drawn from the treasu- 
ry but in virtue of a previous act of appropria- 
tion. But the President himself says that 
' upon him has been devolved, by the constitu- 
tion, and the suffrages of the American people, 
the duty of superintending the operation of the 
executive departments of the government, and 
seeing that the laws arc faithfully executed.' 
If there existed any such double source of exe- 
cutive power, it has been seen that the treasury 
department is not an executive department ; but 
that, in all that concerns the public treasury, 
the Secretary is the agent or representative of 
Congress, acting in obedience to their will, and 
maintaining a direct intercourse with them. By 
what authority does the President derive power 
from the mere result of an election ? In another 
part of this same cabinet paper he refers to the 
suffrages of the people as a source of power 
independent of a system in which power has 
been most carefully separated, and distributed 
between three separate and independent de- 
partments. We have been told a thousand 
times, and all experience assures us, that sucli 
a division is indispensable to the existence and 
preservation of freedom. We have established 
and designated offices, and appointed officers in 
each of those departments, to execute the duties 
respectively allotted to them. The President, 
it is true, presides over the whole ; specific du- 
ties are often assigned by particular laws to 
him alone, or to other officers under his super- 
intendence. His parental eye is presumed to 
survey the whole extent of the system in all 
its movements ; but has he power to come into 
Congress, and to say such laws only shall you 
pass ; to go into the courts, and prescribe the 
decisions which they may j)ronounce ; or even 
to enter the offices of administration, and, where 
duties are specifically confided to those officers, 



to substitute his will to their duty ? Or, has 
he a right, when those functionaries, deliberat- 
in" upon their own solemn obligations to the 
people, have moved forward in their assigned 
spheres, to arrest their lawful progress, because 
they have dared to act contrary to his pleasure 1 
No, sir ; no, sir. His is a high and glorious 
station, but it is one of observation and super- 
intendence. It is to see that obstructions in 
the forward movement of government, unlaw- 
fully interposed, shall be abated by legitimate 
and competent means. 

" Such are the powers on which the President 
relies to justify his seizure of the treasury of 
the United States. I have examined them, one 
by one, and they all fail, utterly foil, to bear out 
the act. We are brought irresistibly to the 
conclusions, 1st, That the invasion of the public 
treasury has been perpetrated by the removal 
of one Secretary of the Treasurj', who would 
not violate his conscientious obligations, and by 
, the appointment of another, who stood ready 



ANNO 1833. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



405 



to subscribe his name to the orders of the Pres- 
ident; and, 2dly, That the President has no 
color of authority in the constitution or laws 
for the act which he has thus caused to be per- 
formed. 

" And now let us glance at some of the tre- 
mendous consequences which maj^ ensue from 
this high-handed measure. If the President 
may, in a case in which the law has assigned a 
specific duty exclusively to a designated officer, 
command it to be executed, couti'ary to his own 
judgment, under the penalty of an expulsion 
from office, and, upon his refusal, may appoint 
some obsequious tool to perform the required 
act, where is the limit to his authority ? Has 
he not the same right to interfere in every other 
case, and remove from office all that he can re- 
move, who hesitate or refuse to do his bidding 
contrary to their own solemn convictions of 
their dut}'? There is no resisting this inevit- 
able conclusion. Well, then, how stands the 
matter of the public treasury ? It has been seen 
that the issue of warrants upon the treasury is 
guarded by four independent and hitherto res- 
ponsible checks, each controlling every other, 
and all bound by the law, but all holding their 
offices, according to the existing practice of the 
government, at the pleasure of the President, 
The Secretary signs, the Comptroller counter- 
signs, the Register records, and the Treasurer 
pays the warrant. We have seen that the 
President has gone to the first and highest link 
in the chain, and coerced a conformity to his 
will. What is to prevent, whenever he desires 
to draw money from the public treasury, his 
applying the same penalty of expulsion, under 
which Mr. Duane suffered, to every link of the 
chain, from the Secretary of the Treasury down, 
and thus to obtain whatever he demands'? 
What is to prevent a more compendious accom- 
plishment of his object, by the agency of transfer 
drafts, drawn on the sole authority of the Sec- 
retary, and placing the money at once wherever, 
or in whatsoever hands, the President pleases ? 

" What security have the people against the 
lawless conduct of any President % Where is 
the boundary to the tremendous power which 
he has assumed ? Sir, every barrier around the 
public treasury is broken down and annihilated 
From the moment that the President pronounced 
the words. ' This measure is my own j I take 
upon myself the responsibility of it,' every safe- 
guard around the treasury was prostrated, and 
henceforward it might as well be at the Hermit- 
age. The measure adopted by tlie President is 
without precedent. I beg pardon — there is one ; 
but we must go down for it to the commence- 
ment of the Christian era. It will be recollected 
by those who are conversant with Roman his- 
tory, that, after Pompey was compelled to retire 
to Brundusium, Caesar, who had been anxious 
to give him battle, returned to Rome, ' having 
reduced Italy,' says the venerable biographer, 
' in sixty days — [the exact period between the 
day of the removal of the deposits and that of 



the commencement of the present session of 
Congress, without the usual allowance of any 
days of grace] — in sixty daj'S, without blood- 
shed.' The biographer proceeds : 

" ' Finding the city in a more settled condition 
than he expected, and many senators there, he 
addressed them in a mild and gracious manner 
[as the President addressed his late Secretary of 
the Treasury], and desired them to send depu- 
ties to Pompey with an offer of honorable terms 
of peace,' &c. As Metellus, the tribune, opposed 
his taking money out of the public treasur}'^, and 
cited some laws against it — [such. Sir, I suppose, 
as I have endeavored to cite on this occasion] — 
Csesar said ' Arms and laws do not flourish to- 
gether. If you are not pleased at what I am 
about, you have only to withdraw. [Leave the 
office, Mr. Duane !] War, indeed, will not tole- 
rate much liberty of speech. When I say this, 
I am renouncing my o\vn right ; for you, and 
all those whom I have found exciting a spirit of 
faction against me, are at my disposal.' Having 
said this, he approached the doors of the trea- 
sury, and, as the kej^s were not produced, he 
sent for workmen to break them open. Metellus 
again opposed him, and gained credit with some 
for his firmness ; but Caesar, with an elevated 
voice, threatened to put him to death if he gave 
him any further trouble. ' And you know very 
well, 3'Oung man,' said he, ' that this is harder for 
me to say than to do.' Metellus, terrified by 
the menace, retired ; and Cajsar was afterwards 
easily and readily supplied with every thing 
necessary for that war. 

" Mr. President (said Mr. C.) tlie people of 
the United States are indebted to the President 
for the boldness of this movement ; and as one, 
among the humblest of them, I profess my ob- 
ligations to him. He has told the Senate, in his 
message refusing an official copy of his cabinet 
paper, that it has been published for the infor- 
mation of the people. As a part of the people, the 
Senate, if not in their official character, have a 
right to its use. In that extraordinary paper 
he has proclaimed that the measure is his own 
and that he has taken upon himself the respon- 
sibility of it. In plain English, he has proclaimed 
an open, palpable and daring usurpation ! 

" For more than fifteen years, 'Mv. President, 
I have been struggling to avoid the present state 
of things. I thought I perceived, in some pro- 
ceedings, during the conduct of the Seminole 
war, a spirit of dcfi,ance to the constitution and 
to all law. With what sincerity and truth — 
with wliat earnestness and devotion to civil 
liberty, I have struggled, the Searcher of all hu- 
man hearts best knows. With what fortune, 
the bleeding constitution of my country- now 
fatally attests. 

" I have, nevertheless, persevered ; and, under 
every discouragement, during the short time 
that I expect to remain in the public councils, 
I will persevere. And if a bountiful Providence 
would allow an unworthy sinner to approach 
the throne of grace, I would beseech Him, as 



406 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



the greatest favor He could grant to me here 
below, to spare mc until I live to behold the 
people, rising in their majesty, with a peaceful 
and constitutional exercise of their power, to 
expel tlie Goths from Home ; to rescue the 
public treasury from pillage, to preserve the 
constitution of the United States ; to uphold the 
Union against the danger of the concentration 
and consolidation of (ill power in the hands of 
the Executive ; and to sustain the liberties of 
the people of this country against the imminent 
perils to which they now stand exposed. 

"And now, I\Ir. President, what, under all 
these circumstances, is it our duty to do? Is 
there a senator who can hesitate to aflBrm, in 
the language of the resolutions, that the Pres- 
ident has assumed a dangerous power over the 
treasury of the United States, not granted to 
him by the constitution and the laws ; and that 
the reasons assigned for the act by the Secre- 
tary of the Treasury are insufficient and unsa- 
tisfactory ? 

" The eyes and the hopes of the American 
people are anxiously turned to Congress. They 
feel that they liave been deceived and insulted ; 
their confidence abused ; their interests betray- 
ed ; and their liberties in danger. They see a 
rapid and alarming concentration of all power 
in one man's hands. They see that, by the ex- 
ercise of the positive authority of the Executive, 
and his negative power exerted over Congress, 
the will of one man alone prevails, and governs 
the republic. The question is no longer what 
laws will Congress pass, but what will the Ex- 
ecutive not veto 1 The President, and not 
Congress, is addressed for legislative action. 
We have seen a corporation, charged with the 
execution of a great national work, dismiss an 
experienced, faithful, and zealous pi-esident, af- 
terwards testify to his ability by a voluntary 
resolution, and reward his extraordinary services 
by a large gratuity, and appoint in his place an 
executive favorite, totally inexperienced and in- 
competent, to propitiate the President. A^e 
behold the usual incidents of approaching tyran- 
ny. The land is lilled with spies and informers, 
and detraction and denunciation are the orders 
of the day. I'cople, especially official incumbents 
in this place, no longer dare speak in the fearless 
tones of manly freemen, but in the cautious 
whispers of trembling slaves. The premonitory 
symptoms of despotism are upon us ; and if 
Congress do not apply an instantaneous and 
effective remedy, the fatal collapse will soon 
come on, and we shall die — ignobly die — base, 
mean, and abject slaves ; the scorn and con- 
tempt of mankind ; unpitied, unwept, unmuurn- 
»dl" 



CHAPTER C. 

MR. BENTOM'S SPEECH IN REPLY TO ME. CLAT-. 
EXTRACTS. 

Mk. Clay had spoken on three successive days, 
being the last daj's of the year 1833. Mr. Ben- 
ton followed him, — and seeing the advantage 
which was presented in the character of the 
resolve, and that of the speech in support of it, all 
bearing the impress of a criminal proceeding, with- 
out other result than to procure a sentence of con- 
demnation against the President for violating the 
laws and the constitution, endangering the pub- 
lic liberty and establishing a tyranny, — he took 
up the proceeding in that sense ; and immedi- 
ately turned all the charges against the resolu- 
tion itself and its mover, as a usurpation of the 
rights of the House of Representatives in 
originating an impeachment, and a violation of 
law and constitution in trying it ea.' parte j and 
said: 

" The first of these resolutions contained im- 
peachable matter, and was in fact, though not 
in form, a direct impeachment of the President 
of the United States. He recited tlie constitu- 
tional provision, that the President might be 
impeached — 1st, for treason ; 2d, for bribery ; 
3d, for high crimes ; 4th, for misdemeanors ; 
and said that the first resolution charged both 
a high crime and a misdemeanor upon the Presi 
dent ; a high crime, in violating the laws and 
constitution, to obtain a power over the public 
treasure, to the danger of the liberties of the 
people; and a misdemeanor, in dismissing the 
late Secretary of the Treasury from office. Mr. 
B. said that the terms of the resolution were 
sufficient!}' explicit to define a high crime, with- 
in the meaning of the constitution, without hav- 
ing recouree to the arguments and declarations 
used by tlie mover in illustration of his mean- 
ing ; but, if any doubt remained on that head, 
it would be removed b}' the whole tenor of the 
argument, and especially tliat part of it which 
compared the President's conduct to that of 
Caesar, in seizing the public treasure, to aid him 
in jmtting an end to the liberties of his country ; 
and every senator, in voting upon it, would vote 
as directl}' upon the guilt or innocence of the 
President, as if he was responding to the ques- 
tion of guilty or not guilty, in the concluding 
sentence of a formal impeachment. 

"We are, then, said i\Ir. B., trying an im- 
peachment ! But how ? The constitution gives 
to the House of Representatives the sole power 
to originate impeachments ; yet we originate 
this impeachment ourselves. The constitution 
gives the accused a right to be present ; but he 



ANNO 1834. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



407 



is not here. It requires the Senate to be sworn 
as judges ; but we are not so swurn. It re- 
quires the Chief Justice of the United States to 
preside when the President is tried ; but the 
Chief Justice is not presiding. It gives the 
House of Representatives a right to be present, 
and to manage the prosecution ; but neither the 
House nor its managers are here. It i-equires 
the forms of criminal justice to be strictly ob- 
served ; yet all these forms are neglected and 
violated. It is a proceeding in which the First 
Magistrate of the republic is to be tried without 
being heard, and in which his accusers are to 



act as his judges ! 

" Blr. B. called upon the Senate to consider 
well what they did before they proceeded fur- 
ther in the consideration of this resolution. He 
called upon them to consider what was due to 
the House of Representatives, whose privilege 
was invaded, and who had a right to send a 
message to the Senate, complaining of the pro- 
ceeding, and demanding its abandonment. He 
conjured them to consider what was due to the 
President, who was thus to be tried in his ab- 
sence for a most enormous crime ; what was 
due to the Senate itself, in thus combining the 
incompatible characters of accusers and judges, 
and which would itself be judged by Europe 
and America. He dwelt particularly on the 
figui'e which the Senate would make in going 
on with the consideration of this resolution. It 
accused the President of violating the constitu- 
tion; and itself committed twenty violations of 
the same constitution in making the accusa- 
tion ! It accused him of violating a single law, 
and itself violated all the laws of criminal jus- 
tice in prosecuting him for it. It charged him 
ivith designs dangerous to the liberties of the 
citizens, and immediately trampled upon the 
rights of all citizens, in the person of their 
Chief Magistrate, 

"Mr. B. descanted 



upon the extraordinary 
organization of the Senate, and drew an argu- 
ment from it in favor of the reserve and deco- 
rum of their proceedings. The Senate were 
lawgivers, and ought to respect the laws already 
made ; they were the constitutional advisers of 
the President, and should observe, as nearly as 
possible, the civil relations which the otBce of 
adviser presiunes ; they might be his judges, and 
should be the last in the world to stir up an ac- 
cusation against him, to prejudge his guilt, or to 
attack his character with defamatory language. 
Decorum, the becoming ornament of every func- 
tionary, should be the distinguishing trait of an 
American senator, who combines, in his own 
office, the united dignities of the executive, the 
legislative, and the judicial character. In his 
judicial capacity especially, he should sacrifice 
to decorum and propriety ; and shun, as he 
would the coiitiigious touch of sin and pesti- 
lence, the slightest approach to the character of 
prosecutor. He referred to British parliamen- 
tary law to show that the Lords could not join 
m an accusation, because they wei-e to try it ; 



but here the Senate was sole accuser, and had 
nothing from the House of Representatives to 
join ; but made the accusation out and out, and 
tried it themselves. He said the accusation 
was a double one — for a high crime and a mis- 
demeanor — and the latter a more flagrant pro- 
ceeding than the former; for it assumed to 
know for what cause the President had dis- 
missed his late Secretary, and undertook to try 
the President for a thing which was not triable 
or impeachable. 

" Fi'om the foundation of the government, it 
had been settled that the President's right tc 
dismiss his secretaries resulted from his consti- 
tutional obligation to see that the laws were 
faithfully executed. Many Presidents had dis- 
missed secretaries, and this was, the first time 
that the Senate had ever undertaken to found 
an impeachment upon it, or had assumed to 
know the reasons for which it was done. 

"Mr. B. said that two other impeachments 
seemed to be going on, at the same time, against 
two other officers, the Secretary of the Treasury 
and the Treasurer ; so that the Senate was brim- 
ful of criminal business. The Treasurer and 
the Secretary of the Treasury were both civil 
officers, and were both liable to impeachment 
for misdemeanors in office ; and great misdemea- 
nors were charged upon them. They were, in 
fact, upon trial, without the formality of a reso- 
lution ; and, if hereafter impeached by the House 
of Representatives, the Senate, if they believed 
what they heard, would be ready to pronounce 
judgment and remove them from office, without 
delay or further examination. 

" Mr. B. then addressed himself to the Vice- 
President (Mr. Van Buren), upon the novelty 
of the scene which was going on before him, and 
the great change which had taken place since 
he had served in the Senate. He commended 
the peculiar delicacy and decorum of the Vice- 
President himself, who, in six years' service, in 
high party times, and in a decided opposition, 
never uttered a word, either in open or secret 
session, which could have wounded the feehngs 
of a political adversar}^, if he had been present 
and heard it. He extolled the decorum of the 
opposition to President Adams' administration. 
If there was one brilliant exception, the error was 
redeemed by classic wit, anil the heroic readiness 
with which a noble heart bared its bosom to the 
bullets of those who felt aggrieved. Still ad- 
dressing himself to the Vice-President. Mr. B. 
said that if he should receive some hits in the 
place where he sat, without the right to reply, 
he must liud consolation in the case of his most 
illustrious predecessor, the great ajjostle of Ame- 
rican liberty (Mr. Jelierson), who often told his 
friends of the manner in which he had been cut 
at when presiding over the Senate, and person- 
ally ainioyed by tiie inferior — no, young and 
inconsiderate — members of the federal party. 

" Mr. B. returned to the point in debate. The 
President, he repeated, was on trial for a high 
ciime, iu seizing the public treasure in violation 



408 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



of the laws and the constitution. Was the 
charge true ? Does the act which he has done 
deserve the definition wliich has been put upon 
it? He had made up his own mind that the 
public deposits ought to be removed from the 
Bank of the United States. He communicated 
that opinion to the Secretary of the Treasury ; 
the Secrctar}' refused to remove them ; the Pre- 
sident removed him, and appointed a Secretarj^ 
who gave the order which he thought the occa- 
sion required. All this he did in virtue of his 
constitutional obligation to see the laws fliith- 
fuUy executed ; and in obedience to the same 
sense of duty which would lead him to dismiss 
a Secretary of ^Var, or of the Navy, who would 
refuse to give an order for troops to march, or a 
fleet to sail. True, it is made the duty of the 
Secretary of the Treasury to direct the removal 
of the deposits ; but the constitution makes it 
the duty of the President to see that the Secre- 
tary performs his duty ; and the constitution is 
as much above law as the President is above the 
Secretary. 

" The President is on trial for a misdemeanor 
— for dismissing his Secretary without sufficient 
Ciiuse. To this accusation there are ready an- 
swers : first, that the President may dismiss his 
Secretaries without cause; secondl}^, that the 
Senate has no cognizance of the case ; thirdly, 
that the Senate cannot assume to know for 
what cause the Secretary in question was dis- 
missed. 

" The Secretary of the Treasury is on trial. 
In order to get at the President, it was found ne- 
cessary to get at a gentleman who had no voice 
on this floor. It had been found necessary to 
assail the Secretary of the Treasury in a man- 
ner heretofore unexampled in the history of the 
Senate. His religion, his politics, his veracity, 
his understanding, his Missouri restriction vote, 
had all been arraigned. Mr. B. said he would 
leave his religion to the constitution of the 
United States, Catholic as he was, and although 
'the Presbyterian might cut off his head the 
first time he went to mass;' for he could see 
no otlier point to the anecdote of Cromwell and 
the capitulating Catholics, to whom he granted 
the free exercise of their religion, only he would 
cut off their heads if they went to mass. His 
understanding he would leave to himself The 
head which could throw the paper which was 
taken for a stone on this floor, but which was, 
in fact, a double-headed chain-shot fired from ^ 
forty-eight poinider, carrying sails, masts, rig- 
ging, all before it, was a head that could take 
care of itself. His veracity would be adjourned 
to the trial which was to take place for mis- 
quoting a letter of Secretary Crawford, and he 
had no doubt would end as the charge did for 
suppressing a letter which was printed in c.v- 
teiiso among our documents, and withholding 
the name and compensation of an agent ; when 
that name and the fact of no compensation was 
lying on the table. The Secretary of the Trea- 
sury was arraigned fur some incidental vote on 



the Missouri restriction, when he was a member 
of the ]\Iar3'land legislature. ]\Ir. B. did not 
know what that vote was ; but he did know that 
a certain gentleman, who lately stood in the re* 
lation of sergeant to another gentleman, in a 
certain high election, was the leader of the forces 
which deforced Missouri of her place in the 
Union for the entire session which he first at- 
tended (not served) in the Congress of the 
United States. His politics could not be severe- 
ly tried in the time of the alien and sedition 
law, when he was scarce of age ; but were well 
tried during the late war, when he sided with 
his countiy. and received the constant denuncia- 
tions of that great organ of federalism, the Fede- 
i-al Republican newspaper. For the rest, Mr. 
B. admitted that the Secretary had voted for 
the elder Adams to be President of the United 
States, but denied the right of certain persons 
to make that an objection to him. Mr. B. dis- 
missed these personal charges, for the present, 
and would adjourn their consideration until his 
(Mr. Taney's) trial came on, for which the sen- 
ator from Kentucky (Mr. Clay), stood pledged ; 
and after the trial was over, he had no doubt 
but that the Secretary of the Treasury, although 
a Catholic and a federalist, would be found to 
maintain his station in the first rank of Ameri- 
can gentlemen and American patriots. 

" Mr. B. took up the serious charges against 
the Secretary : that of being the mere instru- 
ment of the President in removing the deposits, 
and violating the constitution and laws of the 
land. IIow far he was this mere instrument, 
making up his mind, in three days, to do what 
others would not do at all, might be judged by 
eveiy person who would j-cfer to the ojjposition 
papers for the division in the cabinet about the 
removal of the deposits ; and which constantly 
classed Mr. Taney, then the Attorney Genei-al, 
on the side of removal. This classification was 
correct, and notorious, and ought to exempt an 
honorable man, if any thing could exempt him, 
from the imputation of being a mere instrument 
in a great transaction of which he was a prime 
counsellor. The fact is, he had long since, in his 
character of legal adviser to the President, ad- 
vised the removal of these deposits ; and when 
suddenly and unexpectedly called upon to take 
the office which would make it his duty to act 
upon his own advice, he accepted it from the 
single sense of honor and dut}- ; and that ho 
might not seem to desert the President iu flinch- 
ing from the performance of what he had re- 
commendcd. His personal honor was clean ; his 
personal conduct magnanimous ; his official deeds 
would abide the test of law and truth. 

" Mr. B. said he would make short work of 
long accusations, and demolish, in three minutes, 
what had been concocting for three months, and 
delivering; for three days in the Senate. He 
would call tlie attention of the Senate to certain 
clauses of law. and certain treasury instructiona 
which had been left out of view, but which 
were decisive of the accusation against the So- 



ANNO 1834, ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



409 



cretary. The first was the clause in the bank 
charter, which invested the Secretary with the 
power of transferring the public funds from place 
to place. It was the 15th section of the char- 
ter : he would read it. It enacted that when- 
ever required by the Secretary of the Treasury, 
the bank should give the necessary facilities for 
transferring tlie public funds from place to place, 
within the United States, or territories thereof; 
and for distributing the same in payment of the 
public creditors, &c. 

" Here is authority to the Secretary to trans- 
fer the public moneys from place to place, limit- 
ed only by the bounds of the United States and 
its territories ; and this clause of three lines of 
law puts to flight all the nonsense about the 
United States Bank being the treasury, and the 
Treasurer being the keeper of the public moneys, 
with which some politicians and newspaper wri- 
ters have been worrying their brains for the last 
three months. In virtue of this clause, the Se- 
cretary of the Treasury gave certain transfer 
drafts to the amount of two millions and a quar- 
ter ; and his legal right to give the draft was 
just as clear, under this clause of the bank char- 
ter, as his right to remove the deposits was un- 
der another clause of it. The transfer is made 
by draft ; a paj^ment out of the treasury is made 
upon a warrant ; and the difference between a 
transfer draft and a treasury warrant was a thing 
necessary to be known by every man who aspired 
to the oflSce of illuminating a nation, or of con- 
ducting a criminal prosecution, or even of under- 
standing what he is talking about. They have 
no relation to each other. The warrant takes 
the money out of the treasury : the draft trans- 
fers it from point to point, for the purpose of 
making payment : and all this attack upon the 
Secretary of the Treasury is simply upon the 
blunder of mistaking the draft for the warrant. 

" The senator from Kentucky calls upon the 
people to rise, and drive the Goths from the 
capitol. Who are those Goths ? They ai-e 
General -Jackson and the democratic party, — 
he just elected President over the senator him- 
self, and the party just been made the majority 
in the House— all by the vote of the people. It 
is their act that has put these Goths in posses- 
sion of the capitol to the discomfiture of the 
senator and his friends ; and he ought to be 
quite sure that he felt no resentment at an event 
so disastrous to his hopes, when he has indulged 
himself with so much license in vituperating 
those whom the country has put over him. 

" The senator from Kentucky says the eyes 
and the hopes of the country arc now turned 
upon Congress. Yes, Congress is his word, 
and I hold him to it. And what do they see ? 
They see one House of Congress — the one to 
wliich the constitution gives the care of the 
purse, and the origination of impeachments, and 
which is fresh from the popular elections : they 
see that body with a majority of above fifty in 
favor of the President and the Secretary of the 
Treasury, and approving the act which the sen- 



ator condemns. They see that popular appro- 
bation in looking at one branch of Congress, and 
the one charged by the constitution with the 
inquisition into federal grievances. In the other 
branch they see a body far removed from the 
people, neglecting its proper duties, seizing upon 
those of another branch, converting itself into a 
grand inquest, and trying offences which itself 
prefers ; and in a spirit which bespeaks a zeal 
quickened by the sting of personal mortifica- 
tion. He says the country feels itself deceived 
and betrayed— insulted and wronged — its liber- 
ties endangered — and the treasury robbed : the 
representatives of the people in the other House, 
say the reverse of all this — that the President 
has saved the country from the corrupt domin- 
ion of a great corrupting bank, bj' taking away 
from her the public money which she was using 
in bribing the press, subsidizing members, pur- 
chasing the venal, and installing herself in su- 
preme political power. 

" The senator wishes to know what we are to 
do ? What is our duty to do ? I answer, to 
keep ourselves within our constitutional duties 
— to leave this impeachment to the House of 
Representatives — leave it to the House to which 
it belongs, and to those who have no private 
griefs to avenge — and to judges, each of whom 
should retire from the bench, if he happened to 
feel in his heart the spirit of a prosecutor in- 
stead of a judge. The Senate now tries Gene- 
ral Jackson ; it is subject to trial itself — to be 
tried by the people, and to have its sentence 
reversed." 

The corner-stone of Mr. Clay's whole argu- 
ment was, that the Bank of the United States 
was the treasury of the United States. This 
was his fundamental position, and utterly un- 
founded, and shown to be so by the fourteenth 
article of what was called the constitution of 
the bank. It was the article which provided 
for the establishment of branches of the mother 
institution, and all of which except the branch 
at Washington city, were to be employed, or 
not employed, as the directors pleased, as de- 
positories of the public monej^ ; and conse- 
quently were not made so by any law of Con- 
gress. The article said : 

" The directors of said corporation shall es- 
tablish a competent office of discount and de- 
posit in the District of Columbia, whenever any 
law of the United States shall roiiuirc such an 
establishment ; also one such office of discount 
and deposit in any State in which two thousand 
shares shall have been subscribed, or may be 
held, whenever, upon application of the legisla- 
ture of L>uch State, Congress may, by law, re- 
quire the same : Provided, The directors afore- 
said shall not be bound to establish such office 
befoi'e the whole of the capital of the bank shall 



410 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



have been paid up. And it shall be lawful for 
the directors of the said corporation to establish 
offices of discount and deposit wheresoever they 
shall think fit, within the United States or the 
territories thereof, to such persons, and under 
such regulations, as they shall deem proper, not 
being contrary to law, or the constitution of the 
bank. Or, instead of establishing such offices, 
it shall be lawful for the directors of the said 
corporation, from time to time, to employ an}- 
other bank or banks, to be first approved by the 
Secretary- of the Treasury, at any place or places 
that they maj^ deem safe and proper, to manage 
and transact the business proposed as aforesaid, 
other than for the purposes of discount, to be 
managed and transacted by such officers, under 
such agreements, and subject to such regula- 
tions, as they shall deem just and proper, 

•' Mr. B. went on to remark upon this article, 
that it placed the establishment of but one branch 
in the reach or power of Congress, and that one 
was in the District of Columbia — in a district of 
ten miles square — leaving the vast extent of 
twentj'-four States, and three Territories, to ob- 
tain branches for themselves upon contingencies 
not dependent upon the will or power of Con- 
gress ; or requiring her necessities, or even her 
convenience, to be taken into the account. A 
law of Congress could obtain a branch in this 
district; but with respect to every State, the 
establishment of the branch depended, first, upon 
the mere will and pleasure of the bank ; and, 
secondlj^, upon the double contingency of a sub- 
scription, and a legislative act, within the State. 
If then, the mother bank does not think fit, for 
its own advantage, to establish a branch ; or, if 
the people of a State do not acquire 2,000 shares 
of the stock of the bank, and the legislature, 
therefore, demand it, no branch will be estab- 
lished in any State, or any Territory of the 
Union. Congress can only require a branch, in 
any State, after two contingencies have happened 
in the State ; neither of them having the slight- 
est reference to the necessities, or even conve- 
nience, of the federal government. 

" Here, then, said Mr. B., is the Treasury 
established for the United States ! A Treasury 
which is to have an existence but at the will of 
the bank, or the will of a State legislature, and 
a few of its citizens, enough to own 2,000 shares 
of stock worth §100 a share ! A Treasury 
which Congress has no hand in establishing, and 
cannot preserve after it is established ; for the 
mother bank, after establishing her branches, 
may shut them up, or withdi'aw them. Such a 
thing has already happened. Branches in the 
West have been, some shut up, some withdrawn ; 
and, in these cases, the Treasury was broken up, 
accordmg to the new-fangled conception of a na- 
tional Treasury. No ! said Mr. B., the Federal 
bank is no more the Treasury of the United 
States than the State banks are. One is just as 
much the Treas\iry as the other ; and made so 
by this very 14th fundamental article of the 
constitution of the bank. liOok at it ! Look at 



the alternative ! Where branches are not es< 
tablished, the State banks are to be employed ! 

" The Bank of the United States is to select 
the State bank ; the Secretary of the Treasury 
is to approve the selection ; and if he does so, 
the State bank so selected, and so approved, 
becomes the keeper of the public moneys ; it 
becomes the depositor}- of the public moneys ; 
it transfers them ; it pays them out ; it does 
every thing except make discounts for the mo- 
ther bank and issue notes ; it does everything 
which the federal government wants done ; and 
that is nothing but what a bank of deposit can 
do. The government makes no choice between 
State banks and branch banks. They are all 
one to her. They stand equal in her eyes ; they 
stand equal in the charter of the bank itself; and 
the horror that has now broken out against the 
State banks is a thing of recent conception — a 
very modern impulsion ; which is rebuked and 
condemned by the very authority to which it 
traces its source. Mr. B. said, the State banks 
were just as much made the federal treasury by 
the bank charter, as the United States Bank 
itself was : and that was sufficient to annihilate 
the argument which now sets up the federal 
bank for the federal treasury. But the fact was, 
that neither was made the Treasury ; and it 
would be absurd to entertain such an idea for 
an instant ; for the federal bank may surrender 
her charter, and cease to exist — it can do so at 
any moment it pleases — the State banks may 
expire upon their limitation ; they may sur- 
render ; they may be dissolved in \many ways, 
and so cease to exist ; and then there would be 
no Treasury ! What an idea, that the existence 
of the Treasury of this great republic is to de- 
pend, not upon itself, but upon corporations, 
which may cease to exist, on any day, by their 
own will, or their own crimes." 

The debates on this subject brought out the 
conclusion that the treasury of the United States 
had a legal, not a material existence — that the 
Treasurer having no buildings, and keepers, to 
hold the public moneys, resorted (when the 
treasury department was first established), to 
the collectors of the revenue, leaving the money 
in their hands until drawn out for the public 
service — which was never long, as the revenues 
were then barely adequate to meet the daily 
expenses of the government ; afterwards to the 
first Bank of the United States— then to local 
banks; again to the second bank; and iow 
again to local banks. In all tliese cases the 
keepers of the public moneys wei-e nothing but 
keepers, being the mere agents of the Secretary 
of the treasury in holding the moneys which he 
had no means of holding himself. From those 
discussions came the train of ideas which led to 



ANNO 1834. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



411 



the establishment of the independent treasuiy 
— that is to say, to the creation of officers, and 
the erection of buildings, to hold the pubhc 
moneys. 



CHAPTER CI. 

CONDEMNATION OF PRESIDENT JACKSON— ME. 
CALHOUN'S SPEECH— EXTEACTS. 

It was foreseen at the time of the coalition be- 
tween Mr. Calhoun and Mr. Clay, in which they 
came together — a conjunction of the two political 
poles — on the subject of the tariff, and laid it 
away for a term to include two presidential 
elections — that the effect would be (even if it 
was not the design), to bring them together upon 
all other subjects against General Jackson. This 
expectation was not disappointed. Early in the 
debate on Mr. Clay's condemnatory resolution, 
Mr. Calhoun took the floor in its support ; and 
did Mr. Clay the honor to adopt his leading 
ideas of a revolution, and of a robbery of the 
treasury. He not only agreed that we were in 
the middle of a revolution, but also asserted, by 
way of consolation to those who loved it, that 
revolutions never go backwards — an aphorism 
destined, in this case, to be deceived by the event. 
In the pleasing anticipation of this aid from Mr. 
Calhoun and his friends, Mr. Clay had com- 
placently intimated the expectation of this aid 
in his opening speech ; and in that intimation 
there was no mistake. Mr. Calhoun responded 
to it thus : 

" The Senator from Kentucky [Mr. Clay] an- 
ticipates with confidence that the small party 
who were denounced at the last session as trai- 
tors and disunionists, will be found, on this 
trying occasion, standing in the front rank, and 
manfully resisting the advance of despotic power. 
I (said Mr. C.) heard the anticipation with plea- 
sure, not on account of the compliment which it 
implied, but the evidence which it affords that 
the cloud which has been so industriously thrown 
over the character and motive of that small but 
patriotic party begins to be dissipated. The Se- 
nator hazarded nothing in the prediction. That ' 
party is the determined, the fixed, and sworn 
enemy to usurpation, come from what quarter 
and under what form it may — whether from the 
executive upon the other departments of this 
government, or from this government on the 
sovereignty and rights of the States. The reso- 
lution and fortitude with which it maintained its 



position at the last session, under so many diffi- 
culties and dangers, in defence of the States 
against the encroachments of the general go- 
vernment, furnished evidence not to be mistaken, 
that that party, in the present momentous 
struggle, would be found arrayed in defence of 
the rights of Congress against the encroach- 
ments of the President. And let me tell the 
Senator from Kentucky (said Mr, C.) that, if 
the present struggle against executive usurpa- 
tion be successful, it will be owing to the success 
with which we, the nullifiers — I am not afraid 
of the word — maintained the rights of the States 
against the encroachment of the general govern- 
ment at the last session." 

This assurance of aid was no sooner given 
than complied with. Mr. Calhoun, and all his 
friends came immediately to the support of the 
resolution, and even exceeded their author in 
their zeal against the President and his Secre- 
taiy. Notwithstanding the private grief which 
Mr. Calhoun had against General Jackson in 
the affair of the " correspondence " and the 
"exposition" — the contents of which latter 
were well known though not published — and 
notwithstanding every person was obliged to 
remember that grief while Mr. Calhoun was 
assailing the General, and alleging patriotism 
for the motive, and therefore expected that it 
should have imposed a reserve upon him ; yet, 
on the contrary he was most personally bitter, 
and used language which would be incredible, 
if not found, as it is, in his revised reports of 
his speeches. Thus, in enforcing Mr. Clay's 
idea of a robbery of the treasury after the man- 
ner of Julius Caesar, he said : 

" The senator from Kentucky, in connection 
with this part of his argument, read a striking 
passage from one of the most pleasing and in- 
structive writers in any language [Plutarch], 
the description of Caesar forcing himself, sword 
in hand, into the treasury of the lloman common- 
wealth. We are at the same stage of our poli- 
tical revolution, and the analogy between the 
two cases is complete, varied only by the char- 
acter of the actors and the circumstances of the 
times. That was a case of an intrepid and bold 
warrior, as an open plunderer, seizing forcibly 
the treasurj^ of the country, which, in that re- 
public, as well as ours, was confined to the cus- 
tody of the legislative department of the govern- 
ment. The actors in our case ai-e of a different 
character — artful, cunning, and corrupt poli- 
ticians, and not fearless warriors. They have 
entered llie treasury, not sword in hand, as pub- 
lic plunderers, but, with the fiilse keys of soph- 
istry-, as pilferers, under the silence of midnight. 
The motive and the object are the same, varied 



412 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



in like manner by circumstances and character. 
'With money I will ^et men, and with men 
money,' was the maxim of the Roman plunderer. 
With money we will get partisans, with {)artisans 
Votcs,and with votes money, is the maxim of our 
public pilferers. With men and money Cii3sar 
struck down Roman liberty, at the fatal battle 
of Pharsalia, never to rise again ; from which dis- 
astrous hour all the powers of the Roman repub- 
lic were consolidated in the person of Caisar, and 
perpetuated in his line. With money and cor- 
rupt partisans a great effort is now making to 
choke and stifle the voice of American liberty, 
through all its natural organs ; by corrupting 
the press ; by overawing the other departments; 
and, finally, by setting up a new and polluted 
organ, composed of office-holders and corrupt 
partisans, under the name of a national conven- 
tion, which, counterfeiting the voice of the people, 
will, if not resisted, in their name dictate the 
succession ; when the deed will be done, the re- 
volution be completed, and all the powers of our 
republic, in like manner, be consolidated in the 
President, and perpetuated by his dictation." 

On the subject of the revolution, "bloodless 
as yet," in the middle of which we were engaged, 
and which was not to go backwards, Mr. Cal- 
houn said : 

" Viewing the question in its true light, as a 
struggle on the part of the Executive to seize on 
the power of Congress, and to unite in the Pre- 
sident. the power of the sword and the purse, the 
senator from Kentucky [Mr. Clay] said truly, 
and, let me add, philosophically, that we are in 
the midst of a revolution. Yes, the very exis- 
tence of free governments rests on the proper 
distribution and organization of power ; and, to 
destroy this distribution, and thereby concentrate 
power in any one of the departments, is to effect 
a revolution. But while 1 agree with the sen- 
ator that we are in the midst of a revolution, I 
cannot agree with him as to the time at which 
it commenced, or the point to which it has pro- 
gressed. Looking to the distribution of the 
powers of the general government, into the leg- 
islative, executive, and judicial departments, and 
confining his views to the encroachment of the 
executive upon the legislative, he dates the com- 
mencement of the revolution but sixty days 
previous to the meeting of the present Congress. 
I (said Mr, C.) take a wider range, and date it 
from an earlier pc-riod. Besides the distribution 
among the dej)artments of tiic general govern- 
ment, there belongs to our system another, and 
a far more im[)ortant division or distribution of 
power — that between the States and the general 
government, the reserved and delegated rights, 
the maintenance of which is still morecs.-ential to 
the preservation of our institutions. Taking this 
wide view of our political .\vstem, the revolu- 
tion, in the midst of which we are, began, not as 
supposed by the senator fi-om Kentucky, shortly 



before the commencement of the present session, 
but many years ago, with the commencement of 
the restrictive sj'stem, and terminated its first 
stage with the passage of the force bill of the 
last session, which absorbed all the rights and 
sovereignty of the States, and consoldated them 
in this government. Whilst this process was 
going on, of absorbing the reserved powers of 
the States, on the part of the general government, 
another commenced, of concentrating in the ex- 
ecutive the powers of the other two — the legis- 
lative and judicial departments of the govern- 
ment ; which constitutes the second stage of the 
revolution, in which we have advanced almost 
to the termination." 

Mr. Calhoun brought out in this debate the 
assertion, in which he persevered afterwards un- 
til it produced the quarrel in the Senate between 
himself and Mr. Clay, that it was entirely owing 
to the military and nullifying attitude of South 
Carolina that the " compromise " act was passed, 
and that Mr. Clay himself would have been 
prostrated in the attempt to compromise. He 
thus, boldly put forward that pretension : 

" To the interposition of the State of South 
Carolina we are indebted for the adjustment of 
the tariff question ; without it, ail the influence 
of the senator from Kentucky over the manu- 
facturing interest, great as it deservedly is, would 
have been wholly incompetent, if he had even 
thought proper to exert it, to adjust the ques- 
tion. The attempt would have prostrated him, 
and those who acted with him, and not the sys- 
tem. It was the separate action of the State 
that gave him the place to stand upon, created 
the necessity for the adjustment, and disposed 
the minds of all to compromise." 

The necessity of his own position, and the in- 
dispensability of Mr. Calhoun's support, restrain- 
ed Mr. Clay, and kept him quiet under this 
cutting taunt; but he took ample satisfaction 
for it some years later, when the triumidi of 
General Jackson in the '" expunging resolution," 
and the decline of their own prospects for the 
Presidency, dissolved their coalition, and re- 
mitted them to their long previous antagonistic 
feelings. But there was another point in which 
Mr. Calhoun intelligibly indicated what was 
fully believed at the time, namely, that the basis 
of the coalition which ostensibly had for its ob- 
ject the reduction of the tariff, was in reality a 
political coalition to act against General Jackson, 
and to the success of which it was essential that 
their own great bone of contention was 1o be laid 
aside, and kept out of the way, while tlie coali- 
tion was in force. It was to enable them to 



ANNO 1834. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



413 



unite their forces against the "encroachments 
and corruptions of the Executive" that the tariff 
was then laid away ; and although the removal of 
the deposits was not then foreseen, as the first 
occasion for this conjunction, yet there could 
have been no failure of finding occasions enough 
for the same purpose when the will was so 
strong — as subsequent events so fully proved. 
General Jackson could do but little during the 
remainder of his Presidency which was not 
found to be " unconstitutional, illegal, corrupt, 
usurping, and dangerous to the liberties of the 
people;" and as such, subject to the combined 
attack of Mr. Clay and Mr. Calhoun and their 
respective friends. All this was as good as 
told, and with an air of self-satisfaction at the 
foresight of it, in these paragraphs of Mr. Cal- 
houn's speech: 

" Now, I put the solemn question to all who 
hear me : if the tariff had not then been adjust- 
ed — if it was now an open question — what hope 
of successful resistance against the usurpations 
of the Executive, on the part of this or any 
other branch of the government, could be enter- 
tained ? Let it not be said that this is the re- 
sult of accident — of an unforeseen contingency. 
It was clearly perceived, and openly stated, that 
no successful resistance could be made to the 
corruption and encroachments of the Executive, 
while the tariff question remained open, while it 
separated the North from the South, and wasted 
the energy of the honest and patriotic portions 
of the community against each other, the joint 
effort of which is indispensably necessary to ex- 
pel those from authority who are converting 
the entire powers of government into a corrupt 
electioneering machine ; and that, without sepa- 
rate State interposition, the adjustment was im- 
possible. The truth of this position rests not 
upon the accidental state of things, but on a 
pi'ofound principle growing out of the nature of 
government, and party struggles in a free State. 
History and reflection teach us, that when great 
interests come into conflict, and the passions and 
the prejudices of men are aroused, such strug- 
gles can never be composed by the influence of 
any individuals, however great ; and if there be 
not somewhere in the system some high consti- 
tutional power to arrest their progress, and com- 
pel the parties to adjust the difference, they go 
on till the State falls by corruption or violence. 

" I will (said Mr. C.) venture to add to these 
remarks another, in connection with the point 
under consideration, not less true. We are not 
only indebted to the cause which I have stated 
for our present strength in this body against 
the present usurpation of the Executive, but if 
the adjustment of the tariff had stood alone, as 
it ought to have done, without the odious bill 
which accompanied it — if those who led in the 



compromise had joined the State-rights party 
in their resistance to that unconstitutional meas- 
ure, and thrown the responsibility on its real 
authors, the administration, their party would 
have been so prostrated throughout the entire 
South, and their power, in consequence, so re- 
duced, that they would not have dared to attempt 
the present measure ; or, if they had, they 
would have been broken and defeated." 

Mr. Calhoun took high ground of contempt 
and scorn against the Secretary's reasons for 
removing the deposits, so far as founded in the 
misconduct of the bank directors — declaring 
that he would not condescend to notice them — 
repulsing them as intrusive — and shutting his 
eyes upon these accusations, although heinous 
in their nature, then fully proved ; and since 
discovered to be far more criminal than then 
suspected, and such as to subject their authors, 
a few years afterwards, to indictments in the 
Court of General Sessions, for the county of 
Philadeljjhia, for a "conspiracy to cheat and 
defi'aud the stockholders ;" — indictments on 
which they were saved from jury trials by be- 
ing ^'■habeas carpus' d''^ out of the custody of 
the sheriff of the county, who had an-ested 
them on bench warrants. ]\Ir. Calhoun thus 
repulsed all notice of these accusations : 

" The Secretary has brought forward many 
and grievous charges against the bank. I will 
not condescend to notice them. It is the con- 
duct of the Secretary, and not that of the bank, 
which is immediately under examination ; and 
he has no right to drag the conduct of the bank 
into the issue, beyond its operations in regard 
to the deposits. To that extent I am prepared 
to examine his allegations against it ; but be- 
yond that he has no right — no, not the least — 
to arraign the conduct of the bank ; and I, for 
one, will not, by noticing his charges beyond 
that point, sanction his authority to call its con- 
duct in question. But let the point in issue 
be determined, and I, as f:ir as my voice ex- 
tends, will give to those who desire it the means 
of the freest and most unlimited inquiry into its 
conduct." 

But, while supporting Mr. Clay generally in 
his movement against the President, Mr. Cal- 
houn disagreed with him in the essential aver- 
ment in his resolve, that his removal of IMr. 
Duane because he would not, and the appoint- 
ment of Mr. Taney because he would, remove 
them was a usurpation of power. INIr. Calhoun 
held it to be only an •'• abuse ;" and upon that 
point he procured a modification of his resolve 
from Mr. Clay, nothwithstanding the earnest- 



414 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



ness of his speech on the charge of usurpation. 
And he thus stated his objection : 

" But, Avhile I thus severely condemn the con- 
duct of the President in removing the former 
Secretaiy and appointing the present, I must 
sa}"-, that in my opinion it is a case of the abuse, 
and not of the usurpation of power. I cannot 
doubt that the President has, under the consti- 
tution, the right of removal from oflBce ; nor can 
I doubt that the power of removal, wherever it 
exists, does, from necessity, involve the power 
of general supervision ; nor can I doubt that it 
might be constitutionally exercised in reference 
to the deposits. Reverse the present case ; sup- 
pose the late Secretar}'^, instead of being against, 
had been in favor of the removal ; and that the 
President, instead of being for, had been against 
it, deeming the removal not only inexpedient, 
but, under circumstances illegal ; would any 
man doubt that, under such circumstances, he 
had a right to remove his Secretary, if it were 
the only means of preventing the removal of the 
deposits ? Nay, would it not be his indispen- 
sable duty to have removed him ? and, had he 
not, would not he have been universally and 
justly held responsible ?" 

In all the vituperation of the Secretary, as 
being the servile instrument of the President's 
will, the members who indulged in that species 
of attack were acting against public and record- 
ed testimony. Mr. Taney was complying with 
his own sense of public duty when he ordered 
the removal. He had been attorney-general 
of the United States when the deposit-removal 
question arose, and in all the stages of that 
question had been in favor of the removal ; so 
that his conduct was the result of his own judg- 
ment and conscience ; and the only interference 
of the President was to place him in a situation 
where he would carry out his convictions of 
duty. Mr. Calhoun, in this speech, absolved 
himself from all connection with the bank, or 
dependence upon it, or favors from it. Though 
its chief author, he would have none of its ac- 
commodations : and said : 

" I am no partisan of the bank ; I am con- 
nected with it in no way, by moneyed or politi- 
cal ties. I might say, witli truth, that tlie bank 
owes as much to me as to any otlier individual 
in the country ; and I miglit even add that, had 
it not been ibr my efforts, it would not have 
been chartered. Standing in this relation to 
the institution, a high sense of delicacy, a regard 
to independence and character, has restrained 
me from any connection with the institution 
whatever, except some trifling accommodations, 
in the way of oi'dinary business, which were 



not of the slightest importance either to the 
bank or myself." 

Certainly there was no necessity for Mr. Cal- 
houn to make this disclaimer. His character 
for ])ecuniary integrity placed him above the 
suspicion of a venal motive. His errors came 
from a different source — from the one that Cae- 
sar thought excusable when empire was to be 
attained. Mr. Clay also took the opportunity 
to disclaim any present connection with, or past 
favors from the bank ; and, 

" Begged permission to trespass a few mo- 
ments longer on the Senate, to make a state- 
ment concerning himself personally. He had 
heard that one high in office had allowed him- 
self to assert that a dishonorable connection 
had subsisted between him (Mr. C), and the 
Bank of the United States. When the present 
charter Avas granted, he voted for it ; and, hav- 
ing done so, he did not feel himself at liberty 
to subscribe, and he did not subscribe, for a sin- 
gle share in the stock of the bank, although he 
confidently anticipated a great rise in the value 
of the stock. A few years afterwards, during 
the presidency of Mr. Jones, is was thought, by 
some of his friends at Philadelphia, expedient to 
make him (Mr. C), a director of the Bank of 
the United States ; and he was made a director 
without any consultation with him. For that 
purpose five shares were purchased for him, by 
a friend, for which he (Mr. C), afterwards paid. 
When he ceased to be a director, a short time 
subsequently, he disposed of those shares. He 
does not now own, and has not for many years 
been the proprietor of, a single share. 

"When Mr. Cheves was appointed president 
of the bank, its affairs in the States of Kentucky 
and Ohio were in great disorder ; and his (Mr. 
C.'s), professional services were engaged during 
several j'ears for the bank in those States. He 
brought a vast number of suits, and transacted 
a great amount of professional business for the 
bank. Among other suits was that for the re- 
covery of the one hundred thousand dollars, 
seized, under the autliority of a law of Ohio, 
whicli he carried through the inferior and su- 
preme courts. He was jiaid b}' the bank the 
usual compensation for these services, and no 
moi'c. And he ventured to assert that no pro- 
fessional fees were ever more honcstl}' and fair- 
ly earned. He had not, however, been the 
counsel for the bank for upwards of eight years 
past. He does not owe the bank, or any one 
of its branches, a solitary cent. About twelve 
or fifteen years ago, owing to the failure of a 
highly estimable (now deceased), friend, a large 
amount of debt liad been, as his indorscr, tlu-own 
upon him (Mr. C), and it was principally due 
to the Bank of the United States. He (Mr C.) 
estalilished for himself a rigid economy, a sink- 
ing fund, and worked hard, and paid oil" the debt 



ANNO 1834. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



415 



tong since, 



without receivino; from the bank the 



slightest favor, 
were dischargin 
high valuations 



Whilst others around him 
their debts in property, at 
he periodically renewed his 



note, paying the discount, until it was wholly 
extinguished." 

But it was not every member who could thus 
absolve himself from bank connection, favor, or 
dependence. The list of congressional bor- 
rowers, or retainers, was large — not less than 
fifty of the former at a time, and a score of the 
latter ; and even after the failure of the bank 
and the assignment of its effects, and after all 
possible hquidations had been effected by tak- 
mg property at "high valuation," allowing 
largely for " pi'ofessional services," and liberal 
resorts to the '■ profit and loss" account, there 
remained many to be sued by the assignees to 
whom their notes were passed ; and some of 
such early date as to be met by a plea of the 
statute of limitations in bar of the stale de- 
mand. Mr. Calhoun concluded with a "lift to 
the panic" in a reference to the "fearful crisis" 
in which we were involved — the dangers ahead 
to the liberties of the country — the perils of our 
institutions — and a hint at his permanent reme- 
dy — his panacea for all the diseases of the body 
politic — dissolution of the Union. He ended 
thus : 

"We have (said Mr. C), arrived at a fearful 
crisis ; things cannot long remain as they are. 
It behoove-s all who love their country, who 
have affection for their offspring, or who have 
any stake in our institutions, to pause and re- 
flect. Confidence is daily withdrawing from 
the general government. Alienation is hourly 
going on. These will necessarily create a state 
of things inimical to the existence of our insti- 
tutions, and, if not speedily arrested, convul- 
sions must follow, and then comes dissolution 
or despotism ; when a thick cloud will be 
thrown over the cause of liberty and the future 
prospects of our country." 



the business of the country and the alarms of 
the people. For this purpose, loans and accom- 
modations were to cease at the mother bank 
and all its branches, and in all the local banks 
over which the national bank had control ; and 
at the same time that discounts were stopped, 
curtailments were made ; and all business men 
called on for the payment of all they owed, at 
the same time that all the usual sources of sup- 
ply were stopped. This pressure was made to 
fall upon the business community, especially 
upon large establishments employing a great 
many operatives ; so as to throw as many labor- 
ing people as possible out of employment. At 
the same time, politicians engaged in making 
panic, had what amounts they pleased, an in- 
stance of a loan of $100,000 to a single one of 
these agitators, being detected; and a loan of 
$1,100,000 to a broker, employed in making dis- 

in favored cases at a 



in relieving it 



CHAPTER CII. 

PUBLIC DISTRESS. 

From the moment of the removal of the depos- 
its, it was seen that the plan of the Bank of the 
United States was to force their return, and 
with it a renewal of its charter, by operating on 



tress, and 

usury of two and a half per centum per month. 
In this manner, the business community was 
oppressed, and in all parts of the Union at the 
same time : the organization of the national 
bank, with branches in every State, and its con- 
trol over local banks, being sufficient to enable 
it to have its policy carried into effect in all 
places, and at the same moment. The first step 
in this policy was to get up distress meetings — 
a thing easily done — and then to have these 
meetings properly officered and conducted. Men 
who had voted for Jackson, but now renounced 
him, were procured for president, vice-presi- 
dents, secretaries, and orators ; distress orations 
were deUvered ; and, after sufficient exercise in 
that way, a memorial and a set of resolves, 
prepared for the occasion, were presented and 
adopted. After adoption, the old way of send- 
ing by the mail was discarded, and a deputation 
selected to proceed to Washington and make 
delivery of their lugubrious document. These 
memorials generally came in duplicate, to be 
presented, in both Houses at once, by a senator 
from the State and the representative from the 
district. These, on presenting the petition, de- 
livered a distress harangue on its contents, 
often supported by two or three adjunct speak- 
ers, although there was a rule to forbid any 
thing being said on such occasions, except to 
make a brief statement of the contents. Now 
they were read in violation of the rule, and 
spoke upon in violation of the rule, and printed 



416 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



never to be read again, and referred to a com- 
mittee, never more to be seen by it ; and bound 
up in volumes to encumber the shelves of the 
public documents. Every morning, for three 
months, the presentation of these memorials, 
with speeches to enforce them, was the occupa- 
tion of each House : all the memorials bearing 
the impress of the same mint, and the orations 
generally cast after the same pattern. These 
harangues generally gave, in the first place, some 
topograpliical or historical notice of the county 
or town from which it came — sometimes with a 
hint of its revolutionary services — then a de- 
scription of the felicity which it enjoyed while 
the bank had the deposits ; then the ruin which 
came upon it, at their loss ; winding up usually 
with a great quantity of indignation against the 
man whose illegal and cruel conduct had occa- 
sioned such destruction upon their business. 
The meetings were sometimes held by young 
men ; sometimes by old men ; sometimes by the 
laboring, sometimes by the mercantile class ; 
sometimes miscellaneous, and irrespective of 
party ; and usually sprinkled over with a smart 
number of former Jackson-men, who had ab- 
jured him on account of this conduct to the 
bank. vSome passages will be given from a few 
of these speeches, as specimens of the whole; the 
quantity of which contributed to swell the pub- 
lication of the debates of that Congress to four 
large volumes of more than one thousand pages 



each. Thus, :Mr. Tyler of Y 



in present- 



ing a memorial from Culpeper county, and hint- 
ing at the military character of the county, 
said: 

" The county of Culpeper, as he had before ob- 
served, had been distinguished for its whiggism 
from the commencement of the Revolution ; and, 
if it had not been the first to hoist the revolu- 
tionary banner, at the tap of the drum, they 
were second to but one county, and that was the 
good count}' of Hanover, which had expressed 
the same opinion with them on this all-import- 
ant subject. He presented the memorial of these 
sons of the whigs of the Revolution, and asked 
that it might be read, referred to the appropri- 
ate committee, and printed." 

Mr. Robbins of Rhode Island, in presenting 
memorials from the towns of Smithfield and 
Cumberland in that State : 



"A small river runs through these towns, call- 
ed Blackstone River; a narrow stream, of no 
great volume of water, but perennial and un- 
failing, and possessing great power from the fre- 



quency and greatness of its falls. Prior to 
1791, this power had always run to waste, ex- 
cept here and there a saw mill or a grist mill, to 
supply the exigencies of a sparse neighborhood, 
and one inconsiderable forge. Since that period, 
from time to time, and from place to place, that 
power, instead of running to waste, has been 
applied to the use of propelling machinery, till 
the valley of that small river has become the 
Manchester of America. That power is so un- 
limited, that scarcely any hmitation can be fixed 
to its capability of progressive increase in its 
application. That valley, in these towns, already 
has in it over thirty diHerent establishments ; it 
has in it two millions of fixed capital in those 
establishments ; it has expended in it annually, 
in the wages of manual labor, five hundred thou- 
sand dollars ; it has in it one hundred thousand 
spindles in operation. I should say it had — for 
one half of these spindles are already suspended, 
and the other half soon must be suspended, if 
the present state of things continues. On the 
bank of that river, the first cotton spindle was 
established in America. The invention of Ark- 
wright, in 1791, escaped from the jealous prohi- 
bitions of England, and planted itself there. It 
was brought over by a Mr. Slater, who had been 
a laboring manufacturer in England, but who 
was not a machinist. He brought it over, not 
in models, but in his own mind, and fortunately 
he was blessed with a mind capacious of such 
things, and which by its fair fruits, has made 
him a man of immense fortune, and one of the 
greatest benefactors to his adopted country. 
There he made the first essays that laid the 
foundation of that system which has spread so 
for and wide in this country, and risen to such 
a height that it makes a demand annually for 
two hundred and fifty thousand bales of cotton 
— about one fourth of all the cotton crop of all 
our cotton-growing States ; makes for those 
States, for theri- staple, the best market in the 
world, except tliat of England : it was rapidly 
becoming to them the best market in the world, 
not excepting that of England ; still better, it 
was rapidly becoming for them a market to 
weigh down and preponderate in the scale against 
all the other markets of the world taken to- 
gether. Now, all those prospects arc blasted by 
one breath of the Executive administration of 
this country. Now every thing in that valley, 
every thing in possession, every thing in pros- 
pect, is tottering to its fall. One half of those 
one hundred thousand spindles are, as I before 
stated, already stopped ; the other half arc still 
continued, but at a loss to the ov.nacrs. and pure- 
ly from charity to the laborers ; but this charity 
has its limit; and regard to their own safety 
^vill soon constrain them to stop the other half 
Five months ago, had one travelled througli thai 
valley and witnessed the scenes then displayed 
there — their numerous and dense population, all 
industrious, and thriving, and contented— had 
heard the busy hum of industry in their houn 
of labor— the notes of joy in their hours of re- 



ANNO 1834. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



417 



lasation — had seen the plenty of their tables, 
the comforts of their firesides — had, in a word, 
seen in every countenance the content of every 
heart ; and if that same person should travel 
through the same valley hereafter, and should 
find it then deserted, and desolate, and silent as 
the vallej^ of death, and covered over with the 
solitar3' and mouldering ruins of those numer- 
ous establishments, he would sa}^, ' Surely the 
hand of the ruthless destroj-er has been here ! ' 
Now, if the present state of things is to be con- 
tinued, as surely as blood follows the knife that 
has been plunged to the heart, and death ensues, 
so surely that change there is to take place ; and 
he who ought to have been their guardian angel, 
will have been that ruthless destroyer." 

And thus Mr. Webster, in presenting a me- 
morial from Franklin county, in the State of 
Pennsylvania : 

" The county of Franklin was one of the most 
respectable and wealthy in the great State of 
Pennsylvania. It was situated in a rich lime- 
stone valley, and, in its main character, was 
agricultural. He had the pleasure, last year, to 
pass through it, and see it for the first time, 
when its rich fields of wheat and rye were ri- 
pening, and, certainly, he little thought then, 
that he should, at this time have to present to 
the Senate such undeniable proofs ©f their actual, 
severe and pressing distress. As he had said, 
the inhabitants of Franklin county were princi- 
pally agriculturists, and, of these, the majority 
were the tillers of their own land. They were in- 
terested, also, in manufactures to a great extent ; 
they had ten or twelve forges, and upwards of 
four thousand persons engaged in the manufac- 
ture of iron, dependent for their daily bread on 
the product of their own labor. The hands 
employed in this business were a peculiar race 
—miners, colliers, &c.— and, if other employment 
was to be afforded them, they would find them- 
selves unsuited for it. These manufactories had 
been depressed, from causes so well explained, 
and so well understood, that nobody could now 
doubt them. They were precisely in the situa- 
tion of the cotton flictories he had adverted to 
some days ago. There was no demand for their 
products. The consignee did not receive them 
—he did not hope to dispose of them, and would 
not give his paper for them. It was well known 
that, when a manufactured article was sent to 
the cities, the manufacturer expected to obtain 
an advance on them, which he got cashed. This 
whole operation having stopped, in consequence 
of the derangement of the currency, the source 
of business was dried up. There were other 
manufactories in that county that also felt the 
pressure — paper factories and manuiixctories of 
straw paper, which increased the gains of a"-ri- 
culture. These, too, have been under the neces- 
sity of dismissing many of those employed by 
them, which necessity brought this matter of 
Executive interference home to every man's 

Vol. I.— 27 



labor and property. He had ascertained the 
prices of produce as now, and in November last, 
in the State of Pennysylvania, and from these, it 
would be seen that, in the interior region, on the 
threshing floors, they had not escaped the evils 
which had afiected the prices of corn and rye at 
Chambersburg. They were hardly to be got 
rid of at any price. The loss on wheat, the 
great product of the county, was thirty cents. 
Clover seed, another great product, had fallen 
from six dollars per bushel to four dollars. 
This downfall of agricultural produce described 
the cflcct of the measure of the Executive better 
than all the evidences that had been hitherto 
offered. These memorialists, for themselves, 
were sick, sick enough of the Executive experi- 
ment." 

And thus Mr. Southard in presenting the 
memorial of four thousand " young men " of the 
city of Philadelphia : 

" With but very few of them am I personally 
acquainted — and must rel}-, in what I say of 
them, upon what I know of those few, and upon 
the information received from others, which I 
regard as sure and safe. And on these, I ven- 
ture to assure the Senate, that no meeting of 
young men can be collected, in any portion of 
our wide country, on any occasion, containing 
more intelligence — more virtuous pui-pose — 
more manly and honorable feeling — more de- 
cided and energetic character What they say, 
they think. What they resolve they will ac- 
complish. Their proceedings were ardent and 
animated — their resolutions are drawn with 
spirit ; but are such as, I think, may be pro- 
perly received and respected by the Senate. 
They relate to the conduct of the Executive — 
to the present condition of the- country — to the 
councils which now direct its destinies. They 
admit that older and more mature judgments 
may better understand the science of govern- 
ment and its practical operations, but they act 
upon a feeling just in itself, and valuable in its 
effects, that they are fit . to form and express 
opinions on public measures and public princi- 
ples, which shall be their own guide in their 
present and future conduct ; and they express a 
confident reliance on the moral and pliysical 
vigor and untamable love of freedom of the young 
men of the United States to save us from des- 
potism, open and avowed, or silent, insidious, 
and deceitful. They were attracted, or rather 
urged, sir, to this meeting, and to tlie expres- 
sion of their feelings and o])inions, by what they 
saw around, and knew of the action of the Ex- 
ecutive upon the currency and prosperity of the 
countr3\ The}' have just entered, or are about 
entei'ing, on the busv occupations of manhood, 
and are suddenly siu'i)rised bj- a state of things 
around them, new to their observation and ex- 
perience. Calamity had been a stranger in their 
pathway. The}' have grown up through their 
boyhood in the enjoyments of present comfort, 



418 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW 



and the anticipations of future prosperity— their 
seniors actively and successfully engaged in the 
various occupa^ticms of the community, and the 
whole circle of employments open before their 
own industry and hopes — the institutions of 
their country beloved, and their protecting in- 
fluence covering the exertions of all for their 
benetit and happiness. In this state they saw 
the public prosperity, with wdiich alone they 
were familiar, blasted, and for the time destroyed. 
The whole scene, their whole country, was 
changed ; they witnessed fortunes ialling, home- 
steads ruined, merchants foiling, artisans broken, 
mechanics impoverished, all the employments 
on wdiich they were about to enter, paralyzed ; 
hibor denied to the needy, and reward to the 
industrious; losses of millions of property and 
gloom settling where joy and happiness before 
existed. They felt the sirocco pass by, and 
desolate the plains where peace, and animation, 
and happiness exulted." 

And thus Mr. Clay in presenting a memorial 
fi-om Lexmgton, Kentucky : 

" If there was any spot in the Union, likely 
to be exempt from the calamities that had af- 
flicted the others, it would be the region about 
Lexington and its immediate neighborhood. No- 
where" to no other country, has Providence 
been more bountiful in its gifts. A country so 
rich and fertile that it yielded in fair and good 
seasons from sixty to seventy bushels of corn 
to the acre. It was a most beautiful country — 
all the land in it, not in a state of cultivation, 
was in parks (natural meadows), filled with 
flocks and herds, fattening on its luxuriant 
srass. But in what country, in what climate, 
the most favored by Heaven, can happiness and 
prosperity exist against bad government, against 
misrule, and against rash and ill-advised experi- 
ments ? On the mountain's top, in the moun- 
tain's cavern, in the remotest borders of the 
country, every where, every interest has been 
aftected by the mistaken policy of the Executive. 
While he admitted that the solicitude of his 
neighbors and friends was excited in some de- 
gree by the embarrassments of the country, yet 
Ihey felt a deeper solicitude for the restoration 
of the rightful authority of the constitution and 
the laws. It is this which excites their appre- 
hensions, and creates all their alarm, lie would 
not. at this time, enlarge further on the subject 
of this memorial, lie would only remark, that 
hemp, the great staple of the part of the country 
from whence the memorial came, had foUen 
twenty per cent, since he left home, and that 
Indian corn, another of its greatest staples, the 
most valuable of the fiiiits of the earth for the 
use of man, which the farmer converted into 
most of the articles of his consumption, fur- 
nishing him with food and raiment, had fallen to 
an equal extent. There were in thai county 
six thousand fat bullocks now remaining unsold, 
when, long before this time last year, there was 



scarcely one to be purchased. They were not 
sold, because the butchers could not obtain 
from the banks the usual facilities in the way 
of discounts; thej^ could not obtain funds in 
anticipation of their sales wherewith to pur- 
chase ; and now ^100,000 worth of this species 
of property remains on hand, which, if sold, woui'd 
have been scattered through the country by the 
graziers, producing all the advantages to be 
derived from so large a circulation. Every 
farmer was too well aware of these facts one 
moment to doubt them. We are, said Mr. C. 
not a complaining people. We think not so 
much of distress. Give us our laws — guarantee 
to us our constitution — and we will be content 
with almost anj)- form of government." 

And ISIr. Webster thus, in presenting a me- 
morial from Lynn, Massachusetts : 

" Those members of the Senate, said Mr. W., 
who have travelled from Boston to Salem, or to 
Nahant, will remember the town of Lynn, It 
is a beautiful town, situated upon the sea, is 
highly industrious, and has been hitherto pros- 
perous and flourishing. With a population of 
eight thousand souls, its great business is the 
manufocture of shoes. Three thousand persons, 
men, women, and children, are engaged in this 
manufacture. They make and sell, ordinarily, 
two millions of pairs of shoes a year, for which, 
at 75 cents a pair, they receive one million five 
hundred thousand dollars. They consume half 
a million of dollars worth of leather, of which 
they buy a large portion in Philadelphia and 
Baltimore, and the rest in their own neighbor- 
hood. The articles manufactured by them are 
sent to all parts of the country, finding their 
way into everj- principal port, from Eastport 
round to St. Louis. Now, sir, wdien I was last 
among the people of this handsome town, all 
was prosperity and happiness. Their business 
was not extravagantly profitable ; they were 
not growing rich over fost, but they were com- 
fortable, all emplo3-ed, and all satisfied and con- 
tented. But, sir, with them, as with others, a 
most serious change has taken place. They find 
their usual employments suddenly arrested, from 
the same cause which has smitten other parts 
of the country with like efiects; and they 
have sent forward a memorial, which I have 
now the honor of laying before the Senate. 
This memoral.sir, is signed by nine hundred of 
the legal voters of the town ; and I understand 
the largest number of votes known to have been 
given is one thousand. Their memorial is short ; 
it complains of the illegal removal of the depos- 
its, of the attack on the bank, and of the cll'ect 
of these measures on their business." 

And thus Mr. Kent, of Maryland, in present- 
ing petitions from Washington county in that 
State : 

" They depict in strong colors the daily in- 
creasing" distress with which they are surround 



ANNO 1834. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



419 



ed. They deeply deplore it, without the ability 
to relieve it, and they ascribe their condition to 
the derangement of the currency, and a total 
want of confidence, not only between man and 
man, but between banks situated even in the 
sara.e neighborhood — all proceeding, as they 
believe, from the removal of the public deposits 
from the Bank of the United States. Four 
months since, and the counties from whence 
these memorials proceed, presented a popula- 
tion as contended and prosperous as could be 
found in any section of the country. But. sir, 
in that short period, the picture is reversed. 
Their rich and productive lands, which last fall 
were sought after with avidity at high prices, 
they inform us, have fallen 25 per cent., and no 
purchasers are to be found even at that reduced 
price. Wheat, the staple of that region of the 
country, was never much lower, if as low. Flour 
is quoted in Alexandria at $3 75, where a large 
portion of their crops seek a market. These 
honest, industrious people cannot withstand 
the cruel and ruino'us consequences of this des- 
perate and unnecessary experiment. The coun- 
try cannot bear it, and unless speedy relief is 
afforded, the result of it will be as disastrous to 
those who projected it, as to the country at 
large, who are afflicted with it." 

And thus Mr. Webster, presenting a petition 
from the master builders of Philadelphia, sent 
on by a large deputation : 

" I rise, sir, to perform a pleasing duty. It is 
to lay before the Senate the proceedings of a 
meeting of the building mechanics of the city 
and county of Philadelphia, convened for the 
purpose of expressing their opinions on the pre- 
sent state of the countr}^, on the 24th of Febru- 
ary. This meeting consisted of three thousand 
persons, and was composed of carpenters, masons, 
brickmakers, bricklayers, painters and glazicjs. 
lime burners, plasterers, lumber merchants and 
others, whose occupations are connected with 
the building of houses. I am proud, sir, that so 
respectable, so important, and so substantial a 
class of mechanics, have intrusted me with the 
presentment of their opinions and feelings re- 
specting the present distress of the countr}', to 
the Senate. I am happy if they have seen, in 
the course pursued by me here, a policy favor- 
able to the protection of their interest, and the 
prosperity of their families. These intelligent 
and sensible men, these highly useful citizens, 
have witnessed the effect of the late measures 
of government upon their own concerns ; and 
the resolutions which T have now to present, 
fully express their convictions on the subject. 
They propose not to reason, but to testify; they 
speak what they do know. 

" Sir, listen to the statement ; hear the facts. 
The committee state, sir, that eight thousand 
persons are ordinarily employed in building 
houses, in the city and county of Philadelphia; 
a number which, with their families, would make 



quite a considerable town. They further state, 
that the average number of houses, which this 
body of mechanics has built, for the last five 
years, is twelve hundred houses a year. The 
average cost of these houses is computed at two 
thousand dollars each. Here is a business, then, 
sir, of two millions four hundred thousand dol- 
lars a year. Such has been the average of the 
last five years. And what is it now 1 Sir, the 
committee state that the business has fallen off 
seventy-five per cent, at least ; that is to say, 
that, at most, only one-quarter part of their 
usual employment now remains. This is the 
season of the year in which building contracts 
are made. It is now known what is to be the 
business of the year. Many of these persons, 
who have heretofore had, every year, contracts 
for several houses on hand, have this year no 
contract at all. They have been obliged to dis- 
miss their hands, to turn them over to any 
scraps of employment they could find, or to 
leave them in idleness, for want of any employ- 
ment. 

'' Sir, the agitations of the country are not to 
be hushed by authority. Opinions, from how- 
ever high quarters, will not quiet them. The 
condition of the nation calls for action, for mea- 
sures, for the prompt interposition of Congress; 
and until Congress shall act, be it sooner or be 
it later, there will be no content, no repose, no 
restoration of former prosperity. Whoever sup- 
poses, sir, that he, or that any man, can quiet the 
discontents, or hush the complaints of the people 
by merely saying, "peace, be still!" mistakes, 
shockingly mistakes, the real condition of things. 
It is an agitation of interests, not of opinions ; a 
severe pressure on men's property and their means 
of living, not a barren contest about abstract 
sentiments. Even, sir, the voice of party, often so 
sovereign, is not of power to subdue discontents 
and stifle complaints. The people, sir, feel great 
interests to be at stake, and they are rousing 
themselves to protect those interests. They 
consider the question to be, whether the govern- 
ment is made for the people, or the people for 
the government. They hold the former of these 
two propositions, and they mean to prove it. 

'• Mr. President, this measure of the Secretary 
has produced a degree of evil that cannot be 
borne. Talk about it as we will, it cannot be 
borne. A tottermg state of credit, cramped 
means, loss of property and loss of employment, 
doubts of the condition of others, doubts of their 
own condition, constant fear of failures and new 
explosions, an awful dread of the future — sir 
when a consciousness of all these things accom- 
panies a man, at his breakfast, his dinner and 
his supper: when it attends him tlirougli liis 
hours, both of labor and rest ; when it even dis- 
turbs and haunts his dreams, and when he feels, 
too, that that whicli is thus gnawing upon him 
is the pure result of foolish and rash meas- 
ures of government, depend upon it he will not 
bear it. A deranged and disordered currency 
the ruin of occupation, distress for present mean^ 



420 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



the prostration of credit and confidence, and all 
this without hope of improvement or change, is 
a state of things which no intelligent people can 
lonir endure." 

Mr. Clay rose to second the motion of Mr. 
Webster to refer and print this memorial ; and, 
after giving it as his opinion that the property 
(if the country had been reduced four hundred 
millions of dollars in value, by the measures of 
the government, thus apostrophized the Vice- 
President (Mr. Van Buren), charging him with 
a message of prayer and supplication to Presi- 
dent Jackson : 

" But there is another quarter which possesses 
sufficient power and influence to relieve the pub- 
lic distresses. Tn twenty-four hours, the execu- 
tive branch could adopt a measure which would 
afford an efficacious and substantial remedy, and 
re-establish confidence. And those who, in this 
chamber, support the administration, could not 
render a better service than to repair to the exe- 
cutive mansion, and, placing before the Chief 
Magistrate the naked and undisguised truth, 
l)revail upon him to retrace his steps and aban- 
don his fatal experiment. No one, sir, can per- 
form that dutv with more propriety than your- 
self. [The Vice-President.] You can, if you 
will, induce him to change his course. To you, 
then, sir. in no unfriendly spirit, but with feel- 
ings softened and subdued by the deep distress 
which pervades every class of our countrymen, 
I make the appeal. By your official and per- 
sonal relations with the'President, you maintain 
with him an intercoiuse which I neither enjoy 
nor covet. Go to him and tell him, without 
exaggeration, but in the language of truth and 
sincerity, the actual condition of his bleeding 
country.' Tell him it is nearly ruined and un- 
done by the measures which he has been in- 
duced to put in operation. Tell him that his 
experiment is operating on the nation like the 
philosopher's experiment upon a convulsed ani- 
mal, in an exhausted receiver, and that it must 
expire, in agony, if he does not pause, give it free 
and sound circulation, and sufier the energies of 
the. people to be revived and restored. Tell him 
that in a single city, more than sixty bankrupt- 
cies, involving a loss of upwards of fifteen mil- 
lions of dollars, have occurred. Tell him of the 
alarming decline in the value of all projierty, of 
the depreciation of all the products of industry, 
of the stagnation in every branch of business, 
and of the close of numerous manufocturing es- 
tablishments, which, a few short months ago, 
were in active and fiourishing operation. De- 
pict to him, if you can find language to portray, 
the heart-rending wretchedness of thousands of 
the working classes cast out of employment. 
Tell him of the tears of helpless widows, no 
longer able to earn their bread, and of unclad 
and unfed orphans who have been driven, by his 
pohcy, out of the busy pursuits in which but 



j^esterday they were gaining an honest liveli- 
hood. Say to him that if firmness be honor- 
able, when guided by truth and justice, it is in- 
timately allied to another quality, of the most 
pernicious tendency, in the prosecution of an 
erroneous .system. Tell him how nuich more 
true glory is to be won by retracing false steps, 
than by blindly i-ushing on until his coimtry is 
overwhelmed in bankruptc}- and ruin. Tell him 
of the ardent attachment, the unbounded devo- 
tion, the enthusiastic gratitude, towards him, so 
often signally manifested by the American peo- 
ple, and that they deserve, at his hands, better 
treatment. Tell him to guard himself against 
the possibility of an odious comparison with 
that worst of the Roman emperors, who, con- 
templating with indifference the conflagration 
of the mistress of the world, regaled himself 
during the terrific scene in the throng of his 
dancing courtiers. If you desire to secure for 
yourself the reputation of a public benefactor, 
describe to him truly the universal distress al- 
ready produced, and the certain ruin which must 
ensue from perseverance in his measures. Tell 
him that he has been abused, deceived, betray- • 
ed, by the wicked counsels of unprincipled men 
around him. Inform him that all eflbrts in Con- 
gress to alleviate or terminate the public distress 
are paralyzed and likely to prove totally un- 
avaiUng, from liis influence upon a large portion 
of the members, who are unwilling to withdraw 
their support, or to take a course repugnant to 
his wishes and feelings. Tell him that, in his 
bosom alone, under actual circumstances, does 
the power abide to relieve the country ; and 
that, unless he opens it to conviction, and cor- 
rects the errors of his administration, no human 
imagination can conceive, and no human tongue 
can express the awful consequences which ma\- fol- 
low. Entreat him to pause, and to reflect that 
there is a point beyond which human endurance 
cannotgo; and let him not drive this brave, gener- 
ous, and patriotic people to madness and despah-." 



During the delivery of this apostrophe, the 
Vice-President maintained the utmost decorum 
of countenance, looking respectfully, and even 
innocently at the speaker, all the while, as if 
treasuring up every word he .said to be faithfully 
repeated to the President. After it was over, 
and the Vice-President had called some senator 
to the chair, he went up to Mr. Clay, and asked 
him for a pinch of his fine maccoboy snuff (as 
he often did) ; and, havmg received it, walked 
away. But a public meeting in Philadelphia 
took the performance seriously to heart, and 
adopted this resolution, Avhich the indefiitigablo 
Ilezekiah Niles "registered" for the information 
of posterity: 

" Resolved, That ^Martin Van Buren deserves, 
and will receive the execrations of all good men, 



ANNO 1834. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT, 



421 



should he shrink from the responsibility of con- 
veying to Andrew Jackson the message sent 
hy the honorable Henry Clay, when the build- 
ers' memorial was presented to the Senate. I 
charge j'ou, said he, go the President and tell 
him — tell him if he would save his country — if 
he would save himself — tell him to stop short, 
and ponder well his course — tell him to retrace 
his steps, before the injured and insulted people, 
infuriated by his experiment upon their happi- 
ness, rises in the majestj^ of power, and hurls 
the usurper down from the seat he occupies, like 
Lucifer, never to rise again.'' 

Mr. Benton replied to these distress petitions, 
and distress harangues, by showing that they 
were nothing but a reproduction, with a change 
of names and dates, of the same kind of speeches 
and petitions ^rhich were heard in thoyear 1811, 
when the charter of the first national bank was 
expiring, and when General Jackson was not 
President — when Mr. Taney was not Secretary 
of the Treasmy — when no deposits had been 
removed, and when there was no quarrel be- 
tween the bank and the government ; and he 
read copiously from the Congress debates of that 
day to justify what he said ; and declared the 
two scenes, so far as the distress was concerned, 
to be identical. After reading from these peti- 
tions and speeches, he proceeded to say : 

" All the machinery of alarm and distress was 
in as full activity at that time as at present, and 
with the same identical effects. Town meetings 
— memorials — resolutions — deputations to Con- 
gress — alarming speeches in Congress. The 
price of all property was shown to be depressed. 
Hemp sunk in Philadelphia from $350 to $250 
per ton ; flour sunk from $11 a barrel to $7 75 ; 
all real estate fell thirty percent. ; five hundred 
houses were suspended in their erection ; the 
rent of money rose to one and a half per month 
on the best paper. Confidence destroyed — 
manufactories stopped — workmen dismissed — 
and the ruin of the country confidently pre- 
dicted. This was the scene then ; and for what 
object 1 Purely and simply to obtain a recharter 
of the bank — purely and simply to force a re- 
charter from the alarm and distress of the 
country ; for there was no removal of deposits 
then to be complained of, and to be made the 
scape-goat of a studied and premeditated attempt 
to operate upon Congress through the alarms 
of the people and the destruction of their pro- 
perty. There was not even a curtailment of 
discounts then. The wJiole scene was fictitious ; 
but it was a case in which fiction does the mis- 
chief of truth. A false alarm in the money 
market produces all tlie ellects of real danger; 
and thus, as mu<;h distress was proclaimed in 
Congress in 1811 — as much distress was proved 
to exist, and really did exist — then as now; 



without a single cause to be alleged then, which 
is alleged now. But the power and organization 
of the bank made the alarm then ; its power 
and organization make it now ; and fictitious on 
both occasions ; and men were ruined then, as 
now, bjr the power of imaginary danger, which 
in the moneyed world, has all the ruinous effects 
of real danger. No deposits were removed then, 
and the reason was, as assigned by Mr. Gallatin 
to Congress, that the government had borrowed 
more tlian the amount of the deposits fi'om the 
bank ; and this loan would enable her to pro- 
tect her interest in eveiy contingency. The 
open object of the bank then was a recharter. 
The knights entered the lists with their visors 
off — no war in disguise then for the renewal 
of a charter under the tilting and jousting of a 
masquerade scuffle for recovery of deposits." 

This was a complete reply, to which no one 
could make any answer ; and the two distresses 
all proved the same thing, that a powerful na- 
tional bank could make distress when it pleased ; 
and would always please to do it when it had an 
object to gain by it — either in forcing a recharter 
or in reaping a harvest of profit by making a 
contraction of debts after having made an ex- 
pansion of credits. 

It will be difficult for people in after times to 
realize the degree of excitement, of agitation and 
of commotion which was produced by this or- 
ganized attempt to make panic and distress. 
The great cities especially were the scene of 
commotions but little short of frenzy — public 
meetings of thousands, the most inflammatory 
harangues, cannon firing, great feasts — and the 
members of Congress who spoke against the 
President received when they travelled with 
public honors, like conquering generals return- 
ing from victorious battle fields — met by masses, 
saluted with acclamations, escorted by process- 
ions, and their lodgings surrounded by thousands 
calling for a view of their persons. The gaining 
of a municipal election in the city of New-York 
put the climax upon this enthusiasm ; and some 
instances taken from the every day occun-ences 
of the time may give some faint idea of this ex- 
travagant exaltation. Thus : 

" Mr. Webster, on his late journey to Boston, 
was received and parted with at Philadelphia, 
New-York, Providence, &c., by thousands of the 
people." 

"Messrs. Poindexter, Preston and ]\IcDuffie 
visited Philadelphia tlie beginning of this week, 
and received the most flattering attention of the 
citizens — thousands having waited upon to 
honor them ; and they wore dined, &c., with 
great enthusiasm." 



422 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



"A Tery large public meeting was held at the 
Musical Fund Hall, Philadelphia, on Monday 
afternoon last, to compliment the ' whigs ' of 
New-York on the late victory gained by them. 
Thougli thousands were in the huge room, other 
thousands could not get in ! It was a complete 
•jam.' John Sergeant was called to the chair, 
and delivered an address of ' great power and 
ability ' — ' one of the happiest efforts ' of that 
distinguished man. Mr. Preston of the Senate, 
and Mr. McDuflfie of the House of Representa- 
tives, were present. The first was loudly called 
for, when Mr. Sergeant had concluded, and he 
addressed the meeting at considerable length. 
Mr. McDuffie was then as loudly named, and he 
also spoke with his usual ardency and power, 
in which he paid a handsome compliment to INIr. 
Sergeant, who, though ho had differed in opinion 
with him, he regarded as a ' sterling patriot,' &c. 
Each of these speeches were received with hearty 
and continued marks of approbation, and often 
interrupted with shouts of applause. The like, 
it is said, had never before been witnessed in 
Philadelphia. The people were in the highest 
possible state of enthusiasm." 

" An immense multitude of people partook of 
a collation in Castle Garden, New-York, on 
Tuesday afternoon, to celebrate the victory 
gained in the ' three days.' The gai*den was 
dressed with flags, and every thing prepared on 
a grand scale. Pipes of wine and barrels of 
beer were present in abundance, with a full 
supply of eatables. After partaking of refresh- 
ments (in which a great deal of business was 
done in a short time, by the thousands employed 
— for many mouths, like many hands, make 
quick work !) the meeting was organized, by 
appointing Benjamin AYells, carpenter, president, 
twelve vice-presidents, and four secretaries, of 
whom there was one cartman, one sail maker, 
one grocer, one watchmaker, one ship carpenter, 
one potter, one mariner, one ])hysician, one 
printer, one surveyor, four merchants, &c. The 
president bi'iefly, but strongly, addressed the 
multitude, as did several other gentlemen. A 
committee of cong.ratulation from Philadelphia 
was presented to the people and ixiceived with 
shouts. When the time for adjournment ar- 
rived, the vast multitude, in a solid column, 
taking a considerable circuit, proceeded to Green- 
wich-street, where ^Ir. AYebsterwas dining with 
a friend. Loudly called for, he came forward, 
and was instantly suri-ounded by a dense mass 
of merchants and cartmen, sailors and mechanics, 
professional men and laborers, &c., seizing him 
by his hands. lie was asked to say a few words 
to the people, and did so. He exhorted them 
to perseverance in support of the constitution, 
and, aa a dead silence prevailed, he was heard 
by thousands. He thanked them, and ended by 
hoping that God would bless them all." 

"Saturday Messrs. Webster, Preston and 
Binney were expected at Baltimore ; and, though 
raining hard, thousands assembled to meet them. 
Sunday they arrived, and were met by a dense 



mass, and speeches exacted. A reverend minis- 
ter of the Gospel, in excuse of such a gathering 
on the Sabbath, said that in revolutionar}' timea 
there were no Sabbaths. They were conducted 
to the hotel, where 5,000 well-dressed citizens 
received them with enthusiasm." 

'' Mr. McDuflfie reached Baltimore in the after- 
noon of Saturday last, on his return to AVash- 
ington, and was received by from 1,500 to 2,000 
people, who were waiting on the Avharf for the 
purpose. He was escorted to the City Hotel, 
and, from the steps, addressed the crowd (now 
increased to aboiit 3,000 persons), in as earnest 
a speech, perhaps, as he ever pronounced — and 
the manner of his delivery was not less forcible 
than the matter of his remarks. Mr. McD. 
spoke for about half an hour ; and, while at one 
moment he produced a roar of laughtei*, in the 
next he commanded the entire attention of the 
audience, or elicited loud shouts of applause. 

" The brief addresses of IMessrs. AYebster, 
Binney, McDuflfie, and Preston, to assembled 
multitudes in Baltimore, and the manner in 
which they were received, show a new state of 
feelings and of things in this city. AYhen Mr. 
McDuflfie said that ten days after the entrance 
of soldiers into the Senate chamber, to send the 
senators home, that 200,000 volunteers would 
be in AYashington, there was such a shout as we 
have seldom before hearel." 

" There was a mighty meeting of the people, and 
such a feast as was never before prepared in the 
United States, held near Philadelphia, on Tues- 
day last, as a rallying 'to support the constitu- 
tion,' and 'in honor of the late whig victory at 
New-l'"ork,' a very large delegation from that 
city being in attendance, bringing with them 
their frigate-rigged and highly-iinislicd boat, 
called the ' Constitution,' which had been passed 
through the streets during the 'three days.' 
The arrival of the steamboat with this delega- 
tion on board, and the procession that was then 
formed, are described in glowing terms. The 
whole number congregated was supposed not to 
be less than fifty thousand, multitudes attend- 
ing from adjacent parts of Penns3'lvania, New 
Jersey, Delaware, &c. Many cattle and other 
animals had been roasted whole, and there were 
200 great rounds of beef, 400 hams, as many 
beeves' tongues, &c.. and 15,000 loa^-es of bread, 
with crackers and cheese, &c., and equal supplies 
of wine, beer, and cider. This may give some idea 
of the magnitude of the feast. John Sergeant 
presided, assisted by a large number of vice- 
presidents, &c. Strong bands of music played 
at intervals, and several salutes were firjd from 
the miniature frigate, which were returned by 
heavy artillery provided for the purpose." 

Notices, such as these, might be cited in any 
number ; but those given arc enough to show to 
what a degree people can be excited, when a great 
moneyed power, and a great political party, com- 
bine for the purpose of exciting the passions 



ANNO 1834. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



423 



through the public suJOTerings and the public 
alarms. Immense amounts of money were ex- 
pended in these operations ; and it was notorious 
that it chiefly came from the great moneyed cor- 
poration in Philadelphia. 



CHAPTER cm. 

BENATOEIAL CONDEMNATION OF PRESIDENT 
JACKSON: HIS PROTEST: NOTICE OF THE EX- 
PUNGING RESOLUTION. 

Mr. Clay and Mr. Calhoun were the two lead- 
ing spirits in the condemnation of President 
Jackson. Mr. Webster did not speak in favor 
of their resolution, but aided it incidentally in 
the delivery of his distress speeches. The reso- 
lution was theirs, modified from time to time by 
themselves, without any vote of the Senate, and 
by virtue of the privilege which belongs to the 
mover of any motion to change it as he pleases, 
until the Senate, by some action upon it, makes 
it its own. It was altered repeatedly, and up to 
the last moment ; and after undergoing its final 
mutation, at the moment when the yeas and 
nays were about to be called, it was passed by 
the same majority that would have voted for it 
on the first day of its introduction. The yeas 
were : Messrs. Bibb of Kentucky ; Black of 
Mississippi ; Calhoun ; Clay ; Clayton of Dela- 
ware ; Ewing of Ohio ; Frelinghuysen of New 
Jersey ; Kent of Maryland ; Knight of Rhode 
Island ; Leigh of Virginia ; Mangum of North 
Carolina ; Naudain of Delaware ; Poindexter of 
Mississippi ; Porter of Louisiana ; Prentiss of 
Vermont ; Preston of South Carolina ; Bobbins 
of Rhode Island ; Silsbee of Massachusetts ; Na- 
than Smith of Connecticut ; Southard of New 
Jersey ; Sprague of Maine ; Swift of Vermont ; 
Tomlinson of Connecticut; Tyler of Virginia; 
"Waggaman of Louisiana; Webster. — 26. The 
nays were : Messrs. Benton ; Brown of North 
Carolina ; For.syth of Georgia ; Grundy of Ten- 
nessee ; Hendricks of Indiana ; Hill of New 
Hampshire ; Kane of Illinois ; King of Alaba- 
ma ; King of Georgia ; Linn of Missouri ; Mc- 
Kean of Pennsylvania ; Moore of Alabama ; 
Morris, of Ohio ; Robinson of Illinois ; Shep- 
ley of Maine ; Tallmadge of New York ; Tipton 
of Indiana ; Hugh L. White of Tennessee ; Wil- 



kins of Pennsylvania; Silas Wright of New 
York.— 20. And thus the resolution was pass- 
ed, and was nothing but an empty fulmination 
— a mere personal censure — having no relation 
to any business or proceeding in the Senate ; 
and evidently intended for eflect on the people. 
To increase this effect, ]\Ir. Clay proposed a re- 
solve that the Secretary should count the names 
of the signers to the memorials for and against 
the act of the removal, and strike the balance 
between them, which he computed at an hun- 
dred thousand : evidently intending to add the 
effect of this popular voice to the weight of the 
senatorial condemnation. The number turned 
out to be unexpectedly small, considering the 
means by which they were collected. 

When passed, the total irrelevance of the re- 
solution to any right or duty of the Senate was 
made manifest by the insignificance that attend- 
ed its decision. There was nothing to be done 
with it, or upon it, or under it, or in relation to 
it. It went to no committee, laid the founda- 
tion for no action, was not communicable to the 
other House, or to the President ; and remained 
an intrusive fulmination on the Senate Journal : 
put there not for any legislative purpose, but 
purely and simply for popular effect. Great re- 
liance was placed upon that effect. It was fully 
believed — notwithstanding the experience of the 
Senate, in Mr. Van Buren's case — that a senato- 
rial condemnation would destroy whomsoever it 
struck — even General Jackson. Vain calculation ! 
and equally condemned by the lessons of his- 
tory, and by the impulsions of the human heart. 
Fair play is the first feeling of the masses ; a 
fair and impartial trial is the law of the heart, as 
well as of the land ; and no condemnation is toler- 
ated of any man by his enemies. All such are 
required to retire from the box and the bench, 
on a real trial: much more to refrain from a 
simulated one ; and above all from instigating 
one. Mr. Calhoun and Mr. Clay were both 
known to have their private griefs against Gene- 
ral Jackson and also to have been in vehement 
opposition to each other, and that they had 
'■compromised" their own bone of contention to 
be able to act in conjunction ag-ainst him. The 
instinctive sagacity of the people saw all this ; 
and their innate sense of justice and decorum 
revolted at it ; and at the end of these proceed- 
ings, the results were in exact contradiction to 
the calculation of their effect. General Jackson 



424 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



was more popular than ever ; the leaders in the 
movement against him were nationally crippled ; 
their friends, in many instances, were politically 
destroyed in their States. It was a second edi- 
tion of '• Fox's martyrs." 

During all the progress of this proceeding — 
while a phalanx of orators and speakers were 
dail}" fulminating against him — while many 
hundred newspapers incessantly assailed him — 
while public meetings were held in all parts, 
and men of all sorts, even beardless youths, 
harangued against him as if he had been a Nero 
— while a stream of committees was pouring 
upon him (as they were called), and whom he 
soon refused to receive in that character ; during 
the hundred days that all this was going on, and 
to judge from the imposing appearance which the 
crowds made that came to Washington to bring 
up the " distress," and to give countenance to the 
Senate, and emphasis to its proceedings, and to 
fill the daily gallery, applauding the speakers 
against the President — saluting with noise and 
confu-sion those who spoke on his side : during all 
this time, and when a nation seemed to be inarms, 
and the earth in commotion against him, he was 
tranquil and quiet, confident of eventual victory, 
and firml}' relying iipon God and the people to 
set all right. I was accustomed to see him 
often during that time, always in the night (for 
I had no time to quit my scat during the day) ; 
and never saw him appear more truly heroic 
and grand than at this time. He was perfectly 
mild in his language, cheerful in his temper, 
ficm in his conviction ; and confident in his re- 
liance on the power in which he put his trust. 
I have seen him in a great many situations of 
peril, and even of desperation, both civil and mili- 
tary, and always saw him firmly relying upon 
the success of the right through God and the 
people ; and never saw that confidence more 
firm and steady than now. After giving him an 
account of the day's proceedings, talking over 
the state of the contest, and ready to return to 
sleep a little, and prepare much, for the combats 
of the next day, he would usually say: "We 
shall whip them yet. The people will take it 
up after a while." But he also had good de- 
fenders present, and in both Houses, and men 
who did not confine themselves to the defensive 
— did not limit themselves to returning blow 
for blow — but assailed the assailants — boldly 
charging upon them their own illegal conduct — 



exposing the rottenness of their allj'', the bank 
— showing its corruption in conciliating politi- 
cians, and its criminality in distressing the peo- 
ple — and the unlioliness of the combination 
which, to attain political power and secure a 
bank charter, were seducing the venal, terrify- 
ing the timid, disturbing the country, destroy- 
ing business and property, and falsely accus- 
ing the President of great crimes and misde- 
meanors ; because, faithful and fearless, he stood 
sole obstacle to the success of the combined 
powers. Our labors were great and incessant, 
for we had superior numbers, and great ability 
to contend against. I spoke myself above 
thirty times ; othei-s as often ; all many times ; 
and all strained to the utmost ; for we felt, 
that the cause of Jackson was that of the coun- 
try — his defeat that of the people — and the 
success of the combination, the delivering up 
of the government to the domination of a mon- 
eyed power which knew no mode of govern- 
ment but that of corruption and oppression. 
We contended strenuously in both Houses ; 
and as courageously in the Senate against a 
fixed majoritj^ as if we had some chance for 
success ; but our exertions were not for the 
Senate, but for the people — not to change sena- 
torial votes, but to rouse the masses through- 
out the land ; and while borne down by a ma- 
jority of ten in the Senate, we looked with 
pride to the other end of the building ; and de- 
rived confidence from the contemplation of a 
majority of fifty, fresh from the elections of the 
people, and strong in their good cause. It was 
a scene for Mons. De Tocqueville to have look- 
ed on to have learnt which way the difference 
lay between the men of the direct vote of the 
people, and those of the indirect vote of the 
General Assembly, "filtrated" through the 
"refining" process of an intermediate body. 

But although fictitious and forged, yet the 
distress was real, and did an immensitj* of mis- 
chief. Vast numbers of individuals were ruin- 
ed, or crippled in their afl'airs ; a great many 
banks were broken — a run being made upon all 
that would not come into the system of the na- 
tional bank. The deposit banks above all were 
selected for pressure. Several of them were 
driven to suspension — some to give up the de- 
posits — and the bank in Washington, in which 
the treasury did its business, was only saved 
from closing its doors by running wagons with 



ANNO 1834 ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



425 



specie through mud and mire from the mint in 
Philadelphia to the bank in "Washington, to 
supply the place of what was hauled from the 
bank in Washington to the national bank in 
Philadelphia — the two sets of wagons, one go- 
ing and one coming, often passing each other 
on the road. But, while ruin was going on 
upon others, the great corporation in Philadel- 
phia was doing well. The distress of the coun- 
try was its harvest ; and its monthly returns 
showed constant increases of specie. 

When all was over, and the Senate's sen- 
tence had been sent out to do its oflSce among 
the people, General Jackson felt that the time 
had come for him to speak ; and did so in a 
"Protest," addressed to the Senate, and re- 
markable for the temperance and moderation 
of its language. He had considered the pro- 
ceeding against him, from the beginning, as 
illegal and void — as having no legislative aim 
or object — as being intended merely for cen- 
sure ; and, therefore, not coming within any 
power or duty of the Senate. He deemed it 
extrarjudicial and unparliamentary, legally no 
more than the act of a town m^eeting, while in- 
vested with the forms of a legal proceeding ; 
and intended to act upon the public mind with 
the force of a sentence of conviction on an im- 
peachment, while in reality but a personal act 
against him in his personal, and not in his 
official character. This idea he prominent!}' 
put forth in his " Protest ;" from which some 
passages are here given : 

" The resolution in question was introduced, 
discussed, and passed, not as a joint, but as a 
separate resolution. It asserts no legislative 
power, proposes no legislative action ; and 
neither possesses the form nor anj' of the attri- 
butes of a legislative measure. It does not ap- 
pear to have been entertained or passed, with 
anj' view or expectation of its issuing in a law 
or joint resolution, or in the repeal of any law 
or joint resolution, or in any other legislative 
action. 

" Whilst wanting both the form and substance 
of a legislative measure, it is equally manifest, 
that the resolution Avas not justified by any of 
the executive powers conferred on the Senate. 
These powers relate exclusively to the consider- 
ation of treaties and nominations to office ; and 
they are exercised in secret session, and with 
cloised doors. This resolution does not apply 
to any treaty or nomination, and was passed in 
a public session. 

" Nor does this proceeding in any way belong 
to that class of incidental resolutions which re- 



late to the officers of the Senate, to their cham- 
ber, and other appurtenances, or to subjects of 
order, and other matters of the like nature — in 
all which either House may lawfully proceed 
without an}' co-operation with the other, or 
with the President. 

" On the contrary the whole phraseology and 
sense of the resolution seem to be judicial. Its 
essence, true character, and only practical effect, 
are to be found in the conduct which it charges 
upon the President, and in the judgment which 
it pronounces on that conduct. The resolution, 
therefore, though discussed and adopted by the 
Senate in its legislative capacity, is, in its office, 
and in all its characteristics, essentially judicial. 

"That the Senate possesses a high judicial 
power, and that instances may occur in which 
the President of the United States will be ame- 
nable to it, is undeniable. But under the pro- 
visions of the constitution, it would seem to be 
equally plain that neither the President nor any 
other officer can be rightfully subjected to the 
operation of the judicial power of the Senate, 
except in the cases and under the forms pre- 
scribed by the constitution. 

" The constitution declares that ' the Presi- 
dent, Vice-President, and all civil officers of the 
United States, shall be removed from office on 
impeachment for, and conviction of treason, bri- 
bery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors' 
— that the House of Representatives ' shall have 
the sole power of impeachment ' — that the Senate 
' shall have the sole power to try all impeach- 
ments ' — that 'when sitting for that purpose, 
they shall be on oath or affirmation' — that 
' when the President of the United States is 
tried, the Chief Justice shall preside' — that no 
person shall be convicted without the concur- 
rence of two-thirds of the members present' 
— and that 'judgment shall not extend further 
than to remove from office, and disqualification 
to hold and 
profit, under tlie United States.' 

" The resolution above quoted, charges in sub- 
stance that in certain proceedings relating to the 
public revenue, the President has usurped au- 
thority and power not conferred upon him by 
the constitution and laws, and that in doing so 
he violated both. Any such act constitutes a 
high crime — one of the highest, indeed, which 
the President can commit — a crime which justly 
exposes him to impeachment by the House of 
Rejjresentatives, and upon due conviction, to re- 
moval from office, and to the complete and im- 
mutable disfranchisement prescribed by the con- 
stitution. 

" The resolution, then, was in substance an 
impeachment of the President ; and in its pas- 
sage amounts to a declaration bj" a majority of 
the Senate, that he is guilty of an impeachable 
olFeuce. As such it is sjiread upon the journals 
of the Senate — published to the nation and to 
the world — made part of our enduring archives 
— and incorporated in the history of the age. 
The punishment of removal from office and fu« 



enjoy an}' office of honor, trust or 



426 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



ture disqualification, docs not, it is true, follow 
this decision ; nor would it have followed the 
like decision, if the regular forms of procecdin<r 
had been pursued, because the requisite number 
did not concur in the result. But the moral 
intiucnce of a solemn declaration, by a majority 
of the Senate, that the accused is guilty of the 
offence charged upon him, has been as effectual- 
ly secured, as if the like declaration had been 
made upon an impeachment expressed in the 
same terms. Indeed, a greatt-r practical effect 
has been gained, because the votes given for the 
resolution, though not suflBcient to authorize a 
judgment of guilty on an impeachment, were 
numerous enough to carry that resolution. 

" Tliat the resolution does not expressly allege 
that the assumption of power and authority, 
which it condemns, was intentional and corrupt, 
is no answer to the preceding view of its char- 
acter and effect. The act thus condemned, ne- 
cessarily implies volition and design in the in- 
dividual to whom it is imputed, and being un- 
lawful in its character, the legal conclusion is, 
that it was prompted by improper motives, and 
committed with an unla^vful intent. The charge 
is not of a mistake in the exercise of supposed 
powers, but of the assumption of powers not 
conferred by the constitution and laws, but in 
derogation of both, and nothing is suggested to 
excuse or palliate the turpitude of the act. In 
the absence of any such excuse, or palliation, 
there is room only for one inference ; and that 
is, that the intent was unlawful and corrupt. 
Besides, the resolution not only contains no 
mitigating suggestion, but on the contrary, it 
holds up the act complained of as justly ob- 
noxious to censure and reprobation ; and thus 
as distinctly stamps it with impurity of motive, 
as if the strongest epithets had been used. 

" The President of the United States, there- 
fore, has been by a majority of his constitutional 
triers, accused and found guilty of an impeach- 
able offence ; but in no part of this proceeding 
have the directions of the constitution been ob- 
served. 

" The impeachment, instead of being preferred 
and prosecuted by the House of Ilepresenta- 
tives, originated in the Senate, and was prose- 
cuted without the aid or concurrence of the 
other House. The oath or affirmation pre- 
scribed by the constitution, was not taken by 
the senators ; the Cliief Justice did not preside ; 
no notice of the charge was given to the accus- 
ed ; and no opportunity afforded him to respond 
to the accusation, to meet his accusers face to 
face, to cross-examine the witnesses, to procure 
counteracting testimony, or to be heard in his 
defence. The safeguards and formalities which 
the constitution has connected with the power 
of impeachment, wtre doubtless supposed by 
the framcrs of that instrument, to be essential 
to the protection of the public servant, to the 
attainment of justice, and to the order, impar- 
tiality, and dignity of the procedure. These 
safeguards and formalities were not only practi- 



cally disregarded, in the commencement and con- 
duct of these proceedings, but in their result, I 
find myself convicted by less than two-thirds of 
the members present, of an impeachable offence." 



Having thus shown the proceedings of th* 
Senate to have been extra-judicial and the mere 
fulmination of a censure, such as might come 
from a " mass meeting," and finding no warrant in 
any right or duty of the body, and intended for 
nothing but to operate upon him personally, he 
then showed that senators from three States had 
voted contrary to the sense of their respective 
State legislatures. On this point he said : 

" There are also some other circumstances con- 
nected with the discussion and passage of the 
resolution, to which I feel it to be, not only my 
right, but my duty to refer. It appears by the 
journal of the Senate, that among the twenty- 
six senators who voted for the resolution on its 
final passage, and who had supported it in de- 
bate, in its original form, were one of the sena- 
tors from the State of JMaine, the two sesators 
from New Jersey, and one of the senators from 
Ohio. It also appears by the same journal, and 
by the files of the Senate, that the legislatures of 
these States had severally expressed their opin- 
ions in respect to the Executive proceedings 
drawn in question before the Senate. 

" It is thus seen that four senators have de- 
clared by their votes that the President, in tlie 
late Executive proceedings in relation to the 
revenue, had been guilty of the impeachable of- 
fence of ' assuming upon himself authoritj- and 
power not conferred by the constitution and 
laws, but in derogation of both,' whilst the leg- 
islatures of their respective States had deliber- 
ately approved those very proceedings, as consist- 
ent with the constitution, and demanded by the 
public good. If these four votes had been given 
in accordance with the sentiments of the legisla- 
tures, as above expressed, there would have been 
but twenty-four votes out of forty-six for cen- 
suring the President, and the unprecedented re- 
cord of his conviction could not have been placed 
upon the journals of the Senate. 

" In thus referring to the resolutions and in- 
structions of State legislatures, I disclaim and 
repudiate all authority or design to interfere with 
the responsibility due from members of the Se- 
nate to their own consciences, their constituents 
and their country. The facts now stated belong 
to the history of tliQse proceedings, and are im- 
portant to the just development of the principles 
and interests involved in them, as well as to the 
proper vindication of the Executive department-, 
and with that view, and that view onl}', are they 
here made the topic of remark." 

The President then entered his solemn pro- 
test against the Senate's proceedings in these 
words : 



ANNO 1834. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



427 



" With this view, and for the reasons which 
have been stated, I do hereby solemnly protest 
against the aforementioned proceedings of the 
Senate, as unauthorized by the constitution ; con- 
trary to its spirit and to several of its express 
provisions ; subversive of that distribution of the 
powers of government which it has ordained and 
established ; destructive of the checks and safe- 
guards by which those powers were intended, 
on the one hand, to be controlled, and, on the 
other, to be protected ; and calculated, by their 
immediate and collateral effects, by their charac- 
ter and tendency, to concentrate in the hands 
of a body not directly amenable to the people, 
a degree of influence and power dangerous to 
their liberties, and fatal to the constitution of 
their choice." 

And it concluded with an affecting appeal to 
his private history for the patriotism and integ- 
rity of his life, and the illustration of his con- 
duct in relation to the bank, and showed his re- 
liance on God and the People to sustain him ; 
and looked with confidence to the place which 
justice would assign him on the page of history. 
This moving peroration was in these words : 

" The resolution of the Senate contains an im- 
putation upon my private as well as upon my 
public character ; and as it must stand for ever 
on their journals, I cannot close this substitute 
for that defence which I have not been allowed 
to present in the ordinary form, without remark- 
ing, that I have lived in vain, if it be necessary 
to enter into a formal vindication of my charac- 
ter and purposes from such an imputation. In 
vain do I bear upon my person, enduring memo- 
rials of that contest in which Amei'ican liberty 
was purchased; in vain have I since perilled 
property, flune, and life, in defence of the rights 
and privileges so dearly bought : in vain am I 
now, without a personal aspiration, or the hope 
of individual advantage, encountering responsi- 
bilities and dangers, from which, by mere in- 
activity in relation to a single point, I might 
have been exempt — if any serious doubts can 
be entertained as to the purity of my purposes 
and motives. K I had been ambitious, I should 
have sought an alliance with that powerful in- 
stitution, which even now aspires to no divided 
empire. If I had been venal, I should have 
sold myself to its designs. Had I preferred 
personal comfort and ofBcial ease to the perform- 
ance of my arduous duty, I should have ceased 
to molest it. In the history of conquerors and 
usurpers, never, in the fire of youth, nor in the 
vigor of manhood, could I find an attraction to 
lure me from the path of duty ; and now, I shall 
scarcely find an inducement to commence the 
career of ambition, when gray hairs and a de- 
caying frame, instead of inviting to toil and bat- 
tle, call me to the contemplation of other 
tvorlds, where conquerors cease to be honored, 



and usurpers expiate their crimes. The only 
ambition I can feel, is to acquit myself to Him 
to whom I must soon render an account of my 
stewardship, to serve my fellow-men, and live 
respected and honored in the history of my 
country. No ; the ambition which leads me 
on, is an anxious desire and a fixed determina- 
tion, to return to the people, unimpaired, the 
sacred trust they have confided to my charge — 
to heal the wounds of the constitution and pre- 
serve it from further violation ; to persuade my 
countrymen, so far as I may, that it is not in a 
splendid government, supported by powerful 
monopolies and aristocratical establishments, 
that they will find happiness, or their liberties 
pi'otected, but in a plain system, void of pomp 
— protecting all, and granting favors to none — 
dispensing its blessings like the dews of heaven, 
unseen and unfelt, save in the freshness and 
beauty they contribute to produce. It is such 
a government that the genius of our people re- 
quires — such a one only under which our States 
may remain for ages to come, united, prosper- 
ous, and free. If the Almighty Being who has 
hitherto sustained and protected me, will but 
vouchsafe to make my feeble powers instru- 
mental to such a result, I shall anticipate with 
pleasure the place to be assigned me in the 
history of my country, and die contented with 
the belief, that I have contributed in some small 
degree, to increase the value and prolong the 
duration of American liberty. 

" To the end that the resolution of the Se- 
nate may not be hereafter drawn into precedent, 
with the authority of silent acquiescence on the 
part of the Executive department ; and to the 
end, also, that my motives and views in the 
Executive proceeding denounced in that resolu- 
tion may be known to my fellow-citizens, to the 
world, and to all posterity, I respectfully re- 
quest that this message and pi'otest may be en- 
tered at length on the journals of the Senate." 

No sooner was this Protest read in the Senate 
than it gave rise to a scene of the greatest ex- 
citement. Mr. Poindexter, of Mississippi, imme- 
diately assailed it as a breach of the privileges of 
the Senate, and unfit to be received by the body. 
He said : " I will not dignify this paper by con- 
sidering it in the light of an Executive message: 
it is no such thing. I regard it simply as a 
paper, with the signature of Andrew Jackson ; 
and, should the Senate refuse to receive it, it 
will not be the first paper with the same signa- 
ture which has been refused a hearuig in this 
body, on the ground of the abusive and vitupe- 
rative language which it contained. This effort 
to denounce and overawe the deliberations of 
the Senate may properly be regarded as capping 
the climax of that systematic plan of operations 
which had for several years been in progress, 



428 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



designed to bring this body into disrepute among 
the people, and thereby remove the only exist- 
ing barrier to tlie arbiti'ary encroachments and 
usni'patious of Executive power:" — and he mov- 
ed that the paper, as he called it, should not be 
received. 'Sir. Benton deemed this a proper 
occasion to give notice of his intention to move 
a strong measure which he contemplated — an 
expunging resolution against the sentence of the 
Senate : — a determination to which he had come 
from his own convictions of right, and which he 
now announced without consultation with any 
of his friends. He deemed this movement too 
bold to be submitted to a council of friends — too 
daring to expect their concurrence ; — and believed 
it was better to proceed without their know- 
ledge, than against their decision. He, there- 
fore, delivered his notice e.v abrtcphc. accom- 
panied by an earnest invective against the con- 
duct of the Senate; and committed himself irre- 
vocably to the prosecution of the " expunging 
resolution " until he should succeed in the effort, 
or terminate his poUtical life : He said : 

" The public mind was now to be occupied 
with a question of the verj- first moment and 
importance, and identical in all its features with 
the great question growing out of the famous 
resolutions of the English House of Commons 
ai the case of the ^liddlesex election in the year 
1768 ; and which engrossed the attention of the 
British erai)irc for fourteen j'ears before it was 
settled. 1'hat question was one in which the 
House of Commons was judged, and condemned, 
for adopting a resolution which was held by the 
subjects of the British crown to be a violation 
of their constitution, and a subversion of the 
rights of Englishmen : the question now before 
the Senate, and which will go before the Ame- 
rican peoj)le, grows out of a resolution in which 
he (Mr. B.) bclicned that the constitution had 
been violated — the privileges of the House of 
Representatives invaded — and the rights of an 
American citizen, in the person of the President, 
subverted. The resolution of the House of 
Commons, after fourteen years of annual mo- 
tions, was expunged from the Journal of the 
House ; and he pledged himself to the American 
people to conmience a similar series of motions 
witli respect to this resolution of the Senate. 
He had made up his mind to do so without con- 
sultation with any human being, and without 
deigning to calculate the chances or the time of 
success. He rested under the firm conviction 
that the resolution of the Senate, which had 
drawn from the President the calm, temperate, 
and dignified jirote.-t, which had been read at 
the table, was a resolution which ought to be 
expunged from the Journal of the Senate ; and 
\f any thing was necessary to stimulate his 



sense of duty in making a motion to that effect, 
and in encouraging others after he was gone, in 
following up that motion to success, it would be 
found in the history and termination of the simi- 
lar motion which was made in the English House 
of Commons to which he had referred. That 
motion was renewed for fourteen years — from 
17G8 to 1782 — before it was successful. For 
the first seven j'ears, the lofty and indignant 
majority did not condescend to reply to the 
motion. They sunk it under a dead vote as 
often as presented. The second seven years 
they replied ; and at the end of the term, and 
on the assembling of a new Parliament, the 
veteran motion was can-ied by more than two 
to one ; and the gratifying spectacle was beheld 
of a public expurgation, in the face of the as- 
sembled Commons of England, of the obnoxious 
resolution from the Journal of the House. The 
elections in England were septennial, and it 
took two terms of seven years, or two general 
elections, to bring the sense of the kingdom to 
bear upon their representatives. The elections 
of the Senate were sexennial, with intercalary 
exits and entrances, and it might take a less, or 
a longer period, he would not presume to say 
which, to bring the sense of the American people 
to bear upon an act of the American Senate. 
Of that, he would make no calculation ; but the 
final success of the motion in the English House 
of Commons, after fourteen j^ears' perseverance, 
was a sufficient encouragement for him to begin, 
and doubtless would encourage others to con- 
tinue, until the good work should be crowned 
with success ; and the only atonement made 
which it was in the Senate's power to make, to 
the violated majesty of the constitution, the in- 
vaded privileges of the House of Representatives 
and the subverted rights of an American citizen 
" In bringing this great question before the 
American people, Mr. B. should consider him- 
self as addressing the calm intelligence of an 
enlightened conuuunity. He believed the body 
of the American people to be the most enlighten- 
ed community upon earth ; and, without the least 
disparagement to the present Senate, he must 
be iiermitted to believe that many such Senates 
might be drawn from the ranks of the people, 
and still leave no dearth of intelligence behind. 
To such a comnuinity — in an appeal, on a great 
question of constitutional law, to the under- 
standings of such a people — declamation, pas- 
sion, epithets, opprobrious language, would 
stand for nothing. They would iloat, harmless 
and unheeded, through the empty air, and strike 
in vain upon the ear of a sober and dispassionate 
tribunal. Indignation, real or afiected ; wrath, 
however hot ; fury, however enraged ; assevera- 
tions, however violent ; denunciation, however 
furious ; will avail nothing. Facts — inexorable 
facts — are all that will be attended to ; reason, 
calm and self-possessed, is all that will be listen- 
ed to. An intelligent trilnmal will exact the 
respect of an address to their understandings; 
and he that wishes to be heard in this great 



ANNO 1834. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



429 



question, or being heard, would wish to be 
heeded, will have occasion to be clear and cor- 
rect in his facts ; close and perspicuous in his 
application of law ; fair and candid in his con- 
clusions and inferences ; temperate and deco- 
rous in his language; and scrupulously free 
from every taint of vengeance and malice. So- 
lemnly impressed with the truth of all these 
convictions, it was the intention of himself (INIr. 
B.), whatever the example or the provocation 
might be — never to forget his place, his subject, 
his audience, and his object — never to forget 
that he was speaking in the American Senate, 
on a question of violated constitution and out- 
raged individual right, to an audience compre- 
hending the whole body of the American people, 
and for the purpose of obtaining a righteous 
decision from the calm and sober judgment of 
a high-minded, intelligent, and patriotic com- 
munity. 

'• The question immediately before the Senate 
was one of minor consequence ; it might be 
called a question of small import, except for 
the effect which the decision might have upon 
the Senate itself. In that point of view, ii 
might be a question of some moment ; for, with- 
out reference to individuals, it was essential to 
the cause of free governments, that every de- 
partment of the government, the Senate inclu- 
sive, should so act as to preserve to itself the 
respect and the confidence of the country. The 
inwnediate question was, upon the rejection of 
the President's message. It was moved to 
reject it — to reject it. not after it was considered, 
but before it was considered ! and thus to tell 
the American people that their President shall 
not be heard — should not be allowed to plead 
his defence — in the presence of the body that 
condemned him — neither before the condemna- 
tion, nor after it ! This is the motion : and 
certainly no enemy to the Senate could wish it 
to miscarry. The President, in the conclusion 
of his message, has respectfully requested that 
his defence might be entered upon the Journal 
of the Senate — upon that same Journal which 
contains the record of his conviction. This is 
the request of the President. Will the Senate 
deny it ? Will they refuse this act of sheer 
justice and common decency ? Will they go 
further, and not only refuse to place it on the 
Journal, but refuse even to suffer it to remain 
in the Senate ? Will they refuse to permit it 
to remain on file, but send it back, or throw it 
out of doors, without condescending to reply to 
it ? For that is the exact import of the motion 
now made ! Will senators exhaust their minds, 
and their bodies also, in loading this very com- 
munication with epithets, and then say that it 
shall not be received ? Will they receive me- 
morials, resolutions, essays, from all that choose 
to abuse the President, and not receive a word 
of defence from him ? Will they continue the 
spectacle which had been presented here for 
three months — a daily presentation of attacks 
upon the President from all that choose to at- 



tack him, young and old, boys and men — attacks 
echoing the very sound of this resolution, and 
which are not only received and filed here, but 
printed, which, possibly, the twenty-six could 
not unite here, nor go to trial upon any where ! 
He remarked, in the third place, upon the effect 
produced in the character of the resolution, and 
aflSrmcd that it was nothing. He said that the 
same charge ran through all three. They all 
three imputed to the President a violation of 
the constitution and laws of the country — of 
that constitution which he was sworn to sup- 
port, and of those laws which he was not only 
bound to observe himself, but to cause to be 
faithfully observed by all others. 

"A violation of the constitution and of the 
laws, Mr. B. said, were not abstractions and meta- 
ph3-sical subtleties. They must relate to persons 
or things. The violations cannot rest in the 
air ; they must affix themselves to men or to 
property ; they must connect themselves with 
the transactions of real life. They cannot be 
ideal and contemplative. In omitting the spe- 
cifications relative to the dismission of one 
Secretary of the Treasury, and the appointment 
of another, what other specifications were adopt- 
ed or substituted ? Certainly none ! What 
others were mentally intended ? Surely none ! 
What others were suggested 1 Certainly none ! 
The general chai-ge then rests upon the same 
specification; and so completely is this the fact, 
that no supporter of the resolutions has thought 
it necessary to make the least alteration in his 
speeches which supported the original resolu- 
tion, or to say a single additional word in favor 
of the altered resolution as finally passed. The 
omission of the specification is then an omissiou 
of form and not of substance ; it is a change of 
words and not of things ; and the substitution 
of a derogation of the laws and constitution, 
for dangerous to the liberties of the people, is a 
still more flagrant instance of change of words 
without change of things. It is tautologous 
and nonsensical. It adds nothing to the general 
charge, and takes nothing from it. It neither 
explains it nor qualifies it. In the technical 
sense it is absurd ; for it is not the case of a 
statute in derogation of the common law, to 
wit, repealing a part of it ; in the common par- 
lance vmderstanding, it is ridiculous, for the 
President is not even charged with defaming 
the constitution and the laws ; and, if he was 
so charged, it would present a curious ti'ial of 
scandalum viagnatuni for the American Senate 
to engage in. No ! said ^Ir. B., this derogation 
clause is an expletion! It is put in to fill up! 
The regular impeaching clause of dangerous to 
the liberties of the people, had to be taken out. 
There was danger, not in the people certainly, 
but to the character of the resolution, if it staid 
in. It identified that resolution as an im- 
peachment, and, therefore, constituted a piece 
of internal evidence wliich it was necessary' to 
withdraw; but in withdrawing which, the cha- 
racter of the resolution was not altered. The 



430 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



charge for violating the laws and the constitu- 
tion still stood ; and the substituted clause was 
nothing but a stopper to a vacuum — additional 
sound without additional sense, to fill • up a 
blank and round off a sentence. . 

"After showing the impeaching character of 
the Senate's resolution, from its own internal 
evidence, Mr. B. had recourse to another de- 
scription of evidence, scarcely inferior to the 
resolutions themselves, in the authentic inter- 
pretations of their meaning. He alluded to the 
speeches made in support of them, and which 
had resounded in this chamber for three months, 
and were now circulating all over the country 
in every variety of newspaper and pamphlet 
form. These speeches were made bj^ the friends 
of the resolution to procure its adoption here, 
and to justify its adoption before the country. 
Let the country then read, let the people read, 
what has been sent to them for the purpose of 
justifying these resolutions which they are now 
to try ! They will find them to be in the cha- 
racter of prosecution pleadings against an ac- 
cused man, on his trial for the coinmission of 
great crimes ! Let them look over these 
speeches, and mark the passages ; they will 
find language ransacked, history rummaged, to 
find words suflSciently strong, and examples 
sufficiently odious, to paint and exemplif}'^ the 
enormity of the crime of which the President 
was alleged to be guilty. After reading these 
passages, let any one doubt, if he can, as to the 
character of the resolution which was adopted. 
Let him doubt, if he can, of the impeachable 
nature of the offence which was chai-ged upon 
the President. Let him doubt, if he can, that 
every Senator who voted for that resolution, 
voted the President to be guilty of an impeach- 
able offence — an offence, for the trial of which 
this Senate is the appointed tribunal — an offence 
which it will be the immediate duty of the 
House of llepresentatives to bring before the 
Senate, in a formal impeachment, unless they 
disbelieve in the truth and justice of the reso- 
lution which has been adopted. 

" Mr. B. said there were three characters in 
which the Senate could act ; and every time it 
acted it necessarily did so in one or the other of 
these characters. It possessed executive, legis- 
lative, and judicial characters. As a part of the 
executive, it acted on treaties and nominations 
to office ; as a part of the legislative, it assisted 
in making laws; as a judicial tribunal, it decided 
impeachments. Now, in which of these charac- 
ters did the Senate act when it adopted the re- 
solution in question? Not in its executive 
character, it will be admitted ; not in its legisla- 
tive character, it will be proved : for the reso- 
lution was, in its nature, wholly foreign to legis- 
lation. It was directed, not to the formation of 
a law, but to the condemnation of the President. 
It was to condemn him for dismissing one Sec- 
retary, because he would not do a thing, and 
appointing another that he might do it; and 
ccitainly this was not matter for legislation ; for 



^fr. Duane could not be restored by law, nor 
Mr. Taney be put out by law. It was to con- 
vict the President of violating tlie constitution 
and the laws ; and surely these infractions are 
not to be amended by laws, but avenged by trial 
and punishment. The very nature of the reso- 
lution proves it to be foreign to all legislation ; 
its form proves the same thing; for it is not 
joint, to require the action of the House of Rep- 
resentatives, and thus ripen into law; nor is it 
followed by an instruciion to a committee to 
report a bill in conformity to it. No such in- 
struction could even now be added without com- 
mitting an absurdity of the most ridiculous 
character. There was another resolution, with 
which this must not be confounded, and upon 
which an instruction to a committee might have 
been bottomed ; it was the resolution which 
declared the Secretary's reasons for removing 
the deposits to be insuflBcient and unsatisfac- 
tory ; but no such instruction has been bottom- 
ed even upon that resolution ; so that it is evi- 
dent that no legislation of any kind was intended 
to follow either resolution, even that to which 
legislation might have been appropriate, much 
less that to which it would have been an absurd- 
ity. Four months have elapsed since the reso- 
lutions were brought in. In all that time, there 
has been no attempt to found a legislative act 
upon either of them ; and it is too late now to 
assume that the one which, in its nature and in 
its form, is wholly foreign to legislation, is a 
legislative act, and adopted by the Senate in its 
legislative character. No ! This resolution is 
judicial ; it is a judgment pronounced upon an 
imputed offence ; it is the declared sense of a 
majority of the Senate, of the guilt of the Presi- 
dent of a high crime and misdemeanor. It is, 
in substance, an impeachment — an impeachment 
in violation of all the forms prescribed by the 
constitution — in violation of the privileges of 
the House of Representatives — in subversion of 
the rights of the accused, and the record of which 
ought to be expunged from the Journal of the 
Senate. 

'• Mr. B. said the selection of a tribunal for 
the trial of imjjeachments was felt, by the con- 
vention which framed the constitution, as one 
of the most delicate and difficult tasks which 
they had to perforin. Those great men were 
veil read in history, both ancient and modern, 
and knew that the impeaching power — the usual 
mode for tiyiiig political men for political of- 
fences — was often an engine for the gratification 
of factious and ambitious feelings. An impeach- 
ment was well known t(j be the beaten road for 
running down a hated or successful political 
rival. After great deliberation — after weighing 
all the tribunals, even that of the Supreme 
Court — the Senate of the United States was 
fixed ui)0n as the body which, from its constitu- 
tion, would be the most impartial, neutral, and 
equitable, that could be selected, and, with the 
check of a previous inquisition, and present- 
ment of charges by the House of Reprcsenta- 



ANNO 1834 ANDREW JACKSON, PRESmENT. 



431 



tives, would be the safest tribunal to which 
could be confided a power so great in itself, and 
so susceptible of being abused. The Senate was 
selected ; and to show that he had not over- 
stated the difficulties of the convention in making 
the selection, he would take leave to read a pas- 
sage from a work which was canonical on this 
subject, and from an article in that work which 
was written by the gentleman whose authority 
would have most weight on this occasion. He 
spoke of the Federalist, and of the article writ- 
ten by General Hamilton on the impeaching 
power : 

" ' A well-constituted court for the trial of im- 
peachments is an object not more to be desired 
than difficult to be obtained, in a government 
wholly elective. The subjects of its jurisdiction 
are those offences which proceed from the mis- 
conduct of public men ; or, in other words, from 
the abuse or violation of some public trust. 
The}- are of a nature which may, with pecuUar 
propriety, be denominated political, as they re- 
late chiefly to injuries done immediately to so- 
ciety itself. The prosecution of them, for this 
reason, will seldom fail to agitate the passions 
of the whole community, and to divide it into 
parties more or less friendly or inimical to the 
accused. In many cases, it will connect itself 
with the pre-existing factions, and will enlist all 
their animosities, partialities, influence, and in- 
terest, on one side or on the other ; and, in such 
cases, there will always be the greatest danger 
that the decision will be regulated more by the 
comparative strength of parties, than by the 
real demonstrations of innocence or guilt. The 
delicacy and magnitude of a trust which so 
deepl}^ concerns the political reputation and ex- 
istence of every man engaged in the adminis- 
tration of public affiiirs, speak for themselves. 
The difficulty of placing it rightly in a govern- 
ment resting entii-ely on the basis of periodical 
elections, will as readily be perceived, when it 
is considered that the most conspicuous charac- 
ters in it will, from that circumstance, be too 
often the leaders or the tools of the most cun- 
ning or the most numerous faction ; and, on this 
account, can hardly be expected to possess the 
requisite neutrality towards those whose con- 
duct may be the subject of scrutiny. 

" ' The division of the powers of impeachment 
between the two branches of the legislature, as- 
signing to one the right of accusing, to the other 
the right of trying, avoids the inconvenience of 
making the same persons both accusers and 
judges ; and guards against the danger of per- 
secution from the prevalency of a factious spirit 
in either of those branches.' 

" Mr. B. said there was much matter for elu- 
cidation of the present object of discussion in 
the extract which he had read. Its definition 
of an impeachable offence covered the indentical 
charge which was contained in the resolution 
adopted by the Senate against the President. 
The offence charged upon him possessed every 
featHre of the impeachment defined by General 



Hamilton. It imputes misconduct to a public 
man, for the abuse and violation of a public 
trust. The discussion of the charge has agitated 
the passions of the whole community ; it has 
divided the people into parties, some friendly, 
some inimical, to the accused ; it has connected 
itself with the pre-existing parties, enlisting the 
whole of the opposition parties under one ban- 
ner, and calling forth all their animosities — all 
'their partialities — all their influence — all their 
interest ; and, what was not foreseen by Gene- 
ral Hamilton, it has called forth the tremendous 
moneyed power, and the pervading oi-ganization 
of a great moneyed power, wielding a mass of 
forty millions of money, and sixty millions of 
debt; wielding the whole in aid and support ot 
this charge upon the President, and working 
the double battery of seduction, on one hand, 
and oppression on the other, to put down the 
man against whom it is directed ! This is what 
General Hamilton did not foresee ; but the next 
feature in the picture he did foresee, and most 
accurately describe, as it is now seen bj' us all. 
He said that the decision of these impeachments 
would ofter be regulated more by the compara- 
tive strength of parties than by the guilt or in- 
nocence of the accused. How prophetic ! Look 
to the memorials, resolutions, and petitions, sent 
in here to criminate the President, so clearly 
marked b)^ a party line, that when an exception 
occurs, it is made the special subject of public 
remark. Look at the vote in the Senate, upon 
the adoption of the resolution, also as clearly 
defined by a party line as any party question 
can ever be expected to be. 

" To guard the most conspicuous characters 
from being persecuted — Mr. B. said he was 
using the language of General Hamilton — to 
guard the most conspicuous characters from 
being persecuted by the leaders or the tools of 
the most cunning or the most numerous faction 
— the convention had placed the power of try- 
ing impeachments, not in the Supi'eme Court, 
not even in a body of select judges chosen for 
the occasion, but in the Senate of the United 
States, and not even in them without an inter- 
vening check to the abuse of that power, by 
associating the House of Picpresentatives, and 
forbidding the Senate to proceed against any 
officer until that grand inquest of the nation 
should demand his trial. How far fortunate, 
or otherwise, the convention may have been in 
the selection of its tribunal for {he trial of im- 
peachments, it was not for him, Mr. B., to say. 
It was not for him to say how far the requisite 
neutralitj' towards those whose conduct may 
be under scrutiny, may be found, or has been 
found, in this body. But he must take leave to 
say, that if a public man may be virtually im- 
peached — actually condemned by (he Senate of 
an impeachable oilence, without the intervention 
of the House of Representatives, then has the 
constitution failed at one of its most vital points 
and a ready means found for doing a thing 
which had filled other countries with persecu 



432 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



tion, faction, and violence, and which it was 
intended should never be done here. 

" jMr. B. called upon the Senate to recollect 
what was the feature in the famous court of 
the Star Chamber, which rendered that court 
the most odious that ever sat in England. It 
was not the mass of its enormities — great as 
they were — for the regular tribunals which yet 
existed, exceeded that court, both in the mass 
and in the atrocity of their crimes and oppres- 
sions. The regular courts in the compass of a 
single reign — that of James the Second ; a sin- 
gle j^idge. in a single riding — Jeffries, on the 
XVestern Circuit — surpassed all the enormities 
of the Star Chamber, in the whole course of its 
existence. AVhat then rendered that court so 
intolerably odious to the English people ? Sir, 
said ]\Ir. B., it was because that court had no 
grand jury — because it proceeded without pre- 
sentment, without indictment — upon informa- 
tion alone — and thus got at its victims without 
the intervention, witliout the restraint, of an 
accusing bod}^ This is the featui'e which sunk 
the Star Chamber in England. It is the feature 
which no criminal tribunal in this America is 
allowed to possess. The most inconsiderable 
ofl'endcr, in any State of the Union, must be 
charged by a grand jury before he can be tried 
by the court. In this Senate, sitting as a high 
court of impeachment, a charge must first be 
presented by the House of Kepresentatives, 
sitting as the grand inquest of the nation. But 
if the Senate can proceed, without tlie inter- 
vention of tliis grand inquest, wherein is it to 
differ fi-om the Star Chamber, except in the 
mere e:5ecution of its decrees ? And what 
other execution is now required for delinquent 
public men, than the force of public opinion? 
No ! said jNIr. B., we live in an age when public 
opinion over public men, is omnipotent and ir- 
reversible ! — wlien public sentiment annihilates 
a public man more efiectually than the scaflbld. 
To this new and onniipotent tribunal, all the 
public men of Europe and America are now 
happily subject. The fiat of public opinion has 
superseded the axe of the executioner. Struck 
by that opinion, kings and emperors in Europe, 
and the highest functionaries among ourselves, 
fall powerless from the political stage, and wan- 
der, while their bodies live, as shadows and 
phantoms over tlie land. Should he give ex- 
amples ? It might be invidious ; yet all would 
redollect an eminent example of a citizen, once 
sitting at tlie head of this Senate, afterwards 
falling under a judicial prosecution, from which 
he escaped untouched by the sword of the law, 
yet that eminent citizen was more utterly an- 
nihilated by public opinion, than any execution 
of a capital sentence could ever liave accom- 
plished upon his name. 

" What occasion then has the Senate, sitting 
as a court of impeachment, for the power of 
execution ? The only effect of a regular im- 
peachment now, is to remove from office, and 
disqualificatiou for oflfice. An irregular impeach- 



ment will be tantamount to removal and dis- 
qualification, if the justice of the sentence is 
confided in by the people. If this condemnation 
of the President had been pronounced in the 
first term of his administration, and the people 
had believed in the truth and justice of the sen- 
tence, certainly President Jackson would not 
have been elected a second time ; and every 
object that a political rival, or a political party, 
could have wished from his removal from office, 
and disqualification for office, would have been 
accomplished. Disqualification for office — loss 
of public favor — political death — is now the 
object of political rivalsliip ; and all this can be 
accomplished bj' an informal, as well as by a 
formal impeachment, if the sentence is only con- 
fided in by the people. If the people believed 
that the President has violated the constitution 
and the laws, he ceases to be the object of their 
respect and their confidence ; he loses their 
favor ; he dies a political death ; and that this 
might be the object of the resolution, Mr. B. 
would leave to the determination of those who 
should read the speeches which were delivered 
in support of the measure, and which would 
constitute a public and lasting monument of 
the temper in which the resolution was pre- 
sented, and the object intended to be accom- 
plished by it. 

" It was in vain to say there could be no 
object, at this time, in annihilating the political 
intiueiice of President Jackson, and killing him 
off as a public man, with a senatorial conviction 
for violating the laws and constitution of the 
country. Such an assertion, if ventured upon 
by any one, would stand contradicted by facts, 
of which Europe and America are witnesses. 
Does he not stand between the country and the 
bank 1 Is he not proclaimed the sole obstacle 
to the recharter of tlie bank ; and in its recharter 
is there not wrapped up the destinies of a poli- 
tical party, now panting for power ? Remove 
this sole obstacle — annihilate its influence — kill 
off President Jackson with a sentence of con- 
demnation for a high crime and misdemeanor, 
and the charter of the bank will be renewed, and 
in its renewal, a political party, now thundering 
at the gates of the capitol, will leap into power. 
Here then is an object for desiring the extinction 
of the political inlluence of President Jackson ! 
An object large enougli to be seen by all Ameri- 
ca ! and attractive enough to enlist the combined 
interest of a great moneyed power, and of a great 
political party." 

Thus spoke Mr. Benton ; but the debate on 
the protest went on ; and the motion of Mr. 
Poindexter, digested into four different propo- 
sitions, after undergoing repeated modifications 
upon consultations among its friends, and after 
much acrimony on both sides, was adopted by 
the fixed majority of twenty-seven. In voting 
that the nrotest was a breach of the privileges 



ANNO 1834 ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



433 



of the Senate, that body virtually affirmed the 
impeachment character of the condemnatory 
resolutions, and involved itself in the predica- 
ment of voting an impeachable matter without 
observing a single rule for the conduct of im- 
peachments. The protest placed it in a dilemma. 
It averred the Senate's judgment to be without 
authority — without any warrant in the consti- 
tution — any right in the body to pronounce it. 
To receive that protest, and enter it on the 
journal, was to record a strong evidence against 
themselves ; to reject it as a breach of pri- 
vilege was to claim for their proceeding the 
immunity of a regular and constitutional act ; 
and as the proceeding was on criminal matter, 
amounting to a high crime and misdemeanor, 
on which matter the Senate could only act in 
its judicial capacity ; therefore it had to claim 
the immunity that would belong to it in that 
capacity ; and assume a violation of privilege. 
Certainly if the Senate had tried an impeach- 
ment in due form, the protest, impeaching its 
justice, might have been a breach of privilege ; 
but the Senate had no privilege to vote an im- 
peachable matter without a regular impeach- 
ment ; and therefore it was no breach of privilege 
to impugn the act which they had no privilege 
to commit. 



CHAPTER CIV. 

MR. WEBSTER'S PLAN OF RELIEF. 

It has already been seen that Mr. "Webster took 
no direct part in promoting the adoption of the 
resolutions against General Jackson. lie had 
no private grief to incite him against the Presi- 
dent; and, as first drawn up, it would have 
been impossible for him, honored with the titles 
of '"expounder and defender of the constitu- 
tion," to have supported the resolve: bearing 
plainly on its face impeachable matter. After 
sevei-al modifications, he voted for it ; but, from 
the beginning, he had his own plan in view, 
which was entirely different from an attack on 
the President ; and solely looked to the advan- 
tage of the bank, and the relief of the distress, 
in a practical and parliamentary mode of legis- 
lation. He looked to a renewal of the bank 
charter for a short term, and with such modifi- 

VoL. I.— 28 



cations as would tend to disarm opposition, and 
to conciliate favor for it. The term of the re- 
newal was onl}^ to be for six years : a length of 
time well chosen ; because, from the shortness 
of the period, it would have an attraction for all 
that class of members — alwa3's more or less 
numerous in every assembly — who, in every dif- 
ficulty, are disposed to temporize and compro- 
mise ; while, to the bank, in carrying its exist- 
ence beyond the presidential term of General 
Jackson, it felt secure in the future acquisition 
of a full term. Besides the attraction in the 
short period, Mr. Webster proposed another 
amelioration, calculated to have serious effect ; 
it was to give up the exclusive or monopoly 
feature in the charter — leaving to Congress to 
grant any other charter, in the mean time, to a 
new company, if it pleased. The objectionable 
branch bank currency of petty drafts was also 
given up. Besides this, and as an understand- 
ing that the corporation would not attempt to 
obtain a further existence beyond the six years, 
the directors were to be at liberty to begin 
to return the capital to the stockholders at 
any time within the period of three 3^ears, be- 
fore the expiration of the six renewed years 
The deposits were not to be restored until aftei 
the first day of July ; and, as an agreeable con- 
cession to the enemies of small paper currency, 
the bank was to issue, or use, no note under the 
amount of twenty dollars. He had drawn up a 
bill with these provisions, and asked leave to 
bring it in ; and, asking the leave, made a vcy 
plausible business speech in its favor : the best 
perhaps that could have been devised. In addi- 
tion to his own weight, and the recommenda- 
tions in the bill, it was understood to be the 
preference of Mr. Biddle himself — his own choice 
of remedies in the difficulties which surrounded 
his institution. But he met opposition from 
quarters not to be expected : from jMr. Clay, who 
went for the full term of twenty years ; and 
]\Ir. Calhoun, who went for twelve. It was dif- 
ficult to comprehend why these two gentlemen 
should wish to procure for the bank more than 
it asked, and which it was manifestly impossible 
for it to gain. Mr. Webster's bill was the only 
one that stood the least chance of getting 
through the two Houses ; and on that point he 
had private assurances of support from friends 
of the administration, if all the friends of the 
bank stood firm In favoring this charter for 



434 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



twelve 3'cars, Mr. Calhoun felt that an explana- 
tion of his conduct was due to the public, as he 
was well known to have been opposed to the 
renewed charter, when so vehemently attempt- 
ed, in 1832 ; and also against banks generally. 
His explanation was, that he considered it a 
curroncj- question, and a question between the 
national and local banks ; and that the renewed 
charter was to operate against them ; and, in 
winding itself up, was to cease for ever, having 
first established a safe currency. His frequent 
expression was, that his plan was to " unbank 
the banks : " a process not very intelligiblj- ex- 
plained at the time, and on which he should be 
allowed to sjieak for himself. Some passages 
are, thei-efore, given from his speech : 

"After a full survey of the whole subject, I 
can see no means of extricating the country 
from its present danger, and to arrest its fur- 
ther increase, but a bank, the agency of which, 
in some form, or under some authority, is indis- 
pensable. The country has been brought into 
the present diseased state of the currency by 
banks, and must be extricated by their agency. 
We must, in a word, use a bank to unbank the 
banks, to the extent that may be necessary to 
restore a safe and stable currency — just as we 
ay)])ly snow to a frozen limb, in order to restore 
vitality apd circulation, or hold up a burn to 
the flame to extract the inflammation. All must 
see that it is impossible to suppress the bank- 
ing system at once. It must continue for a time. 
Its greatest enemies, and the advocates of an 
exclusive specie circulation, must make it a part 
of their system to tolerate the banks for a longer 
)r a shorter period. To suppress them at once, 
would, if it were possible, work a greater revolu- 
tion: a greater change in the relative condition 
of the various classes of the community than 
would the conquest of the country by a savage 
enemy. What, then, must be done ? I answer, 
a new and safe sj'stcm must gradually grow up 
under, and replace, the old ; imitating, in this 
respect, the beautiful process which we some- 
times see, of a wounded or diseased part in a 
living organic bodj', gradually superseded by the 
Dealing process of nature. 

'• How is this to be eflected ? How is a bank 
to be used as the means of correcting the excess 
of the banking system ? And what bank is to 
be selected as the agent to effect this salutary 
change ? I know, said Mr. C, that a diversity 
of opinion will be found to exist, as to the agent 
to be -selected, among those who agree on every 
other point, and who, in particular, agree on the 
necessit}' of using some bank as the means of 
effecting the object intended; one preferring a 
simple recharter of the existing bank — another, 
the charter of a new bank of the United States 
— a third, a new bank ingrafted upon the old — 



and a fourth, the use of the State banks, as the 
agent. I wish, said Mr. C, to leave all these as 
open questions, to be carefully surveyed and 
compared with each other, calmly and dispas- 
sionately, without prejudice or party feeling ; and 
that to be selected which, on the whole, shall 
appear to be best — the most safe ; the most 
eflicient ; the most prompt in application, and 
the least liable to constitutional objection. It 
would, however, be wanting in candor on my 
part, not to declare that my impression is, that 
a new Bank of the United States, ingrafted upon 
the old, will be found, imder all the circum- 
stances of the case, to combine the greatest ad- 
vantages, and to be liable to the fewest objec- 
tions ; but this impression is not so firmly fixed 
as to be inconsistent with a calm review of the 
whole ground, or to prevent my yielding to the 
conviction of reason, should the result of such 
review prove that any other is preferable. 
Among its peculiar recommendations, may be 
ranked the consideration, that, while it would 
afford the means of a prompt and eflFectual ap- 
plication for mitigating and finally removing the 
existing distress, it would, at the same time, 
open to the whole community a fair opportu- 
nity of participation in the advantages of the 
institution, be they what they ma}-. 

" Let us then suppose (in order to illustrate 
and not to indicate a perference) that the pre- 
sent bank be selected as the agent to effect the 
intended object. What provisions will be 
necessary? I will suggest those that have oc- 
curred to me, mainly, however, with a view of 
exciting the reflection of those much more fa- 
miliar with banking operations than mj'self, and 
who, of course, are more competent to form a 
correct judgment on their practical eflcct. 

"Let, then, the bank charter be renewed for 
twelve years after the expiration of the present 
term, with such modifications and limitations as 
maj^ be judged proper, and that after that period, 
it shall issue no notes under ten dollars ; that 
government shall not receive in its dues any 
sum less than ten dollars, except in tlie legal 
coins of the United States ; that it shall not 
receive in its dues the notes of any bank that 
issues notes of a denomination less than five 
dollars ; and that the United States Bank 
shall not receive in payment, or on deposit, the 
notes of any bank whose notes are not receiv- 
able in dues of the government ; nor the notes 
of any bank which may receive the notes of any 
bank whose notes are not receivable by the gov- 
ernment. At the expiration of six years from the 
commencement of the renewed charter, let the 
bank be prohibited from issuing any note im- 
der twenty doUai-s, and let no sum under that 
amount be received in the dues of the govern- 
ment, except in specie ; and let the value of 
gold be raised at least equal to that of silver, 
to take effect immediately, so that the country 
may be replenished with the coin, the lightest 
and the most portable in proportion to its value, 
i to take the place of the receding bank notes. 



ANNO 1834. AIS'DREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



435 



It is unnecessary for me to state, that at pre- 
sent, the standard value of gold is several per 
cent, less than that of silver, the necessary ef- 
fect of which has been to expel gold entirely 
from our circulation, and thus to deprive us of 
a coin so well calculated for the circulation of 
a countrjr so great in extent, and having so vast 
an intercourse, commercial, social, and political, 
between all its parts, as ours. As an addition- 
al recommendation to x"aise its relative value, 
gold has, of late, become an important product 
of three considerable States of the Union, Vir- 
ginia, North Carolina, and Georgia — to the in- 
dustry of which, the measure proposed would 
give a strong impulse, and which in turn would 
greatly increase the quantity produced. 

" Such are the means which have occurred to 
me. There are members of this body far more 
competent to judge of their practical operation 
than myself, and as my object is simply to sug- 
gest them for their reflection, and for that of 
others who are more liimiliar with this part of 
the subject, I will not at present enter into an 
inquiry as to their efficiency, with a view of 
detei'mining whether they are fully adequate 
to effect the object in view or not. There are 
doubtless others of a similar description, and 
perhaps more efficacious, that may occur to the 
experienced, which I would freely embrace, as 
my object is to adopt the best and most effi- 
cient. And it may be hoped that, if on expe- 
rience it should be found that neither these pro- 
visions nor any other in the power of Congress, 
are fully adequate to effect the important re- 
form which I have proposed, the co-operation 
of the States may be afforded, at least to the 
extent of suppressing the circulation of notes 
under five dollars, where such are permitted to 
be issued under their authority." 

The ultimate object proposed to be accom- 
plished by Mr. Calhoun in this process of " un- 
banking the banks," was to arrive eventually 
and by slow degrees, at a metallic currency, and 
the revival of gold. This had been my object, 
and so declared in the Senate, from the time of 
the first opposition to the United States Bank. 
He had talked his plan over to myself and others : 
we had talked over ours to him. There was a 
point at which we all agreed — the restoration of a 
metallic currency ; but differed about the means 
— he expecting to attain it slowly and eventu- 
ally, through the process which he mentioned ; 
and we immediately, through the revival of the 
gold currency, the extinction of the Bank of the 
United States, the establishment of an indepen- 
dent treasury, andHlie exclusion of all paper 
money from the federal receipts and payments. 
Laying hold of the point on which we agreed, 
(and which was also the known policy of the 



President), Mr. Calhoun appealed to Mr. Silas 
Wright and myself and other friends of the ad- 
ministration, to support his plan. He said: 

" If I understand their views, as expressed 
by the senator from Missouri, behind me (Mr. 
Benton) — the senator from New-York (Mr. 
Wright) ; and other distinguished members of 
the party, and the views of the President, as 
expressed in reported conversations, I see not 
how they can reject the measure (^o wit : his 
plan). They profess to be the advocates of a 
metallic currency. I propose to restore it by 
the most eflectual measures that can be devised ; 
gradually and slowly, and to the extent that 
experience maj' show that it can be done con- 
sistently with due regard to the public interest. 
Further, no one can desire to go." 

The reference here made by Mr. Calhoun to 
the views of the senator from Missouri was to 
conversations held between them; in which 
each freely communicated his own plan. Mr. 
Benton had not then brought forward his pro- 
position for the revival of the gold currency ; 
but did so, (in a speech which he had studied), 
the moment Mr. Calhoun concluded. That was 
a thing understood between them. Mr. Cal- 
houn had signified his wish to speak first ; to 
which Mr. Benton readily assented : and both 
took the opportunity presented by Mr. Web- 
ster's motion, and the presentation of his plan, 
to present their own respectively. Mr. Benton 
presented his the moment Mr. Calhoun sat 
down, in a much considered speech, which will 
be given in the next chapter ; and which was 
the first of his formal speeches in favor of re- 
viving the gold currency. In the mean time, 
Mr. Webster's plan lingered on the motion for 
leave to bring in his bill. That leave was not 
granted. Things took a strange turn. The 
friends of the bank refused in a body to give 
jNIr. Webster the leave asked : the enemies of 
the bank were in favor of giving him the leave — 
chiefly, perhaps, because his friends refused it. 
In this state of contrariety among his friends, 
Mr. Webster moved to lay his own motion on 
the table ; and Mr. Forsyth, to show that this 
l)alk came from his own side of the chamber, 
asked the yeas and nays ; which were granted 
and were as follows : 

''Yeas. — Messi-s Black, Calhoun, Clay, Clay- 
ton, Ewing, Frelinghuysen, Hendricks, King 
of Georgia, Mangum, Moore, Naudain, Poindex- 
ter, Porter, Prentiss, Preston, llobbins, Sil& 



436 



TniRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



bee, Smith, Southard, Sprague, Swift, Tomlin- 
son, Waggaman, Webster. 

"Nays. — Messrs. Benton, Brown, Forsyth, 
Grundy, Ilill, Kane, King of Alabama, Morris, 
Robinson, Shepley, Tallmadge, Tipton, White. 
Wilkins, Wright."" 

The excuse for the movement — for this un- 
expected termination to Mr. Webster's motion 
— was that the Senate might proceed with Mr. 
Clay's resolution against General Jackson, and 
come to a conclusion upon it. It was now time for 
that conclusion. It was near the last of March, 
and the Virginia elections came on in April : 
but the real cause for Mr. Webster's motion 
was the settled opposition of his political friends 
to his plan ; and that was proved by its subse- 
quent fate. In his motion to lay his application 
on the table, he treated it as a temporary dis- 
position of it — the application to be renewed 
at some future time : which it never was. 



CHAPTER CV. 

REVIVAL OF THE GOLB CURRENCY— ME. BEN- 
TON'S SPEECH. 

Mr. Benton said it was now six years since he 
had begun to oppose the renewal of the charter 
of this bank, but he had not, until the present 
moment, found a suitable occasion for showing 
the people the kind of currency which they 
were entitled to possess, and probably would 
possess, on the dissolution of the Bank of the 
United States. This was a view of the subject 
which many wished to see, and which he felt 
bound to give ; and which he should proceed 
to present, with all the brevity and perspicuity 
of which he was master. 

1. In the first place, he was one of those who 
believed that the government of the United 
States was intended to be a hard money govern- 
ment : that it was the intention, and the decla- 
ration of the constitution of the United States, 
that the federal currency should consist of gold 
and silver ; and that there is no power in Con- 
gress to issue, or to authorize any company of 
individuals to issue, any species of federal paper 
currency whatsoever. 

Every clause in the constitution, said Mr. B., 
jvhich bears upon the subject of money — every 



early statute of Congress which interprets the 
meaning of these clauses — and every historic 
recollection which refers to them, go hand in 
hand, in giving to that instrument the meaning 
which this proposition ascribes to it. The 
power granted to Congress to coin money is an 
authority to stamp metallic money, and is not 
an authority for emitting slips of paper contain- 
ing promises to pay money. The authority 
granted to Congress to regulate the value of 
coin, is an authority to regulate the value of the 
metallic money, not of paper. The prohibition 
upon the States against making any thing but 
gold and silver a legal tender, is a moral pro- 
hibition, founded in virtue and honesty, and is 
just as binding upon the federal government as 
upon the State governments ; and that without 
a written prohibition ; for the difference in the 
nature of the two governments is such, that the 
States may do all things which they are not 
foi'bid to do ; and the federal govei-nment can 
do nothing which it is not authorized by the 
constitution to do. The power to punish the 
crime of counterfeiting is limited to the current 
coin of the United States, and to the securities 
of the United States ; and cannot be extended 
to the offence of forging paper money, but by 
that unjustifiable power of construction which 
founds an implication upon an implication, and 
hangs one implied power upon another. The 
word currency is not in the constitution, nor 
any word which can be made to cover a circu- 
lation of bank notes. Gold and silver is the 
only thing recognized for money. It is the 
money, and the only money, of the constitution ; 
and every historic recollection, as well as every 
phrase in the constitution, and every early sta- 
tute on the subject of money, confirms that 
idea. People were sick of paper money about 
the time that this constitution was formed. 
The Congress of the confederation, in the time 
of the Revolution, had issued a currency of paper 
money. It had run the full career of that cur- 
rency. The wreck of two hundred millions of 
paper dollars lay upon the land. The framers 
of that constitution worked in the midst of 
that wreck. They saw the havoc which paper 
money had made upon the fortunes of individu- 
als, and the morals of the public. They deter 
mined to have no more federal paper money. 
They created a hard money government ; they 
intended the new government to recognize no- 



ANNO 1834. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



437 



thing for money but gold and silver ; and every 
word admitted into the constitution, upon the 
subject of money, defines and establishes that 
sacred intention. 

Legislative enactment, continued Mr. B., came 
quickly to the aid of constitutional intention 
and historic recollection. The fifth statute 
passed at the first session of the first Congress 
that ever sat under the present constitution, 
was full and explicit on this head. It defined 
the kind of money which the federal treasury 
should receive. The enactments of the statute 
are remarkable for their brevity and compre- 
hension, as well as for their clear interpretation 
of the constitution ; and deserve to be repeated 
and remembered. They are : That the fees and 
duties payable to the federal government shall 
be received in gold and silver coin only ; the 
gold coins of France, Spain, Portugal, and Eng- 
land, and all other gold coins of equal fineness, 
at eighty-nine cents for every pennyweight; 
the Mexican dollar at one hundi'ed cents ; the 
crown of France at one hundred and eleven 
cents ; and all other silver coins of equal fine- 
ness, at one hundred and eleven cents per ounce. 
This statute was passed the 30th day of July, 
1789— just one month after Congress had com- 
menced the work of legislation. It shows the 
sense of the Congress composed of the men, in 
great part, who had framed the constitution, and 
who, by using the word only, clearly expressed 
their intention that gold and silver alone was 
to constitute the currency of the new govern- 
ment. 

In support of this construction of the consti- 
tion, Mr. B. referred to the phrase so often used 
by our most aged and eminent statesmen, that 
this was intended to be a hard money govern- 
ment. Yes, said Mr. B., the framers of the 
constitution were hard money men; but the 
chief expounder and executor ef that constitu- 
tion was not a hard money man, but a paper 
system man ! a man devoted to the paper system 
of England, with all the firmness of conviction, 
and all the fervor of enthusiasm. God forbid, 
said Mr. B., that I should do injustice to Gen. 
Hamilton — that I should say, or insinuate, aught 
to derogate from the just fame of that great 
man ! He has many titles to the gratitude and 
admiration of his countrymen, and the heart 
could not be American which could dishonor or 
disparage his memory. But his ideas of govern- 



ment did not receive the sanction of general 
approbation ; and of all his political tenets, his 
attachment to the paper system was most 
strongly opposed at the time, and has produced 
the most lasting and deplorable results upon the 
country. In the year 1791, this great man, 
then Secretary of the Treasury, brought forward 
his celebrated plan for the support of public 
credit — that plan which unfolded the entu-e 
scheme of the paper system, and immediately 
developed the great pohtical line between the 
federalists and the republicans. The establish- 
ment of a national bank was the leading and pre- 
dominant feature of that plan ; and the original 
report of the Secretary, in favor of establishing 
the bank, contained this fatal and deplorable 
recommendation : 

" The bills and notes of the bank, origmally 
made payable, or which shall have become pay- 
able, on demand, in gold and silver coin, shall 
be receivable in all payments to the United 
States." 

This fatal recommendation became a clause in 
the charter of the bank. It was transferred 
from the report of the Secretary to the pages of 
the statute book ; and from that moment the 
moneyed character of the federal government 
stood chang-ed and reversed. Federal bank notes 
took the place of hard money ; and the whole 
edifice of the new government slid, at once, from 
the solid rock of gold and silver money, on which 
its framers had placed it, into the troubled and 
tempestuous ocean of a paper currency. 

^Ir. B. said it was no answer to this most 
serious charge of having changed the moneyed 
character of the federal government, and of the 
whole Union, to say that the notes of the Bank 
of the United States are not made a legal tender 
between man and man. There was no necessity, 
he said, for a statute law to that effect ; it was 
sufficient that they were made a legal tender 
to the federal government ; the law of necessity, 
far superior to that of the statute book, would 
do the rest. A law of tender was not necessary ; 
a forced, incidental tender, resulted as an inevi- 
table consequence from the credit and circulation 
which the federal government gave them. What- 
ever was received at tlie custom-houses, at the 
land-offices, at the post-offices, at the marshals' 
and district attorneys' offices, and in all the 
various dues to tlie federal government, must be 
received and wiU be received by the people. It 



438 



THPRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



becomes the actual aud practical currency of the 
land. People must take it, or get nothing ; and 
thus the federal goveniment, establishing a paper 
currenc}^ for itself, establishes it also for the 
States and for the people ; and every body must 
use it from necessity, whether compelled by law 
or not. 

Mr. B. said it was not to be supposed that 
the objection which he now took to the uncon- 
stitutionality of the clause which made the notes 
of the federal bank a legal tender to the federal 
government, was an objection which could be 
overlooked, or disregarded, by the adversaries 
of the bank in 1791. It was not overlooked, or 
disregarded ; on the contrary, it was denounced, 
and combated, as in itself a separate and dis- 
tinct breach of the constitution, going the whole 
length of emitting paper money ; and the more 
odious and reprehensible because a privileged 
company was to have the monopoly of the emis- 
sion. The genius of Hamilton was put in re- 
quisition to answer this objection ; and the best 
answer which that great man could give it, was 
a confession of the omnipotence of the objection, 
and the total impossibility of doing it away. 
His answer surrendered the whole question of 
a currency. It sunk the notes of the bank, which 
were then to be tendered to the federal govern- 
ment, to the condition of supplies fui-nished to 
the government, and to be consumed by it. The 
answer took refuge under the natural power, 
independent of all constitutions, for the tax re- 
ceiver to receive his taxes in what articles he 
pleased. To do justice to General Hamilton, 
and to detect and expose the true character of 
this bank paper, Mr. B. read a clause from Gen. 
Hamilton's reply to the cabinet opinions of Mr. 
Jefferson, and the Attorney General Randolph, 
when President "Washington had the charter of 
the first bank under advisement with his Sec- 
retaries. It was the clause in which General 
Hamilton replied to the objection to the con- 
stitutionality of making the notes of the bank 
receivable in payment of public dues. " To 
designate or appoint the money or thing in which 
taxes are to be paid, is not only a proper, but a 
necessary exercise of the power of collecting 
them. Accordingly, Congress, in the law con- 
cerning the collection of the duties, imposts, and 
tomiage, has pr(>^ ided that they shall be pay- 
able in gold aud silver. But, while it was an 
indispensable part of the work to say in what 



they should be paid, the choice of the specific 
thing was a mere matter of discretion. The 
payment might have been required in the com- 
modities themselves. Taxes in kind, however 
ill judged, are not without precedents, even in 
the United States ; or it might have been in the 
paper money of the several States ; or in the bills 
of the Bank of North America, New-York, and 
Massachusetts, all, or cither of them ; it might 
have been in bills issued under the authority of 
the United States. No part of this, it is pre- 
sumed, can be disputed. The appointment of 
the money or thing in which the taxes are to be 
paid, is an incident of the power of collection. 
And among the expedients which may be adopt- 
ed, is that of bills issued under the authority 
of the United States." Mr. B. would read no 
further, although the argument of General Ham- 
ilton extended through several pages. The 
nature of the argument is fully disclosed in what 
is read. It surrenders the whole question of a 
paper currency. Neither the power to furnish a 
currency, or to regulate c-urrency, is pretended to 
be claimed. The notes of the new bank are put 
upon the footing, not of money, but of commo- 
dities — things — articles in kind — which the tax- 
receiver may accept from the tax payer ; and 
which are to be used and consumed by the tax 
receiver, and not to be returned to the people, 
much less to be diffused over the country in 
place of money. This is the original idea and 
Qonception of these notes. It is the idea under 
which they obtained the legal capacity of receiv- 
ability in jiayment of public dues ; and from 
this humble conception, this degraded assimila- 
tion to corn and grain, to clothes and provisions, 
they have, by virtue of that clause in the char- 
ter, crept up to the character of money — become 
the real, practical currency of the land — driven 
the currency of the constitution from the land 
— ^and so depraved the public intellect as now 
to be called for as money, and proclaimed to be 
indispensable to the country, when the author 
of the bank could not rank it higher than an ex- 
pedient for paying a tax. 

2. In the next place, Mr. B. believed that the 
quantity of specie derivable from foreign com- 
merce, added to the quantity of gold derivable 
from our own mines, were fully sufficient, if not 
expelled from the country by unwise laws, to 
furnish the people with an abundant circulation 
of gold and silver coin, for their common cur* 



ANNO 1834. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



439 



rency, without having recoui-se to a circulation 
of small bank notes. 

The truth of these propositions, Mr. B. held 
to be susceptible of complete and ready proof. 
He spoke first of the domestic supply of native 
gold, and said that no mines had ever developed 
more rapidly than these had done, or promised 
more abundantly than they now do. In the 
year 1824 they were a spot m the State of 
North Carolina ; they are now a region spread- 
ing into six States. In the year 1824 the pro- 
duct was ($5,000 ; in the last year the product, 
in coined gold, was ^868,000 ; in uncoined, as 
much more ; and the product of the present 
year computed at two millions ; with every pros- 
pect of continued and permanent increase. The 
probability was that these mines alone, m the 
lapse of a few years, would furnish an abundant 
supply of gold to establish a plentiful circulation 
of that metal, if not expelled from the country 
by unwise laws. But the great source of supply, 
both for gold and silver, Mr. B. said, was in our 
foreign commerce. It was this foreign com- 
merce which filled the States with hard money 
immediately after the close of the Revolutionary 
War, Vhen the domestic mines were unknown ; 
and it is the same foreign commerce which, even 
now, when federal laws discourage the impor- 
tation of foreign coins and compel their exporta- 
tion, is bringing in an annual supply of seven 
or eight milHons. With an amendment of the 
laws which now discourage the importation of 
foreign coins, and compel their exportation, 
there could be no delay in the rapid accumula- 
tion of a sufficient stock of the precious metals 
to supply the largest circulation which the 
common business of the country could require. 

Mr. B. believed the product of foreign mines, 
and the quantity of gold and silver now in ex- 
istence, to be much greater than was commonly 
supposed; and, as a statement of its amount 
would establish hie proposition in favor of an 
adequate supply of these metals for the common 
currency of the country, he would state that 
amount, as he found it calculated in approved 
works of political economy. He looked to the 
three great sources of supply: 1. Mexico and 
South America ; 2. Europe and Northern Asia ; 
3. The coast of Africa. Taking the discovery 
of the New World as the starting point from 
which the calculation would commence, and the 
product was : 



1. Mexico and South America, 

2. Europe and Northern Asia, 

3. The coast of Africa, . 



§6,468,000,noO 
628,000,000 
150,000,000 



— making a total product of seven thousand two 
hundred and thirty-six millions, in the short 
space of three centuries and a half. To this is 
to be added the quantity existing at the time 
the New World was dit^covered, and which was 
computed at ^2,300,000,000. Upon all these 
data, the political economists, Mr. B. said, after 
deducting $2,000,000,000 for waste and con- 
sumption, still computed the actual stock of 
gold and silver in Europe, Asia, and America, 
in 1832, at about seven thousand millions of 
dollars ; and that quantity constantly and rapid- 
ly increasing. 

]\Ir. B. had no doubt but that the quantity of 
gold and silver in Europe, Asia, and America, 
was suflBcient to carry on the whole business of 
the world. He said that states and empires 
— ^far greater in wealth and population than any 
now existing — far superior in public and private 
magnificence — had carried on all the business of 
private life, and all the affairs of national govern- 
ment, upon gold and silver alone ; and that be- 
fore the mines of Mexico and Peru were known, 
or dreamed of. He alluded to the great nations 
of antiquity — to the Assyrian and Persian em- 
pires ; to Egypt, Carthage, Rome ; to the Gre- 
cian republics ; the kingdoms of Asia Minor ; and 
to the empire, transcending all these put toge- 
ther — the Saracenic empire of the Caliphs, which, 
taking for its centre the eastern limit of the Roman 
world, extended its dominion as far west as Rome 
had conquered, and further east than Alexander 
had marched. These great nations, whose armies 
crushed empires at a blow, whose monumental 
edifices still attest their grandeur, had no idea 
of bank credits and paper money. They used 
gold and silver alone. Such degenerate phrases 
as sound currency, paper medium, circulating 
media, never once sounded in their heroic ears. 
But why go back, exclaimed i\fr. B., to the 
nations of antiquity ? Why quit our own 
day 1 Why look beyond the boundaries of 
Europe ? We have seen an empire in our own 
day, of almost fabulous grandeur and magnifi- 
cence, carrying on all its vast undertakings upon 
a currenc}' of gold and silver, without deigning 
to recognize paper for money. I sjicak, said ^Ir. 
B., of France — great and imperial France — and 
have my eye upon that first year of the consu- 



440 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



late, when a young and victorious general, just 
transferred from the camp to a council, an- 
nounced to his astonished ministers that specie 
payments should commence in France by a given 
day ! — in that France which, for so many years, 
had seen nothing but a miserable currency of 
depreciated mandats and assignats ! The annun- 
ciation was heard with the inward contempt, and 
open distrust, which the whole tribe of hack 
politicians every where feel for the statesman- 
ship of military men. It was followed by the 
success which it belongs to genius to inspire and 
to command. Specie payments commenced in 
France on the day named ; and a hard money 
currency has been the sole currency of France 
from that day to this. 

Such, said Mr. B., is the currency of France ; 
a country whose taxes exceed a thousand mil- 
lions of francs — whose public and private ex- 
penditures require a circulation of three hun- 
dred and fifty millions of dollars — and which 
possesses that circulation, every dollar of it, in 
gold and silver. After this example, can any 
one doubt the capacity of the United States to 
supplj- itself with specie ? Reason and history 
forbid the doubt. Reason informs us that hard 
money flows into the vacuum the instant that 
small bank notes are driven out. France reco- 
vered a specie circulation within a year after the 
consular government refused to recognize paper 
for money. England recovered a gold circulation 
of about one hundx-ed millions of dollars within 
four years after the one and two pound notes 
were suppressed. Our own country filled up 
with Spanish milled dollars, French crowns, 
doubloons, half joes, and guineaSj as by magic, 
at the conclusion of the Revolutionary "War, and 
the suppression of the continental bills. The 
business of the United States would not require 
above sixty or seventy millions of gold and sil- 
ver for the common currency of the people, and 
the basis of large bank notes and bills of ex- 
change. Of that sum. more than one third is 
now in the country, but not in circulation. The 
Bank of the United States hoards above ten mil- 
hons. At the expiration of her charter, in 183G, 
that sum will be paid out in redemption of its 
notes — will go into the hands of the people — 
and, of itself, will nearly double the quantity of 
silver now in circulation. Our native mines will 
be yielding, annually, some millions of gold ; 
foreign commerce will be pouring in her accus- 



tomed copious supply ; the correction of the er- 
roneous value of gold, the liberal admission oi 
foreign coins, and the suppression of small notes, 
will invite and retain an adequate metallic cur- 
rency. The present moment is peculiarly fa- 
vorable for these measures. Foreign exchanges 
are now in our favor ; silver is coming here, al- 
though not current by our laws ; botli gold and 
silver would flow in, and that immediately, to 
an immense amount, if raised to their proper 
value, and put on a proper footing, by our laws. 
Three days' legislation on these subjects would 
turn copious suppUes of gold and silver into the 
country, diffuse them through ever}'^ neighbor- 
hood, and astonish gentlemen when they get 
home at midsummer, at finding hard money 
where they had left paper. 

3. In the third place, Mr. B. undertook to 
afBrm, as a proposition free from dispute or con- 
testation, that the value now set upon gold, by 
the laws of the United States, was unjust and 
erroneous; that these laws had expelled gold 
from circulation ; and that it was the bounden 
duty of Congress to restore that coin to circula- 
tion, by restoring it to its just value. 

That gold was undervalued by the laws of the 
United States, and expelled from circulation, was 
a fact, Mr. B. said, which every body knew ; but 
there was something else which every body did 
not know ; which few, in reality, had an oppor- 
tunity of knowing, but which was necessary to 
be known, to enable the friends of gold to go to 
work at the right place to effect the recovery 
of that precious metal which their fathers once 
possessed — a^ hich the subjects of European kings 
now possess — ^which the citizens of the )'Oung 
republics to the South all possess — which even 
the free negroes of San Domingo possess — bnt 
which the yeomanry of this America have been 
deprived of for more than twenty years, and 
will be deprived of for ever, unless they discover 
the cause of the evil, and apply the remedy to 
its root. 

I have already shown, said Mr. B., that the 
plan for the support of public credit which Gene- 
ral Hamilton brought forward, in 1791, was a 
plan for the establishment of the paper system 
in our America. "We had at that time a gold 
currency which was circulating freely and fully 
all over the country. Gold is the antagonist of 
paper, and, with fair play, will keep a paper cur- 
rency within just and proper limits. It will 



ANNO 1834. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



441 



keep down the small notes; for, no man will 
cany a five, a ten, or a twenty dollar note in his 
pocket, when he can get guineas, eagles, half 
eagles, doubloons, and half joes to carry in their 
place. The notes of the new Bank of the United 
States, which bank formed the leading feature 
in the plan for the support of public credit, had 
already derived one undue advantage over gold, 
in being put on a level with it in point of legal 
tender to the federal government, and universal 
receivability in all payments to that government : 
they were now to derive another, and a still 
greater undue advantage over gold, in the law for 
the establishment of the national mint ; an in- 
stitution which also formed a feature of the plan 
for the support of public credit. It is to that 
plan that we trace the origin of the erroneous 
valuation of gold, which has banished that metal 
from the country. Mr. Secretary Hamilton, in 
his proposition for the establishment of a mint, 
recommended that the relative value of gold to 
silver should be fixed at fifteen for one ; and 
that recommendation became the law of the land ; 
and has remained so ever since. At the same 
time, the relative value of these metals in Spain 
and Portugal, and throughout their vast domin- 
ions in the new world, whence our principal 
supphes of gold were derived, was at the rate of 
sixteen for one ; thus making our standard six 
per cent, below the standard of the countries 
which chiefly produced gold. It was also below 
the English standard, and the French standard, 
and below the standard which prevailed in these 
States, before the adoption of the constitution, 
and which was actually prevailing in the States, 
at the time that this new proportion of fifteen 
to one was established. 

Mr. B. was ready to admit that there was some 
nicety requisite in adjusting the relative value 
of two different kinds of money — gold and silver 
for example — so as to preserve an exact equi- 
poise between them, and to prevent either from 
expelling the other. There was some nicety, 
but no insuperable or even extraordinary diffi- 
culty, in making the adjustment. The nicety 
of the question was aggravated in the j-ear '92, 
by the difficulty of obtaining exact knowledge 
of the relative value of these metals, at that 
time, in France and England ; and Mr. Gallatin 
has since shown that the information which was 
then relied upon was clearly erroneous. The ccgi- 
pequence of any mistake in fixing our standard. 



was also well known in the year '92. Mr. Sec- 
retary Hamilton, in his proposition for the estab- 
lishment of a mint, expressly declared that the 
consequence of a mistake in the relative value 
of the two metals, would be the expulsion of 
the one that was undervalued. Mr. Jefferson, 
then Secretary of State, in his cotemporaneous 
report upon foreign coins, declared the same 
thing. JNIr. Robert Slorris, financier to the 
revolutionary government, in his proposal to 
establish a mint, in 1782, was equally explicit 
to the same effect. The delicacy of the question 
and the consequence of a mistake, were then 
fully understood forty years ago, when the rela- 
tive value of gold and silver was fixed at fifteen 
to one. But, at that time, it unfortunately hap- 
pened that the paper system, then omnipotent 
in England, was making its transit to our Amer- 
ica ; and every thing that would go to establish 
that system — every thing that would go to sus- 
tain the new-born Bank of the United States — 
that eldest daughter and spem gregis of the 
paper system in America — fell in with the pre- 
vailing current, and became incorporated in the 
federal legislation of the day. Gold, it was well 
known, was the antagonist of paper ; from its 
intrinsic value, the natural predilection of all 
mankind for it, its small bulk, and the facility 
of carrying it abovit, it would be preferred to 
paper, either for travelling or keeping in the 
house ; and thus would limit and circumscribe 
the general circulation of bank notes, and pre- 
vent all plea of necessity for issuing smaller 
notes. Silver, on the contrary', from its incon- 
venience of transportation, would favor the cir- 
culation of bank notes. Hence the birth of the 
doctrine, that if a mistake was to be committed, 
it should be on the side of silver ! Mr. Secreta- 
ry Hamilton declares the existence of this feel- 
ing when, in his report upon the establishment 
of a mint, he says : " It is sometimes observed, 
that silver ought to be encouraged, rather than 
gold, as being more conducive to the extension 
of bank circulation, from the greater difficulty 
and inconvenience which its greater bulk, com- 
pared with its value, occasions in the transpor- 
tation of it." This passage in tlio Seoretarv's 
report, proves the existence of the feeling in fa- 
vor of silver against gold, and the cause of that 
feeling. Quotatio-ns might be made from the 
speeches of others to show that they acted upon 
that feeling ; but it is due to General Hamilton 



442 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



to say that he disclaimed such a motive for him- 
self, and expressed a desire to retain both 
metals in circulation, and even to have a gold 
dollar. 

The proportion of fifteen to one vras establish- 
ed. The nth section of the act of April, 1792, 
enacted that every fifteen pounds weight of pure 
silver, should be equal in value, in all payments 
with one pound of pure gold ; and so in propor- 
tion for less quantities of the respective metals. 
This act was the death warrant to the gold cur- 
rency. The diminished circulation of that coin 
soon began to be observable ; but it was not im- 
mediately extinguished. Several circumstances 
delayed, but could not prevent that catastrophe. 
1. The Bank of the United States then issued 
no note of less denomination than ten dollars, 
and but few of them. 2. There were but three 
other banks in the United States, and they issu- 
ed but few small notes ; so that a small note 
currency did not come directly into conflict with 
gold. 3. The trade to the lower Mississipi con- 
tinued to bring up from Natchez and New Orleans, 
for many years, a large supply of doubloons ; and 
long supplied a gold currency to the new States 
in the West. Thus, the absence of a small note 
currency, and the constant arrivals of doubloons 
from the lower Mississippi, deferred the fate of the 
gold currency ; and it was not until the lapse of 
near twenty j'ears after the adoption of the er- 
roneous standard of 1792, that the circulation of 
that metal, both foreign and domestic, became 
completely and totally extinguished in the Uni- 
ted States. The extinction is now complete, and 
must remain so until the laws are altered. 

In making this annunciation, and in thus 
standing forward to expose the error, and to de- 
mand the reform of the gold currency, he (iNIr. 
B.) was not setting up for the honors of a first 
discoverer, or first inventor. Far from it. He 
was treading in the steps of other, and abler 
men, who had gone before him. Four Secre- 
taries of the Treasury, Gallatin, Dallas, Craw- 
ford, Ingham, had, each in their day, pointed 
out the error in the gold standard, and recom- 
mended its correction. Repeated reports of 
committees, in both Houses of Congress, had 
done the same thing. Of these reports he 
would name those of the late Mr. Lowndes of 
South Carolina ; of Mr. Sanford, late a senator 
from New- York; of Mr. Campball P. White, 
now a representative from the city of New-York. 



^Ir. B. took pleasure in recalling and presenting 
to public notice, the names of the eminent men 
who had gone before him in the exploration of 
this path. It was due to them, now that the 
good cause seemed to be in the road to success, 
to yield to them all the honors of first explor- 
ers ; it was due to the cause also, in this hour 
of final trial, to give it the high sanction of their 
names and labors. 

Mr. B. would arrest for an instant the current 
of his remarks, to fix the attention of the Se- 
nate upon a reflection which must suggest it- 
self to the minds of all considerate persons. 
He would ask how it could happen that so many 
men, and such men as he had named, laboring 
for so many years, in a cause so just, for an ob- 
ject so beneficial, upon a state of facts so unde- 
niable, coiild so long and so uniformly fail of 
success ? How could this happen ? Sir, ex- 
claimed Mr. B., it happened because the policy 
of the Bank of the United States required it to 
happen ! The same policy which required gold 
to be undervalued in 1792, when the first bank 
was chartered, has required it to be undervalu- 
ed ever since, now that a second bank has been 
established ; and the same strength which en- 
abled these banks to keep themselves up, also en- 
abled them to keep gold down. This is the answer 
to the question ; and this the secret of the failure 
of all these eminent men in their laudable efforts 
to raise gold again to the dignity of money. 
This is the secret of their failure ; and this secret 
being now known, the road which leads to the 
reformation of the gold currency lies uncovered 
and revealed before us : it is the road which 
leads to the overthrow of the Bank of the United 
States — to the sepulchre of that institution : 
for, while that bank lives, or has the hope of 
life, gold cannot be restored to life. Here then 
lies the question of the reform of the gold cur- 
rency. If the bank is defeated, that currency 
is reformed ; if the bank is victorious, gold re- 
mains degraded ; to continue an article of mer- 
chandise in the hands of the bank, and to be 
expelled from circulation to make room for its 
five, its ten, and its twenty dollar notes. Let 
the people then, who are in favor of restoring 
gold to circulation, go to work in the right 
place, and put down the power that first put 
down gold, and which will never sutler that 
ccyn to rise while it has power to prevent it. 

Mr. B. did not think it necessary to de8c^■^t 



ANNO 1834. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



443 



and expatiate upon the merits and advantages 
of a gold currency. These advantages had been 
too well known, from the earliest ages of the 
world, to be a subject of discussion in the nine- 
teenth century ; but, as it was the policy of the 
paper system to disparage that metal, and as 
that system, in its forty years' reign over the 
American people, had nearly destroyed a know- 
ledge of that currency, he would briefly enume- 
rate its leading and prominent advantages. 1. 
It had an intrinsic value, which gave it curren- 
cy all over the world, to the full amount of that 
value, without regard to laws or circumstances. 
2. It had a uniformity of value, which made it 
the safest standard of the value of property 
which the wisdom of man had ever yet discov- 
ered. 3. Its portability; which made it easy for 
the traveller to carry it about with him. 4. Its 
indestructibility ; which made it the safest mo- 
ney that people could keep in their houses. 5. 
Its inherent purity ; which made it the hardest 
money to be counterfeited, and the easiest to be 
detected, and, therefore, the safest money for 
the people to handle. 6. Its superiority over 
all other money ; which gave to its possessor 
the choice and command of all other money. 
7. Its power over exchanges ; gold being the 
currency which contributes most to the equali- 
zation of exchange, and keeping down the rate 
of exchange to the lowest and most uniform 
point. 8. Its power over the paper money; 
gold being the natural enemy of that system, 
and, with fair play, able to hold it in check. 
9. It is a constitutional currency and the peo- 
ple have a right to demand it, for their cur- 
rency, as long as the present constitution is per- 
mitted to exist. 

Mr. B. said, that the false valuation put upon 
gold had rendered the mint of the United States, 
so far as the gold coinage is concerned, a most ri- 
diculous and absurd institution. It has coined, 
and that at a large expense to the United States, 
2,262,717 pieces of gold, worth $11,852,890; 
and where are these pieces now ? Not one of 
them to be seen ! all sold, and exported ! and 
so regular is this operation that the director 
of the mint, in his latest report to Congress, 
says that the new coined gold frequently re- 
mains in the mint, uncalled for, though ready for 
delivery, until the day arrives for a packet to 
sail to Europe. He calculates that two millions 
of native gold will bo corned annually hereafter ; 



the whole of which, without a reform of the 
gold standard, will be conducted, like exiles, 
from the national mint to the sea-shore, and 
transported to foreign regions, to be sold for the 
benefit of the Bank of the United States. 

Mr. B. said this was not the time to discus? 
the relative value of gold and silvei", nor to urge 
the particular proportion which ought to be 
established between them. That would be the 
proper work of a committee. At present it 
might be sufficient, and not irrelevant, to say 
that this question was one of commerce — that 
it was purely and simply a mercantile problem 
— as much so as an acquisition of any ordinary 
merchandise from foreign countries could be. 
Gold goes where it finds its value, and that 
value is what the laws of great nations give it. 
In Mexico and South America — the countries 
which produce gold, and from which the United 
States must derive their chief supply — the value 
of gold is 16 to 1 over silver; in the island of 
Cuba it is 17 to 1 ; in Spain and Portugal it is 
16 to 1 ; in the "West Indies, generally, it is the 
same. It is not to be supposed that gold will 
come from these countries to the United States, 
if the importer is to lose one dollar in every six- 
teen that he brings ; or that our own gold will 
remain with us, when an exporter can gain a 
dollar upon every fifteen that he carries out. 
Such results would be contrary to the laws of 
tra.de ; and therefore we must place the same 
value upon gold that other nations do, if we 
wish to gain any part of theirs, or to regain any 
part of our own. jMr. B. said that the case of 
England and France was no exception to this 
rule. They rated gold at something less than 
16 for 1, and still retainfcd gold in circulation ; 
but it was retained by force of peculiar laws and 
advantages which do not prevail in the United 
States. In England the circulation of gold was 
aided and protected by four subsidiary laws, 
neither of which exist here: one whicli jirevent- 
ed silver from being a tender for more than forty 
shillings ; another which required the Bank of 
England to pay all its notes in gold ; a third 
which suppressed the small note circulation ; a 
fourth which alloyed their silver nine per cent, 
below the relative value of gold. In France the 
relative proportion of the two metals was also 
below what it was in Spain. Portugal, IMcxico, 
and South America, and still a plentiful supply 
of gold remained in circulation ; but this result 



444 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



was aided by two peculiar causes ; first, the to- 
tal absence of a paper currency ; secondly, the 
proximity of Spain, and the inferiority of Spanish 
manufiictures, which gave to France a ready 
and a near market for the sale of her fine fabrics, 
which were paid for in the gold of the New World. 
In the United States, gold would have none of 
these subsidiary helps ; on the contrary it would 
have to contend with a paper currency, and 
would have to be obtained, the product of our own 
mines excepted, from Mexico and South America, 
where it is rated as sixteen to one for silver. 
All these circumstances, and many others, would 
have to be taken into consideration in fixing a 
standard for the United States. Mr. B, repeat- 
ed that there was nicety, but no difficulty, in 
adjusting the relative value of gold and silver so 
as to retain both in circulation. Several nations 
of antiquity had done it ; some modern nations 
also. The English have both in circulation at 
this time. The French have both, and have had 
for thirty years. The States of this Union also 
had both in the time of the confederation ; and 
retained them until this federal government 
was established, and the paper S3'stem adopted. 
Congress should not admit that it cannot do 
for the citizens of the United States, what so 
many monarchies have done for their subjects. 
Gentlemen, especially, who decry military chief- 
tains, should not confess that they themselves 
cannot do for America, what a military chieftain 
did for France. 

Mr. B. made his acknowledgments to the 
great apostle of American liberty (Mr. Jeffer- 
son), for the wise, practical idea, that the value 
of gold was a commercial question, to be settled 
by its value in other countries. He had seen 
that remark in the works of that great man, and 
treasured it up as teaching the plain and ready 
way to accomplish an apparently difficult object; 
and he fully concurred with the senator from 
South Carolina [^Ir. Calhoun], that gold, in the 
United States, ought to be the preferred metal ; 
not that silver should be expelled, but both re- 
tained ; the mistake, of any, to be in favor of 
gold, instead of being against it. 

IV. Mr. B. believed that it was the intention 
and declared meaning of the constitution, that 
foreign coins should pass currently as money, 
and at their full value, within the United States ; 
that it was the duty of Congress to promote the 
circulation of these coins by giving them their 



full value ; that this was the design of the Statea 
in conferring upon Congress the exclusive power 
of regulating the value of these coins ; that all 
the laws of Congress for preventing the circula- 
tion of foreign coins, and underrating their value, 
were so many breaches of the constitution, and 
so many mischiefs inflicted upon the States ; and 
that it Avas the bounden duty of Congress to re- 
peal all such laws ; and to restore foreign coins 
to the same free and favored circulation which 
they possessed when the federal constitution was 
adopted. 

In support of the first branch of his first po- 
sition Mr. B. quoted the words of the constitu- 
tion which authorized Congress to regulate the 
value of foreign coins ; secondly, the clause in 
the constitution which authorized Congress to 
provide for punishing the counterfeiting of cur- 
rent coin, in which term, foreign coin was includ- 
ed; thii-dly, the clause which prohibited the 
States from making any thing but gold and sil- 
ver coin a tender in payment of debts ; a clause 
which did not limit the prohibition to domestic 
coins, and therefore included foreign ones. 
These three clauses, he said, were concurrent, 
and put foreign coin and domestic coin upon the 
same precise footing of equality, in every parti- 
cular which concerned their current circulation, 
their value, and their protection from counter- 
feiters. Historical recollections were the next 
evidence to which ^Ir. B. referred to sustain his 
position. He said that foreign coins were the 
only coins known to the United States at the 
adoption of the constitution. No mint had been 
established up to that time. The coins of other 
nations furnished the currency, the exclusive 
metallic currency, which the States had used 
from the close of the Revolutionary AVar up to 
the formation of this federal government. It 
was these foreign coins then which the framers 
of the constitution had in view when they in- 
serted all the clauses in the constitution which 
bear upon the value and current circulation of 
coin ; its protection from counterfeiters, and the 
prohibitory restriction upon the States with re- 
spect to the illegality of tenders of any thing ex- 
cept of gold and silver. To make this point still 
plainer, if plainer it could be made, Mr. B. ad- 
verted to the early statutes of Congress which 
related to foreign coins. He had seen no less 
than nine statutes, passed in the first four years 
of the action of this federal government, all en- 



ANNO 1834. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



445 



acted for the purpose of regulating the value, 
protecting the puritj, and promoting the circu- 
lation of these coins. Not only the well-known 
coins of the principal nations were provided for 
in these statutes, but the coins of all the nations 
with whom we traded, how i*are or small might 
be the coin, or how remote or inconsiderable 
might be the nation. By a general provision 
of the act of 1789, the gold coins of all nations, 
which equalled those of England, France, Spain 
and Portugal, in fineness, were to be current at 
89 cents the pennyweight ; and the silver coins of 
all nations, which equalled the Spanish dollar 
in fineness, were to be current at 111 cents the 
ounce. Under these general provisions, a great 
influx of the precious metals took place ; doub- 
loons, guineas, half joes, were the common and 
familiar currency of farmers and laborers, as 
well as of merchants and traders. Every sub- 
stantial citizen then kept in his house a pair 
of small scales to weigh gold, which are now 
used by his posterity to weigh physic. It is a 
great many years— a whole generation has 
grown up — since these scales were used for their 
original purpose ; nor will they ever be needed 
again for that use until the just and wise laws 
of '89 and '90, for the general circulation of 
foreign coins, shall again be put in force. These 
early statutes, added to historical recollections, 
could leave no doubt of the true meaning of the 
constitution, and that foreign coins were intend- 
ed to be for ever current within the United 
States. 

With this obvious meaning of the constitu- 
tion, and the undeniable advantage which re- 
dounded to the United States from the acquisi- 
tion of the precious metals from all foreign na- 
tions, the inquiry naturally presents itself, to 
know for what reason these coins have been 
outlawed by the Congress of the United States, 
and driven from circulation? The inquiring 
mind wishes to know how Congress could be 
brought, in a few short years after the adop- 
tion of the constitution, to contradict that in- 
strument in a vital particular — to repeal the 
nine statutes which they had passed in favor 
of foreign coin— and to illegalize the circula- 
tion of that coin whose value they were to 
regulate, and whose purity to protect ? 

Sir, said Mr. B., I am unwilling to appear 
always in the same train, tracing up all the 
evils of our currency to the same fountain of 



mischiefs — the introduction of the paper sys- 
tem, and the first establishment of a federal 
bank among us. But justice must have its 
sway ; historical truth must take its course ; 
facts must be told ; and authentic proof shall 
supply the place of narrative and assertion. 
We ascend, then, to the year '91— to the exhi- 
bition of the plan for the support of public 
credit — and see in that plan, as one of its fea- 
tures, a proposition for the establishment of a 
national mint ; and in that establishment a 
subsidiary engine for the support of the federal 
bank. We have already seen that in the pro- 
position for the establishment of the mint, gold 
was largely undervalued ; and that this under- 
valuation has driven gold from the country and 
left a vacuum for the circulation of federal bank 
notes ; we are now to see that the same mint 
establishment was to give further aid to the 
circulation of these notes, by excluding foreign 
coins, both gold and silver, from circulation, 
and thus enlarging the vacuum which was to 
be filled by bank paper. This is what we are 
now to see ; and to see it, we will look at the 
plan for the support of public credit, and that 
feature of the plan which proposes the estab- 
lishment of a national mint. 

Mr. B. would remark, that four points were 
presented in this plan : 1, The eventual aboli- 
tion of the currency of foreign coins ; 2. The 
reduction of their value while allowed to circu- 
late ; 3. The substitution of domestic coins ; 
and, 4. The substitution of bank notes in place 
of the uncurrent and undervalued foreign coins. 
Such were the recommendations of Secretary 
Hamilton ; and legislative enactments quickly 
followed to convert his recommendations into 
law. The only power the constitution had 
given to Congress over foreign coins, was a 
power to regulate their value, and to protect 
them from debasement by counterfeiters. It 
was certainly a most strange construction of that 
authority, first, to underrate the value of these 
coins, and next, to prohibit their circulation ! 
Yet both things were done. The mint went in- 
to operation in 1794; foreign coins wore to cease 
to be a legal tender in 1797 j but, at the end of 
that time, the contingencies on wliich the Secre- 
tary calculated, to enable the country to do with- 
out foreign coins, had not occurred; the sub- 
stitutes had not appeared; the mint had nol 
supphed the adequate quantity of domestic coii^ 



446 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



nor had the circulation of bank notes become 
sufficiently familiar to the people to supersede 
gold. The law for the exclusion of foreign coins 
was found to be impracticable; and a suspension 
of it for three years was enacted. At the end of 
this time the evil was found to be as great as 
ever ; and a further suspension of three years 
was made. This third term of three years also 
rolled over, the supply of domestic coins was 
still found to be inadequate, and the people con- 
tinued to be as averse as ever to the bank note 
substitute. A fourth suspension of the law be- 
came necessary, and in 1806 a further suspension 
for three years was made ; after that a fifth, and 
finally a sixth suspension, each for the period 
of three years ; which brought the period for the 
actual and final cessation of the circulation of 
foreicrn coins, to the month of November. 1819. 
From that time there was no further suspension 
of the prohibitory act. An exception was con- 
tinued, and still remains, in ftivor of Spanish 
milled dollars and parts of dollars ; but all other 
foreign coins, even those of Mexico and all the 
South American States, have ceased to be a legal 
tender, and have lost their character of current 
money within the United States. Their value 
is degraded to the mint price of bullion ; and 
thus the constitutional currency becomes an ar- 
ticle of merchandise and exportation. Even the 
Spanish milled dollar, though continued as a 
legal tender, is valued, not as money, but for the 
pure silver in it, and is therefore undervalued 
three or four per cent, and becomes an article of 
merchandise. The Bank of the United States 
has collected and sold 4,450,000 of them. Every 
money dealer is employed in buying, selling, and 
exporting them. The South and West, which 
receives them, is stripped of them. 

Having gone through this narrative of facts, 
and shown the exclusion of foreign coins from 
circulation to be a part of the paper system, and 
intended to facilitate the substitution of a bank 
note currency, ^Ir B. went on to state the in- 
juries resulting from the measure. At the head 
of these injuries he was bound to place the vio- 
lation of the constitution of the United States, 
which clearly intended that foreign coins should 
circulate among us, and which, in giving Con- 
gress authority to regulate their value, and to 
protect them from counterfeiters, could never 
have intended to stop their circulation, and to 
abandon them to debasement. 2. lie denounced 



this exclusion of foreign coins as a fraud, and a 
fraud of the most injurious nature, upon the 
people of the States. The States had surren- 
dered their po^er o\er the coinage to Congress ; 
they made the surrender in language which 
clearly implied thai their currency of foreign 
coins was to be coTitinued to them ; yet that 
currency is suppressed ; a currency of intrinsic 
value, for which they paid interest to nobody, is 
suppressed ; and a currency without intrinsic 
value, a currency of paper subject to every fluc- 
tuation, and for the supply of which corporate 
bodies receive interest, is substituted in its place. 
3. He objected to this suppression as depriving 
the whole Union, and especially the Western 
States, of their due and necessary supply of hard 
money. Since that law took effect, the United 
States had only been a thoroughfare for foreign 
coins to pass through. All that was brought 
mto the country, had to go out of the country. 
It was exported as fast as imported. The cus- 
tom-house books proved this fact. They proved, 
that from 1821 to 1833, the imports of specie 
were $89,428,402 ; the exports, for the same 
time, were §88,821,433 ; lacking but three quar- 
ters of a million of being precisely equal to the 
imports ! Some of this coin was recoined be- 
fore it was exported, a foolish and expensive 
operation on the part of the United States ; but 
the greater part was exported in the same form 
that it was received. INIr. B. had only been able 
to get the exports and imports from 1821 ; if he 
could have obtained those of 1820, and the con- 
cluding part of 1819, when the prohibitory law 
took effect, the amount would have been about 
ninety-six millions of dollars ; the whole of 
which was lost to the country by the prohibi- 
tory law. while much of it would have been 
saved, and retained for home circulation, if it 
had not been for this law. The loss of this 
great sum in specie was an injury to the whole 
Union, but especially to the Western States, 
whose sole resource for coin was from foreign 
countries ; for the coinage of the mmt could 
never flow into that region ; there was nothing 
in the course of trade and exchanges, to carry 
money from the Atlantic States to the West ; 
and the mint, if it coined thousands of millions, 
could not supply them. The taking effect of 
the law in the year 1819, was an aggravation 
of the injury. It was the most unfortunate and 
ruinous of all times for driving specie from tho 



ANNO 1834. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



447 



country. The "Western banks, from their ex- 
ertions to aid the country during the war, had 
stretched their issues to the utmost limit; 
their notes had gone into the land offices ; the 
federal government turned them over to the 
Bank of the United States ; and that bank de- 
manded specie. Thus, the necessity for specie 
was increased at the very moment that the sup- 
ply was diminished ; and the general stoppage 
of the Western banks, was the inevitable and 
natural result of these combined circumstances. 
Having shown the great evils resulting to the 
country from the operation of this law, Mr. B. 
called upon its friends to tell what reason could 
now be given for not repealing it ? He affirmed 
that, of the two causes to which the law owed 
its origin, one had failed in toto, and the other 
had succeeded to a degree to make it the curse 
and the nuisance of the country. One reason 
was to induce an adequate supply of foreign 
coins to be brought to the mint, to be recoin- 
ed ; the other to facilitate the substitution of a 
bank note currency. The foreign coins did not 
go to the mint, those excepted which were im- 
ported in its own neighborhood ; and even these 
were exported nearly as fast as recoined. The 
authority of the director of the mint had al- 
ready been quoted to show that the new coin- 
ed gold was transferred direct from the na- 
tional mint to the packet ships, bound to Eu- 
rope. The custom-house returns showed the 
large exportation of domestic coins. They 
would be found under the head of " Domestic 
Manufactures Exported ; " and made a large 
figure in the list of these exports. In the 
year 1832, it amounted to $2,05^474, and in 
the year 1833, to $1,410,941 ; and everj-- year 
it was more or less ; so that the national mint 
had degenerated into a domestic manufactory 
of gold and silver, for exportation to foreign 
countries. But the coins imported at New Or- 
leans, at Charleston, and at other points re- 
mote from Philadelphia, did not go there to be 
recoined. They were, in part, exported direct 
from the place of import, and in part used by 
the people as current money, in disregard of 
the prohibitory law of 1819. But the greater 
part was exported — for no owner of foreign 
coin could incur the trouble, risk, and ex.pense, 
of sending it some hundred or a thousand miles 
to Philadelphia, to have it recoined ; and then 
incurring the same expense, risk, and trouble 



(lying out of the use of the monej", and receiv- 
ing no interest all the while), of bringing it 
back to be put into circulation ; with the fur- 
ther risk of a deduction for want of standard 
fineness at the mint, when he could sell and 
export it upon the spot. Foreign coins could 
not be recoined, so as to supply the Union, by 
a solitary mint on the Atlantic coast. The 
great West could only be supplied from New 
Orleans. A branch of the mint, placed there, 
could supply the West with domestic coins. 
Mexico, since she became a free country, has 
established seven mints in different places, be- 
cause it was troublesome and expensive to car- 
ry bullion from all parts of the country to be 
coined in the capital ; and when coined there, 
there was nothing in the course of trade to car- 
ry them back into the country ; and the owners 
of it would not be at the expense and trouble 
of carrying it back, and getting it into circula- 
tion, being the exact state of things at present 
in the gold mines of the Southern States. The 
United States, upon the same principles and for 
the same reasons, should establish branches of 
the mint in the South, convenient to the gold 
mine region, and at New Orleans, for the ben- 
efit of that city and the West. Without a 
branch of the mint at New Orleans, the admis- 
sion of foreign coins is indispensable to the 
West ; and thus the interest of that region 
joins itself to the voice of the constitution in 
demanding the immediate repeal of all laws for 
illegalizing the circulation of these coins, and 
for sinking them from their current value as 
money, to their mint value as bullion. The 
design of supplying the mint with foreign coins, 
for recoinage, had then failed ; and in that re- 
spect the exclusion of foreign coins has failed 
in one of its objects — in the other, that of mak- 
ing room for a substitute of bank notes, the 
success of the scheme has been complete, ex- 
cessive, and deplorable. 

Foreign coins were again made a legal tender, 
their value regulated and their importation en- 
couraged, at the expiration of the charter of the 
first Bank of the United States. This continued 
to be the case until after the present Bank of the 
United States was chartered; as soon as that 
event happened, and bank policy again became 
predominant in tlie halls of Congress, the cir- 
culation of foreign coins was again struclc at 
and, in the second year of the existence of the 



448 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



bank, the old act of 1793, for rendering these 
coins uncurrent, was cai ried into final and com- 
plete effect. Since that time, the bank has en- 
joyed all her advantages from this exclusion. 
The expulsion of these coins has created a 
vacuum, to be filled up by her small note cir- 
culation; the traffic and trade in them has 
been as large a source of profit to her as of 
loss to the country. Gold coin she has sold at 
an advance of five or six per cent. ; silver coin 
at about two or three per cent. ; and, her hand 
being in, she made no difference between selling 
domestic coin and foreign coin. Although forbid 
by her charter to deal in coin, she has employed 
her branches to gather ^40,040,000 of coin from 
the States; a large part of which she admits that 
she has sold and transported to Europe. For 
the sale of the foreign coin, she sets up the law- 
yer-like plea, that it is not coin, but bullion ! 
resting the validity of the plea upon English 
statute law ! while, by the constitution of the 
United States, all foreign coins are coin ; while, 
by her own charter, the coins, both gold and 
silver, of Great Britain, France, Spain, and Por- 
tugal, and their dominions, are declared to be 
coin ; and, as such, made receivable in payment 
of the specie proportion of the bank stock — and, 
worse yet! while Spanish dollars, by statute, 
remain the current . coin of the United States, 
the bank admits the sale of 4,450,142 of these 
identical Spanish milled dollars ! 

Mr. B. then took a rapid view of the present 
condition of the statute currency of the United 
States — of that currency which was a legal ten- 
der — that currency with which a debtor had a 
right by law to protect his property from execu- 
tion, and his body from jail, by offering it as a 
matter of right, to his creditor in payment of his 
debt. He stated this statute currency to be : 
1st. Coins from the mint of the United States ; 
2dly. Spanish milled dollars, and the parts of 
such dollars. This was the sum total of the 
statute currency of the United States ; for hap- 
pily no paper of any bank, State or federal, 
could be made a legal tender. This is the sum 
total out of which any man in debt can legally 
pay his debt : and what is his chance for making 
payment out of this brief list? Let us see. 
Coinage from the mint : not a particle of gold, 
nor a single whole dollar to be found ; very few 
half dollars, except in the neighborhood of the 
mint, and in the hands of the Bank of the United 



States and its branches ; the twenty, ten, and 
five cent pieces scarcely seen, except as a cu- 
riosity, in the interior parts of the country. 
So much for the domestic coinage. Now for 
the Spanish milled dollars — how do they stand 
in the United States 1 Nearly as scarce as our 
own dollars ; for, there has been none coined 
since Spain lost her dominion over her colo- 
nies in the New World ; and the coinage of these 
colonies, now independent States, neither is in 
law, nor in fact, Spanish milled. That term 
belongs to the coinage of the Spanish crown, 
with a Spanish king's head upon the face of it ; 
although the coin of the new States, the silver 
dollars of Mexico, Central America, Peru, and 
Chili, are superior to Spanish dollars, in value, 
because they contain more pure silver, still 
they are not a tender ; and all the francs from 
France, in a word, all foreign coin except Span- 
ish milled dollars, the coinage of which has 
ceased, and the country stripped of all that 
were in it, by the Bank of the United States, 
are uncurrent, and illegal as tenders : so that the 
people of the United States are reduced to so 
small a list, and so small a supply of statute 
currency, out of which debts can legally be 
paid, that it may be fairly assumed that the 
whole debtor part of the community lie at the 
mercy of their creditors, to have their bodies 
sent to jail, or their property sold for nothing, 
at any time that their creditors please. To 
such a condition are the free and high-minded 
inhabitants of this country reduced ! and re- 
duced by the power and policy of the first and 
second Banks of the United States, and the 
controlling influence which they have exercised 
over the moneyed system of the Union, from 
the year 1791 down to the present day. 

Mr. B. would conclude what he had to say, 
on this head, with one remark ; it was this : 
that while the gold and silver coin of all the 
monarchs of Europe were excluded from circu- 
lation in the United States, the paper notes of 
their subjects were received as current money. 
The Bank of the United States was, in a great 
degree, a foreign institution. Foreigners held 
a great part of its stock, and may hold it all. 
The paper notes issued by this institution, thus 
composed in great part of the subjects of Euro- 
pean kings, are made legal tenders to the fed- 
eral government, and thus forced into circula- 
! tion among the people ; while the gold and sil 



ANNO 1834. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



449 



yer coin of the kings to which they belong, is 
rejected and exchided, and expelled from the 
country ! He demanded if any thing could 
display the vice and deformity of the paper sys- 
tem in a more revolting and humiliating point 
of view than this single fact ? 

V. Mr. B. expressed his satisfaction at find- 
ing 60 many points of concurrence between his 
sentiments on currency, and those of the sena- 
tor from South Carolina (Mr. Calhoun). Re- 
form of the gold currency — recovery of specie 
— evils of excessive banking — and the eventual 
suppression of small notes — were all points in 
which they agreed, and on which he hoped they 
should be found acting together when these 
measures should be put to the test of legisla- 
tive action. He regretted that he could not 
concur with that senator on the great points to 
which all the others might be found to be subor- 
dinate and accessorial. He alluded to the. pro- 
longed existence of the Bank of the United 
States ! and especially to the practical views 
which that senator had taken of the beneficial 
operation of that institution, first, as the regu- 
lator of the local currencies, and next, as the 
supplier of a general currency to the Union. 
On both these points, he differed — immeasura- 
bly differed — from that senator ; and dropping 
all other views of that bank, he came at once 
to the point which the senator from South Ca- 
rolina marked out as the true and practical 
question of debate ; and would discuss that 
question simply under its relation to the cur- 
rency ; he would view the bank simply as the 
regulator of local currencies and the supplier 
of a national currency, and would give his rea- 
sons for differing — irreconcilably differing — 
from the senator from South Carolina on these 
points. 

Mr. B. took three distinct objections to the 
Bank of the United States, as a regulator of 
currency : 1, that this was a power which be- 
longed to the government of the United States ; 
2, that it could not be delegated; 3, that it 
ought not be delegated to any bank. 

1 . The regulation of the currency of a nation, 
Mr B. said, was one of the highest and most 
delicate acts of sovereign power. It was pre- 
cisely equivalent to the power to create cur- 
rency ; for, a power to make more or less, was, 
in effect, a power to make much or none. It 
was the coining power ; a power that belonged 

Vol. I.— 29 



to the sovereign ; and, where a paper currency 
was tolerated, the coining power was swallow- 
ed up and superseded by the manufactory which 
emitted paper. In the present state of the cui*- 
rency of the United States, the federal bank 
was the mint for issuing money ; the federal 
mint was a manufactory for preparing gold and 
silver for exportation. The States, in the for- 
mation of the constitution, gave the coining 
power to Congress ; with that power, they gave 
authority to regulate the currency of the Union, 
by regulating the value of gold and silver, and 
preventing any thing but metallic money from 
being made a tender in paj^ment of debts. It 
is by the exercise of these powers that the 
federal government is to regulate the currency 
of the Union ; and all the departments of the? 
government are required to act their parts in 
effecting the regulation : the Congress, as the 
department that passes the law ; the President, 
as the authority that recommends it, approves 
it, and sees that it is faithfully executed ; the 
judiciary, as standing between the debtor and 
creditor, and preventing the execution from be- 
ing discharged by any thing but gold and silver; 
and that at the rate which the legislative de- 
partment has fixed. This is the power, and sole 
power, of regulating currency which the federal 
constitution contains ; this power is vested in 
the federal government, not in one department 
of it, but in the joint action of the three de- 
partments ; and while this power is exercised 
by the government, the currency of the whole 
Union will be regulated, and the regulation ef- 
fected according to the intention of the consti- 
tution, by keeping all the local banks up to the 
point of specie payment ; and thereby making 
the value of their notes equivalent to specie. 

2. This great and delicate power, thus involv- 
ing the sacred relations of debtor and creditor, 
and the actual rise or fall in the value of every 
man's property, Mr. B. undertook to affii-m, 
could not be delegated. It was a trust from 
the State governments to the federal govern- 
ment. The State governments divested them- 
selves of this power, and invested the federal 
government with it, and made its exercise de- 
pend upon the three branches of the new gov 
ernment ; and this new government could no 
more delegate it, than they could delegate any 
other great power which they were bound to 
execute themselves. Not a word of this regu 



450 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



lating power, Mr. B. said, was heard of when 
the first bank was chartered, in the year 1791. 
No person whispered such a reason for the es- 
tabhshment of a bank at that time ; the whole 
conception is newfangled — an afterthought — 
growing out of the very evils which the bank 
itself has brought upon the country, and which 
are to be cured by putting down that great 
bank ; after which, the Congress and the judi- 
ciary will easily manage the small banks, by 
holding them up to specie payments, and ex- 
cluding every unsolid note from revenue pay- 
ments. 

3. Mr. B. said that the government ought not 
to delegate this power, if it could. It was too 
great a power to be trusted to any banking 
companj' whatever, or to any authority but the 
highest and most responsible which was known 
to our form of government. The government 
itself ceased to oe independent — it ceases to be 
safe — when the national currency is at the will 
of a company. The government can undertake 
no great enterprise, neither of war nor peace, 
without the consent and co-operation of that 
company ; it cannot count its revenues for six 
months ahead without referring to the action 
of that company — its friendship or its enmity — 
its concurrence or opposition — to see how far 
that company will permit money to be plenty, 
or make it scarce ; how far it will let the mo- 
neyed system go on regularly, or throw it into 
disorder ; how far it will suit the interests, or 
policy, of that company to create a tempest, or 
to suffer a calm, in the moneyed ocean. *rhe 
people are not safe when a companj- has such a 
power. The temptation is too great — the op- 
portunity too easy — to put up and put down 
prices ; to make and break fortunes ; to bring 
the whole community upon its knees to the 
Neptunes who preside over the flux and reflux 
of paper. All property is at their mercy. The 
price of real estate — of every growing crop — 
of every staple article in market — is at their 
command. Stocks are their playthings — their 
gambling theatre — on which they gamble daily, 
with as little secrecy, and as little morahty, 
and far more mischief to fortunes, than common 
gamblers carr}' on their operations. The philo- 
sophic Voltaire, a century ago, from his retreat 
in Ferney, gave a lively description of this oper- 
ation, by which he was made a winner, without 
the trouble of playing. I have a friend, said 



he, who is a director in the Bank of Franca 
who writes to me when they are going to make 
money plenty, and make stocks rise, and then 1 
give orders to my broker to sell ; and he writes 
to me when they are going to make money 
scarce, and make stocks fall, and then I write to 
my broker to buy ; and thus, at a hundred 
leagues from Paris, and without moving from mj^ 
chair, I make money. This, said Mr. B., is the 
operation on stocks to the present day ; and it 
cannot be safe to the holders of stock that there 
should be a moneyed power great enough in this 
country to raise and depress the prices of their 
property at pleasure. The great cities of the 
Union are not safe, while a company, in any 
other city, have power over their moneyed sys- 
tem, and are able, by making money scarce or 
plenty — ^by exciting panics and alarms — to put 
up, or put down, the price of the staple articles 
in which they deal. Every commercial city, for 
its own safety, should have an independent mo- 
neyed system — should be free from the control 
and regulation of a distant, possibly a rival city, 
in the means of carr3^ng on its own trade. 
Thus, the safety of the government, the safety of 
the people, the interest of all owners of property 
— of all growing crops — the holders of all stocks 
— the exporters of all staple articles — require 
that the regulation of the currency should be 
kept out of the hands of a great banking com- 
pany ; that it should remain where the constitu 
tion placed it — in the hands of the federal go- 
vernment — in the hands of their representatives 
who are elected by them, responsible to them, 
may be exchanged by them, who can pass no 
law for regulating currency which will not bear 
upon themselves as well as upon their constitu- 
ents. This is what the safety of the community 
requires ; and, for one, he (Mr. B.) would not, 
if he could, delegate the power of regulating the 
currency of this great country to any banking 
company whatsoever. It was a power too tre- 
mendous to be trusted to a company. The 
States thought it too great a power to be trusted 
to the State governments ; he (^Ir. B.) thought 
so too. The States confided it to the federal go- 
vernment ; he, for one, would confine it to the 
federal government, and would make that go- 
vernment exercise it. Above all, he would not 
confer it upon a bank which was itself above 
regiilation ; and on this point he called upon 
the Senate to recollect the question, apparently 



ANNO 1834. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



451 



trite, but replete with profound sagacity — that 
sagacity which it belongs to great men to pos- 
sess, and to express — which was put to the Con- 
gress of 1816, when this bank charter was under 
discussion, and the regulation of the currency 
was one of the attributes with which it was to 
be invested; he alluded to his late esteemed 
friend (Mr. Randolph), and to his call upon the 
House to tell him who was to bell the cat ? 
That single question contains in its answer, and 
in its allusion, the exact history of the people of 
the United States, and of the Bank of the United 
States, at this day. It was a flash of hghtning 
into the dark vista of futurity, showing in 181 G 
what we all see in 1834. 

Mr. B. took up the second point on which he 
disagreed with the Senator from South Carolina 
[Mr. Calhoun], namely, the capacity of the Bank 
of the United States to supply a general cur- 
rency to the Union. In handling this question 
he would drop all other inquiries — lay aside 
every other objection — overlook every consider- 
ation of the constitutionality and expediency of 
the bank, and confine himself to the strict ques- 
tion of its ability to diffuse and retain in circu- 
lation a paper currency over this extended Union. 
He would come to the question as a banker 
would come to it at his table, or a merchant in 
his counting-room, looking to the mere operation 
of a money system. It was a question for wise 
men to think of, and for abler men than himself 
to discuss. It involved the theory and the sci- 
ence of banking — Mr. B. would say the philoso- 
phy of banking, if such a term could be applied 
to a moneyed system. It was a question to be 
studied as the philosopher studies the laws which 
govern the material world — as he would study 
the laws of gravitation and attraction which 
govern the movements of the planets, or draw 
the waters of the mountains to the level of the 
ocean. The moneyed system, said Mr. B., has its 
laws of attraction and gravitation — of repulsion 
and adhesion ; and no man may be permitted to 
indulge the hope of establishing a moneyed sys- 
tem contrary to its own laws. The genius of 
man has not yet devised a bank — the historic 
page is yet to be written which tells of a bank 
— which has diffused over an extensive country, 
and retained in circulation, a general paper cur- 
rency. England is too small a theatre for a 
complete example ; but even there the impossi- 
bility is confessed, and has been confessed for a 



century. The Bank of England, in her greatest 
day of pre-eminence, could not furnish a general 
currency for England alone — a territory not 
larger than Virginia. The country banks fur- 
nished the local paper currenc}^, and still furnish 
it as far as it is used. They carried on their 
banking upon Bank of England notes, until the 
gold currency was restored; and local paper 
formed the mass of local circulation. The notes 
of the Bank of England flowed to the great 
commercial capitals, and made but brief sojourn 
in the counties. But England is not a fair ex- 
ample for the United States ; it is too small ; a 
fairer example is to be found nearer home, in our 
own country, and in this very Bank of the United 
States which is now existing, and in favor of 
which the function of supplying a general cur- 
rency to this extended confederacy is claimed. 
We have the experiment of this bank, not once, 
but twice made ; and each experiment proves 
the truth of the laws which govern the system. 
The theory of bank circulation, over an extended 
territory, is this, that you may put out as many 
notes as you may in any one place, they will 
immediately fall into the track of commerce — 
into the current of trade — into the course of ex- 
change — and follow that current wherever it 
leads. In these United States the current sets 
from every part of the interior, and especially 
from the South and West into the Northeast — 
into the four commercial cities north of the 
Potomac ; Baltimore, Philadelphia, New- York, 
and Boston : and all the bank notes which will 
pass for money in those places, fall into the cur- 
rent which sets in that direction. When there, 
there is nothing in the course of trade to bring 
them back. There is no reflux in that current ! 
It is a trade-wind which blows twelve months in 
the year in the same direction. This is the 
theory of bank circulation over extended terri- 
tory ; and the history of the present bank is an 
exemplification of the truth of that tlicory. 
Listen to IMr. Cheves. Read his report made to 
the stockholders at their triennial meeting in 
1822. He stated this law of circulation, and 
explained the inevitable tendency of the branch 
bank notes to flow to the Northeast ; the impose 
sibility of preventing it ; and the resolution which 
he had taken and executed, to close all the 
Southern and Western branches, and prevent 
them from issuing any more notes. Even while 
issuing their own notes, they had so far forgot 



452 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



their charter as to carry on operations, in part, 
upon the notes of the local banks — having col- 
lected those notes in great quantity, and loaned 
them out. This was reported by the investiga- 
ting committee of 1819, and made one of the 
charges of misconduct against the bank at that 
time. To counteract this tendency, the bank 
applied to Congress fur leave to issue their bank 
notes on terms which would have made them a 
mere local currency. Congress refused it ; but 
the bank is ndw attempting to do it herself, by 
refusing to take the notes received in payment 
of the federal revenue, and sending it back to be 
paid where issued. Such was the history of the 
branch bank notes, and which caused that cur- 
rency to disappear from all the interior, and from 
the whole South and West, so soon after the 
bank got into operation. The attempt to keep 
out branch notes, or to send the notes of the 
mother bank to any distance, being found im- 
practicalile, there was no branch currency of 
any kind in circulation for a period of eight or 
nine j'^ears, until the year 1827, when the branch 
checks were invented,, to perform the miracle 
which notes could not. Mr. B. would say no- 
thing about the legality of that invention ; he 
would now treat them as a legal issue under the 
charter ; and in that most favorable point of 
view for them, he would show that these branch 
checks were nothing but a quack remedy — an 
empirical contrivance — which made things worse. 
By their nature they were as strongl}" attracted 
to the Northeast as the branch notes had been ; 
by their terms they were still more strongly 
attracted, for they bore Philadelphia on their 
face ! they were payable at the mother bank ! 
and, of course, would naturally flow to that place 
for use or payment. This was their destiny, 
and most punctually did they fulfil it. Never 
did the trade-winds blow more trul}- — never did 
the gulf stream flow more regularly — than those 
checks flowed to the Northeast ! The avera"-e 
of four years next ensuing the invention of these 
checks, which went to the mother bank, or to 
the Atlantic branches north of the Potomac, in- 
cluding the branch notes which flowed with them, 
was about nineteen millions of dollars per an- 
num ! Mr. B. then exhibited a table to prove 
what he alleged, and from which it appeared that 
the flow of the branch paper to the Northeast 
was as regular and uniform as an operation of 
nature ; that each city according to its commer- 



cial importance, received a greater or less pro- 
portion of this inland paper gulf stream ; and 
that the annual variation was so slight as only 
to prove the regularity of the laws by which it 
was governed. The following is the table which 
he exhibited. It was one of the tabular state- 
ments obtained by the investigating committee 
in 1832: 

Amount of Brunch Bank Paper received at— 

1828. 1829. 1830. 1881. 

1. New- York, . 11,938,350 11,294,960 9,168,370 12,284,820 

2. Philadelphia, 4,458,150 4,106.935 4,579,725 5,398,800 
8. Boston, . . 1,010,730 1,844.170 1,794,750 1,816,480 
4. Baltimore, . 1,437,100 1,420,300 1,376,820 1,588,680 

18,888,830 18,666,475 16,919,160 21,092,230 

After exhibiting this table, and taking it for 
complete proof of the truth of the theory which 
he had laid down, and that it demonstrated the 
impossibility of keeping up a circulation of the 
United States Bank paper in the remote and 
interior parts of the Union, Mr. B. went on to 
say that the story was yet but half told — the 
mischief of this systematic flow of national cur- 
rency to the Northeast, was but half disclosed ; 
another curtain was yet to be lifted — another 
vista was yet to be opened — and the effect of 
the system upon the metallic currency of the 
States was to be shown to the people and the 
States. This view would show, that as fast as 
the checks or notes of any branch were taken up 
at the mother bank, or at the branches north of 
the Potomac, an account was opened against the 
branch from which they came. The branch was 
charged with the amount of the notes or checks 
taken up ; and periodically served with a copy 
of the account, and commanded to send on specie 
or bills af exchange to redeem them. When 
redeemed, they were remitted to the branch from 
which they came; while on the road they were 
called notes in transitu ; and when arrived they 
were put into circulation again at that place- 
fell into the current immediately, which carried 
them back to the Northeast — there taken up 
again, charged to the branch — the branch re- 
quired to redeem them again with specie or bills 
of exchange ; and then returned to her, to be 
again put into circulation, and to undergo again 
and again, and until the branch could no longer 
redeem them, the endless process of flowing to 
the Northeast. The result of the whole was, is, 
and for ever will be, that the branch will have 
to redeem its circulation till redemption is ini- 



ANNO 1834. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



453 



possible ; until it has exhausted the country of 
its specie ; and then the country in which the 
branch is situated is worse off than before she 
had a branch ; for she had neither notes nor specie 
left. ]\Ir. B. said that this was too important a 
view of the case to be rested on argument and 
assertion alone ; it required evidence to vanquish 
incredulity, and to prove it up ; and that evi- 
dence was at hand. He then referred to two 
tables to show the amount of hard money which 
the mother bank, under the operation of this 
system, had drawn from the States in which her 
branches wex'e situated. All the tables were up 
to the year 1831, the period to which the last 
investigating committee had brought up their 
inquiries. One of these statements showed the 
amount abstracted from the whole Union; it 
was $40,040,622 20; another showed the amount 
taken from the Southern and Western States ; 
it was $22,523,387 94; another showed the 
amount taken from the branch at New Orleans ; 
it was $12,815,798 10. Such, said Mr. B., has 
been the result of the experiment to diffuse a 
national paper currency over this extended 
Union. Twice in eighteen years it has totally 
failed, leaving the country exhausted of its spe- 
cie, and destitute of paper. This was proof 
enough, but there was still another mode of 
proving the same thing; it was' the fact of 
the present amount of United States Bank notes 
in circulation. Mr. B. had heard with pain the 
assertion made in so many memorials presented 
to the Senate, that there was a great scarcity of 
currency ; that the Bank of the United States 
had been obliged to contract her circulation in 
consequence of the removal of the deposits, and 
that her notes had become so scarce that none 
could be found; and strongly contrasting the 
present dearth which now prevails with the 
abundant plenty of these notes which reigned 
over a happy land before that fatal measure came 
to blast a state of unparalleled prosperity. The 
fact was, Mr. B. said, that the actual circulation 
of the bank is greater now than it was before 
the removal of the deposits ; greater than it has 
been in any month but one for upwards of a 
year past. The discounts were diminished, he 
said, but the circulation was increased. 

Mr. B. then exhibited a table of the actual 
eirculation of the Bank of the United States for 
the whole year 1833, and for the two past months 
of the present year ; and stated it to be taken 



from the monthly statements of the bank, as 
printed and laid upon the tables of members. It 
was the net circulation — the quantity of notes 
and checks actually out — excluding all that were 
on the road returning to the branch banks, 
called notes in transitu, aud which would not 
be counted till again issued by the branch to 
which they were returned. 

TTie JhUoiijing is the table : 



January, 1833, 

February, 

March, 

April, 

May, 

June, 

July, 

August, 

September, 

October, 

November, 

December, 

January, 1834, 

February, " 



u 
u 
a 
n 
a 
a 
a 
a 
a 
u 
u 



, $17,666,444 

. 18,384,050 
. 18,033,205 

. 18,384,075 
. 18,991,200 

. 19,366,555 
, 18,890,505 

. 18,413,287 
19,128,189 

. 18,518,000 
18,650,912 

. not found. 
, 19,208,375 

. 19,260,472 



By comparing the circulation of each month, 
as exhibited on this table, Mr. B. said, it would 
be seen that the quantity of United States Bank 
notes now in circulation is three quarters of a 
million greater than it was in October last, and 
a million and a half greater than it was in Jan- 
uary, 1833. How, then, are we to account for 
this cry of no money, in which so many respec- 
table men join ? It is in the single fact of their 
flow to the Northeast. The pigeons, which 
lately obscured the air with their numbers, 
have all taken their flight to the North ! But 
pigeons will return of themselves, whereas these 
bank notes will never return till they are pur- 
chased with gold and silver, and brought back. 
Mr. B. then alluded to a petition from a meet- 
ing in his native State, North Carolina, and in 
which one of his esteemed friends (Mr. Carson) 
late a member of the House of Eepresentatives, 
was a principal actor, and which stated the ab- 
solute disappearance of United States Bank 
notes from all that region of country. Certain- 
ly the petition was true in that statement ; but 
it is equally true that it was mistaken in sup- 
posing that the circulation of the bank was di- 
minished. The table which he had read had 
shown the contrary ; it showed an increase, in- 



454 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



stead of a diminution, of the circulation. The 
only difTcrence was that it had all left that part 
of the country, and that it would do for ever ! 
If a hundred millions of United States Bank 
notes were carried to the upper parts of North 
Carolina, and put into circulation, it would he 
but a short time before the whole would have 
fallen into the current which sweeps the paper 
of that bank to the Northeast. Mr. B. said 
there were four other classes of proof which he 
could bring in, but it would be a consumption 
of time, and a work of supererogation. He 
would not detail them, but state their heads : 

1. One was the innumerable orders which the 
mother bank had forwarded to her branches to 
send on specie and bills of exchange to redeem 
their circulation — to pour in reinforcements to 
the points to which their circulation tends ; 

2. Another was in the examination of Mr. Bid- 
die, president of the bank, b}"- the investigating 
committee, in 1832, in which this absorbing 
tendency of the branch paper to flow to the 
Northeast was fully charged and admitted ; 

3. A third was in the monthly statement of the 
notes in transitu, which amount to an average 
of four miUions and a half for the last twelve 
months, making fifty millions for the year ; and 
which consist, by far the greater part, of branch 
notes and checks redeemed in the Northeast, 
purchased back by the branches, and on their 
way back to the place from which they issued ; 
and, 4. The last class of proof was in the fact, 
that the branches north of the Potomac, being 
unable or unwilling to redeem these notes any 
longer, actually ceased to redeem them last fall, 
even when taken in revenue payment to the 
United States, until coerced by the Secretary of 
the Treasury; and that they will not be re- 
deemed for individuals now, and are actually 
degenerating into a mere local cun-ency. Upon 
these proofs and ajguments, Mr. B. rested liis 
case, and held it to be fully established, first, by 
argument, founded in the nature of bank circu- 
lation over an extended tcrritoiy ; and secondly, 
by proof, derived from the operation of the pre- 
sent bank of the United States, that neither the 
present bank, nor any one that the wisdom of 
man can devise, can ever succeed in diffusing a 
general paper circulation over the States of this 
Union. 

YI. Dropping every other objection to the 
bank — looking at it purely and simply as a sup- 



plier of national currency — he, ]Mr. B., could not 
consent to prolong the existence of the present 
bank. Certainly a profuse issue of paper at all 
points — an additional circulation if even a fe\* 
millions poured out at the destitute points- 
would make cuirency plenty for a little while, 
but for a httle while only. Nothing permanent 
would result from such a measure. On the con- 
trary, in one or two years, the destitution and 
distress would be greater than it now is. At 
the same time, it is completely in the power of 
the bank, at this moment, to grant relief, full, 
adequate, instantaneous relief! In making this 
assertion, Mr B. meant to prove it ; and to prove 
it, he meant to do it in a way that it should 
reach the understanding of every candid and 
impartial friend that the bank possessed ; for he 
meant to discard and drop from the inquiry, all 
his own views upon the subject ; to leave out of 
view every statement made, and every opinion 
entertained by himself, and his friends, and pro- 
ceeed to the inquiry upon the evidence of the 
bank alone — upon that evidence which flowed 
from the bank directory itself, and from the 
most zealous, and best informed of its friends on 
this floor. Mr. B. assumed that a mere cessa- 
tion to curtail discounts, at this time, would 
be a relief— that it would be the salvation 
of those who were pressed — and put an end to 
the cry of distress ; he averred that this curtail- 
ment must now cease, or the bank must find a 
new reason for carrying it on ; for the old reason 
is exhausted, and cannot apply. Mr. B. then 
took two distinct views to sustain his position ; 
one founded in the actual conduct and present 
condition of the bank itself, and the other in a 
comparative view of the conduct and condition 
of the foTOier Bank of the United States, at the 
approaching period of its dissolution. 

I. As to the conduct and condition of the 
present bank. 

Mr. B. appealed to the knowledge of all pre- 
sent for the accuracy of his assertion, when he 
said that the bank had now reduced her dis- 
counts, dollar for dollar, to the amoimt of pub- 
lic deposits withdrawn. The adversaries of the 
bank said the reduction was much larger than 
the abstraction ; but he dropped that, and con- 
fined himself strictly to the admissions and de- 
clarations of the bank itself. Taking then the 
fact to be, as the bank alleged it to be, that she 
had merely brought down her business in pro 



ANNO 1834. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



455 



portion to the capital taken from her, it followed 
of course that there was no reason for reducing 
her business any lower. Her relative position 
— her actual strength — was the same now that 
it was before the removal ; and the old reason 
could not be available for the reduction of ano- 
ther dollar. Next, as to her condition. Mr. B. 
undertook to afBrin, and would quickly prove, 
that the general condition of the bank was bet- 
ter now than it had been for j-ears past ; and 
that the bank was better able to make loans, or 
to increase her circulation, than she was in any 
of those past periods in which she was so lav- 
ishly accommodating the public. For the 
proof of this, Mv. B. had recourse to her specie 
fund, always the true test of a bank's ability, 
and showed it to be greater now than it had 
been for, two years past, when her loans and cir- 
culation were so much greater than they are 
now. He took the month of May, 1832, when 
the whole amount of specie on hand was ^7,890, 
347 59 ; when the net amount of notes in cir- 
culation was $21,044,415 ; and when the total 
discounts were $70,428,070 72 : and then con- 
trasted it with the condition of the bank at 
this time, that is to say, in the month of Febru- 
ary last, when the last return was made ; the 
items stands thus : specie, $10,523,385 69 ; 
net amount of notes in circulation, $19,260,472; 
total discounts, $54,842,973 64. From this 
view of figures, taken from the oflScial bank re- 
turns, from which it appeared that the specie in 
the bank was nearly three milhons greater than 
it was in May, 1832, her net circulation nearly 
two millions less, and her loans and discounts 
u pwards of fifteen millions less ; Mr. B. would 
submit it to all candid men to say whether the 
bank is not more able to accommodate the com- 
munity now than she was then ? At all events, 
he would demand if she was not now able to 
cease pressing them ? 

II. As to the comparative condition and con- 
duct of the first Bank K the United States at 
the period of its approacning dissolution. 

Mr. B. took the condition of the bank from 
Ml. Gallatin's statement of its affairs to Con- 
gress, made in January, 1811, just three months 
before the charter expired; and which showed 
the discounts and loans of the bank to be $14 
578.294 25, her capital being $10,000,000; so 
that the amount of her loans, three months be- 
fore her dissolution, was nearly in proportion — 



near enough for all practical news — to the pro- 
portion which the present loans of the Bank of 
the United States bear to its capital of thirty- 
five millions. Fifty per cent, upon the formei 
would give fifteen miihous ; fifty per cent, upon 
the latter would give fifty-two millions and a 
half. To make the relative condition of the 
two banks precisely equal, it will be sufiicient 
that the loans and discounts of the present bank 
shall be reduced to fifty-two millions by the 
month of January, 1836 ; that is to say, it need 
not make any further sensible reduction of its 
loans for nearly two years to come. Thus, the 
mere imitation of the conduct of the old bank 
wil be a relief to the community. A mere ces- 
sation to curtail, will put an end to the distress, 
and let the country go on, quietly and regularly, 
in its moneyed operations. If the bank will 
not do this — if it will go on to curtail — it is 
bound to give some new reason to the country. 
The old reason, of the removal of the deposits, 
will no longer answer. !Mr. B. had no faith in 
that reason from the beginning, but he was now 
taking the bank upon her o^vn evidence, and 
trying her upon her own reasons, and he held 
it to be impossible for her to go on without the 
production of a reason. The hostility of the 
government — rather an incomprehensible, and 
altogether a gratuitous reason, fi-om the begin- 
ning — will no longer answer. The government 
in 1811 was as hostile to the old bank, as the 
government now is to this one ; and rather more 
so. Both Houses of Congress were then hos- 
tile to it, and hostile unto death ! For they let 
it die ! die on the day appointed by law for its 
death, without pity, without remorse, without 
the reprieve of one da}-. The government can 
do no worse now. The Secretary of the Trea- 
sury has removed the deposits; and that ac- 
count is settled by the reduction of an equal 
amount of loans and discounts. The rest de- 
pends upon the government ; and the hostility 
of the government cannot go further than to 
kill the bank, and cannot kill it more dead than 
the old bank was killed in 1811. ]\Ir. B. had a 
further comparison to draw between the conduct 
of the old bank, and the present one. The old 
bank permitted her discounts to remain at their 
maximum to the very end of her charter ; she 
discounted sixty days' paper up to the last day of 
her existence ; while this bank has commenced u 
furious curtailment two years and a half be 



456 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



fore the cspiration of her charter. Again: the 
old bank had not an hour, as a corporation, to 
wind lip her business after the end of her char- 
ter ; this bank has the use of all her corporate 
faculties, for that purpose, for t^vo years after 
the end of her charter. Again : the present 
bank pretends that she will have to collect the 
whole of her debts within the period limited for 
winding up her affairs ; the old bank took up- 
wards of twelve years after the expiration of her 
charter, to collect hers ! She created a trust ; 
she appointed trustees ; all the debts and credits 
were put into their hands, the trustees proceed- 
ed like an}"- other collectors, giving time to all 
debtors who would secure the debt, pay in- 
terest punctuallj-, and discharge the principal 
by instalments. This is what the old bank 
did ; and she did not close her affairs until the 
IGth of June, in the year 1823. The whole 
operation was conducted so gently, that the 
public knew nothing about it. The cotempora- 
ries of the dissolution of the bank, knew nothing 
about its dissolution. And this is what the 
present bank may do, if it pleases. That it has 
not done so — ^that it is now grinding the com- 
munity, and threatening to grind them still 
harder, is a proof of the dangerous nature of a 
great moneyed power ; and should be a warning 
to the people who now behold its conduct — 
who feel its gripe, and hear its threat — never to 
suffer the existence of such another power in 
our free and happy land. 

YII. Mr. B. deprecated the spirit which seem- 
ed to have broken out against State banks ; it 
was a spirit which augured badly for the rights 
of the States. Those banks were created by 
the States ; and the works of the States ought 
to be respected ; the stock in those banks was 
held by American citizens, and ought not to be 
injuriously assailed to give value to stock held 
in the federal bank by foreigners and aliens. 
The verj- mode of carrying on the warfare 
against State banks, has itself been an injury, 
and a just cause of complaint. Some of the 
most inconsiderable have been picked out — 
their affairs presented in the most unfavorable 
light; and then held forth as a fair sample of the 
whole. How much more easy would it have 
been to have acted a more grateful, and a more 
equitable part ! a part more jdst to the State 
governments which created those banks, and 
the American citizens who held stock in them ! 



Instead of hunting out for remote and incon« 
siderable banks, and instituting a most dispar- 
aging scrutiny into their small affairs, and mak- 
ing this high Senate the conspicuous theatre for 
the exhibition of their insignificance, why not 
take the higher order of the State banks ? — 
those whose names and characters are well 
known? whose stock upon the exchange of 
London and New-York, is superior to that of 
the United States Bank ? whose individual de- 
posits are greater than those of the rival branch- 
es of the Bank of the United States, seated in 
their neighborhood? whose bills of exchange 
are as eagerly sought for as those of the federal 
bank ? which have reduced exchange below the 
rates of the federal bank? and which, in every 
particular that tries the credit, is superior to 
the one which is receiving so much. homage 
and admiration ? Mr. B. said there were plenty 
of such State banks as he had described ; they 
were to be found in every principal city, from 
New Orleans to Boston. Some of them luid been 
selected for deposit banks, others not; but 
there was no difficulty in making a selection of 
an ample number. 

This spirit of hostility to the State banks, 
Mr. B. said, was of recent origin, and seemed U 
keep pace with the spirit of attack u])on the 
political rights of the States. When the first 
federal bank was created, in the year 1791, it 
was not even made, by its charter, a place of 
deposit for the public moneys. Mr. Jefferson 
preferred the State banks at that time; and so 
declared himself in his cabinet opinion to Pre- 
sident Washington. Mr. Gallatin deposited a 
part of the pviblic moneys in the State banks 
during the whole of the long period that he was 
at the head of the treasury. At the dissolution 
of the first Bank of the United States, he turned 
over all the public moneys which he held in de- 
posit to these banks, taking their obligation to 
pay out all the treasury warrants drawn upon 
them in gold and silver, if desired by the hold- 
er. When the present bank was chartered, the 
State banks stood upon an equal footing with 
the federal bank, and were placed upon an equal- 
ity with it as banks of deposit, in the very char- 
ter which created the federal bank. Mr. B. was 
alluding to the 14th fundamental article of the 
constitution of the bank — the article which pro 
vided for the establishment of branches — and 
which presented an ai'gumeut in justification oj 



ANNO 1834. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



457 



the removal of the deposits which the adversa- 
ries of that measure most pertinaciously decline 
to answer. The government wanted banks of 
deposit, not of circulation ; and by that article, 
the State banks are made just as much banks 
of deposit for the United States as the Bank of 
the United States is. They are put upon exact 
equality, so far as the federal government is con- 
cerned; for she stipulates but for one single 
branch of the United States Bank, and that to 
be placed at Washington city. As for all other 
branches, their establishment was made to de- 
pend — not on the will, or power, of the federal 
government — not on any supposed or real ne- 
cessity on her part to have the use of such 
branches — but upon contingencies, over which 
she had no control ; contingencies depending, 
one upon the mere calculation of profit and loss 
by the bank itself, the other upon the subscrip- 
tions of stock within a State, and the applica- 
tion of its legislature. In these contingencies, 
namely, if the Bank of the United States thought 
it to her interest to establish branches in 
the States, she might do it ; or, if 2,000 shares 
of stock was subscribed for in a State, and there- 
upon an application was made by the State le- 
gislature for the institution of a branch, then its 
establishment within the State became obliga- 
tory upon the bank. In neither contingency 
had the will, the power, or the necessities of 
the federal government, the least weight, con- 
cern, or consideration, in the establishment of 
the branch. If not established, and so far as 
the government is concerned, it might not be, 
then the State banks, selected by the United 
States Bank, and approved by the Secretary of 
the Treasury, were to be the banks of deposit 
for the federal moneys. This was an argument, 
Mr. B. said, in justification of the removal of the 
deposits, and in favor of the use of the State 
banks which gentlemen on the opposite side of 
the question — gentlemen who take so much 
pains to decry State banks — have been careful 
not to answer. 

The evils of a small paper circulation, he con- 
sidered among the greatest grievances that could 
afflict a community. The evils were innumer- 
able, and fell almost exclusively upon those who 
were least able to bear them, or to guard against 
them. If a bank stops payment, the holders of 
the small notes, who are usually the working 
part of the community, are the last to find it 



out, and the first to suffer. If counterfeiting 
is perpetrated, it is chiefly the small notes 
which are selected for imitation, because they 
are most current among those who know the 
least about notes, and who are most easily mada 
the dupes of imposition, and the victims of 
fraud. As the expeller of hard money, small 
notes were the bane and curse of a country. A 
nation is scarce, or abundant, in hard money, 
precisely in the degree in which it tolerates the 
lower denominations of bank notes. France 
tolei-ates no note less than ^100; and has a gold 
and silver circulation of 350 millions of dollars. 
England tolerates no note of less than ^25 ; and 
has a gold and silver circulation of 130 millions 
of dollars : in the United States, where ^5 is 
the minimum size of the federal bank notes, the 
whole specie circulation, including what is in 
the banks, does not amount to thirty millions 
of dollars. To increase the quantity of hard 
money in the United States, and to supply the 
body of the people with an adequate specie cur- 
rency to serve for their daily wants, and ordi- 
nary transactions, the bank note circulation be- 
low twenty dollars, ought to be suppressed. If 
Congress could pass a law to that effect, it ought 
to bed one ; but it cannot pass such a law : it has 
no constitutional power to pass it. Congress 
can, however, do something else, which will, in 
time, effectually put down such a currency. It 
can discard it, and disparage it. It can reject 
it from all federal payments. It can reject the 
whole circulation of any bank that will continue 
to issue small notes. Their rejection from all 
federal payments, would check their currency, 
and confine the orbit of their circulation to the 
immediate neighborhood of the is^ suing bank. 
The bank itself would find butlitt'.e profit from 
issuing them — public sentiment would come to 
the aid of federal policy. The people of the 
States, when countenanced and sustained bv the 
federal government, would indulge their natural 
antipathy and honest detestation of a small 
paper currency. They would make war upon 
all small notes. The State legislatures would 
be under the control of the people ; and the States 
that should first have the wisdom to limit their 
paper circulation to a minimum of twenty dol- 
lar bills, would immediately fill up with gold and 
silver. The common currency would be entirely 
metallic; and there would be abroad and solid 
basis for a superstructure of large notes ; while 



458 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



the States ■which continued to tolerate the 
small notes, would be afflicted with all the 
evils of a most pestilential part of the paper 
system, — small notes, part counterfeit, part un- 
currcnt, half worn out ; and all incapable of be- 
ing used -with any regard to a beneficial econo- 
my. Mr. B. ^vent on to depict the evils of a 
small note currency, which he looked upon as 
the bane and curse of the laboring part of the 
community, and the reproach and opprobrium 
of any government that tolerated it. He said 
that the government which suffered its curren- 
cy to fall into such a state that the fanner, the 
artisan, the market man, the day laborer, and 
the hired servant, could only be paid in small 
bank notes, was a government which abdicated 
one of its most sacred duties ; and became an 
accomplice on the part of the strong in the op- 
pression of the weak. 

Mr. B. placed great reliance upon the restora- 
tion of the gold currency for putting down a 
small note circulation. No man would choose 
to carry a bundle of small bank notes in his 
pocket, even new and clean ones, much less old, 
ragged, and filthy ones, when he could get gold 
in their place. A limitation upon the receiva- 
bility of these notes, in payment of federal dues, 
would complete their suppression. INIr. B. did 
not aspire to the fclicit}^ of seeing as fine a cur- 
rency in the United States as there is in France, 
where there was no bank note under five hun- 
dred francs, and where there was a gold and sil- 
ver circulation at the rate of eleven dollars a 
head for each man, woman, and child, in the king- 
dom, namely, three hundred and fifty millions 
of dollars for a population of thirty -two millions 
of souls; but he did aspire to the comparative 
happiness of seeing as good currency established 
for ourselves, by ourselves, as our old fellow- 
subjects— the people of old England— now pos- 
sess from their king, lords, and commons. They 
— he spoke of England proper — had no bank 
note less than five pounds sterling, and they 
possessed a specie circulation (of which three- 
fourths was gold) at the rate of about nine dol- 
lars a head, men, women, children (even pau- 
pers) included ; namely, about one hundred and 
thirty millions for a population of fourteen mil- 
lions, lie, Mr. B., must be allowed to aspire to 
the happiness of possessing, and in his sphere 
to labor to acquire, as good a circulation as these 
English have ; and that would be an immea- 



surable improvement upon our present condi- 
tion. We have local bank notes of one, two, 
three, four dollars ; we have federal bank notes 
of five and ten dollars — the notes of those Eng- 
lish who are using gold at home while we are 
using their paper here : — we have not a particl* 
of gold, and not more silver than at the rate oi 
about two dollars a head, men, women, cliildren 
(even slaves) included ; namely, about thirty 
millions of silver for a population of thirteen 
millions. Mr. B. believed there was not upon 
the fiice of the earth, a country whose actual 
currency was in a more deplorable condition 
than that of the United States was at present ; 
the bitter fruit of that fatal paper system which 
was brought upon us, with the establishment ol 
the first Bank of the United States in 1791, and 
which will be continued upon us until the cita- 
del of that system — the Bastile of paper money, 
the present Bank of the United States, — shall 
cease to exist. 

Mr. B. said, that he was not the organ of the 
President on this floor — he had no authority 
from the President to speak his sentiments to 
the Senate. Even if he knew them, it would 
be unparliamentary, and irregular, to state them. 
There was a way for the Senate to communicate 
with the President, which was too v/ell known 
to every gentleman to require any mdication 
from him. But he might be pfcrmitted to sug- 
gest — in the absence of all regular information 
— that if any Senator wished to understand, and 
to comment upon, the President's opinions on 
currency, he might, perhaps, come something 
nearer to the mark, by commenting on what he 
(Mr. B.) had been saying, than by having re- 
course to the town meeting reports of inimical 
bank committees. 



GHAPTEE CVI. 

ATTEMPTED INVESTIGATION OF THE BANK OF 
THE UNITED STATES. 

The House of Representatives had appointed 
a select committee of its members to investigate 
the affairs of the Bank of the United States — 
seven in number, and consisting of Mr. Francis 
Thomas, of IMaryland ; Mr. Edward Everett, of 
Massachusetts; Mr. Henry A. Muhleubei'g, ol 



ANNO 1834. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



459 



Pennsylvania : Mr. John Y. Mason, of Virginia ; 
Mr. W. W. Ellsworth, of Connecticut; Mr. 
Abijah jSIann, Jr. of New-York ; Mr. Robert T. 
Lytle, of Ohio. The authority under which the 
committee acted, required them to ascertain : 1. 
The causes of the commercial embarrassment, 
and the public distress complained of in the nu- 
merous distress memorials presented to the two 
Houses during the session ; and whether the 
bank had been any way instrumental, through 
its management or money, in producing the dis- 
tress and embarrassment, of which so much com- 
plaint was made. 2. To inquire whether the 
charter of the bank had been violated ; and what 
corruptions and abuses, if any, had existed in its 
management. 3. To inquire whether the bank 
had used its corporate power, or money, to con- 
trol the press, to interpose in politics, or to in- 
fluence elections. The authority conferred upon 
the committee was ample for the execution of 
these inquiries. It was authorized to send for 
persons and papers ; to summon and examine 
witnesses on oath ; to visit, if necessary, the 
principal bank, and its branches ; to inspect the 
books, correspondence and accounts of the bank, 
and other papers connected with its manage- 
ment. The right of the House to make this 
investigation was two-fold: first, under the 
twenty-third article of the charter: secondly^ 
as the founder of the corporation; to whom 
belongs, in law language, the right to "visit" 
the institution it has founded; which "visit- 
ing" is for examination — as a bishop "vis- 
its " his diocese — a superintendent " visits " the 
works and persons under his care ; not to see 
them, but to examine into their management 
and condition. There was also, a third right of 
examination, resulting from the act of the cor- 
poration; it was again soliciting a re-charter, 
and was bound to show that the corporators 
had used their actual charter fairly and legally 
before it asked for another. And,fourlhly, there 
was a further right of investigation, still result- 
ing from its conduct. It denied all the accusa- 
tions brought against it by the government di- 
rectors, and brought before Congress by the 
Secretary of the Treasury ; and joined issue upon 
those accusations in a memorial addressed to 
the two Houses of Congress. To refuse cxamma- 
tion under these circumstances would be shrink- 
ing from the issue which itself had joined. The 
committee proceeded to Philadelphia, and soon 



found that the bank did not mean to submit to 
an examination. Captious and special pleading 
objections were made at every step, until at- 
tempts on one side and objections on the other 
ended in a total refusal to submit their books 
for inspection, or themselves for an examination. 
The directoi's had appointed a company of seven 
to meet the committee of the House — a proce- 
dure unwarranted by any right or usage, and 
offensive in its pretentious equahty ; but to 
which the committee consented, at first, from 
a desire to do nothing to balk the examination. 
That corporation committee was to sit with 
them, in the room in the bank assigned for the 
examination ; and took care always to pre- 
occupy it before the House committee arrived ; 
and to act as if at home, receiving guests. The 
committee then took a room in a hotel, and 
asked to have the bank books sent to them ; 
which was refused. They then desired to have 
the books subjected to their inspection in the 
bank itself; in which request they were baffled, 
and defeated. The bank committee required 
written specification of their pomts of inquiry, 
either in examining a book, or asking a ques- 
tion — that it might judge its legality ; which 
the}'- confined to mere breaches of the charter. 
And when the directors were summoned to an- 
swer questions, they refused to be sworn, and 
excused themselves on the ground of being par- 
ties to the proceeding. Some passages from the 
committee's report will show to what extent 
this higgling and contumacy was carried by this 
corporation — deriving its existence from Con- 
gress, and endeavoring to force a renewed char- 
ter from it while refusing to show how it had 
used the first one. Thus : 

" On the 23d of April, their chairman address- 
ed to the President of the bank, a communica- 
tion, inclosing a copy of the resolution of the 
House of Representatives, and notifying him of 
the readiness of the committee to visit the bank 
on the ensuing day, at any hour agreeable to 
him. In reply, the President informed the com- 
mittee that the papers thus received sliould be 
submitted to the board of directors, at a special 
meeting to be called for that purpose. It ap- 
pears, in the journal of the proceedings of the 
committee, herewith presented to the House, 
that this was done, and that the directors ap- 
pointed a committee of seven of their board, to 
receive the connnittce of the House of Represen- 
tatives, and to oifer for their inspection such 
books and papers oi the bank, as may be neces- 
sary to exhibit the proceedings of the corporation, 



460 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



according to the requirement of the charter. In 
the letter of John Sergeant, Esq., as chairman 
of the committee of directors communicating the 
proceedings of tlie board, he says that he was 
directed to inform the cliairman of this committee 
that tlie committee of the diiectors ' will imme- 
diately direct the necessary arrangements to be 
made for the accommodation of the committee 
of the House of Kepresentatives,' and would 
attend at the bank to receiye them the next day, 
at eleyen o'clock. Your committee attended, 
and were received by the committee of di- 
rectors. 

" Up to this period, nothing had occurred to 
justify the belief that a disposition was felt, on 
the part of the managers of the bank, to embar- 
rass the proceedings of the committee, or have 
them conducted differently from those of the 
two preceding committees of investigation. On 
assembling, however, the next morning, at the 
bank, they found the room which had been 
offered for their accommodation, preoccupied by 
the committee of the board, with the president 
of the bank, as an ex officio member, claiming 
the right to be present at the investigations and 
examinations of this committee. This proceeding 
the committee were not prepared to expect. 
When the appointment of the committee of 
seven was first made, it was supposed that that 
measure, however designed, M-as not well calcu- 
lated to facilitate the examination. 

" With a previous determination to be present 
when their books were to be inspected, they 
«ould have waited to avow it until these books 
were called for, and the attempt made to inspect 
them in their absence. These circumstances are 
now reviewed, because they then excited an ap- 
prehension, which the sequel formed into con- 
viction, that this committee of directors had 
been appointed to supervise the acts and doings 
of your committee, and to limit and restrain 
their proceedings, not accoi'ding to the directions 
contained in the resolution of the House, but 
the will and judgment of the board of directors. 
Your conunittee have chosen to ascribe this claim 
of the committee of directors to sit conjointly 
with them, to the desire to prevent them from 
making use of the books and papers, for some 
of the purposes pointed out by the resolution of ; 
the House. They are sensible that this claim to ' 
be present at all examinations, avowed prema- j 
turel}', and subsequently persisted in with pe- 
culiar pertinacity, could be attributed to very j 
ditferent motives ; but I'espect for themselves, 
and respect for the gentlemen who compose the 
committee of directors, utterly forbids theascrip- j 
tion to them of a feeling which would merit ! 
compassion and contempt nuich more than re- 
sentment. 

" This novel position, voluntarily and deliber- 
ately taken by the committee of the directors, 
predicated on an idea of equality of rights with 
your committee, under your .esolution, rendered 
it probable, and in some measure necessary, that 
your committee should express its opinions of , 



the relative rights of the corporation and thu 
House of Representatives. I'o avoid all mis- 
understanding and future misrepresentations, it 
was desirable that each question should be de- 
cided sepaiately. Contemplating an extended 
investigation, but unwilling that an apprehension 
should exist of improper disclosures being made 
of the transactions of the bank and its customers, 
your committee, following the example of the 
committee of 1832, adopted a resolution declaring 
that their proceedings should be confidential, 
until otherwise ordered by the conmiittee, and 
also a resolution that the committee would con- 
duct its investigations ' without the presence of 
anj^ person not required or invited to attend.' 
A copy of these resolutions was furnished to the 
committee of directors, in the hope that the ex- 
clusive control of a room at the bank, during its 
hours of business, would thereafter be conceded 
to j^our committee, while the claim of the com- 
mittee of directors to be present when the books 
were submitted for inspection, should be post- 
poned for decision, when the books were called 
for and produced by them. 

" On the 28th ult. this committee assembled 
at the banking house, and again found the room 
they expected to find set apart for their use, 
preoccupied by the committee of directors, and 
others, oflScers of the bank. And instead of 
such assurances as they had a right to expect, 
they received copies of two resolutions adopted 
by the board of directors, in which they were 
given to understand that their continued occu- 
pation of the room must be considered a favor, 
and not a matter of right ; and in which the 
board indulge in unjust commentaries on the 
resolution of the House of Representatives ; and 
intimate an apprehension that your committee 
design to make their examinations secret, par- 
tial, unjust, oppressive and contrary to common 



right." 



On receiving this offensive communication, 
manifestly intended to bring on a quarrel, the 
committee adopted a resolution to sit in a room 
of their hotel, and advised the bank accordingly ; 
and required the president and directors to sub- 
mit the books to their inspection in the room 
so chosen, at a day and hour named. To this 
the directors answered that they could not com- 
ply ; and the committee, desirous to do all they 
could to accomplish the investigation committed 
to them, then gave notice that they would attend 
at the bank on a named day and hour to inspect 
the books in the bank itself — either at the 
counter, or in a room. Arriving at the ap- 
pointed time, and asking to see the books, they 
were positively refused, reasons in writing being 
assigned for the refusal. They then made a 
written request to see certain books specifically 
and for a specified purpose, namely, to ascertain 



ANNO 1834. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESmENT. 



461 



the truth of the report of the government di- 
rectors in using the money and power of the 
bank in politics, in elections, or in producing 
the distress. The manner in which this call 
was treated must be given in the words of the 
report itself; thus : 

"Without giving a specific answer to these 
calls for books and papers, the committee of 
directors presented a written communication, 
which was said to be ' indicative of the mode of 
proceeding deemed right by the bank.' 

" The committee of the board in that commu- 
nication, express the opinion, that the inquiry 
can only be rightfully extended to alleged viola- 
tioas of the charter, and i^leny virtually the right 
of the House of Representatives to authorize 
the inquiries required in the resolution. 

" They also required of the committee of in- 
vestigation, ' when they asked for books and 
papers, to state specifically in writing, the pur- 
poses for which they are proposed to be inspect- 
ed ; and if it be to establish a violation of the 
charter, then to state specifically in writing, 
what are the alleged or supposed violations of 
charter, to which the evidence is alleged to be 
applicable.' 

" To this extraordinary requirement, made 
on the supposition that your committee were 
charged with the duty of crimination, or prose- 
cution for criminal offence, and implying a right 
on the part of the directors to determine for 
what purposes the inspection should be made, 
and what books or papers should be submitted 
to inspection, your committee replied, that they 
were not chai'ged with the duty of criminating 
the bank, its directors, or others ; but simply 
to inquire, amongst other things, whether any 
prosecution in legal form should be instituted, 
and from the nature of their duties, and the in- 
structions of the House of Representatives, they 
were not bound to state specifically in writing 
any charges against the bank, or any special 
purpose for which they required the production 
of the books and papers for inspection." 

The committee then asked for copies of the 
accounts and entries which they wished to see, 
and were answered that it would require the 
labor of two clerks for ten months to make them 
out ; and so declined to give the copies. The com- 
mittee finding tlxat they could make nothing out 
of books and papers, determined to change their 
examination of things into that of persons ; and 
for that purpose had recourse to the subpoenas 
furnished by the House ; and had them served 
by the United States marshal on the president 
and directors. This subpoena, which contained 
a clause of duces tecum, with respect to the 
books, was so far obeyed as to bring the direc- 



tors in person before the committee ; and so far 
disobeyed as to bring them without the books , 
and so far exceeded as to bring them with a 
written refusal to be sworn — for reasons which 
they stated. But this part deserves to be told 
in the language of the report ; which says : 

" Believing they had now exhausted, in their 
efforts to execute the duty devolved upon them, 
all reasonable means depending solely upon the 
provisions of the bank charter, to obtain the 
inspection of the books of this corporation, your 
committee were at last reluctantly compelled to 
resort to the subpoenas which had been furnished 
to them under the seal of this House, and at- 
tested by its clerk. Thej^, thereby, on the 9th 
inst. dirscted the marshal of the eastern district 
of Pennsylvania to summon Nicholas Biddle, 
president, and thirteen other persons, directors 
of the bank, to attend at their committee room, 
on the next day, at twelve o'clock, at noon, to 
testify concerning the matters of which your 
committee were authorized to inquire, and to 
bring with them certain books therein named 
for inspection. The marshal served the sum- 
mons in due form of law, and at the time ap- 
pointed, the persons therein named appeared 
before the committee and presented a written 
communication signed by each of them, as the 
answer of each to the requirements of the sub- 
poena, which is in the appendix to this report. 
In this paper they declare 'that they do not 
produce the books required, because they are 
not in the custody of either of us, but as has 
been heretofore stated, of the board,' and add, 
' considering that as corporators and directors, 
we are parties to the proceeding — we do not 
consider ourselves bound to testify, and there- 
fore respectfully decline to do so.' " 

This put an end to the attempted investiga- 
tion. The committee returned to Washington 
— made report of their proceedings, and moved : 
" That the speaker of this House do issue his 
warrant to the sergeant-at-arms, to arrest Ni- 
cholas Biddle, president — Manuel Eyre, Law- 
rence Lewis, Ambrose White, Daniel W. Cox, 
John Holmes, Charles Chauncey, John Goddard, 
John R. Neff, William Piatt, Matthew Newkirk, 
James 0. Fisher, John S. Henry, and John 
Sergeant, directors — of the Bank of the L'^nited 
States, and bring them to the bar of this House, 
to answer for the contempt of its lawful au- 
thority." This resolve was not acted upon by 
the House ; and the directors had the satisfaction 
to enjoy a negative triumph in their contempt 
of the House, flagrant as that contempt was 
upon its own showing, and still more so upon 
its contrast with the conduct of the same bank 



462 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



(though under a different set of directors), in 
the year 1819. A committee of investigation 
was then appointed, armed with the same powers 
which were granted to this committee of the 
year 1834 , and the directors of that time readily 
submitted to every species of examination which 
the committee chose to make. They visited the 
principal bank at Philadelphia, and several of 
its branches. They had free and unrestrained 
access to the books and papers of the bank. 
They were furnished by the oflBcers with all the 
copies and extracts they asked for. They sum- 
moned before them the directors and officers of 
the bank, examined them on oath, took their 
testimony in writing — and obtained full answers 
to all their questions, whether they implied 
illegalities violative of the charter, or abuses, or 
mismanagement, or mistakes and errors. 



CHAPTER CVII. 

MR. TANEY'S REPORT ON THE FINANCES— EXPO- 
SURE OF THE DISTRESS ALARMS— END OF THE 
PANIC. 

About the time when the panic was at its height, 
and Congress most heavily assailed with dis- 
tress memorials, the Secretary of the Treasury 
was called upon by a resolve of the Senate for 
a report upon the finances — with the full be- 
lief that the finances were going to ruin, and 
that the government would soon be left without 
adequate revenue, and driven to the mortifying 
resource of loans. The call on the Secretary 
was made early in May, and was answered the 
middle of June ; and was an utter disappoint- 
ment to those who called for it. Far from 
showing the financial decline which had been 
expected, it showed an increase in every branch 
of the revenue ! and from that authentic test of 
the national condition, it was authentically 
shown that the Union was prosperous ! and that 
the distress, of which so much Mas heard, was 
confined to the victims of the United States 
Bank, so far as it was real; and that all beyond 
that was fictitious and artificial — the result of 
the machinery for organizing panic, oppressing 
debtors, breaking up labor, and alarming the 
timid. When the report came into the Senate, the 
reading of it was commenced at the table of the 
Secretary, and had not proceeded far when Mr. 



"Webster moved to cease the reading, and send 
it to the Committee on Finance — that commit- 
tee in which a report of that kind could not ex- 
pect to find either an early or favorable notice. 
We had expected a motion to get rid of it, in 
some quiet way, and had prepared for whatever 
might happen. Mr. Taney had sent for me, the 
day before it came in ; read it over with me ; 
showed me all the tables on which it was 
founded ; and prepared me to sustain and em- 
blazon it : for it was our intention that such a 
report should go to the country, not in the 
quiet, subdued tone of a State paper, but with 
all the emphasis, and all the challenges to pub- 
lic attention, which the amplifications, the ani- 
mation, and the fire and freedom which the 
speaking style admitted. The instant, then, 
that Mr. Webster made his motion to stop the 
reading, and refer the report to the Finance 
Committee, Mr. Benton rose, and demanded 
that the reading be continued : a demand which 
he had a right to make, as the rules gave it to 
every member. He had no occasion to hear it 
read, and probably heard nothing of it ; but the 
form was necessary, as the report was to be the 
text of his speech. The instant it was done, he 
rose and delivered his speech, seizing the circum- 
stance of the interrupted reading to furnish the 
brief exordium, and to give a fresh and im- 
promptu air to what he was going to say. The 
following is the speech : 

Mr. Benton rose, and said that this report 
was of a nature to deserve some attention, be- 
fore it left the chamber of the Senate, and went 
to a committee, from which it might not re- 
turn in time for consideration at this session. 
It had been called for under circumstances 
which attracted attention, and disclosed infor- 
mation which deserved to be known. It was 
called for early in May, in the crisis of the 
alarm operations, and with confident assertions 
that the answer to the call would prove the 
distress and the suffering of the country. It 
was confidently asserted that the Secretary o( 
the Treasury had over-estimated the revenues 
of the year ; that there would be a great falling 
off — a decline — a bankruptcy ; that confidence 
was destroyed — enterprise checked — industry 
paralyzed — commerce suspended ! that the dire- 
ful act of one man, in one dire order, had changed 
the face of the country, from a scene of unpar- 
alleled prosperity to a scene of unparalleled 



ANNO 1834. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



463 



desolation ! that the canal was a solitude, the 
lake a desert waste of waters, the ocean with- 
out ships, the commercial towns deserted, silent, 
and sad ; orders for goods countermanded ; for- 
eign purchases stopped ! and that the answer 
of the Secretary would prove all this, in show- 
ing the falsity of his own estimates, and the 
great decUne in the revenue and importations 
of the country. Such were the assertions and 
predictions under which the call was made, and 
to which the public attention was attracted by 
every device of theatrical declamation from this 
floor. Well, the answer comes. The Secretary 
sends in his report, with every statement called 
for. It is a report to make the patriot's heart 
rejoice ! full of high and gratifying facts ; re- 
plete with rich information ; and pregnant with 
evidences of national prosperity. How is it re- 
ceived — how received by those who called for it ? 
With downcast looks, and wordless tongues ! A 
motion is even made to stop the reading ! to stop 
the reading of such a report ! called for under 
Buch circumstances ; while whole days are given 
up to reading the monotonous, tautologous, and 
endless repetitions of distress memorials, the 
echo of our own speeches, and the thousandth 
edition of the same work, without emendation 
or correction ! All these can be read, and 
printed, too, and lauded with studied eulogium, 
and their contents sent out to the people, 
freighted upon every wind ; but this oflBcial 
report of the Secretary of the Treasury, upon 
the state of their own revenues, and of their 
own commerce, called for by an order of the 
Senate, is to be treated like an unwelcome and 
worthless intruder ; received without a word — 
not even read — slipped out upon a motion — 
disposed of as the Abbe Sieyes voted for the 



death of Louis the Sixteenth: mo7't sans phrase ! 
death, without talk ! But he, Mr. B., did not 
mean to suffer this report to be dispatched in 
this unceremonious and compendious style. It 
had been called for to be given to the people, 
and the people should hear of it. It was not 
what was expected, but it is what is true, and 
what will rejoice the heart of every patriot in 
America. A pit was dug for Mr. Taney ; the 
diggers of the pit have fallen into it ; the fault 
is not his ; and the sooner they clamber out, the 
better for themselves. The people have a right 
to know the contents of this report, and know 
them they shall ; and if there is any man in this 



America, whose heart is so constructed as to 
grieve over the prosperity of his country, let 
him prepare himself for sorrow ; for the proof 
is forthcoming, that never, since America had a 
place among nations, was the prosperity of the 
country equal to what it is at this day ! 

Mr. B. then requested the Secretary of the 
Senate to send him the report, and comparative 
statements ; which being done, Mr. B. opened 
the report, and went over the heads of it to 
show that the Secretary of the Treasury had 
not over-estimated the revenue of the year, as 
he had been charged, and as the I'eport was ex- 
pected to prove : that the revenue was, in fact, 
superior to the estimate ; and that the impor- 
tations would equal, if not exceed, the highest 
amount that they had ever attained. 

To appreciate the statements which he should 
make, ]\Ir. B. said it was necessary for the Senate 
to recollect that the list of dutiable articles was 
now greatly reduced. Many articles were now 
free of duty, which formerly paid heavy duties ; 
many others were reduced in duty ; and the fair 
effect of these abolitions and reductions would 
be a diminution of revenue even without a dimi- 
nution of imports ; yet the Secretary's estimate, 
made at the commencement of the session, was 
more than realized, and showed the gratifying 
spectacle of a full and overflowing treasury, in- 
stead of the empty one which had been pre- 
dicted ; and left to Congress the grateful occupa- 
tion of further reducing taxes, instead of the 
odious task of borrowing money, as had been 
so loudly anticipated for six months past. The 
revenue accruing from imports in the first quar- 
ter of the present year, was 5,344,540 dollars ; 
the payments actually made into the treasury 
from the custom-houses for the same quarter, 
were 4,435,386 dollars j and the payments from 
lands for the same time, were 1,398,200 dollars. 
The two first months of the second quarter were 
producing in a full ratio to the first quarter ; 
and the actual amount of available funds in the 
treasury on the 9th day of this month, was 
eleven millions, two hundred aud forty-nine 
thousand, four hundred and twelve dolhirs. The 
two last quarters of the year were always the 
most productive. It vas the time of the largest 
importations of foreign goods wliich pay most 
duty — the woollens — and the season, also, for 
the largest sale of public lands. It is well be- 
lieved that the estimate will be more largely ex« 



464 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



ceeded in those two quarters than in the two 
first ; and that the excess for the whole year, 
over the estimate, will be full two millions of 
dollars. This, jNIr. B. said, was one of the evi- 
dences of jjublic prosperity which the report 
contained, and which utterly contradicted the 
idea of distress and commercial embarrassment 
svhich had been propagated, from this chamber, 
for the last six months. 

Mr. B. proceeded to the next evidence of com- 
mercial prosperity ; it was the increased importa- 
tions of foreign goods. These imports, judging 
from the five first months, would be seven mil- 
lions more than they were two years ago, when 
the Bank of the United States had seventy mil- 
lions loaned out ; and they were twenty millions 
more than in the time of Mr. Adams's adminis- 
tration. At the rate they had commenced, they 
would amount to one hundred and ten millions 
for the year. This will exceed whatever was 
known in our country. The imports, for the 
time that President Jackson has served, have re- 
gularly advanced from about ^74.000,000 to 
^108,000,000. The following is the statement 
of these imports, from which Mr. B. read : 



1829 
1830 
1831 
1832 
1833 



$74,492,527 
70J876,920 
103,191,124 
101,029,206 
108,118,311 



Mr. B. said that the imports of the last year 
were gi'eater in proportion than in any previous 
year ; a temporary decline might reasonably have 
been expected; such declines alwaj's take place af- 
ter excessive importations. Ifit had occurred now, 
though naturally to have been expected, the fact 
would have been trumpeted forth as the infalli- 
ble sign — the proof positive — of commercial dis- 
tress, occasioned by the fatal removal of the de- 
posits. But, as there was no decline, but on the 
contrary, an actual increase, he must claim the 
evidence for the other side of the account, and 
Bet it down as proof positive that commerce is not 
destroyed ; and, consequently, that the removal 
of the deposits did not destroy commerce. 

The next evidence of commercial prosperity 
which ;Mr. B. would exhi >it to the Senate, was 
in the increased, and increasing number of ship 
arrivals from foreign ports. The number of ar- 
rivals for the month of May, in New-York, 
was two hundred and twenty-three, exceeding 



by thirty-six those of the month of April, 
and showing not only a great, but an increas- 
ing activity in the commerce of that great 
emporium — he would not say of the United 
States, or even of North America — but he 
would call it that great emporium of the two 
Americas, and of the New World ; for the goods 
imported to that place, were thence distributed 
to every part of the two Americas, from the 
Canadian lakes to Cape Horn. 

A third evidence of national prosperity was 
in the sales of the public lands. Mr. B. had, 
on a former occasion, adverted to these sales, 
so far as the first quarter was concerned ; and 
had shown, that instead of falling off", as had 
been predicted on this floor, the revenue from 
the sales of these lands had actually doubled, 
and more than doubled, what they were in 
the first quarter of 1833. The receipts for 
lands for that quarter, were $608,526 ; for the 
first quarter of the present year they were 
$1,398,206 ; being two to one, and $60,000 
over ! The receipts for the two first months 
of the second quarter, were also known, and 
would carry the revenue from lands, for the 
first five months of this year, to two miUions 
of dollars ; indicating five millions for the 
whole year j an enormous amount, from which 
the people of the new States ought to be, in 
some degree, relieved, by a reduction in the 
price of lands. Jlr. B. begged in the most em- 
phatic terms, to remind the Senate, that at the 
commencement of the session, the sales of the 
public lands were selected as one of the crite- 
rions by which the ruin and desolation of the 
country were to be judged. It was then pre- 
dicted, and the prediction put forth with all 
the boldness of infolliblc prophecy, that the re- 
moval of the deposits would stop the sales of 
the public lands ;*that money would disappear, 
and the people have nothing to buy with ; that 
the produce of the earth would rot upon the 
hands of the farmer. These were the predic- 
tions ; and if the sales had really declined, 
what a proof would immediately be found in 
the fact to prove the truth of the prophecy, and 
the dire effects of changing the public moneys 
from one set of banking-houses to another! 
But there is no decline ; but a doubling of the 
former product ; and a fair conclusion thence de- 
duced that the new States, in the interior, are 
as prosperous as the old ones, on the sea-coast. 



ANNO 1834. ANDREW JACKSON, PREQIDENT. 



465 



Having proved the general prosperity of the 
country from these infallible data — flourishing 
revenue — flourishing commerce — increased arri- 
vals of ships — and increased sales of public 
lands, Mr. B. said that he was far from denying 
that actual distress had existed. He had ad- 
mitted the fact of that distress heretofore, not 
to the extent to which it was charged, but to a 
sufHcient extent to excite sympathy for the 
sufferers ; and he had distinctly charged the 
whole distress that did exist to the Bank of 
the United States, and the Senate of the Uni- 
ted States — to the screw-and-pressure opera- 
tions of the bank, and the alarm speeches in 
the Senate. He had made this charge ; and 
made it under a full sense of the moral respon- 
sibihty which he owed to the people, in affirm- 
ing any thing so disadvantageous to others, 
from this elevated theatre. He had, therefore, 
given his proofs to accompany the charge ; and 
he had now to say to the Senate, and through 
the Senate to the people, that he found new 
proofs for that charge in the detailed state- 
ments of the accruing revenue, which had been 
called for by the Senate, and furnished by the 
Secretary of the Treasury. 

Mr. B. said he must be pardoned for repeat- 
ing his request to the Senate, to recollect how 
often they had been told that trade was para- 
lyzed ; that orders for foreign goods were coun- 
termanded ; that the importing cities were the 
pictures of desolation ; their ships idle ; their 
wharves deserted ; their mariners wandering 
up and down. Now, said jNIr. B., in looking 
over the detailed statement of the accruing re- 
venue, it was found that there was no decline 
of commerce, except at places where the policy 
and power of the United States Bank was pre- 
dominant ! Where that power or policy was 
predominant, revenue declined; where it was 
not predominant, or the policy of the bank not 
exerted, the revenue increased ; and increased 
fast enough to make up the deficiency at the 
other places. Mr. B. proceeded to verify this 
statement by a reference to specified places. 
Thus, at Philadelphia, where the bank holds its 
seat of empire, the revenue fell off about one 
third ; it was ^797,316 for the first quarter of 

1833, and only $542,498 for the first quarter of 

1834. At New-York, where the bank has not 
been able to get the upper hand, there was an 
increase of more than $120,000 ; the reve- 

VoL. I.— 30 



nue there, for the first quarter of 1833, was 
$3,122,160; for the first of 1834, it was 
$3,249,786. At Boston, where the bank is 
again predominant, the revenue fell off about 
one third ; at Salem, Mass., it fell off four fifths. 
At Baltimore, where the bank has been defeat- 
ed, there was an mcrcase in the revenue of more 
than $70,000. At R,ichmond, the revenue was 
doubled, from $12,034 to $25,810. At Charles- 
ton, it was increased from $09,503 to $102,810. 
At Petersburg, it was slightly increased ; and 
throughout all the region south of the Poto- 
mac, there was either an increase, or the slight 
falling off which might result from diminished 
duties without diminished importations. Mr. 
B. said he knew that bank power was pre- 
dominant in some of the cities of the South ; 
but he knew, also, that the bank policy of dis- 
tress and oppression had not been practised 
there. That was not the region to be governed 
by the scourge. The high mettle of that re- 
gion required a different policy: gentleness, 
conciliation, coaxing ! If the South was to be 
gained over by the bank, it was to be done by 
favor, not by fear. The scourge, though so 
much the most congenial to the haughty spirit 
of the moneyed power, was only to be applied 
where it would be submitted to ; and, therefore, 
the whole region south of the Potomac, was ex- 
empted from the lash. 

Mr. B. here paused to fix the attention of the 
Senate upon these facts. Where the power of 
the bank enabled her to depress commerce and 
sink the revenue, and her policy permitted her 
to do it, commerce was depressed ; and the reve- 
nue was sunk, and the prophecies of the distress 
orators were fulfilled ; but where her power did 
not predominate, or where her policy required 
a different course, commerce increased, and the 
revenue increased ; and the result of the whole 
is, that New-York and some other anti-bank 
cities have gained what Philadelphia and other 
bank cities have lost ; and the federal treasury 
is just as well off, as if it had got its accustomed 
supply from every place. 

This view of facts, I\Ir. B. said, must fasten 
upon the bank the odium of Iiaving produced all 
the real commercial distress whicli has been felt. 
But at one point, at New Orleans, there was 
further evidence to convict her of wanton and 
wicked oppression. It was not in the Secre- 
tary's reports, but it was in the weekly returns 



466 



THIRTY TEARS' VIEW. 



of the bank ; and showed that, in the beginning 
of March, that institution had carried off from 
her branch in New Orleans, the sum of about 
$800,000 in specie, which it had been collecting 
all the winter, by a wanton curtailment, under 
the pretext of supplying the amount of the de- 
posits taken from her at that place. These 
$800,000 dollars were collected from the New 
Orleans merchants in the very crisis of the arri- 
val of Western produce. The merchants were 
pressed to pay debts, when they ought to have 
been accommodated with loans. The price of 
produce was thereby depressed ; the whole 
West suffered from the depression ; and now it 
is proved that the money was not wanted to 
supply the place of the deposits, but was sent 
to Philadelphia, where there was no use for it, 
the bank having more than she can use ; and 
that the whole operation was a wanton and 
wicked measure to coerce the West to cry out for 
a return of the deposits, and a renewal of the 
charter, by attacking their commerce in the 
market of New Orleans. This fact, said Mr. 
B., would have been proved from the books of 
the bank, if they had been inspected. Failing 
in that, the proof was intelligibly found m the 
weekly returns. 

Mr. B. took up another table to prove the 
prosperity of the country : it was in the increase 
of specie since the programme for the distress 
had been published. That programme dated 
from the first day of October last, and the clear 
increase since that time is the one half of the 
whole quantity then in the United States. The 
imports had been $11,128,291 ; the exports only 
$998,761. 

Mr. B. remarked, upon this statement, that 
it presented a clear gain of more than ten mil- 
lions of dollars. lie was of opinion that two 
millions ought to be added for sums not entered 
at the custom-house, which would make twelve 
millions ; and added to the six millions of 1833, 
would give eighteen millions of specie of clear 
gain to the country, in the last twenty months. 
This, he said was prosperity. It was wealth it- 
self; and besides, it showed that the country 
was not in debt for its large importations, and 
that a larger proportion of foreign imports now 
consisted of specie than was ever known before. 
Mr. B. particularized the imports and exports 
of gold ; how the former had increased, and the 
latter diminished, during the last few months ; 



and said that a great amount of gold, both for- 
eign and domestic, was now waiting in the coun- 
try to see if Congress would raise gold to its 
fair value. If so raised, this gold would remain, 
and enter into circulation ; if not, it would im- 
mediately go off to foreign countries ; for gold 
was not a thing to stay where it was under- 
valued. He also spoke of silver, and said that 
it had arrived without law, but could not re- 
main without law. Unless Congress passed an 
act to make it current, and that at full value as 
money, and not at the mint value, as bulhon, it 
would go off. 

Mr. B. had a further view to give of the pros- 
perity of the country, and further evidence to 
show that all the distress really suflered was 
factitious and unnatural. It was in the great 
increase of money in the United States, during 
the last year and a half. He spoke of money ; 
not paper promises to pay money, but the thing 
itself — real gold and silver — and affirmed that 
there was a clear gain of from eighteen to twen- 
ty millions of specie, within the time that he had 
mentioned. He then took up the custom-house 
returns to verify this important statement, and 
to let the people see that the country was never 
so well off for money as at the very time that it 
was proclaimed to be in the lowest state of pov- 
erty and misery. He first showed the imports 
and exports of specie and bullion for the year 
ending the 30th of September, 1833. It was as 
follows : 

Year eliding September 30. 1833. 





Imports. 


Exports. 


Gold bullion, 


$48,207 


$20,775 


Silver do. 


297,840 




Gold coin, 


503,585 


495,890 


Silver do. 


G,160,G7G 


1,722,196 



$7,070,368 $2,244,861 

Mr. B. having read over this statement, re- 
marked ui)on it, that it presented a clear balance 
of near five millions of specie in favor of the 
United States on the first day of October last, 
without counting at least another million which 
was l>rought by ])assengers, and not put upon 
the custom-house books. It might be assumed, 
he said, that there was a clear accession of six 
millions of specie to the money of the United 
States, on the morning of that very day which 
had been pitched upon by all the distress era- 



ANNO 1834. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



467 



tors in the country, to date the ruin and desola- 
tion of the country. 

Mr. B. then showed a statement of the im^- 
ports and exports of specie and bullion, from 
the first of October, 1833. to the 11th of Juno, 
instant. 

Mr. B. recapitulated the evidences of national 
prosperity — increased imports — revenue from 
customs exceeding the estimate — increased re- 
venue from public lands — increased amount of 
specie — above eleven millions of available funds 
now in the treasury — domestic and foreign 
commerce active — the price of produce and pro- 
perty fair and good — labor every where finding 
employment and reward — more money in the 
country than ever was in it at any one time 
before — the numerous advertisements for the 
purchase of slaves, in the papers of this city, for 
the Southern market, which indicated the high 
price of Southern products — and aflSrmed his 
conscientious belief, that the country was more 
prosperous at this time than at any period of 
its existence ; and inveighed in terms of strong 
indignation against the arts and artifices, which 
for the last six months had disturbed and agi- 
tated the country, and done serious mischief to 
many individuals. He regretted the miscarriage 
of the attempt t® examine the Bank of the 
United States, which he believed would have 
completed the proof against that institution for 
its share in getting up an unnatural and facti- 
tious scene of distress, in the midst of real 
prosperity. But he did not limit his invective 
to the bank, but came directly to the Senate, 
and charged a full share upon the theatrical 
distress speeches, delivered upon the floor of 
the Senate, in imitation of Volney's soliloquy 
over the ruins of Palmyra. He repeated some 
passages from the most affecting of these la- 
mentations over the desolation of the country, 
such as the Senate had been accustomed to hear 
about the time of the New-York and Virginia 
elections. " The canal a solitude ! The lake a 
desert waste of waters ! That populous city 
lately resounding with the hum of busy multi- 
tudes, now silent and sad ! A whole nation, in 
the midst of unparalleled prosperity, and Ar- 
cadian felicity, suddenly struck into poverty, and 
plunged into unutterable woe ! and all tliis by the 
direful act of one wilful man ! " Such, said Mr. B., 
were the lamentations over the ruins, not of the 
Tadmor in the desert, but of this America, whose 



true condition j^ou have just seen exhibited in 
the foithful report of the Secretary of the Trea- 
sury. Not even the " baseless fabric of a vision'" 
was ever more destitute of foundation, than 
those lamentable accounts of desolation. The 
lamentation has ceased ; the panic has gone off; 
would to God he could follow out the noble line 
of the poet, and say, " leaving not a wreck be- 
hind." But he could not say that. There were 
wrecks ! wrecks of merchants in every city in 
which the bank tried its cruel policy, and wrecks 
of banks in this district, where the panic speeches 
fell thickest and loudest upon the ears of an 
astonished and terrified community ! 

But, continued Mr. B., the game is up ; the 
alarm is over ; the people are tired of it ; the 
agitators have ceased to work the engine of 
alarm. A month ago he had said it was " the 
last of pea-time " with these distress memorials ; 
he would now use a bolder figure, and say, that 
the Secretary's report, just read, had expelled 
forever the ghost of alarm from the chamber of 
the Senate. All ghosts, said Mr. B., are afraid 
of the light. The crowing of the cock — the break 
of day — remits them all, the whole shadowy 
tribe, to their dark and dreary abodes. How 
then can tliis poor ghost of alarm, which has 
done such hard service for six months past, how 
can it stand the full light, the broad glare, the 
clear sunshine of the Secretary's report ? "Alas, 
poor ghost ! " The shade of the " noble Dane " 
never quit the stage under a more inexorable 
law than the one which now drives thee away ! 
This report, replete with plain facts, and lumin- 
ous truths, puts to flight the apparition of dis- 
tress, breaks down the whole machinery of 
alarm, and proves that the American people 
are, at this day, the most prosperous people on 
which the beneficent sun of heaven did ever 
shine ! 

Mr, B. congratulated himself that the spectre 
of distress could never be made to cross the 
Mississippi. It made but slow progress any 
where in the Great Valley, but was balked at 
the King of Floods. A letter from St. Louis in- 
formed him that an attempt had just been made 
to get up a distress meeting in the town of St. 
Louis ; but without effect. The ofllcers were 
obtained, and according to the approved rule of 
such meetings, they were converts from Jack- 
sonism ; but there the distress proceedings 
stopped, and took another turn. The fare* 



468 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



could not be played in that town. The actors 
would not mount the stage. 

Mr. B. spoke of the circulation of the Bunk 
of the United States, and said that its notes 
might be withdrawn without being f&lt or known 
by the community. It contributed but four 
millions and a quarter to the circulation at this 
time. He verified this statement by showing 
that the bank had twelve millions and a quarter 
of specie in its vaults, and but sixteen millions 
and a half of notes in circulation. The differ- 
ence was four millions and a quarter ; and that 
was the precise amount which that gigantic in- 
stitution now contributed to the circulation of 
the country ! Only four millions and a quarter. 
If the gold bill passed, and raised gold sixteen 
to one, there would be more than that amount 
of gold in circulation in three months. The fo- 
reign coin bill, and the gold bill, would give the 
country many dollars in specie, without interest, 
for each paper dollar which the bank issues, and 
for which the country pays so dearly. The dis- 
solution of the bank would turn out twelve 
millions and a quarter of specie, to circulate 
among the people ; and the sooner that is done 
the better it will be for the country. 

The Bank is now a nuisance, said Mr. B. "With 
upwards of twelve millions in specie, and less 
than seventeen millions in circulation, and onlj'' 
fifty-two millions of loans, it pretends that it 
cannot lend a dollar, not even to business men, 
to be returned in sixty days ; when, two years 
ago, with only six millions of specie and twenty- 
two miUions of circulation, it ran up its loans 
to seventy millions. The president of the bank 
then swore, that all above six millions of specie 
was a surplus ! How is it now, with near dou- 
ble as much specie, and five millions less of notes 
out, and twelve millions less of debt ? The 
bank needs less specie than any other banking 
institution, because its notes are receivable, by 
law, in all federal payments ; and from that cir- 
cumstance alone wovild be current, at par, al- 
though the bank itself might be wholly unable 
to redeem them. Such a bank is a nuisance. 
It is the dog in the manger. It might lend 
money to business men, at short dates, to the 
last day of its existence ; yet the signs are for a 
new pressure ; a new game of distress for the fall 
elections in Pennsylvania, New- York, and Ohio. 
If that game should be attempted, Mr. B. said, 
it would have to be done withou excuse, for 



the bank was full of money ; without pretext, 
for the deposit farce is over; without the aid 
of panic speeches, for the Senate will not be in 
session. 

Mr. B. said, that among the strange events 
which took place in this world, nothing could 
be more strange than to find, in our own coun- 
try, and in the nineteenth centary, any practi- 
cal illustration of the ancient doctrine of the 
metempsychosis. Stranger still, if that doctrine 
should be so far improved, as to take effect in 
soulless bodies ; for, according to the founders 
of the doctrine, the soul alone could transmi- 
grate. Now, corpoi'ations had no souls; that 
was. law, laid down by all the books : that all 
corporations, moneyed ones especially, and above 
all, the Bank of the United States, was most 
soulless. Yet the rumor was, that this bank 
intended to attempt the operation of effecting a 
transfer of her soul ; and after submitting to 
death in her present form, to rise up in a new 
one. Mr. B. said he, for one, should be ready 
for the old sinner, come in the body of what 
beast it might. No form should deceive hhn, 
not even if it condescended, in its new shape, to 
issue from Wall-street instead of Chestnut ! 

A word more, and Mr. B. was done. It was 
a word to those gentlemen whose declarations, 
many ten thousand times issued from this floor, 
had deluded a himdred thousand people to send 
memorials here, certifying what those gentle- 
men so incontinently repeated, that the removal 
of the deposits had made the distress, and no- 
thing but the restoration of the deposits, or the 
renewal of the charter, could remove the distress ! 
"Well! the deposits are not restored, and the 
charter is not renewed ; and yet the distress is 
gone ! What is the inference ? Why that gen- 
tlemen are convicted, and condemned, upon their 
ovm argument ! They leave this chamber to go 
home, self-convicted upon the very test which 
they themselves have established ; and after hav 
ing declared, for six months, upon this floor, 
that the removal of the deposits made the dis 
tress, and nothing but their restoration, or the 
renewal of the bank charter, could relieve it, 
and that they would sit here until the dog-days, 
and the winter solstice, to effect this restoration 
or renewal : they now go home in good time fot 
harvest, without effecting the restoration or the 
renewal ; and find every where, as they go the 
evidences of the highest prosperity which ever 



ANNO 1834. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESmENT. 



469 



blessed the land. Yes ! repeated and exclaimed 
Mr. B. with great emphasis, the deposits are 
not restored — the charter is not renewed — the 
distress is gone — and the distress speeches have 
ceased ! No more lamentation over the desola- 
tion of the land now ; and a gentleman who 
should undertake to entertain the Senate again 
in that vein, in the face of the present national 
prosperity— in the face of the present report 
frorn the Secretary of the Treasury — would be 
stared at, as the Trojans were accustomed to 
stare at the frantic exhibitions of Priam's dis- 
tracted daughter, while vaticinating the down- 
fall of Troy in the midst of the heroic exploits 
of Hector. 

At the conclusion of this speech Mr. Webster 
spoke a few words, signifying that foreigners 
might have made the importations which kept 
up the revenue; and Mr. Chambers, of I\Iary- 
land, spoke more fully, to show that there was 
not time yet for the distress to work its effect 
nationally. Mr. Webster then varied his motion, 
and, instead of sending the Secretary's report to 
the Finance Committee, moved to lay it upon the 
table : which was done : and being printed, and 
passed into the newspapers, with the speech to 
emblazon it, had a great effect in bringing the 
panic to a close. 



CHAPTER CVIII. 

REVIVAL OF THE GOLD CUEEENCT. 

A MEASURE of relief was now at hand, before 
which the machinery of distress was to balk, 
and cease its long and cruel labors : it was the 
passage of the bill for equalizing the value of 
gold and silver, and legalizing the tender of 
foreign coins of both metals. The bills were 
brought forward in the House by Mr. Campbell 
P. White of New-York, and passed after an ani- 
mated contest, in which the chief question was 
as to the true relative value of the two metals, 
varied by some into a preference for national 
bank paper. Fifteen and five-eighths to one waS 
the ratio of nearly all who seemed best calcula- 
ted, from their pursuits, to understand the sub- 
ject. The thick array of speakers was on that 
side; and the eighteen banks of the city of 
New-York, with Mr. Gallatin at their head, fa- 



vored that proportion. The difficulty of adjust 
ing this value, so that neither metal should ex- 
pel the other, had been the stumbling block for 
a great many years; and now this difficulty 
seemed to be as formidable as ever. Refined 
calculations were gone into : scientific light was 
sought : history was rummaged back to the 
times of the Roman empire : and there seemed 
to be no way of getting to a concord of opinion 
either from the lights of science, the voice of his- 
tory, or the result of calculations. The author 
of this View had (in his speeches on the sub- 
ject), taken up the question in a practical point 
of view, regardless of history, and calculations, 
and the opinions of bank officers ; and looking 
to the actual, and equal, circulation of the two 
metals in different countries, he saw that this 
equality and actuality of circulation had existed 
for above three hundred years in the Spanish, 
dominions of Mexico and South America, where 
the proportion was 16 to one. Taking his stand 
upon this single fact, as the practical test which 
solved the question, all the real friends of the 
gold currency soon rallied to it. Mr. White 
gave up the bill which he had first introduced, 
and adopted the Spanish ratio. I\Ir. Clowney 
of South Carolina, Mr. Gillet and Mr. Cambre- 
leng of New- York, Mr. Ewing of Indiana, Mr. 
McKim of ]\Iaryland, and other speakers, gave it 
a warm support. Mr. John Quincy Adams 
would vote for it, though he thought the gold 
was over-valued ; but if found to be so, the dif- 
ference could be corrected hereafter. The prin- 
cipal speakers against it and in favor of a lower 
rate, were IMessrs. Gorham of Massachusetts ; 
Selden of New- York ; Binney of Pennsylvania; 
and Wilde of Georgia. And, eventually the bill 
was passed by a large majority — 145 to 36. In 
the Senate it had an easy passage. Mr. Calhoun 
and Webster supported it : Mr. Clay opposed it: 
and on the final vote there were but seven neg- 
atives : INIessrs. Chambers of Maryland ; Clay ; 
Knight of Rhode Island ; Alexander Porter of 
Louisiana; Silsbce of Massachusetts ; Southard 
of New Jersey ; Sprague of Maine. 

The good effects of the bill were immediately 
seen. Gold began to flow into the country 
through all the channels of commerce : old chests 
gave up their hordes : the mint was busy : and 
in a few months, and as if by magic, a currency 
banished from the country for thirty years, 
overspread the land, and g-ave joy and confidence 



470 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



to all the pursuits of industry. But this joy- 
was not universal. A large interest connected 
with the Bank of the United States, and its sub- 
sidiary and subaltern institutions, and the whole 
paper system, vehemently opposed it; and 
spared neither pains nor expense to check its 
circulation, and to bring odium upon its sup- 
porters People were alarmed with counterfeits. 
Gilt counters were exhibited in the markets, to 
alarm the ignorant. The coin itself was bur- 
lesqued, in mock imitations of brass or copper, 
with grotesque figures, and ludicrous inscriptions 
— the ''whole hog" and the "better currency," 
being the favorite devices. Many newspapers 
expended their daily wit in its stale depreciation. 
The most exalted of the paper money party, 
would recoil a step when it was offered to them, 
and beg for paper. The name of " Gold humbug" 
was fastened upon the person supposed to have 
been chiefly instrumental in bringing the derided 
coin into existence ; and he, not to be abashed, 
made its eulogy a standing theme — vaunting its 
excellence, boasting its coming abundance, to 
spread over the land, flow up the Mississippi, shine 
through the interstices of the long silken purse, 
and to be locked up safely in the farmer's trusty 
oaken chest. For a year there was a real war 
of the paper against gold. But there was some- 
thing that was an overmatch for the arts, or 
power, of the paper system in this particular, 
and which needed no persuasions to guide it 
when it had its choice : it was the instinctive 
feeling of the masses ! which told them that 
money which would jingle in the pocket was the 
right money for them — that hard money was the 
right money for hard hands — that gold was the 
true -currency for every man that had any thing 
true to give for it, either in labor or property : 
and upon these instinctive feelings gold became 
the avidious demand of the vast operative and 
producing classes. 



CHAPTER CIX. 

EEJECTION OF ME. TANEY, NOMINATED FOR 
SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY. 

A PRESENTIMENT of what was to happen in- 
duced the President to delay, until near the end 
of the session, the nomination to the Senate of 



Mr. Taney for Secretary of the Treasury. He 
had offended the Bank of the United States too 
much to expect his confirmation in the present 
temper of the Senate. lie had a right to hold 
back the nomination to the last day of the ses- 
sion, as the recess appointment was valid to its 
end ; and he retained it to the last week, not 
being willing to lose the able and faithful ser- 
vices of that gentleman during the actual ses- 
sion of Congress. At last, on the 23d of June, 
the nomination was sent in, and immediately re- 
jected by the usual majority in all cases in 
which the bank was concerned. Mr. Taney, 
the same day resigned his place ; and Jlr. 
McClintock Young, first clerk of the treasury, 
remained by law acting Secretary. Mr. Benja- 
min Franklin Butler, of New-York, nominated 
for the place of attorney-general, was confirmed 
— he having done nothing since he came into 
the cabinet to subject him to the fate of his 
predecessor, though fully concurring with the 
President in all his measures in relation to the 
bank. 



CHAPTER ex. 

SENATORIAL INVESTIGATION OF THE BANK OP 
THE UNITED STATES. 

This corporation had lost so much ground in 
the public estimation, by repulsing the investi- 
gation attempted by the House of Representa- 
tives, that it became necessary to retrieve the 
loss by some report in its fiivor. The friends 
of the institution determined, therefore, to have 
an investigation made by the Senate — by the Fi- 
nance Committee of that body. In conformity 
to this determination Mr. Southard, on the last 
day of the session moved that that committee 
should have leave to sit during the recess of the 
Senate to inquire whether the Bank of the Uni- 
ted States had violated its charter — whether it 
was a safe depository of the public moneys — 
and what had been its conduct since 1832 in re- 
gard to extension and curtailment of loans, and 
its general management since that time. The 
committee to whom this investigation was com- 
mitted, consisted of Messrs. Webster, Tyler 
Ewing, Mangum, and Wilkins. Of this com- 
mittee all, except the last named, were the op- 
ponents of the administration, friends of the 



ANNO 1834. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



471 



bank, its zealous advocates in all the questions 
between it and the government, speaking ar- 
dently in its favor, and voting with it on all 
questions during the session. Mr. Wilkins 
very properly refused to serve on the conunit- 
tee ; and Mr. King of Alabama, being proposed 
in his place, also, and with equal propriety, re- 
fused to serve. This act of the Senate in thus 
undertaking to examine the bank after a re- 
pulse of the committee of the House of Repre- 
sentatives and still standing out in contempt of 
that House, and by a committee so composed, 
and so restricted, completed the measure of 
mortification to all the friends of the American 
Senate. It was deemed a cruel ^^ound given to 
itself by the Senate. It was a wrong thing, 
done in a wrong way, and could have no result 
but to lessen the dignity and respectability of 
the Senate, The members of the committee 
were the advocates of the bank, and its public 
defenders on all the points to be examined. 
This was a violation of parliamentary law, as 
well as of the first principles of decency and 
propriety — the whole of which require crimina- 
tory investigations to be made, by those who 
make the accusations. It was to be done in va- 
cation ; for which purpose the committee was 
to sit in the recess — a proceeding without pre- 
cedent, without warrant from any word in the 
constitution — and susceptible of the most abuse- 
ful and factious use. The only semblance of 
precedent for it was the committee of the House 
in 1824, on the memorial of Mr. Ninian Ed- 
wards against Mr. Crawford in that year ; but 
that was no warrant for this proceeding. It 
was a mere authority to an existing commit- 
tee which had gone through its examination, 
and made its report to the House, to continue 
its session after the House adjourned to take 
the deposition of the principal witness, detained 
by sickness, but on his way to the examination. 
This deposition the committee were to take, 
publish, and be dissolved ; and so it was done 
accordingly. And even this slight continuation 
of a committee Was obtained from the House 
with difficulty, and under the most urgent cir- 
cumstances. Mr. Crawford was a candidate for 
the presidency ; the election was to come on 
before Congress met again ; Mr. Edwards had 
made criminal charges against him ; all the tes- 
timony had been taken, except that of Mr. Ed- 
wards himself 5 and he had notified the com- 



mittee that he was on his way to appear before 
them in obedience to their summons. And it 
was under these circumstances that the existing 
committee was authorized to remain in ses- 
sion for his arrival — to receive his testimony — 
publish it — and dissolve. No perambulation 
through the country — no indefinite session — no 
putting members upon Congress jier diems and 
mileage from one session to another. Wrong- 
ful and abuseful in its creation, this peripa- 
tetic committee of the Senate was equally so 
in its composition and object. It was composed 
of the advocates of the bank, and its object evi- 
dently was to retrieve for that institution a 
part of the ground which it had lost ; and was 
so viewed by the community. The clear-sight- 
ed masses saw nothing in it but a contrivance 
to varnish the bank, and the odious appella- 
tion of "whitewashing committee" was fasten- 
ed upon it. 



CHAPTER CXI. 

DOWJSi'ALL OF THE BANK OF THE UNITED 

STATES. 

When the author of the yEneid had shown the 
opening gradeur of Rome, he deemed himself 
justified in departing from the chronological 
order of events to look ahead, and give a 
glimpse of the dead Marcellus, hope and heir of 
the Augustan empire ; in the like manner the 
writer of this View, after having shown the 
greatness of the United States Bank — exempli- 
fied in her capacity to have Jackson condemned 
— the government directors and a secretary of 
the treasury rejected — a committee of the House 
of Representatives repulsed — the country con- 
vulsed and agonized — and to obtain from the Se- 
nate of the United States a committee to proceed 
to the city of Philadelphia to "wa^h out its foul 
linen;" — after seeing all this and beholding the 
greatness of the moneyed power at the culmina- 
ting point of its domination, I feel justified in 
looking ahead a few years to see it in its altered 
phase — in its ruined and fallen estate. And 
this shall be done in the simplest form of ex- 
hibition ; namely : by copying some announce- 
ments from the Philadelphia papers of the day. 
Thus : ]. '' Resolved (by the stockholders), that 



472 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



it is expedient for the Bank of the United States 
to make a general assignment of the real and 
personal estate, goods and chattels, rights and 
credits, whatsoever, and whercsover, of the said 
corporation, to five persons, for the payment or 
securing of the debts of the same — agreeably to 
the provisions of the acts of Assembly of this 
commonwealth (Pennsylvania)." 2. "It is 
known that measures have been taken to rescue 
the property of this shattered institution from 
impending peril, and to recover as much as pos- 
sible of those enormous bounties which it was 
conceded had been paid by its late managers to 
trading politicians and mercenary publishers for 
corrupt services, rendered to it during its char- 
ter-seeking and electioneering campaigns." 3. 
" The amoimt of the suit instituted by the Bank 
of the United States against Mr. N. Biddle is 
$1,018,000, paid out during his administration, 
for which no vouchers can be found." 4. " The 
United States Bank is a perfect wreck, and is 
seemingly the pi'ey of the officers and their 
friends, which are making away with its choicest 
assets by selling them to each other, and taking 
pay in the depreciated paper of the South." 5. 
" Besides its own stock of 05,000,000, which is 
sunk, the bank carries down with it a great many 
other institutions and companies, involving a 
loss of about 21,000,000 more — making a loss 
of 56,000,000 — ^besides injuries to individuals." 
6. " There is no price for the United States 
Bank stock. Some shares are sold, but as lot- 
tery tickets would be. The mass of the stock- 
holders stand, and look on, as passengers on a 
ship that is going down, and from which there 
is no escape." 7. •' By virtue of a writ of cen- 
ditioni exponas, directed to the sheriff of the 
city and county of Philadelphia, will be exposed 
to public sale to the highest bidder, on Friday, 
the 4th day of November next, the marble house 
and the grounds kno.wn as the Bank of the 
United States, &c." 8. " By virtue of a writ of 
levari facias, to me directed, will be exposed to 
public sale the estate known as 'Andalusia,' 
ninety-nine and a half acrcs, one of tlie most 
highly improved places in Philadelphia; the 
mansion-house, and out-houses and offices, all on 
the most splendid scale ; the green-houses, hot- 
houses, and conservatories, extensive and useful ; 
taken as the property of Nicholas Biddle." 9. 
'' To the honorable Court of General Sessions. 
The grand jury for the county of Philadelphia. 



respectfully submit to the court, on their oatha 
and affirmations, that certain officers connected 
with the United States Bank, have been guilty 
of a gross violation of the law — colluding to- 
gether to defraud those stockholders who had 
trusted their property to be preserved by them. 
And that there is good ground to warrant a 
prosecution of such persons for criminal offences, 
which the grand jury do now present to the 
court, and ask that the attorney-general be di- 
rected to send up for the action of the grand 
jury, bills of indictment against Nicholas Biddle, 
Samuel Jaudon, John Andrews, and others, to 
the grand jury unknown, for a conspiracy to 
defraud the stockholders in the Bank of the 
United States of the sums of, &c." 10. Bills of 
indictment have been found against Nicholas 
Biddle, Samuel Jaudon and John Andrews, ac- 
cording to the presentment of the grand jury ; 
and bench warrants issued, which have been 
executed upon them." 11. "Examination of 
Nicholas Biddle, and others, before Recorder 
Vaux. Yesterday afternoon the crowd and 
excitement in and about the court-room where 
the examination was to take place was even 
greater than the day before. The court-room 
doors were kept closed up to within a few min- 
utes of four o'clock, the crowd outside blocking 
up every avenue leading to the room. When 
the doors were thrown open it was immediately 
filled to overflowing. At four the Recorder 
took his seat, and announcing that he was ready 
to proceed, the defendants were called, and sev- 
erally answered to their names, dtc." 1 2. " On 
Tuesday, the 18th, the examination of Nicholas 
Biddle and others, was continued, and conclud- 
ed; and the Recorder ordered, that Nicholas 
Biddle, Thomas Dunlap, John Andrews, Samuel 
Jaudon, and Joseph Cowpcrthwaite. each enter 
into a separate recognizance, with two or more 
suflBcient sureties, in the sum of $10,000, for 
their appearance at the present session of the 
court of general sessions for the city and county 
of Philadelphia, to answer the crime of which 
they thus stand charged." 13, " Nicholas Bid- 
dle and those indicted with him have been carried 
upon writs of habeas corjms before the Judges 
Barton, Conrad, aud Doran, and dischai"gcd from 
the custody of the sheriff." 14. "The criminal 
proceedings against these former officers of the 
Bank of the United States have been brought to 
a close. To get rid of the charges against theia 



ANNO 1834. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



473 



without trial of the facts against them, before a 
jury, they had themselves surrendered by their 
bail, and sued out writs of habeas corpus for 
the release of their persons. The opinions of 
the judges, the proceedings having been con- 
cluded, were delivered yesterday. The opinions 
of Judges Barton and Conrad was for their dis- 
charge ; that of Judge Doran was unfavorable. 
They were accordingly discharged. The indig- 
nation of the community is intense against this 
escape from the indictments without jury trials." 



CHAPTER CXII. 

DEATH OF JOHN RANDOLPH, OF EOANOAKE. 

He died at Philadelphia in the summer of 1833 
— the scene of his early and brilliant apparition 
on the stage of public life, having commenced 
his parliamentary career in that city, under the 
first Mr. Adams, when Congress sat there, and 
when he was barely of an age to be admitted 
into the body. For more than thirty years he 
was the political meteor of Congress, blazing 
with undiminished splendor during the whole 
time, and often appearing as the "planetary 
plague " which shed, not war and pestilence on 
nations, but agony and fear on members. His 
sarcasm was keen, refined, withering — with a 
great tendency to indulge in it ; but, as he be- 
lieved, as a lawful parliamentary weapon to effect 
some desirable purpose. Pretension, meanness, 
vice, demagogisra, were the frequent subjects of 
the exercise of his talent ; and, when confined to 
them, he was the benefactor of the House. Wit 
and genius all allowed him ; sagacity was a 
quality of his mind visible to all observers— and 
which gave him an intuitive insight into the 
effect of measures. During the first six years 
of Mr. Jefferson's administration, he was the 
^ Murat " of his party, brilliant in the charge, 
and always ready for it; and valued in the 
council, as well as in the field. He was Ion"- 
the chairman of the Counnittec of Ways and 
Means — a place always of labor and responsi- 
bility, and of more then than now, when the 
elements of revenue were less abtmdant ; and 
no man could have been placed in that situation 
during Mr. Jefferson's time whose known saga- 



city was not a pledge for the safety of his lead 
in the most sudden and critical circumstances. 
He was one of those whom that eminent states- 
man habitually consulted during the period of 
their friendship, and to whom he carefully com- 
municated his plans before they were given to 
the public. On his arrival at Washington at 
the opening of each session of Congress during 
this period, he regularly found waiting for him 
at his estabhshed lodgings — then Crawford's, 
Georgetown — the card of Mr. Jefferson, with an 
invitation for dinner the next day ; a dinner at 
which the leading measures of the ensuing ses- 
sion were the principal topic. JNIr. Jefferson 
did not treat in that way a member in whose 
sagacity he had not confidence. 

It is not just to judge such a man by ordinary 
rules, nor by detached and separate incidents in 
his life. To comprehend him, he must be judged 
as a whole — physically and mentally — and un- 
der many aspects, and for his entire life. He 
was never well — a chronic victim of ill health 
from the cradle to the grave. A letter from his 
most intimate and valued friend, Mr. Macon, 
written to me after his death, expressed the be- 
lief that he had never enjoyed during his life 
one day of perfect health — such as well people 
enjoy. Such life-long suffering must have its 
effect on the temper and on the mind ; and it 
had on his — bringing the temper often to the 
querulous mood, and the state of his mind some- 
times to the question of insanity ; a question 
which became judicial after his death, when the 
validity of his will came to be contested. I had 
my opinion on the point, and gave it responsibij-, 
in a deposition duly taken, to be read on the 
trial of the will ; and in which a belief in his 
insanity, at several specified periods, was fully 
expressed — with the reasons for the opinion. I 
had good opportunities of forming an opinion, 
living in the same house with him several years, 
having his confidence, and seeing him at all 
hours of the day and night. It also on several 
occasions became my duty to study the ques- 
tion, with a view to govern my own conduct un- 
der critical circumstances. Twice he applied to 
me to carry challenges for him. It would have 
been inhuman to have gone out with a man not 
in his right mind, and critical to one's self, as 
any accident on the ground might seriously com- 
promise the second. My opinion was fixed, of 
occasional temporary aberrations of niindj and 



474 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



during such periods he would do and say strange 
things — but always in his own way — not only 
method, but genius in his fantasies : nothing to 
bespeak a bad heart, but only exaltation and ex- 
citement. The most brilliant talk that I ever 
heard from him came forth on such occasions — 
a flow for hours (at one time seven hours), of 
copious wit and classic allusion — a perfect scat- 
tering of the diamonds of the mind. I heard a 
friend remark on one of these occasions, " he has 
wasted intellectual jewelry enough here this 
evening to equip many speakers for great ora- 
tions." I once sounded him on the delicate 
point of his own opinion of himself: — of course 
when he was in a perfectly natural state, and 
when he had said something to permit an ap- 
proach to such a subject. It was during his iast 
visit to "Washington, two winters before he died. 
It was in my room, in the gloom of the evening 
light, as the day was going out and the lamps 
not lit — no one present but ourselves — he re- 
clining on a sofa, silent and thoughtful, speak- 
ing but seldom, and I only in reply, I heard him 
repeat, as if to himself, those lines from John- 
son, (which in fact I had often heard from him 
before), on " Senility and Imbecility," which 
show us life under its most melancholy form. 

" In life's last scenes what prodigies surprise, 
Fears of the brave, and follies of the wise I 
From Marlborough's eyes the streams of dotage flow, 
And Swift expires, a driveller and a show. " 

When he had thus repeated these lines, which 
he did with deep feeling, and in slow and mea- 
sured cadence, I deemed it excusable to make 
a remark of a kind which I had never ventured 
on before ; and said : !Mr. Randolph I have 
several times heard you repeat these lines, as 
if they could have an application to yourself, 
while no person can have less reason to fear the 
fate of Swift. I said this to sound him, and to 
see what he thought of himself. His answer 
was: "I have lived in dread of insanity." That 
answer was the opening of a sealed book — re- 
vealed to me the source of much mental agony 
that I had seen him undergo. I did deem him 
in danger of the fate of Swift, and from the 
same cause as judged by his latest and greatest 
biographer. Sir ^\'altcr Scott. 

His parliamentary life was resplendent in 
talent — elevated in moral tone — always moving 
on the lofty line of honor and patriotism, and 



scorning every thing mean and selfish. He was 
the indignant enemy of personal and plundet 
legislation, and the very scourge of intrigue and 
corruption. He reverenced an honest man in 
the humblest garb, and scorned the dishonest, 
though plated with gold. An opinion was pro- 
pagated that he was fickle in his friendships. 
Certainly there were some capricious changes ; 
but far more instances of steadfast adherence. 
His friendship with Mr. Macon was historic. 
Their names went together in life— live together 
in death — and are honored together, most by 
those who knew them best. With Mr. Taze- 
well, his friendship was still longer than that 
with Mr. Macon, commencing in boyhood, and 
only ending with life. So of many others ; and 
pre-eminently so of his neighbors and constitu- 
ents — the people of his congressional district — 
affectionate as well as faithful to him ; electing 
him as they did, from boyhood to the grave. 
No one felt more for friends, or was more soli- 
citous an^ anxious at the side of the sick and 
dying bed. Love of wine was attributed to 
him ; and what was mental excitement, was re- 
ferred to deep potations. It was a great error. 
I never saw him affected by wine — not even to 
the slightest departure from the habitual and 
scrupulous decorum of his manners. His tem- 
per was naturally gay and social, and so in- 
dulged when suffering of mind and body per- 
mitted. He was the charm of the dinner-table, 
where his cheerful and sparkling wit delighted 
every ear, Ut up every countenance, and detained 
every guest. He was charitable ; but chose 
to conceal the hand that ministered relief. I 
have often seen him send little children out to 
give to the poor. 

He was one of the large slaveholders of Vir- 
ginia, but disliked the institution, and, when 
let alone, opposed its extension. Thus, in 1803, 
when as chairman of the committee which re- 
ported upon the Indiana memorial for a tempo- 
rary dispensation from the anti-slavery part of 
the ordinance of 1787, he puts the question 
upon a statesman's ground ; and reports against 
it, in a brief and comprehensive argument : 

"That the rapid population of the State of 
Ohio suflBcicntly evinces, in tlie opinion of j-our 
committee, that the labor of the slave is not 
necessar}' to promote the growth and settle- 
ment of colonies in that region. That tliis la 
bor, demonstrably the dearest of au}-, can only 
be employed to advantage in the cultivation of 



ANNO 1834. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



475 



products more valuable than any known to that 
quarter of the United States : and the commit- 
tee deem it highly dangerous and inexpedient 
to impair a provision wisely calculated to pro- 
mote the Tiappiness and prosperity of the north- 
western country, and to give strength and secu- 
rity to that extensive frontier. In the salutary 
operation of this sagacious and benevolent re- 
straint, it is believed that the inhabitants of 
Indiana will, at no very distant day, find ample 
remuneration for a temporary privation of labor 
and emigration." 

He was against slavery ; and by his will, both 
manumitted and provided for the hundreds 
which he held. But he was against foreign in- 
terference with his rights, his feelings, or his 
duties ; and never failed to resent and rebuke 
such interference. Thus, he was one of the 
most zealous of the opposers of the proposed 
Missouri restriction ; and even voted against the 
divisional line of "thirty-six thirty." In the 
House, when the term "slaveholder" would be 
reproachfully used, he would assume it, and re- 
fer to a member, not in the parliamentary phrase 
of colleague, but in the complimentary title of 
" my fellow-slaveholder." And, in London, when 
the consignees of his tobacco, and the slave fac- 
tors of his father, urged him to liberate his 
slaves, he quieted their intrusive philanthropy, 
on the spot;, by saying, " Yes : you buy and set 
free to the amount of the money you have receiv- 
ed from my father and his estate for these slaves, 
and I will set free an equal number." 

In his youth and later age, he fought duels : 
in his middle life, he was against them ; and, 
for a while, would neither give nor receive a 
challenge. He was under religious convictions 
to the contrary, but finally yielded (as he be- 
lieved) to an argument of his own, that a duel 
was private war, and rested upon the same 
basis as public war ; and that both were allow- 
able, when there was no other redress for in- 
sults and injuries. That was his argument; 
but I thought his relapse came more from feel- 
ing than reason ; and especially from the death 
of Decatur, to whom he was greatly attached, 
and whose duel with Barron long and greatly 
escited him. He had religious impressions, and 
a vein of piety which showed itself more in pri- 
vate than in external observances. He was ha- 
bitual in his reverential regard for the divinity 
of our religion ; and one of his beautiful expres- 
sions was, that, " If woman had lost us para- 
dise, she had gained us heaven." The Bible 



and Shakespeare were, in his latter years, hia 
constant companions — travelling with him on 
the road — remaining with him in the chamber. 
The last time I saw him (in that last visit to 
Washington, after his return from the Russian 
mission, and when he was in full view of death) 
I heard him read the chapter in the Revelations 
(of the opening of the seals), with such pow- 
er and beauty of voice and delivery, and such 
depth of pathos, that I felt as if I had never 
heard the chapter read before. When he had 
got to the end of the opening of the sixth seal, 
he stopped the reading, laid the book (open at 
the place) on his breast, as he lay on his bed, 
and began a discourse upon the beauty and 
sublimity of the Scriptural writings, compared 
to which he considered all human compositions 
vain and empty. Going over the images pre- 
sented by the opening of the seals, he averred 
that their divinity was in their sublimity — that 
no human power could take the same images, 
and inspire the same awe and terror, and sink 
ourselves into such nothingness in the presence 
of the " wrath of the Lamb " — that he wanted 
no proof of their divine origin but the sublime 
feelings which they inspired. 



CHAPTEE CXIII. 

DEATH OF ME. WIET. 

He died at the age of sixty-two, after having 
reached a place in the first line at the Virginia 
bar, where there were such lawyers as Wick- 
ham, Tazewell, Watkins Leigh ; and a place in 
the fi-ont rank of the bar of the Supreme Court, 
where there were such jurists as Webster and 
Pinkney ; and after having attained the high 
honor of professional preferment in the appoint- 
ment of Attorney General of the United States 
under the administration of Mr. Monroe. His 
life contains instructive lessons. Born to no 
advantages Kf wealth or position, he raised him- 
self to whaw he became by his own exertions. 
In danger of falling into a ftital habit in early 
life, he retrieved himself (touched b}' the noblo 
generosity of her who afterwards became his 
admired and beloved wife), from the brink of 
the abyss, and became the model of every do- 
mestic virtue; with genius to shine without 



476 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



labor, he yot considered genius nothing <vithout 
labor, and gave through life a laborious applica- 
tion to the study of the law as a science, and to 
each particular case in which he was ever em- 
ployed. The elegant pursuits of literature oc- 
cupied the moments taken from professional 
studies and labors, and gave to the reading pub- 
lic several admired productions, of which the 
long-desired and beautiful ''Life of Patrick 
Henry," was the most considerable : a grateful 
commemoration of Virginia's greatest orator, 
which has been justly repaid to one of her first 
class orators, by Mr. Kennedy of Maryland, in 
his classic " Life of William Wirt." How grate- 
ful to see citizens, thus engaged in laborious 
professions, snatching moments from their daily 
labors to do justice to the illustrious dead — to 
enlighten posterity by their history, and en- 
courage it by their example. Worthy of his 
political and literary eminence, and its most 
shining and crowning ornament, was the state 
of his domestic relations — exemplary in every 
thing that gives joy and decorum to the private 
family, and rewarded with eveiy blessing which 
could result from such relations. But, why use 
this feeble pen, when the voice of Webster is at 
hand ? Mr. Wirt died during the term of the 
Supreme Court, his revered friend, the Chief 
Justice Marshall, still living to preside, and to 
give, in touching language, the order to spread 
the pi'oceedings of the bar (in relation to his 
death) upon the records of the court. At the 
bar meetijig, which adopted these proceedings, 
Mr. Webster thus paid the tribute of justice and 
affection to one with whom professional rivahy 
hafl been the source and cement of personal 
friendship : i 

" It is announced to us that one of the oldest, 
one of the ablest, one of the most distinguished 
members of this liar, has departed this mortal life. 
William Wirt is no more ! He has this day closed 
a professional career, among the longest and the 
most brilliant, wliich the distinguished members 
of the profession in the United States have at 
any time accomplished. Unsullied in every 
thing which regards professional honor and in- 
tegrity, patient of laboi, and rich in those stores 
of learning, which are the reward of patient 
labor anfl patient labor only ; and if equalled, 
yet certainly allowed not to be excelled, in fer- 
vent, animated and persuasive eloquence, he has 
left an example which those who seek to raise 
themselves to great heights of professional emi- 
nence, will, hereafter emulously study. For- 



tunate, indeed, will be the few, who shall imitate 
it successfully ! 

" As a public man, it is not our peculiar duty 
to speak of Mr. Wirt here. His character in 
that respect belongs to his countr}', and to 
tjie history of his country. And. sir, if we 
were to speak of him in his private life, and 
in his social relations, all we could possibly say 
of his urbanity, his kindness, the faithfulness 
of his friendships, and the warmth of his affec- 
tions, would hardly seem sufficiently strong 
and glowing to do him justice, in the feeling and 
judgment of those who, separated, now forever 
from his embraces can only enshrine his memory 
in their bleeding hearts. Nor may we, sir, more 
than allude to that other relation, which be- 
longed to him, and belongs to us all ; that high 
and paramount relation, which coimects man 
with his INIaker ! It may be permitted us, how- 
ever, to have the pleasure of recording his name, 
as one who felt a deep sense of religious duty, 
and who placed all his hopes of the future, in 
the truth and in the doctrines of Christianity. 

" But our particular ties to him were the ties of 
our profession. He was our brother, and he was 
our friend. With talents powerful enough to ex- 
cite the strengtli of the strongest, with a kindness 
both of heart and of manner capable of warming 
and winning the coldest of his brethren, he has 
now completed the term of his professional life, 
and of his earthly existence, in the enjoj^ment 
of the high respect and cordial affections of us 
all. Let us. then, sir, hasten to pay to his 
memory the well-deserved tribute of our regard. 
Let us lose no time in testifying our sense of 
our loss, and in expressing our grief, that one 
great light of oxir profession is extinguished for- 
ever." 



CHAPTER CXIV. 

DEATH OF THE LAST OF THE SIGNERS OF THE 
DECLAKATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 

On the morning of July 4th, 182G — just fifty 
years after the event — ^but three of the fifty-six 
members of the continental Congress of 1776 
who had signed the Declaration of Independence, 
remained alive ; on the evening of that day 
there remained but one — Charles Carroll, of 
Carrollton, IMaryland ; then a full score beyond 
the Psalmist's limit of manly life, and destined 
to a further lease of six good years. It has been 
remarked of the " signers of the Declaration " 
that a felicitous existence seems to have been 
reserved for them ; blessed with long life and 
good health, honored with the public esteem, 



ANNO 1834. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



477 



raised to tho highest dignities of the States and 
of the federal government, happy in their pos- 
terity, and happy in the view of the great and 
prosperous country which their labors had 
brought into existence. Among these, so feli- 
citous and so illustrious, he was one of the most 
happy, and among the most distinguished. He 
enjoyed the honors of his pure and patriot life 
in all their forms ; age, and health, and mind, 
for sixteen years beyond that fourscore which 
brings labor and sorrow and weakness to man ; 
ample fortune ; public honors in filling the high- 
est offices of his State, and a seat in the Senate 
of the United States ; private enjoyment in an 
honorable and brilliant posterity. Born to for- 
tune, and to the care of wise and good parents, 
he had all the advantages of education which 
the colleges of France and the " Inns of Court " 
of London could give. With every thing to lose 
in unsuccessful rebellion, he risked all from the 
first opening of the contest with the mother 
country : and when he walked up to the secre- 
tary's table to sign the paper, which might 
become a death-warrant to its authors, the re- 
mark was made, " there go some millions." And 
his signing was a privilege, claimed and granted. 
He was not present at the declaration. He was 
not even a member of Congress on the memora- 
ble Fourth of July. He was in Annapolis on 
that day, a member of the Maryland Assembly, 
and zealously engaged in urging a revocation of 
the instructions v/hich limited the Maryland 
delegates in the continental Congress to ob- 
taining a redress of grievances without breaking 
the connection with the mother country. He 
succeeded — was appointed a delegate — flew to 
his post — and added his name to the patriot list. 
All history tells of the throwing overboard of 
the tea in Boston harbor : it has not been equally 
attentive to the burning of the tea in Anna- 
polis harbor. It was the summer of 1774 that 
the brigantine "Peggy Stewart" approached 
Annapolis with a cargo of the forbidden leaves on 
board. The people were in commotion at the 
news. It was an insult, and a defiance. Swift 
destruction was in preparation for the vessel : 
instant chastisement was in search of the owners. 
Terror seized them. They sent to Charles Car- 
roll as the only man that could moderate the 
fury of the people, and save their persons and 
property from a sudden destruction. He told them 
there was but one way to save their persons, 



and that was to burn their vessel and cargo, in- 
stantly and in the sight of the people. It was 
done : and thus the flames consumed at Anna- 
polis, what the waves had buried at Boston : 
and in both cases the spirit and the sacrifice was 
the same — opposition to taxation without repre- 
sentation, and destruction to its symbol. 



CHAPTER CXV. 

COMMENCEMENT OP THE SESSION 18^4— '35: 
PEESIDENT'S MESSAGE. 

Towards the close of the previous session, Mr. 
Stevenson had resigned the place of speaker of 
the House of Representatives in consequence of 
his nomination to be minister plenipotentiary and 
envoy extraordinary to the court of St. James 
— a nomination then rejected by the Senate, but 
subsequently confirmed. ]\Ir. John Bell of 
Tennessee, was elected speaker in his place, his 
principal competitor being Mr. James K. Polk 
of the same State: and, with this difierence in 
its organization, the House met at the usual 
time — the first Monday of December. The 
Cabinet then stood : John Forsyth, Secretary of 
State, in place of Louis McLane, resigned ; Levi 
Woodbury, Secretary of the Treasury ; Lewis 
Cass, Secretary at War; Mahlon Dickerson, 
Secretary of the Navy ; William T. Barry, Post 
Master General ; Benjamin Franklin Butler, 
Attorney General. The condition of our affairs 
with France, was the prominent feature of the 
message, and presented the relations of the United 
States with that power under a serious aspect. 
The indemnity stipulated in the treaty of 1831 
had not been paid — no one of the instalments ; 
— and the President laid the subject before Con- 
gress for its consideration, and action, if deemed 
necessary. 

" I regret to say that the pledges made through 
the minister of France have not been redeemed. 
The new Chambers met on the 31st July last, 
and although the subject of fulfilling treaties was 
alluded to in tlie speech from the throne, no at- 
tempt was made by the King or his Cabinet to 
procure an appropriation to carry it into execu- 
tion. The reason.s given for this omission, al- 
though they might be considered sufficient in 
an ordinary case, are not consistent with the 
expectations founded upon the assurances given 
here, for there is no constitutional obstacle to 



478 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



entering into Icuislativc business at the first 
meeting; of the Chambers. This point, however, 
might have been overlooked, had not tlie Cham- 
bers, instead of being called to meet at so early 
a day that the result of their deliberations might 
be communicated to me before the meeting of 
Congress, been prorogued to the 29th of the 
present month — a period so late that their de- 
cision can scarcely be made known to the present 
Congress prior to its dissolution. To avoid this 
delay, our minister in Paris, in virtue of the 
assurance given by the French minister in the 
United States, strongly urged the convocation 
of the Chambers at an earlier day, but without 
success. It is proper to remark, however, that 
this refusal has been accompanied with the most 
positive assurances, on the part of the Executive 
government of France, of their intention to press 
the appropriation at the ensuing session of the 
Chambers. 

" If it shall be the pleasure of Congress to 
await the further action of the French Chambers, 
no further consideration of the subject will, at 
this session, probably be required at your hands. 
But if, from the original delay in asking for an 
appropriation ; from the refusal of the Chambers 
to grant it when asked ; from the omission to 
bring the subject before the Chambers at their 
last session ; from the fact that, including that 
session, there have been five different occasions 
when the appropriation might have been made ; 
and from the delay in convoking the Chambers 
until some weeks after the meeting of Congress, 
when it was well kno\vn that a communication 
of the whole subject to Congress at the last ses- 
sion was prevented by assurances that it should 
be disposed of before its present meeting, you 
should feel yourselves constrained to doubt 
whether it be the intention of the French govern- 
ment in all its branches to carry the treaty into 
effect, and think that such measures as the occa- 
sion may be deemed to call for should be now 
adopted, the important question arises, what 
those measures shall be." 

The question then, of further delay, waiting 
on the action of France, or of action on our own 
part, was thus referred to Congress ; but under 
the constitutional injunction, to recommend to 
that body the measures he should deem neces- 
sary, and in compliance with his own sense of 
duty, and according to the frankness of his tem- 
per, he fully and categorically gave his own 
opinion of what ought to be done ; thus : 

" It is my conviction that the United States 
ought to insist on a prompt execution of the 
treaty ; and, in case it be refused, or longer dc- 
laj'ed, take redress into their own hands. Af- 
ter the delay, on the part of France, of a quarter 
of a century, in acknowledging these claims by 
treaty, it is not to be tolerated that another 
quarter of a century is to be wasted in nego- 



tiating about the payment. The laws of nations 
provide a remedy for such occasions. It is a 
well-settled principle of the international code, 
that where one nation owes another a liquidated 
debt, which it refuses or neglects to pay, the 
aggrieved party may seize on the property be- 
longing to the other, its citizens or subjects, 
sufficient to pay the debt, without giving just 
cause of war. This rcmedj'^ has been repeatedly 
resorted to, and recently by France herself to- 
wards Portugal, under circumstances less un- 
questionable." 

'• Since France, in violation of the pledges 
given through her minister here, has delayed 
her final action so long that her decision will 
not probably be known in time to be communi- 
cated to this Congress, I recommend that a law 
be passed authorizing reprisals upon French 
property, in case provision shall not be made for 
the payment of the debt at the approaching 
session of the French Chambers. Such a mea- 
sure ought not to be considered by France as a 
menace. Iler pride and power are too well 
known to expect any thing from her fears, and 
preclude the necessity of the declaration that 
nothing partaking of the character of intimida- 
tion is intended by us. She ought to look upon 
it as the evidence only of an inflexible deter- 
mination on the part of the United States to in- 
sist on their rights. That Government, by do- 
ing only what it has itself acknowledged to be 
just, will be able to spare the United States the 
necessity of taking redress into their own hands, 
and save the propert}' of French citizens from 
that seizure and sequestration which American 
citizens so long endured without retaliation or 
redress. If she should continue to refuse that 
act of acknowledged justice, and, in violation of 
the law of nations, make reprisals on our part 
the occasion of hostilities ag-ainst the United 
States, she would but add violence to injustice, 
and could not fail to expose herself to the just 
censure of civilized nations, and to the retribu- 
tive judgments of Heaven.'' 

In making this recommendation, and in look- 
ing to its possible result as producing war be- 
tween the two countries, the President showed 
himself fully sensible to all the considerations 
which should make such an event deplorable 
between powers of ancient friend>ship, and their 
harmony and friendship desirable for tlie sake 
of the progress and maintenance of liberal po- 
litical systems in Europe. And on this point he 
said: 

"Collision with France is the more to be re- 
gretted, on account of the position she occupies 
in lEurope in relation to liberal institutions. 
But in maintaining our national rights and hon 
or, all governments are alike to us. If, by a 
collision with France, in a case where she is 



ANNO 1834. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



479 



clearly in the wrong, the march of liberal prin- 
ciples shall be impeded, the responsibility for 
that result, as well as every other, will rest on 
her own head." 

This state of our relations with France gave 
rise to some animated proceedings in our Con- 
gress, '"'hich will be noticed in their proper place. 
The condition of the finances was shown to be 
good — not only adequate for all the purposes of 
the government and the complete extinguish- 
ment of the remainder of the public debt, but 
still leaving a balance in the treasury equal to 
one fourth of the annual income at the end of 
the year. Thus : 

" According to the estimate of the Treasury 
Department, the revenue accruing from all 
sources, during the present year, will amount to 
twenty millions six hundred and twenty-four 
thousand seven hundred and seventeen dollars, 
which, with the balance remaining in the Trea- 
sury on the first of January last, of eleven mil- 
lions seven hundred and two thousand nine hun- 
dred and five dollars, produces an aggregate of 
thirtj^-two millions three hundred and twenty- 
seven thousand six hundred and twenty-three 
dollars. The total expenditure during the year 
for all objects, including the public debt, is esti- 
mated at twenty-five millions five hundred and 
ninety-one thousand three hundred and ninety 
dollars, which will leave a balance in the Trea- 
sury on the first of January, 1835, of six mil- 
lions seven hundred and thirty-six thousand 
two hundred and thirty-two dollars. In this 
balance, however, Avill be included about one 
million one hundred and fifty thousand dollars 
of what was heretofore reported by the depart- 
ment as not efiective." 

This unavailable item of above a million of 
dollars consisted of local bank notes, received 
in payment of public lands during the years of 
general distress and bank suspensions from 1819 
to 1822 ; and the banks which issued them hav- 
ing failed they became worthless; and were 
finally dropt from any enumeration of the con- 
tents of the treasury. The extinction of the 
public debt, constituting a marked event in our 
financial history, and an era in the state of the 
treasury, was looked to by the President as the 
epoch most proper for the settlement of our 
doubtful points of future policy, and the in- 
auguration of a system of rigorous economy : to 
which effect the message said : 

"Free from public debt, at peace with all the 
world, and with no complicated interests to con- 
sult in our intercourse with foreign powers the 
present may be hailed as the epoch in our' his- 



tory the most favorable for the settlement of 
those principles in our domestic policy, which 
shall be best calculated to give stability to our 
republic, and secure the blessings of freedom to 
our citizens. While we are felicitating our- 
selves, therefore, upon the extinguishment of 
the national debt, and the prosperous state of 
our finances, let us not be tempted to depart 
from those sounds maxims of public poFicy, 
which enjoin a just adaptation of the revenue to 
the expenditures that are consistent with a rigid 
economy, and an entire abstinence from all top- 
ics of legislation that are not clearly within the 
constitutional powers of the Government, and 
suggested by the wants of the country. Properly 
regarded, under such a policy, every diminutioa 
of the public burdens arising from taxation, 
gives to individual enterprise increased power, 
and furnishes to all the members of our happy 
confederacy, new motives for patriotic aftection 
and support. But, above all, its most important 
effect will be found in its influence upon the 
character of the Government, by confining its ac- 
tion to those objects which will be sure to secure 
to it the attachment and support of our fellow- • 
citizens." 

The President had a new cause of complaint 
to communicate against the Bank of the United 
States, which was the seizure of the dividends 
due the United States on the public stock in 
the institution. The occasion was, the claim 
for damages which the bank set up on a pro- 
tested bill of exchange, sold to it on the faith of 
the French treaty ; and which was protested for 
non-payment. The case is thus told by the 
President : 

" To the needless distresses brought on the 
country during the last session of Congress, 
has since been added the open seizure of the 
dividends on the public stock, to the amount of 
)$170,041, under pretence of paying damages, 
cost, and interest, upon the protested French 
bill. This sum constituted a portion of the es- 
timated revenues for the year 1834, upon which 
the appropriations made by Congress were 
based. It would as soon have been expected 
that our collectors would seize on tlie customs, 
or the receivers of our land offices on the 
moneys arising from the sale of public lands, 
under pretences of claims ag.iinst the United 
States, as that the bank would have retained 
the dividends. Indeed, if the principle be esta- 
blished that any one who chooses to set up a 
claim against the United States may, without 
authority of law, seize on the public property 
or money wherever he can find it, to pay such 
claim, there will remain no assurance that our 
revenue will reacli the treasury, or that it will 
be applied after the appropriation to the pur- 
poses designated in the law. The paymasters 
of our army, and the pursers of our navy, may, 



480 



THIRTY YEARS' VIE-W. 



under like pretences, apply to their own use 
moneys appropriated to get in motion the pub- 
lic force, and in time of war leave the country 
without defence. This measure, resorted to by 
the Bank, is disoi'ganizing and revolutionary, 
and, if generally resorted to by private citizens 
in like cases, would fill the land with anarchy 
and violence." 

The money thus seized by the bank was re- 
tained until recovered from it by due course of 
law. The corporation was sued, judgment re- 
covered against it, and the money made upon 
a writ of execution ; so that the illegahty of its 
conduct in making this seizure was judicially 
established. The President also communicated 
new proofs of the wantonness of the pressure 
and distress made by the bank during the pre- 
ceding session — the fact coming to light that it 
had shipped about three millions and a half of 
the specie to Europe which it had squeezed out 
of the hands of the people during the panic ; — 
and also that, immediately after the adjourn- 
ment of Congress, the action of the bank was 
reversed — the curtailment changed into exten- 
sion ; and a discoimt line of seventeen millions 
rapidly ran out. 

" Immediately after the close of the last ses- 
sion, the bank, through its president, announced 
its ability and readiness to abandon the system 
of unparalleled curtailment, and the interrup- 
tion of domestic exchanges, which it had prac- 
tised upon from the 1st of August, 1833, to the 
30th of June, 1834, and to extend its accommo- 
dations to the community. The grounds as- 
sumed in this annunciation amounted to an ac- 
knowledgment that the curtailment, in the ex- 
tent to which it had been carried, was not 
necessary to the safety of the bank, and had 
been persisted in merely to induce Congress to 
grant the prayer of the bank in its memorial 
relative to the removal of the deposits, and to 
give it a new charter. They were substantially 
a confession that all the real distresses which 
individuals and the country had endured for the 
preceding six or eight months, had been need- 
lessly produced by it, with the view of effecting, 
through the sufferings of the people, the legisla- 
tive action of Congress. It is a subject of con- 
gratulation that Congress and the country had 
the virtue and firmness to bear the infliction ; 
that the energies of our people soon found relief 
from this wanton tyranny, in vast importations 
of the precious metals from almost every part 
of the world ; and that, at the close of this tre- 
mendous effort to control our government, the 
bank found itself powerless, and no longer able 
to loan out its surplus means. The community 
had learned to manage its affairs without its 
assistance, and trade had already found now 



auxiliaries ; so that, on the 1st of October last, 
the extraordinary spectacle was presented of a 
national bank, more than one half of whose 
capital was either lying unproductive in its 
vaults, or in the hands of foreign bankers." 

Certainly this was a confession of the whole 
criminality of the bank in making the v^^istress ; 
but even this confession did not prevent the 
Senate's Finance Committee from making an 
honorable report in its favor. But there is 
something in the laws of moral right above the 
powers of man, or the designs and plans o^ 
banks and politicians. The greatest calamity 
of the bank — the loss of thirty-five millions of 
stock to its subscribers — chiefly dates from this 
period and this conduct. Up to this time its 
waste and losses, though great, might still have 
been remediable ; but now the incurable course 
was taken. Half its capital lying idle ! Good 
borrowers were scarce ; good indorsers still more 
so ; and a general acceptance of stocks in lieu of 
the usual security was the fatal resort. First, its 
own stock, then a great variety of stocks were 
taken ; and when the bank went into liquida- 
tion, its own stock was gone ! and the others in 
every imaginable degree of depreciation, from 
under par to nothing. The government had di- 
rectors in the bank at that time, Messrs. Charles 
McAllister, Edward D. Ingraham, and Ell- 
maker; and the President was under no mistake 
in any thing he said. The message recurs to 
the fixed policy of the President in selling the 
public stock in the bank, and says : 

" I feel it my duty to recommend to you that 
a law be passed authorizing the sale of the pub- 
lic stock ; that the provision of the charter re- 
quiring the receipt of notes of the bank in pay- 
ment of public dues, shall, in accordance with 
the power reserved to Congress in the 14th 
section of the charter, be suspended until the 
bank pays to the treasury the dividends with- 
held ; and that all laws connecting the govern- 
ment or its officers with the bank, directly or 
indirectly, be repealed ; and that the institu- 
tion be left hereafter to its own resources and 
means." 

The wisdom of this persevering recommenda- 
tion was, fortunately, appreciated in time to 
save the United States from the fate of other 
stockholders. The attention of Congress was 
again called to the regulation of the deposits in 
State banks. As yet there was no law upon 
the subject. The bill for that purpose passed 
in the House of Representatives at the previous 



ANNO 1834. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



481 



session, had been laid upon the table in the 
Senate; and thus was kept open a head of com- 
plaint against the President for the illegal cus- 
tody of the pjiblic moneys. It was not illegal. 
It was the custody, more or less resorted to, 
under every administration of the federal gov- 
ernment, and never called illegal except imder 
President Jackson ; but it was a trust of a kind 
to require regulation by law ; and he, therefore, 
earnestly recommended it. The message said : 

" The attention of Congress is earnestly in- 
vited to the regulation of the deposits in the 
State banks, by law. Although the power now 
exercised by the Executive department in this 
behalf is only such as was uniformly extrted 
through every administration from the origin of 
the government up to the establishment of the 
present bank, yet it is one which is susceptible 
of regulation by law, and, therefore, ought so to 
be regulated. The power of Congress to direct 
in what places the Treasurer shall keep the 
moneys in the Treasury, and to impose restric- 
tions upon the Executive authority, in relation 
to their custody and removal, is unlimited, and 
its exercise will rather be courted than discour- 
aged by those public officers and agents on whom 
rests the responsibility for their safety. It is 
desirable that as little power as possible should 
be left to the President or Secretary of the 
Treasury over those institutions, which, bping 
thus freed from Executive influence, and without 
a common head to direct their operations, would 
have neither the temptation nor the ability to 
interfere in the political conflicts of the country. 
Not deriving their charters from the national 
authorities, they would never have those induce- 
ments to meddle in general elections, which 
have led the Bank of the United States to agi- 
tate and convulse the country for upwards of 
two years." 

The increase of the gold currency was a subject 
of congratulation, and the purification of paper 
by the suppression of small notes a matter of 
earnest recommendation with the President — the 
latter addressed to the people of the States, and 
every way worthy of their adoption. He said : 

" The progress of our gold coinage is credita- 
ble to the officers of the mint, and promises in a 
short period to furnish the country with a 
sound and portable currency, which will much 
diminish the inconvenience to travellers of the I 
want of a general ])apor currenc}', should the 
State banks be incai)able of furnishing it. Those 
institutions have already shown themselves com- 
petent to purchase and furnish domestic exchange 
for the convenience of trade, at reasonable rates; 
and not a doubt is entertained that, in a short 
period, all the wants of the count rj^, in bank 
iiccommodations and exchange, ^\-ill be supplied 
as promptly and as cheaply as they have here- 

Vol. I.— 31 



tofore been by the Bank of the United States. 
if the several States shall be induced gradually 
to reform their banking systems, and prohibit 
the issue of all small notes, we shall, in a few 
years, have a currency as sound, and as little 
liable to fluctuations, as any other commercial 
country." 

The message contained the standing recom- 
mendation for reform in the presidential election- 
The direct vote of the people, the President con- 
sidered the only safeguard for the purity of that 
election, on which depended so much of the 
safe working of the government. The message 
said: 

" I trust that I may be also pardoned for re- 
newing the recommendation I have so often sub- 
mitted to your attention in regard to the mode 
of electing the President and Vice-President of 
the United States. All the reflection I have 
been able to bestow upon the subject, increases 
my conviction that the best interests of the 
country will be promoted by the adoption of 
some plan which will secure, in all contingencies, 
that important right of sovereignty to the direct 
control of the people. Could this be attained, 
and the terms of those oflQcers be limited to a 
single period of either four or six j-ears, I think 
our hberties would possess an additional safe- 
guard." 



CHAPTER CXVI. 

REPORT OF THE BANK COMMITTEE. 

Early in the session the Finance Committee 
of the Senate, which had been directed to make 
an examination into the affairs of the Bank of 
the United States, made their report — an ela- 
borate paper, the reading of which occupied two 
hours and a half, — for this report was honored 
with a reading at the Secretary's table, while but 
few of the reports made by heads of departments, 
and relating to the affairs of the whole I^nion, 
received that honor. It was not only read 
through, but by its author — Mr. Tyler, the se- 
cond named of the committee; the first named, or 
official chairman, Mr. Webster, not having acted 
on the committee. The report was a most ela- 
borate vindication of the conduct of the bank at 
all points ; but it did not stop at the defence of 
the institution, but went forward to the crimi- 
nation of others. It dragged in the names of 
General Jackson, Mr. Van Buren, and Mr. Ben- 
ton, laying hold of the circumstance of their 
having done ordinary acts of duty to their friends 



482 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



and constituents in promoting their application 
for branch banks, to raise false implications 
against them as having been in favor of the in- 
stitution. Tf such had been the fact, it did not 
come within the scope of the committee's ap- 
pointment, nor of the resolution under which 
they acted, to have reported upon such a cir- 
cumstance : but the implications were imtrue ; 
and Mr. Benton being the only one present that 
had the right of speech, assailed the report the 
instant it was read — declaring tliat such things 
were not to pass uncontradicted for an instant 
— that the Senate was not to adjourn, or the 
galleries to disperse without hearing the contra- 
diction. And being thus suddenly called up by 
a sense of duty to himself and his friends, he 
would do justice upon the report at once, expos- 
ing its numerous fallacies from the moment they 
appeared in the chamber. He commenced with 
the imputations upon himself. General Jackson 
and Mr. Van Buren, and scornfully repulsed the 
base and gratuitous assumptions which had been 
made. He said : • 

" His own name was made to figure in that 
report — in very good company to be sure, that 
of President Jackson, Vice-President Van Buren 
and Mr. senator Grundy. It seems that we 
have all been detected in something that de- 
serves exposure — in the offence of aiding our re- 
spective constituents, or fellow-citizens in ob- 
taining branch banks to be located in our respec- 
tive States ; and upon this detection, the assertion 
is made that these branches were not extended 
to these States for political effect, when the 
cliarter was nearly run out, but in good foith, 
and upon our application, to aid the business of 
the country. INIr. B. said, it was true that he 
had forwarded a petition from the merchants of 
St. Louis, about 1826 or '27, soliciting a branch 
at that place : and he had accompanied it by a 
letter, as he had been requested to do, sustaining 
and supporting their request; and bearing the 
testimony to their characters as men of business 
and pro})erty which the occasion and the truth 
require*!. He did this for n\erchants who were 
his political enemies, and he did it readily and 
cordially, as a representative ought to act for 
his constituents, whether they are for him, or 
against him, in the elections. So far so good ; 
but the allegation of the report is, that the 
branch at St. Louis was established upon this 
petition and this letter, and therefore was not 
established with political views, but p\irely and 
simply for business purposes. Now, said Mr. 
B., I have a question to put to the senator from 
Virginia (^Ir. Tyler), who has made the report 
for the committee : It is this : whethei' the pre- 
sident or directors of the bank had informed him 
that General Cadwallader had benn sent as aa 



agent to St. Louis, to examme the place, and to 
report upon its ability to sustain a branch? 

" Mr. Tyler rose, ana said, that he had heard 
nothing at the bank upon the subject of Gen. 
Cadwallader having been sent to St. Louis, or 
any report upon the place being made." 

" Then, said Mr. Benton, resuming liis speech, 
the committee has been treated unworthily, — 
scurvily, — basely, — by the bank ! It has been 
made the instrument to report an untruth to 
the Senate, and to the American people ; and 
neither the Senate, nor that part of the Ameri- 
can people who chance to be in this chamber, 
shall be permitted to leave their places until 
that falsehood is exposed. 

"Sir, said "Mv B., addres.sing the Vice-Presi- 
dent, the president, and directors of the Bank of 
the United States, upon receiving the merchants' 
petition, and my letter, did not send a branch to 
St. Louis ! They sent an agent there, in the per- 
son of General Cadwallader, to examine the 
place, and to report upon its mercantile capabil- 
ities and wants ; and upon that report, the de- 
cision was made, and made against the request 
of the merchants, and that upon the ground 
that the business of the place would not justify 
the establishment of a branch. The petition 
from the merchants came to Mr. B. while he 
was here, in his seat ; it was forwarded from 
this place to Philadelphia ; the agent made his 
visit to St. Louis before he (^Ir. B.) returned ; 
and when he got home, in the spring, or sum- 
mer, the merchants informed him of what had 
occurred ; and that they had received a letter 
from the directory of the bank, informing them 
that a branch could not be granted; and there the 
whole affair, so far as the petition and the lettei: 
were concerned, died away. But, said Mr. B., 
it happened just in that time, that I made my 
first demonstration — struck my first blow — 
against the bank ; and the next news that I had 
from the merchants was, that another letter had 
been received from the bank, without any new 
petition having been sent, and without any new 
report upon the business of tlie place, informing 
them that the branch was to come ! And como 
it did, and immediately went to work to gain 
men and presses, to govern the politics of the 
State, to exclude him (Mr. B.) from re-election 
to the Senate ; and to oppose every candidate, 
from governor to constable, who was not for 
the bank. The branch had even furnished a 
list to the mother bank, through some of its 
officers, of the names and residences of the ac- 
tive citizens in every part of the State ; and to 
these, and to their great astonishment at the 
familiarity and condescension of the liigh di- 
rectory in Philadelphia, myriads of bank docu- 
ments were sent, with a mii\iite descrijjtion of 
name and place, postage free. At the presi- 
dential election of 1832, the State was deluged 
with these favors. At his own re-elections to 
the Senate, the two last, the branch fiank was 
in the field against him every where, and in 
every form ; its directors traversing the State, 



ANNO 1S34. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



483 



going to the houses of the members of the 
General Assembly after they were elected, in 
almost every county, over a State of sixty 
thousand square miles ; and then attending the 
legislature as lobby members, to oppose him. 
Of these things Mr. B. liad never spoken in 
public before, nor should he have done it now, 
had it not been for the falsehood attempted to 
be palmed upon the Senate through the instru- 
mentality of its committee. But having been 
driven into it, he would mention another cir- 
cumstance, which also, he had never named in 
public before, but which would -"hrow light 
upon the establishment of the branch in St. 
Louis, and the kind of business which it had to 
perform. An immense edition of a review of 
his speech on the veto message, was circulated 
through his State on the eve of his last election. 
It bore the impress of the bank foundry in Phi- 
ladelphia, and was intended to let the people 
of JNIissouri see that he (Mr. B.) was a very un- 
fit person to represent them : and afterwards it 
was seen from the report of the government 
directors to the President of the United States, 
that seventy-five thousand copies of that review 
were paid for by the Bank of the United States ! " 

The committee had gone out of their way — 
departed from the business with which they 
were charged by the Senate's resolution — to 
bring up a stale imputation upon Gen. Jackson, 
for becoming inimical to Mr. Biddle, because he 
could not make him subservient to his purposes. 
The imputation was unfounded and gratuitous, 
and disproved by the journals of the Senate, 
which bore Gen. Jackson's nomination of Mr. 
Biddle for government director — and at the head 
of those directors, thereby indicating him for 
president of the bank — three several times, in as 
many successive years, after the time alleged for 
this hostility and vindictiveness. This unjus- 
tifiable imputation became the immediate, the 
next point of Mr. Benton's animadversion ; and 
was thus disposed of: 

" Mr. B. said there was another thing which 
must be noticed now, because the proof to con- 
found it was written in our own journals. lie 
alluded to the ' hostility ' of the President of 
the United States to the bank, which made so 
large a figure in that report. The ' vindictive- 
ness ' of the President, — the ' hostility ' of the 
President, was often pressed into the service of 
that report — which he must be permitted to 
qualify as an elaborate defence of the bank. 
Whether used originally, or by quotation, it 
was the same thing. 1'he quotation from Mr. 
Duane was made to help out the arguinent of 
the committee— to sustain their position— and 
thereby became their own. The ' vindictive- 
ness ' of the President towards the bank, is 



brought forward with imposing gravity by the 
committee ; and no one is at a loss to under- 
stand what is meant ! The charge has been 
made too often not to suggest the whole story 
as often as it is hinted. The President became 
hostile to Ur. Biddle, according to this fine 
story, because he could not manage him ! be- 
cause lie could not make him use the institution 
for political purposes ! and hence his revenge, 
his vindictiveness, his hatred of Mr. Biddle, and 
his change of sentiment towards the institution. 
This is the charge which has run through the 
bank presses for three years, and is alleged to 
take date from 1829, when an application was 
made to change the president of the Portsmouth 
branch. But how stands the truth, recorded 
upon our own journals ? It stands thus : that 
for three consecutive years after the harboring 
of this deadly malice against Mr. Biddle, for not 
managing the institution to suit the President's 
political wishes — for t!u-ee j'ears, one after 
another, with this ' vindictive ' hate in his bo- 
som, and this diabolical determination to ruin 
the institution, he nominates this same ]\Ir. 
Biddle to the Senate, as one of the government 
directors, and at the head of those directors ! 
Mr. Biddle and some of his friends with him 
came in, upon every nommation for three suc- 
cessive years, after vengeance had been sworn 
against him ! For three years afterwards he is 
not only named a director, but indicated for the 
presidency of the bank, by being put at the 
head of those who came recommejided by the 
nomination of the President, and the sanction of 
the Senate ! Thus was he nominated for the 
years 1830, 1831, and 1832 ; and it was only 
after the report of Mr. Clayton's committee of 
1832 that the President ceased to nominate Mr. 
Biddle for government director ! Such was the 
frank, confiding and friendly conduct of the 
President ; while j\f r. Biddle, conscious that he 
did not deserve a nomination at his hands, had 
hims«lf also elected during each of these years, 
at the head of the stockholders' ticket. He 
knew what he was meditating and hat-ching 
against the President, though the President did 
not ! What then becomes of the charge faintly 
shadowed forth by the committee, and publicly 
and directly made bj- the bank and its friends ? 
False ! False as hell ! and no senator can say 
it without finding the proof of the falsehood re- 
corded in our own journal ! " 

Mr. Benton next defended Mr. Taney from 
an unjustifiable and gratuitous assault made 
upon him by the committee — the moi-e unwar- 
rantable because that gentleman was in retire- 
ment — no more in public life — having resigned 
his place of Secretary of the Treasury the day 
he was rejected by the Senate. ^Ir. Taney, in 
his report upon the removal of the deposits, had 
repeated, what the government directors and a 
committee of the House of Representatives had 



484 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



first reported, of the illegal conduct of the bank 
committee of exchange, in making loans. The 
fact was true, and as since shown, to a far higher 
decree than then detected ; and the Senate's 
eomnuttee were unjustifiable in defending it. 
But not satisfied with this defence of a criminal 
institution against a just accusation, they took 
the opportunity of casting censure upon Mr. 
Taney, and gaining a victory over him by mak- 
ing a false issue. Mr. Benton immediately 
corrected this injustice. He said : 

" That he was not now going into a general 
answer to the report, Imt he must do justice to 
an abse. * gentleman — one of the purest men 
Hpon earth, both in public and private life, and 
who, after the manner he had been treated in 
this chamber, ought to be secure, in his retire- 
ment, from senatorial attack and injustice. The 
committee have joined a conspicuous issue wnth 
Mr. Taney ; and they have carried a glorious 
bank victory over him, by turning otF the trial 
upon a false point. Mr. Taney arraigned the 
legality of the conduct of the exchange commit- 
tee, which, overleaping the business of such a 
committee, which is to buy and sell real bills 
of exchangee, had become invested with the 
power of Ihe whole board; transacting that 
business which, by the charter, could only be 
done by the board of directors, and by a board 
of not less than seven, and which they could not 
delegate. Yet this committee, of three, selected 
by the President himself, was shown by the 
report of the government directors to transact 
the most important business ; such as making 
immense loans, upon long credits, and upon 
questionable security ; sometimes covering its 
operations under the simulated garb, and falsi- 
fied pretext, of buyhiis a bill of exchange; 
sometimes using no disguise at all. It was 
shown, by the same report, to have the exclu- 
sive charge of conductiug the curtailment last 
winter ; a business of the most important cha- 
racter to the country, having no manner of 
aflinity to the projier functions of an exchange 
committee; and which tliey conducted in the 
most partial and iniquitous manner ; and with- 
out even reporting to the board. All this the 
government chrectors communicated. All this 
was commented upon on this lioor; yet Mr. 
Taney is selected ! He is the one pitched upon ; 
as if nobody but him had arraigned the illegal 
acts of this committee; and then he is made to 
arraign the existence of tl)e counuitlee, and not 
its misconduct ! Is this right I Is it fair ? Is it 
just thus to pursue that gentleman, and to pur- 
sue him unjustly ? Can the vengeance of the 
bank never be appeased while he lives and 
moves on earth 7 " 

After having vindicated the President, the 
Vice-President, Mr. Grundy, Mr. Taney, and 



himself, from the unfounded imputations of th« 
committee, so gratuitously presented, so un- 
warranted in fact, and so foreign to the purpose 
for which they were appointed, Mr. Benton 
laid hold of some facts which had come to 
light for the purpose of showing the misconduct 
of the bank, and to invalidate the committee's 
report. The first was the cransijortation of specie 
to London while pressing it out of the com- 
munity here. He said : 

" He had performed a duty, which ought not 
to be delayed an houi-, in defending himself, the 
President, and ]Mr. Taney, from the sad injustice 
of that report; the report itself, with all its 
elaborate pleadings for the bank, — its errors of 
omission and commission, — would come up for 
argument after it was printed ; and when, with 
God's blessing, and the help of better hands, he 
would hope to show that it was the duty of the 
Senate to recommit it, with instructions to ex- 
amine witnesses upon oath, and to brmg out 
that secret history of the institution, which 
seems to have been a sealed book to the com- 
mittee. For the present, he would bring to 
light two facts, detected in the intricate mazes 
of the monthly statements, which would fix at 
once, both the character of the bank and the 
character of the report ; the bank, for its au- 
dacity, wnckedness and falsehood ; the report, 
for its blindness, fatuity, and partiality. 

" The bank, as all America knows (said Mr. 
B.), filled the whole country with the endless 
cry which had been echoed and re-echoed from 
this chamber, that the removal of the deposits 
had laid her under the necessity of curtailing 
her debts ; had comiiellcd her to call in her loans, 
to fill the vacuum in her coficrs produced by 
this removal ; and thus to enable herself to 
stand the pressure which the ' hostility' of the 
government was bringing upon her. This was 
the assertion for six long months ; and now let 
facts confront this assertion, and reveal the 
truth to an outraged and insulted community. 

"The first fact (said Mr. B.), is the transfer 
of the moneys to London, to lie there idle, whilo 
squeezed out of the people here during the panic 
and pressure. 

'• The cry of distress was raised in December, 
at the meeting of Congress ; and during that 
month the sum of .^129,764 was transferred by 
the bank to its agents, the Barings. This cry 
waxed stronger till July, and until that time 
the monthly transfers were : 



December, 
February, 
March, . , 
May, . . 
June, . . 
July, . . 



$129,704 

. 355.253 

, 201:543 

. 34.749 

. 2.142,054 

. '501,950 

{$3,425,313 



ANNO 1834. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



485 



Making the sum of near three millions and a 
half transferred to London, to lie idle in the 
hands of an agent, while that very money "was 
squeezed out of a few cities here ; and theVhole 
country, and the halls of Congress, were filled 
with the deafening din of the cry, that the bank 
was forced to curtail, to supply the loss in her 
own coflers from the removal of the deposits ! 
And, worse yet ! The bank had, in the hands 
of the same agents, a large sum when the trans- 
fers of these panic collections began ; making in 
the whole, the sum of ^4,261,201, on the first 
day of July last, which was lying idle in her 
agents' hands in London, drawing little or no 
interest there, while squeezed out of the hands 
of those who were paying bank interest here, 
near seven per cent. ; and had afterwards to go 
into brokers' hands to borrow at one or two per 
cent, a month. Even now, at the last returns 
on the first day of this month, about two mil- 
lions and a half of this money ($2,678,006) was 
still lying idle in the hands of the Barings! 
waiting till foreign exchange can be put up again 
to eight or ten per cent. The enormity of this 
conduct, jMr. B. said, was aggravated by the 
notorious fact, that the transfers of this money 
were made by sinking the price of exchange as 
low as five per cent, below par, when shippers 
and planters had bills to sell ; and raising it 
eight per cent, above par when merchants and 
importers had to buy ; thus double taxing the 
commerce of the country — double taxing the 
producer and consumer — and making a fluctua- 
tion of thirteen per cent, in foreign" exchange, 
in the brief space of six months. And all this 
to make money scarce at home while charging 
that scarcity upon the President ! Thus com- 
binmg calumny and stock-jobbing with the 
diabolical attempt to ruin the countrj^, or to 
rule it." 

The next glaring fact which showed the enor- 
mous culpability of the bank in making the 
pressure and distress, was the abduction of 
about a million and a quarter of hard dollars 
from New Orleans, while distressing the busi- 
ness community there by refusal of discounts 
and the ciu-tailmcnt of loans, under pretence of 
making up what she lost there by the removal 
of the deposits. The fact of the abduction was 
detected in the monthly reports still made to 
the Secretary of the Treasury, and was full proof 
of the wantonness and wickedness of the pres- 
sure, as the amount thus squeezed out of the 
community was immediately transferred to Phi- 
ladelphia or New-York ; to be thence shipped to 
London, Mr. Benton thus exposed this iniquity : 

" The next fact, l\Ir. B. said, was the abduction 
of an immense amount of specie from New Or- 
leans, at the moment the Western produce was 



arriving there ; and thus disabling the merchants 
from buying that produce, and thereby sinking 
its price nearly one half; and all under the false 
pretext of supplying the loss in its coifers, occa- 
sioned by the removal of the deposits. 

'• The falsehood and wickedness of this con- 
duct will appear from the fact, that, at the time 
of the removal of the deposits, in October, the 
public deposits, in the New Orleans branch, were 
far less than the amount afterwards curtailed, 
and sent off; and that these deposits were not 
entirely drawn out, for many months after the 
curtailment and abduction of the money. Thus, 
the public deposits, in October, were : 

" In the name of the Treasurer 

of the United States, $294,228 02 

173,764 64 



" In the name of public officers, 



$467,993 26 



" In all, less than half a million of doUars. 
" In March, there was still on hand : 

"In the name of the Treasurer, $40,266 28 
"In the name of public officers, 63,671 80 

$103,938 08 

"In all, upwards ©f one hundred thousand 
dollars; and making the actual withdrawal of 
deposits, at that branch, but $360,000, and that 
paid out gradually, in the discharge of govern- 
ment demands. 

" Now, what was the actual curtailment, dur- 
ing the same period? It is shown from the 
monthly statements, that these curtailments, on 
local loans, were $788,904 ; being upwards of 
double the amount of deposits, miscalled re- 
moved; for they were not removed ; but only 
paid out in the regjdar progress of government 
disbursement, and actually remaining in the mass 
of circulation, and much of it in the bank itself. 
But the specie removed during the same time ! 
that was the fact, the damning fact, upon which 
he relied. This abduction was : 



"In the month of No- 
vember, $334,647 
" In the month of JMarch, 808,084 



at the leatt 



$1,142,731 

"Making near a million and a quarter of dol- 
lars, at the least. Mr. B. repeated, at the least ; 
for a monthly statement does not sliow the ac- 
cumulation of the month which niighl also be 
sent off; and the statement could only be relied 
on for so much as appeared a month before the 
abduction was made. Probably the sum was 
upwards of a million and a (juarter of liard dol- 
lars, thus taken away fiom New Orleans last 
winter, by stopping accommodations, calling in 
loans, breaking uj) domestic exchange, creating 
panic and pressure, and sinking the price of all 
pi'oduce; that the mother bank might transfer 
funds to London, gamble in foreign exchange, 



486 



THIRTY YEAES' VIEW. 



spread desolation and terror through the land ; 
and then charsre the whole upon the President 
of the United' States; and end with the grand 
consummation of bringing a new political party 
into power, and perpetuating its own charter." 

Mr. Benton commented on the barefoccdness 
of running out an immense line of discounts, so 
soon done after the rise of the last session of 
Congress, and so suddenly, that the friends of 
the bank, in remote places, not having had time 
to be informed of the " reversal of the bank 
screws," were still in full chorus, justb'"ying the 
curtailment ; and concluded with denouncing 
the report as ex parte, and remarking upon the 
success of the committee in finding what they 
were not sent to look for, and not finding what 
they ought to have found. He said : 

" These are some of the astounding iniquities 
which have escaped the eyes of the committee, 
while they have been so successful in their anti- 
quarian researches into Andrew Jackson's and 
Felix Grundy's letters, ten or twenty j'ears ago, 
and into Martin Van Buren's and Thomas H. Ben- 
ton's, six or eight j^ears ago ; letters which every 
public man is called upon to give to his neighbors, 
or constituents ; which no public man ought to 
refuse, or, in all probability ever did refuse ; and 
which are so ostentatiously paraded in the re- 
port, and so emphatically read in this chamber, 
with pause and gesture ; and with such a sym- 
pathetic look for the expected smile from the 
friends of the bank ; letters which, so far as he 
was concerned, had been used to make the com- 
mittee the organ of a falsehood. And now, Mr. 
B. would be glad to know, who put the commit- 
tee on the scent of those old musty letters ; for 
there was nothing in the resolution, under which 
they acted, to conduct their footsteps to the silent 
covert of that small game." 

Mr. Tyler made a brief reply, in defence of 
the report of the committee, in which he said : 

" The senator from ]\Iissouri had denominated 
the report ' an elaborate defence of the bank.' 
He had said that it justified the bank in its 
course of curtailment, during the last winter 
and the early part of the summer. Sir, if the 
honorable senator had paid more attention to 
the reading, or hadAvaited to have it in jirint, he 
would not have hazarded such a declaration. 
He would have perceived that tliat whole ques- 
tion was submitted to the decision of the Senate. 
The committee had presented both sides of the 
question — the view most fiivorable, and that 
most imfavorable, to the institution. It exhib- 
ited the measures of the Executive and those of 
the bank consequent upon them, on the one 
side, and the available resources of the Ijank on 
the other. The fact that its circulation of 
§19,000.000 ■ was protected by specie to the 



amount of $10,000,000, and claims on the State 
banks exceeding !iJ;2,000,000, which were equal to 
specie — that its purchase of domestic exchange 
had so declined, from May to October, as to 
place at its disposal more than $^5,000,000; 
something more than a doubt is expressed 
whether, tnider ordinary circumstances, the 
bank would have been justified in curtailing its 
discounts. So, too, in regard to a perseverance 
in its measures of precaation as long as it did, 
a summary of fjicts is given to enable the Sen- 
ate to djecide upon the propriety of the course 
pursued by the bank. The effort of the com- 
mittee has been to present these subjects fairly 
to the Senate and the country. They have 
sought ' nothing to extenuate,' nor have they 
'set down ought in malice.' The statements 
are presented to the senator, for his calm and 
deliberate consideration — to each senator, to be 
weighed as becomes his high station. And what 
is the course of the honorable senator ? The 
moment he (Mr. T.) could return to his seat 
from the Clerk's table, the gentleman pounces 
upon the report, and makes assertions which a 
careful perusal of it would cause him to know 
it does not contain. On one subject, the con- 
troversy relative to the bill of exchange, and 
the damages consequent on its protest, the com- 
mittee had expressed the opinion, that the gov- 
ernment Avas in error, and he, as a member of 
that committee, would declare his own convic- 
tion that that opinion was sound and maintain- 
able before any fair and impartial trilmnal in 
the world. Certain persons started back with 
alarm, at the mere mention of a court of justice. 
The trial byjurA-had become hateful in their 
ej-es. The great principles of viagna charta 
arc to be overlooked, and the declarations con- 
tained in the bill of rights are become too old- 
fashioned to be valuable. Popular prejudices 
are to be addressed, and instead of an appeal to 
the calm judgment of mankind, everj- lurking 
prejudice is to be awakened, because a corpora- 
tion, or a set of individuals, have believed them- 
selves wronged by the accounting officers of the 
treasury, and have had the temerity and impu- 
dence to take a course calculated to bring their 
rights before the forum of the courts. Let those 
who see cause to pursue this course rejoice as 
they may please, and exult in the success which 
attends it. For one, I renounce it as unworthy 
American statesmen. The committee had ad- 
dressed a sober and temperate but firm argu 
ment, upon this subject, to the Senate ; and, 
standing in the presence of that august body, 
and befure the wliole American people, he rest- 
ed upon that argument for the truth of the opin- 
ion advanced. An opinion, for the honesty of 
which, on his own part, he would avouch, after 
the most solemn miinner, under the unutterable 
obligations he was under to his Creator. 

" The senator had also spoken in strong lan- 
guage as to that part of the report whicli related 
to the committee of exchange. He had said 
that a false issue had been presented — that the 



ANNO 1835. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



487 



late Secretary of the Treasury (]Mr. Taney) had 
Bever contended that the bank had no right to 
appoint a committee of exchange — that such a 
committee was appointed by all banks. In this 
last declaration the gentleman is correct. All 
banks have a committee to purchase exchange. 
But Mr. T. would admonish the gentleman to 
beware. He would find himself condemning 
him whom he wished to defend. Mr. Taney's 
very language is quoted in the report. He places 
the violation of the charter distinctly on the 
ground that the business of the bank is intrust- 
ed to three members on the exchange committee, 
when the charter requires that not less than 
seven shall constitute a board to do business. 
His very words are given in the report, so that 
he cannot be misunderstood ; and the commen- 
tary of the committee consists in a mere narra- 
tive of facts. Little more is done than to give 
facts, and the honorable senator takes the alaraa ; 
and, in his elfort to rescue the late Secretary 
from their influence, plunges him still deeper 
into difficulty. 

" The senator had loudly talked of the com- 
mittee having been made an instrument of^ by 
the bank. For himself, he renounced the as- 
cription. He would tell the honorable senator 
that he could not be made an instrument of by 
the bank, or by a still greater and more formidable 
power, the administration. He stood upon that 
floor to accomplish the purposes for which he 
was sent there. In the consciousness of his 
own honesty, he stood firm and erect. He would 
worship alone at the shrine of truth and of honor. 
It was a precious thing, in the eyes of some 
men, to bask in the sunshine of power. He 
rested only upon the support, which had never 
failed him, of the high and lofty feelings of his 
{¥)nstituents. He would not be an instrument 
even in their hands, if it were possible for them 
to require it of him, to gratify an unrighteous 
motive." 



CHAPTEE CXVII. 

FRENCH SPOLIATIONS BEFORE 1800. 

These claims had acquired an imposing aspect 
by this time. They were called " prior " to the 
year 1800 ; but how much prior was not shown, 
and they might reach back to the establishment 
of our independence. Their payment by the 
United States rested upon assumptions which 
constituted the basis of the demand, and on 
which the bill was framed. It assumed,^?s^ — 
That illegal seizures, detentions, captures, con- 
demnations, and confiscations were made of the 
vessels and property of citizens of the United 



States before the period mentioned. Secondly 
— That these acts were committed by such or- 
ders and under such circumstances, as gave the 
sufferers a right to indemnity from the French 
government. Tliirdhj — That these claims had 
been annulled by the United States for public 
considerations. FouHhbj — That this annul- 
ment gave these sufferers a just claim upon the 
United States for the amount of their losses. 
Upon these four assumptions the bill rested — 
some of them disputable in pomt of fact, and others 
in point of law. Of these latter was the assump- 
tion of the liability of the United States to be- 
come paymasters themselves in cases where 
failing, by war or negotiation, to obtain redress 
they make a treaty settlement, surrendering or 
abandoning claims. This is an assumption con- 
trary to reason and law. Every nation is bound 
to give protection to the persons and property 
of their citizens ; but the government is the 
judge of the measure and degree of that pro- 
tection ; and is not bound to treat for ever, or 
to fight for ever, to obtain such I'edress. After 
having done its best for the indemnity of some 
individuals, it is bound to consider what is due 
to the whole community — and to act accordingly ; 
and the unredressed citizens have to put up y 
with their losses if abandoned at the general set- 
tlement which, sooner or later, must terminate 
all national controversies. All this was well 
stated by Mr. Bibb, of Kentucky, in a speech on 
these French claims upon the bill of the pre- 
sent year. He said : 

"He was well aware that the interests of 
individuals ought to be supported by their gov- 
ernments to a certain degree, but he did not 
think that governments were bound to push 
such interest to the extremity of war — he did 
not admit that the rights of the whole were to 
be jeoparded by the claims of individuals — the 
safety of the community was paramount to the 
claims of private citizens. He would proceed 
to see if the interests of our citizens had been 
neglected by this government. These claims 
have been urged from year to year, with all the 
earnestness and zeal due from the nation. But 
they went on from bad to worse, till negotia- 
tions were in vain. AVe then assumed a hostile 
position. During the year '98, more than 
twenty laws were' passed by Congress upon this 
very subject — some for raising troops — some for 
providing arms and munitions of war — some for 
fitting out a naval force, aud so on. AVas this 
neglecting the claims of our citizens? "We 
went as far as the interests of the nation woidd 
permit. We prosecuted these claims to the 



488 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW 



very verge of plunging into that dreadful war 
then desolating Eurojie. The government then 
issued its proclamation of neutrality and non- 
intercourse. Mr. B. next proceeded to show- 
that France had no just claims upon us, aris- 
ing from the guaraiUy. This guaranty against 
France was not considered binding, even by 
France herself, any further than was consistent 
with our relations with other nations ; that it 
was so declared b}' her minister ; and, moreover, 
that she acknowledged the justice of our neu- 
trality. These treaties had been violated by 
France, and the United States could not surely 
be bound by treaties which she had herself vio- 
lated ; and consequentlj', we were under no 
obligation on account of the guarant}'. jMr. B. 
went on to show that, by the terms of the 
treaty of 1800, the debts due to our citizens 
had not been relinquished : — that as the guaran- 
ty did not exist, and as the claims had not 
been abandoned, Mr. B. concluded that these 
claims ought not to be paid by this government. 
He was opposed to going back thirty-four years 
to sit in judgment on the constituted authori- 
ties of that time. There should be a stability 
in the government, and he was not disposed to 
question the judgu;ent of the man (Washing- 
ton) who has justl}^ been called the first in war 
and the first in peace. We are sitting here to 
rcjudge th(! decisions of the government thirty- 
four years since." - 

This is well stated, and the conclusion just 
and logical, that we ought not to go back thir- 
ty-four years to call in question the judgment 
of Washington's administration, lie was look- 
ing to the latest date of the claims when he said 
thirty -four years, which surely was enough ; 
but Washington's decision in his proclamation 
of neutrality was seven years before that time ; 
and the claims themselves have the year 1800 
for their period of limitation — not of commence- 
ment, which was many years before. This 
doctrine of governmental liability when aban- 
doning the claims of citizens for which indem- 
nity could not be pbtained, is unknown in other 
countries, and was unknown in ours in the ear- 
lier ages of the government. There was a case 
of this abandonment in our early history which 
rested upon no "assumption" of fact, but on 
the fact itself; and in which no attempt was 
made to enforce the novel doctrine. It was the 
case of the slaves carried off by the British 
troops at the close of the Revolutionary War, 
and for which indemnity was stipulated in the 
treaty of peace. Great Britain refused that in- 
demnity ; and after vain efforts to obtain it by 
the Conjrr'CBS of the confederation, and after- 



wards under Washington's administration, thia 
claim of indemnity, no longer resting upon a 
claim of the sufferers, but upon a treaty stipu- 
lation — upon an article in a treaty for their 
benefit — was abandoned to obtain a general ad- 
vantage for the whole community in the com- 
mercial treaty with Great Britain. As these 
claims for French spoliations are still continued 
(1850), I give some of the speeches for and 
against them fifteen years ago, believing that 
they present the strength of the argument on 
both sides. The opening speech of Mr. Web- 
ster presented the case : 

" lie should content himself with stating very 
briefly an outline of the grounds on which these 
claims are supposed to rest, and then leave the 
subject to the consideration of the Senate. He, 
however, should be happy, in the course of the 
debate, to make such explanations as might be 
called for. It would be seen that the bill pro- 
posed to make satisfaction, to an amount not 
exceeding five millions of dollars, to such citi- 
zens of the United States, or their legal repre- 
sentatives, as had valid claims for indemnity on 
the French government, rising out of illegal 
captures, detentions, and condemnations, made 
or committed on their property prior to the 
30th day of September, 1800. This bill sup- 
posed two or three leading propositions to be 
true. 

" It supposed, in the first place, that illegal 
seizures, detentions, captures, condemnations 
and confiscations, were made, of the vessels and 
property of the citizens of the United States, 
before the 30th September, 1800. 

" It supposed, in the second place, that thes<» 
acts of wrong were committed by such orders 
and under such circumstances, as that the su' 
fercrs had a just right and claim for indemnity 
from the hands of the government of Franc** 

" Going on these two propositions, tlie bill 
assumed one other, and that was, that all such 
claims on France as came within a prescribed 
period, or down to a prescribed period, had been 
annulled by the United States, and that this 
gave them a rfght to claim indemnity from this 
government. It supposed a liability in justice, 
in fairness and equity, on the part of this gov- 
ernment, to make the indemnity. These were 
the grounds on which the bill was framed. 
That there were many such confiscations no ono 
doubted, and many such acts of wrong as wero 
mentioned in the first section of the bill. Tha^ 
they were committed by Frenchmen, and under 
such circumstances as gave those who suffered 
wrong an unquestionable right to claim indem- 
nity from the French government, nobody, he 
supposed, at this day, %vould question. There 
were two questions which might be made the 
subject of discussion, and two only occurred to 



ANNO 1835. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



489 



him at that moment. The one was, ' On what 
ground was the government of the United States 
answerable to any extent for the injury done to 
these claimants ? ' The other, ' To what extent 
was the government in justice bound?' And 
jirst — of the first. ' Why was it that the gov- 
ernment of the United States had become re- 
sponsible in law or equity to its citizens, for the 
claims — for any indemnity for the wrongs com- 
mitted on their commerce by the subjects of 
France before 1800?' 

" To this question there was an answer, which, 
whether satisfactory or not, had at least the 
merit of being a very short one. It was, that, 
by a treaty between France and the United 
States, beai-ing date the 30th of September, 
1800, in a political capacity, the government of 
the tJnitcd States discharged and released the 
government of France fi-om this indemnity. It 
went upon the ground, which was sustained by 
all the correspondence which had preceded the 
treaty of 1800, that the disputes arising be- 
tween the two countries should be settled by a 
negotiation. And claims and pretensions hav- 
ing been asserted on either side, commissioners 
on the part of the United States were sent out 
to assert and maintain the claims of indemnity 
which they demanded ; while commissioners ap- 
pointed on the part of France asserted a claim 
to the full extent of the stipulations made in '78, 
which the}^ said the United States had promised 
to fulfil, and in order to carry into effect the 
treaty ol a!!ian,x' of the same date, viz. : Feb- 
ruary, 1778. 

"The negotiation ultimately terminated, and a 
treaty was finally ratified upon the terms and 
conditions of an otfset of the respective claims 
against each other, and for ever; so that the 
United States government, by the surrender 
and discharge of these claims of its citizens, had 
made this surrender to the French government 
to obtain for itself a discharge from the onerous 
liabilities imposed upon them by the treaty of 
1778, and in order to escape from fulfilling other 
stipulations proclaimed in the treaty of com- 
merce of that year, and which, if not fulfilled, 
might have brought about a war with France. 
This was the ground en which these claims 
rested. 

" Heretofore, when the subject had been before 
Congress, gentlemen had taken this view of the 
case ; and he believed there was a report pre- 
sented to the Senate at the time, which set forth 
that the claims of our citizens, being left open 
the United States had done these claimants no 
injury, and that it did not exempt the govern- 
ment of France from liability." 

Mr. Wright, of New- York, spoke fully against 
the bill, and upon a close view of all the facts 
of the case and all the law of the case as grow- 
ing out or treaties or found in the law of nations. 
His speech was no* only a mastej ly argument. 



but an historical monument, going back to the 
first treaty '.nth France in 1778, and coming 
down through our legislation and diplomacy on 
French questions to the time of its delivery.' A 
separate chapter is due to this great speech ; 
and it will be given entire in the next one. 



CHAPTEll CXVIII. 

FEENCK SPOLIATIONS : SPEECH OF MR. WRIGHT, 
OF NEW-TORIv. 

" Mr. Wright understo. K the friends of this 
bill to put its merits upon the single and distinct 
ground that the government of the United States 
had released France from the payment of the 
claims for a consideration, passing directly to 
the benefit of our government, and fully equal 
in value to the claims themselves. Mr. W. said 
he should argue the several questions presented, 
upon the supposition that this was the extent 
to which the friends of the bill had gone, or 
were disposed to go, in claiming a liability on 
the part of the United States to pay the claim- 
ants ; and, thus understood, he was read}^ to 
proceed to an examination of the strength of this 
position. 

" His first duty, then, was to examine the re- 
lations existing between France and the United 
States prior to the commencement of the dis- 
turbances out of which these claims have arisen ; 
and the discharge of this dut)' v>-ould compel a 
dry and uninteresting reference to the several 
treaties which, at that period, governed those 
relations. 

" The seventeenth article of the treaty of am- 
ity and commerce of the Cth Februaiy, li 78, 
was the first of these references, and that article 
was in the following words : 

" ' Art. 17. It shall be lawful for the ships of 
war of either party, and privateers, freely to 
carry whithei'soever they please the ships and 
goods taken from their enemies, without being 
obliged to pay any dut}' to the officers of the 
admiralty or any other judges; nor shall such 
prizes be arrested or seized when tlK\y como to 
or enter the ports of either party; nor sliall the 
scarchci's or other officers of those places search 
the same, or make examination concerning the 
lawfulness of such prizes ; but tiiey ma}' hoist 
sail at any time and depart and carry their 
prizes to the places expressed in their commis- 
sions, which the conniianders of such ships of 
war shall be o1)liged to show ; on the contrary, 
no shelter or refuge shall be given in their ports 
to such as shall have made prize of the subjects, 
people, or property of either of the jiarties; but 
if such shall come in. being forced by stress of 



490 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW 



weather, or the danger of the sea, all proper 
means shall be vigorously used, that they go 
out and retire from thence as soon as possible.' 

'' This article, i\Ir. W. said, would be found to 
be one of the most material of all the stipula- 
tions between the two nations, in an examina- 
tion of the diplomatic correspondence during 
the whole period of the disturbances, from the 
breaking out of the war between France and 
England, in 1793, until the treaty of the 30th 
September, 1800. The privileges claimed by 
France, and the exclusions she insisted on as 
applicable to the other belligerent Powers, were 
fruitful sources of complaint on both sides, and 
constituted many material points of disagree- 
ment between the two nations through this en- 
tire interval. What these claims were on the 
part of France, and how far they were admitted 
by the United States, and how far controverted, 
will, ^Ir. AY. said, be more properly considered 
in another part of the argument. As connected, 
however, with this branch of the relations, hu 
thought it necessary to refer to the twenty- 
second article of the same treaty, which was in 
the following words : 

" ' .4/-;. 22. It shall not be lawful for any for- 
eign privateers, not belonging to subjects of the 
Most Christian King, nor citizens of the said 
United States, who have commissions from any 
other prince or State in enmity with either na- 
tion, to fit their ships in the ports of either the 
one or the other of the aforesaid parties, to sell 
what they have taken, or in any other manner 
whatsoever to exchange their ships, merchan- 
dises, or any other lading ; neither shall they be 
allowed even to purchase victuals, except such 
as shall be necessary for their going to the next 
port of that prince or State from which they 
nave commissions.' 

" Mr. W. said he now passed to a different 
branch of the relations between the two coun- 
tries, as established by this treaty of amity and 
commerce, which was the reciprocal right of 
either to carry on a free trade with the enemies 
of the other, restricted only by the stipulations 
of the same treaty in relation to articles to be 
considered contraband of Avar. This reciprocal 
right is defined in the twenty-third article of the 
treaty, which is in the words following : 

" ' Art. 23. It shall be lawful for all and singu- 
lar the subjects of the Most Christian King, and 
the citizens, people, and inhabitants of the said 
United States, to sail with their shijjs with all 
manner of liberty and security, no distinction 
being made who are the proprietors of the mer- 
chandises laden thereon, from any port to the 
places of those who now are or hereafter shall 
be at enmity with the Most Christian King, or 
the United .States. It shall likewise be lawful 
for the subjects and inhabitants aforesaid to sail 
with the ships and merchandises aforementioned, 
and to trade with the same liberty and security 
from the places, ports, and havens of those who 
are enemies of both or either party, without any 
opposition or disturbance whatsoever, not only 



directly from the places of the enemy aforemen« 
tioned to neutral places, but also from one placa 
belonging to an enemy to another place belong- 
ing to an enemy, whether they be under the 
jurisdiction of the same prince, or under several. 
And it is hereby stipulated that free ships shall 
also give a freedom to goods, and that every 
thing shall be deejned to be free and exempt 
which shall be found on board the ships belong- 
ing to the subjects of either of the confederates, al- 
though the whole lading, or any part thereof, 
should appertain to the enemies of either, con- 
traband goods being always excepted. It is also 
agreed, in like manner, that the same liberty be 
extended to persons who are on board a free 
ship, with this effect, that although they be ene 
mies to both or either party, they are not to be 
taken out of that free ship, unless they are soldiers 
and in actual service of the enemies.' 

" The restrictions as to articles to be held be- 
tween the two nations as contraband of war, 
Mr. "VY. said, were to be found in the twenty- 
fourth article of this same treaty of amity and 
commerce, and were as follows : 

" ' Art. 24. This liberty of navigation and 
commerce shall extend to all kinds of merchan- 
dises, excepting those only which are distinguish- 
ed by the name of contraband, and under this 
name of contraband, or proh'bited goods, shall 
be comprehended arms, great guns, bombs, with 
fuses and other things belonging to them, can- 
non ball, gunpowder, match, pikes, swords, lan- 
ces, spears, halberds, mortars, petards, grenades, 
saltpetre, muskets, nuisket ball, helmets, breast- 
plates, coats of mail, and the like kinds of arras 
proper foi- arming soldiers, musliet rests, belts, 
horses with their furniture, and all other wai'- 
like instruments whatever. These merchandi- 
ses which follow shall not be reckoned among 
contraband or proliibited goods ; that is to say, 
all sorts of cloths, and all other manufactures 
woven of any wool, fiax, silk, cotton, or any other 
material whatever; all kinds of wearing apparel, 
together with the species whereof they are used 
to be made ; gold and silver, as well coined as 
uncoined: tin, iron, latten, copper, brass, coals; 
as also wheat and barley and any other kind of 
corn and pulse : tobacco, and hkewise all man- 
ner of spices ; salted and smoked flesh, salted 
fish, cheese, and butter, beer, oils, wines, sugars, 
and all sorts of salts ; and, in general, all provis- 
ions which serve for the nourishment of man- 
kind, and the sustenance of life ; furthermore, 
all kinds of cotton, hemp, fiax, tar, pitch, ropes, 
cables, sails, sail cloths, anchors, and any part 
of anchors, also ships' masts, planks, boards, and 
beams, of what trees soever; and all other things 
proper either for building or repairing ships, and 
all otlier goods whatever which have not been 
worked into the form of any instrument or thing 
prepared for war by land or by sea, shall not be 
reputed contraband, much less such as have been 
already wrought and made up for any other use* 
all which shall be wholly reckoned among free 
goodij J as likewise all other merchandises and 



ANNO 1835. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



491 



things which are not comprehended and particu- 
larly mentioned in the foregoing enumeration of 
contraband goods, so that they may be trans- 
ported and carried in the freest manner by the 
subjects of botli confederates, even to the places 
belonging to an enemy, such towns or places be- 
ing only excepted as are at that time besieged, 
blocked up, or invested.' 

" Mr. W. said this closed his references to this 
treaty, with the remark, which he wished care- 
fully borne in mind, that the accepted public law 
was greatly departed from in this last article. 
Provisions, in their broadest sense, materials for 
ships, rigging for ships, and indeed almost all the 
articles of trade mentioned in the long exception 
in the article of the treaty, were articles contra- 
band of war by the law of nations. This article, 
therefore, placed our commerce with France upon 
a footing widely different, in case of a war between 
France and any third power, from tlie rules which 
would regulate that commerce with the other 
belligerent, with whom we might not have a 
similar commercial treaty. Such was its effect as 
compared with our relations with England, with 
which power we had no commercial treaty what- 
ever, but depended upon the law of nations as 
our commercial rule and standard of intercourse. 

" Mr. AV. said he now passed to the treaty of 
alliance between France and the United States, 
of the same date with the treaty of amity and 
commerce before referred to, and his first re- 
ference was to the 11th article of this latter 
treaty. It was in the following words : 

^^^ Art. 11. The two parties guarantee mutual- 
]y from the present time, and for ever, against 
all other powers, to wit: The United States to 
His Most Chi'istian Majesty the present posses- 
sions of the Crown of Fi'ance in America, as well 
as those which it may acquire by the future trea- 
ty of peace : And His Most Christian Majesty 
guarantees on his part to the United States, their 
liberty, sovereignty, and independence, absolute 
and unlimited, as well in matters of government 
as commerce, and also their possessions, and the 
additions or conquests that their confederation 
may obtain durmg the war, from any of the do- 
minions now or heretofore possessed by Great 
Britain in North America, conformable to the 
fifth and sixth articles above written, the whole 
as their possessions shall be fixed and assured to 
the said States at the moment of the cessation 
of their present war with England.' 

" This article, Mr. W. said, was the most im- 
portant reference he had made, or could make, 
so far as the claims provided for by this bill 
were concerned, because he imderstood the 
friends of the bill to derive the principal consid- 
eration to the United States, which created their 
liability to pay the claims, from the guaranty 
on the part of the United States contained in it. 
The Senate would see that the article was a 
mutual and reciprocal guaranty, 1st. On the part 
of the United States to France, of her posses- 
hions in America; and 2d. On the part of France 
to the United States, of their 'liberty, sove- 



reignty, and independence, absolute and imlimit- 
ed, as well in matters of government as com- 
merce, and also their possessions,' &c. ; and thai 
the respective guarantees were ' for ever.' It 
would by-and-by appear in what manner this 
guaranty on the part of our government was 
claimed to be the foundation for this pecuniary 
responsibility for millions, but at present he 
must complete his references to the treaties 
which formed the law between the two nations, 
and the rule of their relations to and with each 
other. lie had but one more article to read, and 
that was important only as it went to define the 
one last cited. This was the 12th article of the 
treaty of alliance, and was as follows : 

" ' Art. 12. In order to fix more precisely the 
sense and application of the preceding article, 
the contracting parties declare that, in case of a 
rupture between France and England, the re- 
ciprocal guaranty declared in the said article 
shall have its full force and effect the moment 
such war shall break out ; and if such rupture 
shall not take place, the mutual obligations of the 
said guaranty shall not commence until the mo- 
ment of the cessation of the present war between 
the United States and England shall have ascer- 
tained their possessions.' 

" These, said Mr. W., are the treaty stipula- 
tions between France and the United States, ex- 
isting at the time of the commencement of the 
disturbances between the two countries, which 
gave rise to the claims now the subject of con- 
sideration, and which seem to bear most mate- 
rially upon the points in issue. There were other 
provisions in the ti'eaties between the two gov- 
ernments more or less applicable to the present 
discussion, but, in the course he had marked out 
for himself, a reference to them was not indis- 
pensable, and he was not disposed to occupy the 
time or weary the patience of the Senate with 
more of these dry documentary quotations than 
he found absolutely essential to a full and clear 
understanding of the points he pi-oposed to ex- 
amine. 

" Mr. W. said he was now ready to present 
the origin of the claims which formed the sub- 
ject of the bill. The war between France and 
England broke out, according to his recollection, 
late in the year 1792, or early in the year 1793, 
and the United States resolved upon preserving 
the same neutral position between those belli- 
gerents, which they had assunted at the com 
mcncement of the war between France and cer 
tain other European powers. This neutrality 
on tlie part of the United States seemed to be 
acceptable to the then French Republic, and her 
minister in the United States and her diplomatic 
agents at home were free and distinct in their 
expressions to this effect. 

'•Still that Republic made broad claims under 
the 17th article of the treaty of amity and com- 
merce before quoted, aud her minister here as- 
sumed the riglit to purchase ships, arm them as 
privateers in our ports, conunission officers foi 
them, enlist our own citizens to man them, 



492 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



and, thus prepared, to send them from our ports 
to cruise against En-rlish vessels upon our coast. 
Many prizes were made, which were broug-ht 
into our ports, submitted to the athniralty juris- 
diction conferred by the French Repubhc upon 
her consuls in the United States, condemned, 
and the captured vessels and cargoes exposed for 
sale in our markets. These practices were im- 
mediately and earnestly complained of by the 
British government as violations of the neutral- 
ity which our government had declared, and 
which we assumed to maintain in regard to all 
the belligerents, as favors granted to one of the 
belligerents, not demandable of right under our 
treaties with France, and as wholly inconsistent, 
according to the rules of international law, with 
our continuance as a neutral power. Our gov- 
ernment so far yielded to these complaints as to 
prohibit the French from fitting out, arming, 
equipping, or commissioning privateers in our 
ports, and from enlisting our citizens to bear 
arms under the French flag. 

" This decision of the rights of France, under 
the treaty of amity and commerce, produced 
warm remonstrances from her minister in the Uni- 
ted States, but was finally ostensibl}' acquiesced 
in by the Republic, although constant complaints 
of evasions and violations of the rule continued 
to harass our government, and to occupy the at- 
tention of the respective diplomatists. 

" The exclusive privilege of our ports for 
her armed vessels, privateers, and their prizes, 
granted to France by the treaty of amity and 
commerce, as has before been seen, excited the 
jealousy of England, and she was not slow in 
sending a portion of her vast navy to line our 
coast and block up our ports and harbors. The 
insolence of power induced some of her armed 
vessels to enter our ports, and to remain, in 
violation of our treaty with France, though not 
by the consent of our government, or when we 
had the power to enforce the treaty by their 
ejection. These incidents, however, did not fail 
to form the subject of new charges from the 
French ministers, of bad faith on our part, of 
partiality to England to the prejudice of our 
old and faithful ally, "of permitted violations of 
the treaties, and of an ineiHciency and Avant of 
zeal in the performance of our duties as neutrals. 
To give point to these complaints, some few in- 
stances occurred in which British vessels brought 
their prizes into our ports, whether in all cases 
under those casualties of stress of weather, or 
the dangers of the sea, which rendered the act 
in conformity with the treaties and the law of 
nations or not, is not perhaps ver}' certain or 
very material, inasmuch as the sj)irit of complaint 
eeems to have taken possession of the French 
negotiators, and these acts gave colorable ground 
to their remonstrances. 

" Contemporaneously with these grounds of 
misunderstanding and these collisions of inter- 
est between the belligerents, and between the 
interests of cither of them and the preservation 
of our neutrahty, the French began to discover 



the disadvantages to them, and the great advan- 
tages to the British, of the different rules which 
governed the commerce between the two nations 
and the United States. The rule between us 
and France was the commercial treaty of 
which the articles above quoted form a part, and 
the rule between us and Great Britain, was that 
laid down by the law ^f nations. ^Mr. W. said 
he would detain the Senate to point out but two 
of the differences between these rules of com- 
merce and intercourse, because upon these two 
principallj^ depended the difficulties which follow- 
ed. The first was, that, by the treaty between 
us and France, 'free ships shall also give a free- 
dom to the goods ; and every thing shall be 
deemed to be free and exempt which shall be found 
on board the ships belonging to the subjects of 
either of the confederates, although the whole 
lading, or anj- part thereof, should appertain 
to the enemy of either, contraband goods being 
alwaj's excepted;' while the law of nations, which 
was the rule between us and England, made the 
goods of an enemy a lawful prize, though found in 
the vessel of a friend. Hence it followed that 
French property on board of an American vessel 
was subject to capture b}^ British cruisers with- 
out indignity to our flag, or a violation to inter- 
national law, while British property on boai-d of 
an American vessel could not be captured by a 
French vessel without an insult to the flag of 
the United States, and a direct violation of the 
twenty-third article of the treaty of amity and ■ 
commerce between us and France, before refer- 
red to. 

" jMr. "W. said the second instance of disadvan- 
tage to France which he proposed to mention, 
was the great difference between the articles 
made contraband of war bj' the twenty-fourth 
article of the treaty of amitv and commerce, be- 
fore read to the Senate, and by the law of na- 
tions. By the treaty, provisions of all kinds, 
ship timber, .ship tackle (guns only excepted), 
and a large list of other articles of trade and com- 
merce, were declared not to be contraband of 
war, while the same articles are expressly made 
contraliand by the law of nations. Hence an 
American vessel, clearing for a French port with 
a cargo of provisions or ship stores, wa.s lawful 
prize to a British cruiser, as, by the law of na- 
tions, carr\'ing articles contraband of war to an 
enemy, while the same vessel, cleai-ing for a 
British port, with the same cargo, could not be 
captured b}- a French vessel, because the tieaty 
declared that the articles composing the cargo 
should not be contraband as between the United 
States and France. Mr. W. said the Senate 
would sec, at a single glance, how eminently 
these two advantages on the part of Great Britain 
were calculated to turn our commerce to her 
ports, where, if the treaty between us and 
France was observed, our vessels could go in 
! perfect .'safety, while, laden with provisions, our 
only considerable export, and destined for a 
I French port, they were liable to capture, as 
1 carrying to an enemy contraband articles. Up- 



ANNO 1835. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



493 



on their return, too, they were equally out of 
danger from French cruisers, as, by the treaty, 
free ships made free the goods on board ; while, 
if they cleared irom a port in France with a 
French cargo, they were lawful prize to the 
British, upon the principle of the law of nations, 
that the goods of an enemj^ are lawful prize, 
even when found in the vessel of a friend. 

" Both nations were in constant and urgent 
want of provisions from the United States ; and 
this double advantage to England of having her 
ports open and free to our vessels, and of pos- 
sessing the right to capture those bound to 
French ports, exasperated the French Republic 
bej'ond endurance. Her ministers remonstrated 
with our government, controverted our construc- 
tion of British rights, again renewed the accu- 
sations of partiality, and finally threw ofi' the 
obligations of the treaty ; and, by a solemn de- 
cree of their authorities at home, established the 
rule which governed the practice of the British 
cruisers. France, assuming to believe that the 
United States permitted the neutrality of her 
flag to be violated by the British, without re- 
sistance, declared that she would treat the flag 
of all neutral vessels as that flag should permit 
itself to be treated by the other belligerents. 
This opened our commerce to the almost indis- 
criminate plunder and depredation of all the 
powers at war, and but for the want of the pro- 
visions of the United States, which was too 
stronglv felt both in England and France not to 
govern, in a great degree, the policy of the two 
nations, it would seem probable, from the docu- 
mentary history of the period, that it must have 
been swept from the ocean. Impelled by this 
want, however, the British adopted the rule, at 
at early day, that the provisions captured, al- 
though in a strict legal sense forfeited, as being 
by the law of nations contraband, should not 
be confiscated, but carried into English ports, 
and paid for, at the market price of the same 
provisions, at the port of their destination. The 
same want compelled the French, when they 
came to the conclusion to lay aside the obliga- 
tions of the treaty, and to govern themselves, 
not by solemn compacts with friendly powers, 
but by the standards of wrong adopted by their 
enemies, to adopt also the same rule, and instead 
of confiscating the cargo as contraband of war, if 
provisions, to decree a compensation gradu- 
ated by the market value at the port of destina- 
tion. 

" Such, said Mr. W., is a succinct view of the 
disturbances between France and the United 
States, and between France and Great Britain, 
out of which grew what are now called the 
French claims for spoliations upon our com- 
merce, prior to the 30th of September, 1800. 
Other subjects of difference might have had a 
remote influence ; but, Mr. W., said, he believed 
it would be admitted bji- all, that those he had 
named were the principal, and might be as- 
sumed as having given rise to the commercial 
irregularities in which the claims commenced. 



This state of things, without material change, 
continued until the year 1798, when our govern- 
ment adopted a course of measures intended to 
suspend our intercourse with France, until she 
should be brought to respect our rights. These 
measures were persevered in by the United 
States, up to September, 1800, and were termi- 
nated by the treaty between the two nations of 
the 30th of that month. Here, too. terminated 
claims which now occupy the attention of the 
Senate. 

"As it was the object of the claimants to 
show a liability, on the part of our government, 
to pay their claims, and the bill under discussion 
assumed that liability, and provided, in part at 
least, for the payment, jNIr. W. said it became 
his duty to inquire what the government had 
done to obtain indemnity for these claimants 
from France, and to see whether negligence on 
its part had furnished equitable or legal ground 
for the institution of this large claim upon the 
national treasury. The period of time covered 
by the claims, as he understood the subject, was 
from the breaking out of the war between 
France and England, in 1793, to the signing of 
the treaty between France and the United States, 
in September, 1800 5 and he would consider the 
efforts the government had made to obtain in- 
demnity : 

" 1st. From 1793 to 1798. 
'• 2d. From 1798 to the treaty of the 30th 
September, 1800. 

" During the first period, Mr. W. said, these 
eiforts were confined to negotiation, and he felt 
safe in the assertion that, during no equal period 
in the history of our government, could there 
be found such untii-ing and unremitted exertions 
to obtain justice for citizens who had been in- 
jured in their properties by the unlawful acts 
of a foreign power. Any one who would read 
the mass of diplomatic correspondence between 
this government and France, from 1793 to 179S, 
and who would mark the frequent and extraor- 
dinary missions, bearing constantly in mind that 
the recovery of these claims was the onl}' ground 
upon our part for the whole negotiation, would 
find it difficult to say where negligence towards 
the rights and interests of its citizens is imputa- 
ble to the government of the United States, 
during this period. He was not aware that 
such an imputation had been or would be made ; 
but sure he was that it could not be made with 
justice, or sustained by the ftxcts ujKin the re- 
cord. No liability, therefore, cquit:il)le or legal, 
had been incurred, up to the year 1798. 

" And if, said Mr. W., negligence is not im- 
putable, prior to 1798, and no liability had then 
been incurred, how is it for the second period, 
from 1798 to 1800 ? The efforts of the former 
period were negotiation — constant, earnest, ex- 
traordinary negotiation. What were they for 
the latter perioii 1 His answer was, war; actual, 
open Avai- ; and he believed tlie statute book of 
the United States would justify him in the posi- 
tion. He was well aware that this point woiJd 



494 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



be strenuously controverted, because the friends 
of the bill would admit that, if a state of war 
between the two countries did exist, it put an 
end to claims existing; i)rior to the war, and not 
provided for in the tieaty of peace, as well as to 
all pretence for claims to indemnity for injuries 
to our commerce, committed by our enemy in 
time of war. Mr. \Y. said he had found the evi- 
dences so numerous, to establish liis position that 
a state of actual war did exist, that he had been 
quite at a loss from what portion of the testi- 
mon}^ of record to make his selections, so as to 
establish the fact beyond reasonable dispute, and 
at the same time not to weary the Senate by te- 
dious references to laws and documents. He 
had finally concluded to confine himself exclu- 
sivel}- to the statute book, as the highest possi- 
ble evidence, as in his judgment entirely con- 
clusive, and as being susceptible of an arrange- 
ment and condensation which would convey to 
the Senate the wholo material evidence, in a 
satisfactory manner, and in less compass than 
ihe proofs to be drawn from anj- other source. 
He had, therefore, made a very brief abstract of 
a few statutes, which he would read in his 
place : 

"By an act of the 28th jNfay, 1798, Congress 
authuiized the capture of all armed vessels of 
France which had committed depredations upon 
our commerce, or which should be found hover- 
mg upon our coast for the purpose of commit- 
ting such depredations. 

''By an act of the 13th June, 1798, only six- 
teen days after the passage of the former act, 
Congrtts prohibited all vessels of the United 
States fi um visiting anj' of the ports of France 
or her d^pendeucies, under the penalty of for- 
feiture of vessel and cargo ; required every ves- 
sel clearing for a foreign port to give bonds (the 
owner, oi factor and master) in tlio amount of 
the vesse\ and cargo, and good sureties in half 
ihat amount, conditioned that the vessel to which 
the clearance was to be granted, would not. Vol- 
untarily, visit any port of France or her depen- 
dencies; and prohibited all vessels of France, 
armed or unarmed, or o\vned, fitted, hired, or 
employed, by any person resident within the 
territory of the French Republic, or its depen- 
dencies, or sailing or coming therefrom, from en- 
tering or remaining in any port of the United 
States, unless permitted by the President, by 
special passport, to be granted by him in each 
case. 

'•By an act of the 25th June, 1798, only 
twelve days after the passage of the last-men- 
tioned act. Congress authorized the merchant 
vessels of the United States to arm, and to de- 
fend themselves against any sear-^h, restraint, or 
seizure, by vessels sailing under French colors, 
to repel force by force to capture any French 
vessel attempting a search, restraint, or seizure, 
and to recapture any American merchant vessel 
which had been captured by the French. 

" Here, ^Ir. "\V. said, he felt constrained to 
make a remark upon the chai'acter of these seve- 



ral acts of Congress, and to call the attention of 
the Senate to their peculiar adaptation to the 
measures which speedily followed in future acts 
of the national legislature. The first, author- 
izing the cajjture of French armed vessels, was 
peculiarly calculated to put in martial prepara- 
tion all the navj^ which the United States then 
possessed, and to spread it upon our coast. The 
second, establishing a perfect non-intercourse 
with France, was sure to call home our mer- 
chant vessels from that country and her depen- 
dencies, to confine within our own jiorts those 
vessels intended for commerce with France, and 
thus to withdraw from the reach of the French 
cruisers a large portion of the ships and proper- 
ty of our citizens. The third, authorizing our 
merchantmen to arm, was the greatest induce- 
ment the government could give to its citizens 
to arm our whole commercial marine, and was 
sure to put in warlike preparation as great a 
portion of our merchant vessels as a desire of 
self-defence, patriotism, or cupidity, would arm. 
Could measures more eminently calculated to 
prepare the countrj' for a state of war have been 
devised or adopted ? Was this the intention of 
those measures, on the part of the government, 
and was that intention carried out into action ? 
INIr. W. said he would let the subsequent acts of 
the Congress of the United States answer ; and 
for that purpose, he would proceed to read from 
his abstract of those acts : 

" By an act of the 28th June, 1798, three days 
after the passage of the act last referred to, 
Congress authorized the forfeiture and condem- 
nation of all French vessels captured in pursi>- 
ance of the acts before mentioned, and provided 
for the distribution of the prize money, and for 
the confinement and support, at the expense of 
the United States, of prisoners taken in the cap- 
tured vessels. 

" B}^ an act of the 7th July, 1798, nine days 
after the passage of the last-recited act. Congress 
declared 'that the United States arc of right 
freed and exonerated from the stipulations of 
the treaties and of the consular convention 
heretofore concluded between the United States 
and France ; and tliat the same shall not hence- 
forth bo regarded as legally obligatory on the 
government or citizens of the United States.' 

" By an act of the 9th July, 1798, two days 
after the passage of the act declaring void the 
treaties, Congress autliorized the capture, by 
the public armed vessels of the United States, 
of all armed French vessels, whether within the 
jurisdictional limits of the United States or upon 
the high seas, their condenmation as prizes, their 
sale, and the distribution of the prize money ; 
empowered the President to grant commissions 
to private armed vessels to make the same cap- 
tures, and with the same rights and powers, as 
public armed vessels ; and provided for the saf* 
keeping and support of the prisoners taken, at 
the expense of the United States. 

" By an act of the 9th February, 1799, Con- 
gress Continued the non-intercourse between the 



ANNO 1835. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



49,'5 



United States and France for one j'ear, from the 
3d of March, 1799. 

" By an act of the 28th February, 1799, Con- 
gress provided for an exchange of prisoners with 
France, or authorized the President, at his dis- 
cretion, to send to the dominions of France, 
without an exchange, such prisioncrs as might 
remain in the power of the United States. 

_ " By an act of the 3d March, 1799, Congress 
directed the President, in case any citizens of 
the United States, taken on board vessels be- 
longing to any of the powers at war with France, 
by French vessels, should be put to death, cor- 
porally punished, or unreasonably imprisoned, 
to retaliate promptly and fully upon any French 
prisoners in the power of the United States. 

" By an act of the 27th February, 1800, Con- 
gress again continued the non-intercourse be- 
tween us and France, for one j-ear, from the 3d 
of March, 1800. 

" Mr. W. said he had now closed the refer- 
ences he proposed to make to the laws of Con- 
gress, to prove that war — actual war — existed 
between the United States and France, from 
Jul^', 1798, until that war was terminated by 
the treaty of the 30th of September, 1800. He 
had. he hoped, before shown that the measures 
of Congress, up to the passage of the act of Con- 
gress of the 25th of June, 1798, and including 
that act, were appropriate measures preparatory 
to a state- of war; and he had now shown a to- 
tal suspension of the peaceable relations between 
the two governments, by the declaration of Con- 
gress that the treaties should no longer be con- 
sidered binding and obligatory upon our govern- 
ment or its citizens. What, then, but war could 
be inferred from an indiscriminate direction to 
our public armed vessels, put in a state of pre- 
paration, by preparatory acts, to capture all 
armed French vessels upon the high seas, and 
from granting commissions to our whole com- 
mercial marine, also armed by the operation of 
previous acts of Congress, authorizing them to 
make the same captures, with regulations appli- 
cable to both, for the condemnation of the prizes 
the distribution of the prize money, and the de- 
tention, support, and exchange of the prisoners 
taken in the captured vessels ? Will any man 
said Mr. W., call this a state of -peace 1 

•' [Here Mr. Webster, chairman of the select 
committee which reported the bill, answered 
'Certainly.'] ' 

"Mr. AV. proceeded. He said he was not 
deeply read in the treatises upon national law, and 
he should never dispute with that learned gen- 
tleman upon the technical definitions of peace 
and war, as given in the books ; but his appeal 
was to the plain sense of every senator and 
every citizen of the country. Would either call 
that state of things which he had described, 
and wliich he had shown to exist from the 
highest of all evidence, the laws of Congress 
alone, peace ? It was a state of open and un- 
disguised hostility, of force opposed to force, of 
war upon the ocean, as far as o«r government 



were in command of the means to carry on a 
maritime war. If it was peace, he should like 
to be informed, by the friends of the bill, what 
would be war. This was violence and blood- 
shed, the power of the one nation against the 
power of the other, reciprocally exhibited by 
physical force. 

" Couple with this the withdrawal by Franco 
of her minister from this government, and her 
refusal to receive the American commission, con- 
sisting of Messrs. Marshall, Pinckney, and Gerry, 
and the consequent suspension of negotiations 
between the two governments, during the period 
referred to ; and Mr. W. said, if the facts and 
the national records did not show a state of war, 
he was at a loss to know what state of things 
between nations should be called war. 

"If, however, the Senate should tliink him 
wrong in this conclusion, and that the claims 
were not utterly barred by war, he trusted the 
facts disclo.sed in this part of his argument would 
be considered sufficient at least to protect the 
faith of the government in the discharge of its 
whole duty to its citizens ; and that after it had 
carried on these two years of war, or, if not war, 
of actual force and actual fighting, in which the 
blood of its citizens had been shed, and their lives 
sacrificed to an unknown extent, for the single and 
sole purpose of enforcing these claims of indi- 
viduals, the imputation of negligence, and hence 
of liability to pay the claims, would not be urged 
as growing out of this portion of the conduct of 
the government. 

" Mr. W. said he now came to consider the 
treaty of the 30th September, 1800, and the rea- 
sons which appeared plainly to his mind to have 
induced the American negotiators to place that 
negotiation upon the basis, not of an existing 
war, but of a continued peace. That such was 
assumed to be the basis of the negotiation, he 
beUeved to be true, and this fact, and this fact 
only, so far as he had heard the arguments of 
the friends of the bill, was depended upon to 
prove that there had been no war. He had at- 
tempted to show that war in fiict had existed, 
and been carried on for two years ; and if he 
could now show that the inducement, on the 
part of the American ministers, to place the ne- 
gotiation which was to put an end to the existing 
hostilities upon a peace basis, arose from no 
considerations of a national or political charac- 
ter, and from no ideas of consistency with the 
existing state of facts, but solely from a desire 
still to save, as far as might be in their power, 
the interests of these claimants, he should sub- 
mit with great confidence that it did not lay in 
the mouths of the same claimants to turn round 
and claim this imj)lied admission of an absence 
of war, thus made by the agents of the govern- 
ment out of kindness to them, and an excess of 
regard for their interests, as the basis of a li- 
ability to pay the damages which they had 
sustained, and which this diplomatic untrutli, 
like all the previous steps of the government, 
failed to recover for them. What, then, Mr. 



496 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



Prfisident, said Mr. W., was the subject on our 
part, of tlio constant and laborious nofjotiations 
carried on between the two governments from 
1793 to 1798 ? The claims. What, on our part, 
was the object of the disturbances from 1798 to 
1800 — of the non-intercourse — of the sending 
into service our navy, and arming our merchant 
Tcssels — of our raising troops and providing 
armies on the land — of the expenditure of the 
millions taken from the treasury and added to 
our public debt, to equip and sustain these fleets 
and armies ? The claims. Why were our ci- 
tizens sent to capture the French, to spill their 
blood, and lay down their lives upon the high 
seas ? To recover the claims. These were the 
whole matter. We had no other demand upon 
France, and, upon our part, no other cause of 
difference with her. 

" What i)viblic, or national, or political object 
had we in the negotiation of 1800, which led to 
the treaty of the 30th September of that year ? 
None, but to put an end to the existing hostili- 
ties, and to restore relations of peace and friend- 
ship. These could have been as well secured by 
negotiating upon a war as a peace basis. Indeed, 
a*^ there were in our former treaties stipulations 
which we did not want to revive, a negotiation 
upon the basis of existing war was preferable, 
60 fiir as the interests of the government were 
concerned, because that would put all questions, 
growing out of former treaties between the par- 
ties, for ever at rest. Still our negotiators con- 
sented to put the negotiation upon the basis of 
continued peace, and why ? Because the adop- 
tion of a basis of existing war would have barred 
effectually and for ever all classes of the claims. 
This, Mr. AV. said, was the only possible as- 
signable reason for the course pursued by the 
American negotiators ; it was the only reason 
growing out of the existing facts, or out of the 
interests, public or private, involved in the diflfi- 
culties between tlie two nations. He therefore 
felt himself fully warranted in the conclusion, that 
the American ministers preferred and adopted a 
peace basis for the negotiation which resulted in 
the treaty of the 30th of September, 1800, solely 
from a wish, as far as the}- might be able, to save 
the interests of our citizens holding claims against 



they. 



Mr. President, said ^Ir. W., suc- 



F ranee. 

" Did 
ceed b}^ this artifice in benefiting the citizens 
who had sustained injuries 1 He would let the 
treaty speak for itself. The following are ex- 
tracts from the 4th and 5th articles : 

" ' Aii. 4. Property captured, and not yet de- 
finitively condemned, or which may be captured 
before the exchange of ratiiications (contraband 
goods destined to an enemy's port excepted), 
shall be mutually restored on the following 
proof of ownership.' 

"[Here follows the form of proof, when the 
article proceeds :] 

" 'This article shall take cQect from the date 
of the signature of the present convention. And 
if, from tiic date of the said signature, any pro- 



perty shall be condemned contrary to the intent 
of the said convention, before the knowledge of 
this stipulation shall be obtained, the property 
so condemned shall, without delay, be restored 
or paid for.' 

" 'Art. 5. The debts contracted for by one of 
the two nations with individuals of the other, or 
by individuals of the one with individuals of the 
other, shall be paid, or the payment may be 
prosecuted m the same manner as if there had 
been no misunderstanding between the two 
States. But this clause shall not extend to 
indemnities claimed on account of captures or 
confiscations.' 

'• Here, jNlr. "SV. said, was evidence from the 
treaty itself, that, by assuming a peace basis for 
the negotiation, the property of our merchants 
captured and not condemned was saved to them, 
and that certain classes of claimants against the 
French government were provided for, and their 
rights expressl}^ reserved. So much, therefore, 
was gained by our negotiators by a departure 
from the facts, and negotiating to put an end to 
existing hostilities upon the basis of a continued 
peace. Was it, then, generous or just to permit 
these merchants, because our ministers did not 
succeed in saving all they claimed, to set up this 
implied admission of continued peace as the 
foundation of a liability against their own go- 
vernment to pay what was not recovered from 
France ? He could not so consider it, and he 
felt sure the country never would consent to so 
responsible an implication from an act of exces- 
sive kindness. iSlr. W. said he must not be un- 
derstood as admitting that all was not, by the 
effect of this treaty, recovered from France, 
which she ever recognized to be due, or ever in- 
tended to pay. On the contrary, his best im- 
pression was, from what he had been able to 
learn of the claims, that the treaty of Louisiana 
])rovided for the payment of all the claims which 
France ever admitted, ever intended to pay, or 
wliich there was the most remote hope of re- 
covering in any way whatever. He should, in 
a subsequent part of his remarks, have occasion 
to examine that treatj^, the claims whicli were 
paid under it, and to comjiare the claims paid 
with those urged before the treaty of September. 
1800. 

" ^Ir. W. said he now came to the considera- 
tion of the liability of the United States to these 
claimants, in case it shall be determined by the 
Senate that a war between France and the United 
States had not existed to bar all ground of claim 
cither against France or the United States. He 
understood the claimants to put this liability 
upon the assertion that the government of the 
United States had released their claims against 
France by the treaty of the 30th of September, 
1800, and that the release was made for a fu-ll 
and valuable consideration passing to the United 
States, wliich in law and equity made it their 
duty to pa}' the claims. The consideration pas- 
sing to tlte United SUites is alleged to be their 
release from the onerous obligations imposed 



ANNO 1835. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



497 



upon them by the treaties of amit}^ and commerce 
and alliance of 1778, and the consular convention 
of 1778, and especially and principally by the 
seventeenth article of the treaty of amity and 
commerce, in relation to armed vessels, pri- 
vateers, and prizes, and by the eleventh article 
of the treaty of alliance containing the mutual 
guarantees. 

" The release, Mr. "W. said, was claimed to 
have been made in the striking out, by the Se- 
nate of the United States, of the second article 
of the treaty of 30th September, 1800, as that 
article was originally inserted and agreed upon 
by the respective negotiators of the two powers, 
as it stood at the time the treaty was signed. 
To cause this point to be clearly underetood, it 
would be necessary for him to trouble the Senate 
with a history of the ratification of this treaty. 
The second article, as inserted by the negotia- 
tors, and as standing at the time of the signing 
of the treaty, was in the following words : 

"'^lr^2. The ministers plenipotentiary of 
the two powers not being able to agree, at pre- 
sent, respecting the treaty of alliance of 0th 
February, 1778, the treaty of amity and com- 
merce of the same date, and the convention of 
14th of November, 1788, nor upon the indem- 
nities mutually due or claimed, the parties will 
negotiate further upon these subjects at a 
convenient time ; and, until they may have 
agreed upon these points, the said treaties and 
convention shall have no operation, and the re- 
lations of the two countries shall be regulated 
as follows : ' 

" The residue of the treaty, Mr. W. said, was 
a substantial copj- of the former treaties of amity 
and commerce, and alliance between the two 
nations, with such modifications as were desir- 
able te both, and as experience under the former 
treaties had shown to be for the mutual interests 
of both. 

"This second article was submitted to the 
Senate by the President as a part of the treaty, 
as by the constitution of the United States the 
President was bound to do, to the end that the 
treaty might be properly ratified on the part of 
the United States, the French government having 
previously adopted and ratified it as it was signed 
by the respective negotiators, the second article 
being then in the form given above. The Senate 
refused to advise and consent to this article, and 
expunged it from the treaty, inserting in its 
place the following : 

" ' It is agreed that the present convention 
shall be in foi'ce for the term of eight years 
from the time of the exchange of the ratifica- 
tions.' 

" In this shape, and with this modification, 
the treat}^ was duly ratified by the President of 
the United States, and returned to the French 
government for its dissent or concurrence. Bon- 
aparte, then First Consul, concurred in the 
modification made by the Senate, in the follow- 
ing language, and upon the condition thei-ein 
expressed : 

Vol. I.— 32 



'• ' The government of the United States hav- 
ing added to its ratification that the convention 
should be in force for the space of eight years, 
and having omitted the second article, the g(> 
vernment of the French Republic consents to 
accept, ratify, and confirm the above convention, 
with the addition, purporting that the conven- 
tion shall be in force for the space of eight years, 
and with the retrenchment of the second article : 
Provided, That, by this retrenchment, the two 
States renounce the respective pretensions which 
are the object of the said article.' 

"This ratification by the French Republic, 
thus qualified, was returned to the United States, 
and the treaty, with the respective conditional 
ratifications, was again submitted by the Presi- 
dent of the United States to the Senate. That 
body ' resolved that they considered the said 
convention as fully ratified, and returned the 
same to the President for the usual promulga- 
tion 5 ' whereupon he completed the ratification 
in the usual forms and by the usual publication. 

" This, Mr. W. said, was the documentary 
history of this treaty and of its ratification, and 
here was the release of their claims rehed upon 
by the claimants under the bill before the Senate. 
They contend that this second article of the 
treaty, as originally inserted by the negotiators, 
reserved their claims for future negotiation, and 
also reserved the subjects of disagreement under 
the treaties of amity and commerce, and of alli- 
ance, of 1778, and the consular convention of 
1788 ; that the seventeenth article of the treaty 
of amity and commerce, and the eleventh article 
of the treaty of alliance, were particularly oner- 
ous upon the United States ; that, to dischaigo 
the government from the onerous obligations 
imposed upon it in these two articles of the respec- 
tive treaties, the Senate was induced to expunge 
the second article of the treaty of the 30th Sep- 
tember above referred to, and, by consequence, 
to expunge the reservation of their claims as 
subjects of future negotiation between the two 
nations ; that, in thus obtaining a discharge fi-om 
the onerous obligations of these treaties, and 
especially of the two articles above designated, 
the United States was benefited to an amount 
beyond the whole value of the claims discharged, 
and that this benefit was the inducement to the 
expunging of the second article of the treat.v, 
with a full knowledge that the act did discharge 
the claims, and create a legal and equitable ob- 
ligation on the part of the govenuiRnt to pay 
them. 

" These, Mr. W. said, he understood to be the 
assumptions of the claimants, and this their 
course of reasoning to arrive at the conclusion 
that the United States were liable to them for 
the amount of their claims. He nuist here raise 
a preliminary question, which he had satisfied 
himself would show these assumptions of tl)e 
claimants to be wholly without foundation, so 
far as the idea of benefit to the United States 
was supj)Osed to be derived from expunging this 
second article of the treaty of 1800. What, he 



498 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



must be permitted to ask, would have been the 
liabiHty of the United States under the ' onerous 
obli<rations ' referred to. in case the Senate had 
ratified the treaty, retaining this second article ? 
The binding force of the treaties of amity and 
commerce, and of alliance, and of the consular 
convention, was released, and the treaties and 
convention ■were themselves suspended bj'^ the 
very article in question ; and the subjects of 
disagreement growing out of them were merely 
made matters of future negotiation ' at a con- 
venient time.' What was the value or the 
burden of such an obligation upon the United 
States ? for this was the only obligation from 
which our government was released by striking 
out the article. The value, Mr. W. said, was 
the value of the privilege, being at perfect liberty, 
in the premises, of assenting to or dissenting 
from a bad bargain, in a matter of negotiation 
between ourselves and a foreign power. This 
was the consideration passing to the United 
States, and, so far as he was able to view the 
subject, this was all the consideration the go- 
vernment had received, if it be granted (which 
he must by no means be understood to admit), 
that the striking out of the article was a release 
of the claims, and tliat such release was intended 
as a consideration for the benefits to accrue to 
the government from the act. 

" Mr. TV. said he felt bound to dwell, for a mo- 
ment, upon this point. What was the value of 
an obligation to negotiate ' at a convenient time ? ' 
AVas it any thing to be valued ? The ' conven- 
ient time ' might never arrive, or if it did arrive, 
and negotiations were opened, were not the 
government as much at liberty as in any other 
case of negotiation, to refuse propositions which 
were deemed disadvantageous to itself? The 
treaties were su.spcnded, and could not be re- 
vived without the consent of the United States ; 
and, of consequence, the ' onerous obligations ' 
comprised in certain articles of these treaties 
were alsa suspended until the same consent 
should revive them. Could he, then, be mistaken 
in the conclusion that, if the treaty of 1800 had 
been ratified with the second article forming a 
part of it, as originally agreed hy the negotiators, 
the United States would have been as effectually 
released from the onerous obligations of the 
former treaties, until those obligations should 
again be put in force by their consent, as they 
were released when that article was stricken 
out, and the treaty ratified without it? In 
.short, could he be mistaken in the position that 
all the inducement, of a national character, to 
ex])unge that article from the treaty, was to get 
rid of an obligation to negotiate 'at a conve- 
nient time ? ' And could it be possible that 
such an inducement would have led the Senate 
of the United States, understanding this conse- 
quence, to impose upon the government a 
liability to the amount of ^5,000,000 1 He could 
not adopt so absurd a supposition ; and he felt 
himself compelled to say that this view of the 
action of the gGvernment in the ratification of 



the treaty of 1800, in his mind, put an end to 
the pretence that the striking out of this article 
relieved the United States from obligations so 
onerous as to form a valuable consideration for 
the payments provided for in this bill. He 
could not view the obligation released — a mere 
obligation to negotiate — as onerous at all, or as 
forming any consideration whatever for a pecuni- 
ary li,ibility. much less for a liabilit}' for millions. 

" Mr. W. said he now proposed to consider 
whether the ellect of expunging the second ar- 
ticle of the treaty of 1800 was to release any 
claim of value — any claim which France had 
ever acknowledged, or ever intended to pay. 
He had before shown, by extracts from the 
fourth and fifth articles of the treaty of 1800, 
that certain classes of claims were saved by that 
treaty, as it was ratified. The claims so re- 
served and provided for were paid in pursuance 
of provisions contained in the treaty between 
France and the United States, of the 30th of 
April, 1803 ; and to determine what claims were 
thus paid, a reference to some of the articles of 
that treaty was necessary. The purchase of 
Louisiana was made by the United States for 
the sum of 80,000,000 of francs, 60,000,000 of 
which were to be paid into the French treasury, 
and the remaining 20,000,000 were to be applied 
to the payment of these claims. Three separate 
treaties were made between the parties, bearing 
all the same date, the first providing for the 
cession of the territory, the second for the pay- 
ment of the 60,000,000 of francs to the French 
treasury, and the third for the adjustment and 
payment of the claims. 

" Mr. W. said the references proposed were to 
the last-named treaty, and were the following : 

" 'Art. 1. The debts due by France to citizens 
of the United States, contracted before the 8th 
of Vendemiaire, ninth year of the French Re- 
public (30th September, 1800), shall be paid 
according to the following regulations, with in- 
terest at six per cent., to commence from the 
period when the accounts and vouchers were 
presented to the French government.' 

" 'Art. 2. The debts provided for by the pre- 
ceding article are those whose result is comprised 
in the conjectural note annexed to the present 
convention, and which, with the interest, cannot 
exceed the sum of twenty millions of francs. 
The claims comprised in the said note, which 
fall within the exceptions of the following arti- 
cles, shall not be admitted to the benefit of this 
provision.' 

" ' Art. 4. It is expressly agreed that the pre- 
ceding articles shall comprehend no debts but 
such as are due to citizens of the United States, 
who have been and are yet creditors of France, 
for supplies, for embargoes, and prizes made at 
sea, in which the appeal has been properly lodged 
within the time mentioned in the said conven- 
tion of the 8th Vendemiaire, ninth year (30th 
September, 1800).' 

" ' Art. 5. The preceding articles shall apply 
only, 1st, to captures of which the council of 



ANNO 1S35. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



499 



prizes shall have ordered restitution, it being 
well understood that the claimant cannot have 
recourse to the United States otherwise than 
he might have had to the government of the 
French Republic, and only in case of the insuffi- 
ciency of the captors ; 2d, the debts mentioned 
in the said fifth article of the convention, con- 
tracted before the 8th Vendemaire, and 9 (30th 
September, 1800), the payment of which has 
been heretofore claimed of the actual govern- 
ment of France, and for which the creditors 
have a right to the protection of the United 
States ; the said fifth article does not compre- 
hend prizes whose condemnation has been or 
shall be confirmed ; it is the express intention 
of the contracting parties not to extend the 
benefit of the present convention to reclama- 
tions of American citizens, who shall have es- 
tablished houses of commerce in France, Eng- 
land, or other countries than the United States, 
in partnership with foreigners, and ^vho by that 
reason and the nature of their commerce, ought 
to be regarded as domiciliated in the places 
where such houses exist. All agreements and 
bargains concerning merchandise, which shall 
not be the property of American citizens, are 
: equally excepted from the benefit of the said 
convention, saving, however, to such persons 
their claims in like manner as if this treaty had 
not been made. 

" From these provisions of the treaty, Mr. W. 
said, it would appear that the claims to be paid 
were of three descriptions, to wit : 

" 1. Claims for supplies. 



" 2. Claims for embargoes, 
o. 



" 3. Claims for captures made at sea, of a de- 
scription defined in the last clause of the 4th 
and the first clause of the 5th article. 

" How far these claims embraced all which 
Prance ever acknowledged, or ever intended to 
pay, Mr. W. said he was unable to say, as the 
time allowed him to examine the case had not 
permitted him to look sufficiently into the docu- 
ments to make up his mind with precision upon 
this point. He had found, in a report made to 
the Senate on the 14th of January, 1831, in fa- 
vor of this bill, by the honorable ]Mr. Livingston, 
then a vScnator from the State of Louisiana, the 
following classification of the French claims, as 
insisted on at a period before the making of the 
treaty of 1800, to wit : 

'"1. From the capture and detention of about 
fifty vessels. 

" ' 2. The detention, for a j'ear, of eighty other 
vessels, under the Bordeaux embargo. 

" ' 3. The non-payment of supplies to the West 
India islands, and to continental France. 

" ' 4. For depredations committed on our com- 
merce in the West Indies.' 

"Mr. W. said the comparison of the two 
classifications of claims would show, at a single 
view, that Nos. 2 and 3 in Mr. Livingston's list 
were provided for hy the treaty of 1803, from 
which he had read. Whetlier any, and if any, 
what portions of Nos. 1 and 4 in !Mr. Living- 



ston's list were embraced in No 3 of the pro- 
visions of the treaty, as he had numbered then\ 
he was unable to say ; but this much he could 
say, that he had found nothing to satisfy his 
mind that parts of both those classes of claims 
were not so included, and therefore provided for 
and paid under the treaty ; nor had he been able 
to find any thing to show tliat this treaty of 
1803 did not provide for and pay all the claims 
which France ever acknowledged or ever in- 
tended to pay. He was, therefore, unprepared 
to admit, and did not admit, that any thing of 
value to any class of individual claimants was 
released by expunging the second original ar- 
ticle from the treaty of the 30th September, 
1800. On the contrary, lie was strongly im- 
pressed with the belief that the adjustment of 
claims provided for in the treaty of 1803 had 
gone to the whole extent to which the French 
government had, at any period of the negotia- 
tions, intended to go. 

"Mr. W. said this impression was greatly 
strengthened by the circumstance that the claims 
under the Bordeaux embargo were expressly 
provided for in this treaty, while he could see 
nothing in the treaty of 1800 which seemed to 
him to authorize the supposition that this class 
of claims was more clearly embraced within the 
reservations in that treaty than any class which 
had been admitted by the French government. 

" Another fact, Mr. W. said, was material to 
this subject, and should be borne carefully in 
mind by every senator. It was, that not a cent 
was paid hy France, even upon the claims re 
served and admitted by the treaty of 1800, un 
til the sale of Louisiana to the United States, 
for a sum greater by thirty millions of francs 
than that for which the French minister was 
instructed to sell it. Yes, Mr. President, said 
jMr. W., the only payment yet made upon any 
portion of these claims has been virtually made 
by the United States ; for it has been made out 
of the consideration money paid for Louisiana, 
after paying into the French treasury ten mil- 
lions of ff-ancs beyond the price France herself 
placed upon the territory. It is a singular fact 
that the French negotiator was instructed to 
make the sale for fifty millions, if he could get 
no more ; and when he found that, by yielding 
twenty millions to pay the claims, he could get 
eighty millions for the territory, and thus put 
ten millions more into the treasury of liis na- 
tion than she had instructed him to ask for the 
whole, he yielded to the claims and clusod the 
treaty. It w-as safe to say that, but for this sjiecu- 
lation in the sale of Louisiana, not one dollar 
would have been paid upon the claims to this 
day. All our subsequent negotiations with 
France of a similar character, and our present 
relations with that country, growing out of pri- 
vate claims, justify this position. What, then, 
would have been' the value of claims, if such 
fairly existed, which were not acknowledged 
and provided for by the treaty of 1800, but were 
left for future negotiation 'at a convenient 



500 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



time ? ' Would they have been worth the five 
millions of dollai-.s you propose to appropriate 
by this bill ? Would they have been worth 
further negotiation ? He thought they would 
not. 

'•' ]\Ir. W. said he. would avail himself of this 
occasion, when speaking of the treaty of Louisi- 
ana and of its connection with these claims, to 
explain a mistake into which he had fallen, and 
which ho found from conversation with several 
gentlemen, who had been for some years mem- 
bers of Congress, had been common to them 
and to himself. The mistake to which he al- 
luded was, the supposition that the claimants 
under tliis bill put their case upon the assump- 
tion that their claims had constituted part of 
the consideration for which Louisiana ha*J been 
ceded to the United States ; and that the con- 
sideration they contended the government had 
received, and upon which its liability rested, 
was the cession of that tcrritor}^ for a less sum, 
in money, than was considered to be its value, 
on account of the release of the French govern- 
ment from those private claims. He had rested 
under this misapprehension until the opening 
of the present debate, and until he commenced 
an examination of the case. lie then found that 
it was an entire misapprehension ; that the Uni- 
ted States had paid, in money, for Louisiana, 
thirty millions of francs beyond the price which 
France had set upon it ; that the claimants un- 
der this bill did not rest their claims at all up- 
on ihis basis, and that the friends of the bill in 
the Senate did not pretend to derive the liability 
of the government from this source. Mr. "\V. 
said he was induced to make tliis explanation 
in justice to himself and because there might 
be some person within the hearing of his voice 
who might still be under the same misappre- 
hension. 

" He had now, Mr. W. said, attempted to 
establish the following propositions, viz. : 

" 1. That a state of actual war, by which he 
meant a state of actual hostilities and of force, 
and an interruption of all diplomatic or friendly 
intercourse between the United States and 
France, had existed from the time of the pas- 
sage of the acts of the 7th and 9th of July, 
1798, before referred to, until the sending of the 
negotiators, Ellsworth, Davie, and Murra}^, in 
1800, to make a treaty which put an end to the 
hostilities existing, upon the best terms that 
could be obtained ; and that the treaty of the 
30th of September, 1800, concluded by these 
negotiators, was, in fact, aTid so far as private 
claims were concerned, to Ijc considered as a 
treaty of peace, and to conclude all such claims, 
not reserved by it, as finally ratified by the two 
powers. 

" 2. That the treaty of amity and commerce, 
and the treaty of alliance of 1778, as well as 
the consularconventionof 1788, were suspended 
by the 2d article of the treaty of 18t)0, and 
from that time became mere matters for negotia- 
tion between the parties at a convenient time ; 



that, therefore, the desire to get rid of thesa 
treaties, and of any ' onerous obligations ' coo 
tained in them, was only the desire to get ria 
of an obligation to negotiate 'at a convenient 
time ; ' and that such a consideration could not 
have induced the Senate of the United States to 
expunge that article from the treaty, if thereby 
that body had supposed it was imposing upon 
the country a liability to pay to its citizens the 
sum of five millions of dollars — a sum much 
larger than Franco had asked, in money, for a 
full discharge from the 'onerous obligations' 
relied upon. 

"3, That the treaty of 1800 reserved and 
provided for certain portions of the claims ; that 
payment, 'according to such reservations, was 
made under the treatj'' of 1803 ; and that it is 
at least doubtful whether the payment thus 
made did not cover all the claims ever admitted, 
or ever intended to be paid by France ; for 
which reason the e.^pjmging of the second arti- 
cle of the treaty of 1800, by the Senate of the 
United States, in all probability, released no- 
thing which ever had, or which was ever likely 
to have value. 

" Mr. W. said, if he had been successful in 
establishing either of these positions, there was 
an end of the claims, and, by consequence, a 
defeat of the bill. 

" The advocates of the bill conceded that two 
positions must be established, on their part, to 
sustain it, to wit : 

" 1. That the claims were valid claims against 
France, and had never been paid. And 

" 2. That they were released by the govern- 
ment of the L^nited States for a full and valua- 
ble consideration passing to its benefit by means 
of the release. 

"If, then, a state of war had existed, it would 
not be contended that an}^ claims of this cha- 
racter, not reserved or provided for in the 
treaty of peace, were valid claims after the ra- 
tification of such a treat}'. Ilis first proposi- 
tion, therefore, if sustained, would defeat the 
bill, by establishing the fact that the claims, if 
not reserved in the treaty of 1800, were not 
valid claims. 

" The second proposition, if sustained, would 
establish the fact that, inasmuch as the valu- 
able consideration passing to the United States 
was alleged to grow out of the ' onerous obfi- 
gations ' in the treaty of amity and commerce, 
the treaty of alliance, and the consular conven- 
tion ; and inasmuch as these treaties, and all 
obligations, past, present, or future, 'onerous' 
or otherwise, growing out of them, were sus- 
pended and made inoperative by the second 
article of the treaty of the 30th of September, 
1800, until further 'negotiation, by the common 
consent of both powers, should revive tb.em, the 
Senate of the United States could not have ex- 
pected, when they expunged this article from 
the treaty, that, by thus discharging the govern- 
ment from an obligation to negotiate 'at a con- 
venient time,' thby were incurring against it a 



ANNO 1835. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



501 



liability of millions ; in other words, the dis- 
charge of the government from an obligation to 
negotiate upon any subject 'at a convenient 
time,' could not have been considered by the 
Senate of the United States as a good and valu- 
able consideration for the pa3'-ment of private 
claims to the amount of five millions of dollars. 

" The third proposition, if sustained, would 
prove that all the claims ever acknowledged,or ever 
intended to be paid by France, were paid under 
the treaty of 1803, and that, therefore, as claims 
never admitted or recognized by France would 
scarcely be urged as valid claims against hei', 
no valid claims remamed ; and, consequently, 
the expunging of the second article of the treaty 
of the 30th of September, 1800, released nothing 
which was valid, and nothing remained to be 
paid by the United States as a liability incurred 
by that modification of that treaty. Here Mr. 
W. said he would rest his reasoning as to these 
three propositions. 

" But if the Senate should determine that he 
had been wrong in them all, and had failed to 
sustain either, he had still another proposition, 
which he considered conclusive and unanswer- 
able, as to any valuable consideration for the re- 
lease of these claims having passed to the United 
States in consequence of their discharge from 
the 'onerous obligations' said to have beeu 
contained in the former treaties. These ' one- 
rous obligations,' and the only ones of which 
he had heard any thing in the course of the de- 
bate, or of wliich he had found any thing in the 
documents, arose under the 17th article of the 
treaty of amity and commerce, and the 11th 
article of the treaty of alliance ; and, in relation 
to both, he laid down this broad proposition, 
which would b<.' "*"ully sustained by the treaties 
themselves, and by every act and every expres- 
sion on the part of the American negotiators, 
and the government of the United States, viz, : 

" ' The obligations, liabilities, and responsi- 
bilities, imposed upon the government of the 
United States and upon France by the 17th 
article of the treaty of amity and commerce of 
1778, and by the 11th article of the treaty of 
alliance of 1778, where mutual, reciprocal, and 
equal : each formed the consideration, and the 
only consideration, for the other; and, therefore, 
any release which discharged both powers 
from those liabilities, responsibilities, and obli- 
gations, must have been mutual, reciprocal, and 
equal ; and the release of either must have 
formed a full and valuable consideration for the 
release of the othei-.' 

" Mr. W- said lie would not trouble the Senate 
by again reading the articles from the respective 
treaties. They would be recollected, and no one 
would controvert the fact that, when the trea- 
ties were made, these articles were intended to 
contain mutual, reciprocal, and equal obligations. 
By the first we gave to France the liberty of 
our ports for her armed vessels, privateers, and 
prizes, and prohibited all other powers from the 
enjojonent of the same privilege ; and France 



gave to us the liberty of her ports for our Arme(? 
vessels, privateers, and prizes, and guarded the 
privilege by the same prohibition to other 
powers ; and by the second we guaranteed to 
France, for ever, her possessions in America, 
and France guaranteed to us, for ever, ' oiu- Ub- 
erty, sovereignty, and independence, absolute 
and unlimited, as well in matters of government 
as commerce.' Such were the obhgation^ in 
their original inception. Will it be contended 
that they were not mutual, reciprocal, and equal, 
and that, in each instance, the one did not form 
the consideration for the other ? Surely no one 
will take this ground. 

'•If, then, said Mr. W., the obligations im- 
posed upon each government by these articles 
of the respective treaties were mutual, recipro- 
cal, and equal, when undertaken, they must 
have remained equal until abrogated by war, or 
changed by treaty stipulation. No treaty, sub- 
sequent to those which contain the obligations, 
had affected them in any manner whatever. I^ 
as he had attempted to show, war had existed 
from July, 1778, to 1800, that would not have 
rendered the obligations unequal, but would 
have abrogated them altogether. If. as the 
fi'iends of the bill contend, there had been no 
war, and the treaties were in full force up to 
the signing of the convention of the 30th of Sep- 
tember, 1800, what was the effect of that treat)^, 
.as originally signed by the negotiators, upon 
these mutual, reciprocal, and equal obligations ? 
The second original article of that treaty will 
answer. It did not attempt to disturb their 
mutuality, reciprocity, or equality, but suspend- 
ed them as they were, past, present, or future, 
and made all the subject of future negotiation 
' at a convenient time.' 

" But, Mr. W. said, the Senate of the United 
States expunged this article of the treaty of 
1800, and refused to advise and consent to rati- 
fy it as a part of the treaty ; and hence it was 
contended the United States had discharged 
themselves from the 'onerous obligations' of 
these articles in the respective treaties, and had, 
by that act, incurred, to the claimants under 
this bill, the heavy liability which it recognizes. 
If the expunging of that article discharged the 
United States from obligations thus onerous, 
did it not discharge France from the fellow obli- 
gations ? Was not the discharge, made in that 
manner, as mutual, reciprocal, and cipial, as the 
obligations in their inception, and in all their 
subsequent stages up to that act ? How, then, 
could it be contended that the discharge of the 
one was not a full and adequate consiiloration 
for the discharge of the other ? Nothing upon 
the fivce of the treaties authorized the introduc- 
tion of this inequality at this step in the official 
proceedings. Nothing in the record of the pro- 
ceedings of the Senate, when acting upon the 
article, indicates that they intended to pay five 
millions of dollars to render this nuitual release 
equal between the two powers. The obligations 
and responsibilities were resers'cd as subjects of ' 



602 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



future negotiation, upon terms of equality, and 
the striking out of that reservation was but a 
mutual and leciprocal and ec^ual release from 
the obligation further to negotiate. This much 
for the reciprocity of these obligations as derived 
from the action of the sovereign powers them- 
selves. 

" What was to be learned from the action of 
their respective negotiators 1 He did not doubt 
but that attempts had been made on the part 
of France to exhibit an inequality in the obliga- 
tions under the treaty, and to set up that ine- 
quality against the claims of our citizens ; but 
had our negotiators ever admitted the inequality 
to exist, or ever attempted to compromise the 
rights of the claimants under this bill for such a 
consideration ? He could not find that they 
had. He did not hear it contended that they 
had : and, from the evidence of their acts, re- 
maining upon record, as a part of the diplomatic 
correspondence of the period, he could not sup- 
pose they had ever entertained the idea. He 
had said that the American negotiators had al- 
ways treated these obligations as mutual, recip- 
rocal, and equal ; and he now proposed to read 
to the Senate a part of a letter from Messrs. 
Ellsworth, Davie, and Murra}-, addressed to the 
French negotiators, and containing the project 
of a treaty, to justify his assertion. The letter 
was dated 20th August, 1800, and it would be 
recollected that its authors were the negotia- 
tors, on the part of the United States, of the 
treaty of the 30th of September, 1800. The ex- 
tract is as follows : 

"'1. Let it be declared that the former trea- 
ties are renewed ajid confirmed, and shall have 
the same effect as if no misunderstanding be- 
tween the two powers had intervened, except so 
far as they are derogated from by the present 
treaty. 

'"2. It shall be optional with either party 
to pay to the other, within seven years, three 
millions of francs, in money or securities which 
may be issued for indemnities, and thereby to 
reduce the rights of the other as to privateers 
and prizes, to those of the most favored nation. 
And during the said terra allowed for option, 
the right of both parties shall be limited by the 
line of the most favored nation. ♦ 

" ' 3. The mutual guaranty in the treaty of 
alliance shall be so specified and limited, that its 
future obligation shall be, on the part of France, 
when the United States shall be attacked, to 
furnish and deliver at her own ports military 
stores to the amount of one million of francs ; 
and, on the part of tlie United States, when the 
French possessions in America, in any future 
war, shall be attacked, to furnish and deliver at 
their own ports a like amount in provisions. 
It shall, moreover, be oj)tional for either party 
to exonerate itself wholly of its obligation, by 
paying to the other, within seven years, a gross 



sum of five millions of francs 



such 



,, m money or 
Becurities as may be issued for indenmities.' 
' Mr. W. asked if he needed further proofs 



that not only the American government, but tha 
American negotiators, treated these obligations 
under the treaty as, in all respects, nmtual, r© 
ciprocal, and equal ; and if the fallacy of the ar- 
gument that the United States had obtained to 
itself a valuable consideration for the release of 
these private claims in the release of itself from 
these obligations, was not utterly and entirely 
disproved by these facts ? Was not the release 
of the obligations on the one side the release of 
them on the other ? And was not the one re- 
lease the necessary consideration for the other ? 
How, then, could it be said, with any justice, 
that we sought our release at the expense of the 
claimants ? There was no reasonable ground 
for such an allegation, either from the acts of 
our government or of our negotiators. When 
the latter fixed a value upon our obligations as 
to the privateers and prizes, and as to the guar- 
anty, in the same article they fixed the same 
price, to a franc, upon the reciprocal obligations 
of France ; and when the former discharged our 
liabilit}", by expunging the second article of the 
treaty of 1800, the same act discharged the cor- 
responding liability of the French government. 

" Here, then, Mr. W. said, must end all pre- 
tence of a valuable consideration for these claims 
passing to the United States from this source. 
The onerous obligations were mutual, reciprocal, 
and equal, and the respective releases were mu- 
tual, reciprocal, and equal, and simultaneous, 
and nothing could be fairly drawn from the act 
which operated these mutual releases to benefit 
these claimants. 

" Mr. W. said he was, then, necessarily brought 
back to the proposition with which he started 
in the commencement of his argument, that, if 
the United States were liable to pay these 
claimants, that liability must rest upon the 
broad ground of a failure by the goverimient, 
after ordinary, and, in this instance, extraordi- 
nar}' efforts to collect the money. The idea of 
a release of the claims for a valuable considera- 
tion passing to the government had been ex- 
ploded, and, if a liability was to be claimed on 
account of a failure to collect the money, upon 
what ground did it rest ? What had the gov- 
ernment done to protect the rights of these 
claimants ? It had negotiated from 1793 to 
1798, with a vigilance and zeal and talent al- 
most unprecedented in the history of diplomacy. 
It had sent to France minister after minister, 
and, upon several occasions, exti'aordinary mis- 
sions composed of several individuals. Be- 
tween 1798 and 1800, it had equipped fleets 
and armies, expended millions in warlike pre- 
paration, and finally sent forth its citizens to 
battle and death, to force the payment of the 
claims. Were we now to be told, that our 
failure in these efforts had created a liability 
against us to pay the money ? That tuc same 
citizens who had been taxed to pay the ex- 
penses of these long negotiations, and of this 
war for the claims, were to be further taxed to 
pay such of the claims as we had failed to col 



ANNO 1835. ANDREW JACKSON, rRESIDENT. 



503 



lect ? He could never consent to such a deduc- 
tion from such premises. 

" But, Mr. President, said Mr. TV., there is 
another view of this subject, placed upon this 
basis, which renders this bill of trifling impor- 
tance in the comparison. If the failure to 
collect these claims has created the liability to 
pay them, that liability goes to the extent of 
the claims proved, and the interest upon them, 
not to a partial, and perhaps trifling, dividend. 
Who, then, would undertake to say what 
amount of claims might not be proved during 
the state of things he had described, from the 
breaking out of the war between France and 
England, in 1793, to the execution of the treaty, 
in 1800 ? For a great portion of the period, 
the municipal regulations of France required 
the captured cai'goes to be not confiscated, but 
paid for at the market value at the port to 
which the vessel was destined. Still the cap- 
ture would be proved, the value of the cargo 
ascertained, before the commission which the 
bill proposes to establish ; and who would 
adduce the proof that the same cargo was paid 
for by the French government ? 

" This principle, however, Mr. "VY. said, went 
much further than the whole subject of the old 
French claims. It extended to all claims for 
spoliations upon our commerce, since the exist- 
ence of the government, which we had failed to 
collect. Who could say where the liability 
would end 7 In how many cases had claims of 
this character been settled by treaty, what had 
been collected in each case, and what amount 
remained unpaid, after the release of the foreign 
government ? He had made an unsuccessful 
effort to answer these inquiries, so far as the 
files of the state department would furnish the 
information, as he had found that it could only 
be collected by an examination of each indivi- 
dual claim ; and this would impose a labor upon 
the department of an unreasonable character, 
and would occupy more time than remained to 
furnish the information for his use upon the pre- 
sent occasion. He had, however, been favored 
by the Secretary of State with the amounts al- 
lowed by the commissioner.s, the amounts paid, 
and the rate of pay upon the principal, in two 
recent cases, the Florida treaty, and the treaty 
with Denmark. In the former instance, the 
paj^ment was ninety-one and two thirds per 
centum upon the principal, while in the latter it 
was but tliirty-one and one eighth per centum. 
Assume that these two cases are the maximum 
and mininmm of all the cases where releases 
have been given for partial . payments ; and 
he begged the Senate to reflect upon the 
amounts unpaid which might be called from the 
national treasury, if the principle were once ad- 
mitted that a failure to collect creates a liability 
to pay. 

"That in his assumption that a liability of 
this sort must go to the whole amount of the 
claims, he onl}^ took the ground contended for 
by the friends of this bill, he would trouble the 



Senate with another extract from the report of 
Mr. Livingston, from which he had before read 
In speaking of the amount which should be ap- 
propriated, ^Ir. Livingston saj's : 

'• ' The only remaining inquiry is the amount ; 
and on this point the committee have had some 
difficulty. Two modes of measuring the com- 
pensation suggested themselves : 

" ' 1. The actual loss sustained hy the peti- 
tioners. 

" ' 2. The value of the advantages received, as 
the consideration, by the L'nited States. 

" ' The first is the one demanded by strict 
justice ; and is the only one that satisfies the 
word u.sed by the constitution, which requires 
just compensation, which cannot be said to have 
been made when any thing less than the full 
value is given. But there were difficulties which 
appeared insurmountable, to the adoption of 
this rule at the present day, arising from the 
multiplicity of the claims, the nature of the de- 
predations which occasioned them, the loss of 
documents, either by the lapse of time, or the 
wilful destruction of them by the depredators 
The committee, therefore, could not undertake 
to provide a specific relief for each of the peti- 
tioners. But they have recommended the insti- 
tution of a board, to enter into the investigation, 
and apportion a sum which the committee have 
recommended to be appropriated, pj-o ro.ta, 
among the several claimants.' 

" ' The committee could not believe that the 
amount of compensation to the sufferers should 
be calculated by the advantages secured to the 
United States, because it was not, according to 
their ideas, the true measure. If the property 
of an individual be taken for public use, and the 
government miscalculate, and find that the ob- 
ject to which they have applied it has been 
injurious rather than beneficial, the value of tlie 
property is still due to the owner, who ought 
not to sufler for the false speculations which 
have been made. A turnpike or canal may be 
very unproductive ; but the owner of the "land 
which has been taken for its construction is not 
the less entitled to its value. On the other 
hand, he can have no manner of right to more 
than the value of his property, be the object to 
which it has been applied ever so benciicial.' 

"Here, Mr. W. said, were two proposed 
grounds of estimating the extent of the liability 
of the government to the claimants ; and that 
which graduated it by tlie value received by the 
government was distinctl}' rejected, while that 
making the amount of the claims the measure 
of liability, was as distinctly asserted to be the 
true and just standard. IIo hoi)ed he had shown, 
to the satisfaction of the Senate, that the former 
rule of value received hj the government would 
allow the claimants nothing at all, Avhile he was 
compelled to say that, upon the broad principle 
that a failure to collect creates a liability to jniy, 
he could not controvert tlie correctness of tlie 
conclusion that the liabihty must be commen- 
sm-ate with the claim. He could controvert, ho 



504 



TIITRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



thouc:ht. successfullj', the principle, but he could 
not the measure of daraa,c:es when the principle 
was conceded. He would here conclude his re- 
marks u])()n tlie points he had noticed, by the 
earnest declaration that he believed the passage 
of this bill would open more widely the doors 
of the public treasury than any legislation of 
which he had any knowledge, or to which Con- 
gress had ever yielded its assent. 

" Ml". ^Y. said he had a few observations to 
offer relative to the mode of legislation proposed, 
and to the details of the bill, and he would trou- 
ble the Senate no further. 

" His lirst objection, under this head, was to 
the mode of legislation. If the government be 
liable to pay these claims, the claimants are 
citizens of the countrj^, and Congress is as ac- 
cessible to them as to other claimants who have 
demands against the treasury. Why were thoy 
not permitted, individually, to appl}' to Congress 
to establish their respective claims, as other 
claimants were bound to do, and to receive such 
relief, in each case, as Congress, in its Avisdom, 
should sec tit to grant 1 Why were these claims, 
more than others, grouped together, and at- 
tempted to be made a matter of national impor- 
tance ? Why was a commission to be cstabhshed 
to ascertain tlieir validity, a duty in ordinary 
cases discharged by Congress itself? Were the 
Senate sure that much of the importance given 
to these claims had not proceeded from this as- 
sociation, and from the formidable amount thus 
presented at one view ? AVould any gentleman 
be able to convince himself that, acting upon a 
single claim in this immense mass, he should 
have given it his favorable consideration? For 
his part, he considered the mode of legislation 
unusual and objectionable. His principal ob- 
jections to the details Avere, that the second 
section of the bill prescribed the rules which 
should govern the commission in deciding upon 
the claims, among which ' the former treaties 
between the United States and France ' were 
enumerated ; and that the bill contained no de- 
claration that the payments made under it were 
in full of the claims, or that the respective claim- 
ants should execute a release, as a condition of 
receiving their dividends. 

" The first objection was predicated upon the 
fact that the bill covered the whole period from 
the making of the treaties of 1778, to that of 
the 30th September, 1800, and made the former 
treaties the rule of adjudication, when Congresr 
on the 7th July, 1798, by a deliberate legislative 
act, declared those treaties void, and no longer 
binding uj)on tlie United States or their citizens. 
It is a fact abundantly proved by the documents, 
that a largo portion of the claims now to be paid, 
arose williin the period last alluded to; and that 
treaties declared to be void should be made the 



law in determining what were and what wer« 
not illegal captures, during the time that they 
were held to have no force, and when our citizens 
were authoi-ized by law to go upon the high seas, 
regardless of their provisions, Mr. W. said, would 
seem to him to be an absurdity which the Seuatu 
would not legalize. He was fully aware that 
the first section of the bill purported to provide 
for ''Valid claims to indemnity upon the French 
government, arising out of illegal captures, de- 
tentions, forcible seizures, illegal condemnations, 
and confiscations ; ' but it could not be over- 
looked that illegal captures, condemnations, and 
confiscations, must relate entirely to the law 
which was to govern the adjudication ; and if 
that law was a void treaty which the claimants 
were not bound to observe, and did not observe, 
was it not more than possible that a capture, 
condemnation, or confiscation, might, by com- 
pulsion, be adjudged illegal under the rule fixed 
by the bill, while that same capture, condemna- 
tion, or confiscation, was strictly lega'l under the 
laws which governed the commerce of the claim - 
ant when the capture was made ? He must say 
that it appeared clear to his mind that the rule 
of adjudication ujion the validity of claims of this 
description, should, in all cases, be the same rule 
which governed the commerce out of which the 
claims have arisen. 

" His second objection, Mr. W. said, was made 
more as a wish that a record of the intentions 
of the present Congress should be preserved 
upon the face of the bill, than from any idea that 
the provision suggested would afford the least 
protection to the public treasur}'. Every day's 
legislation showed the futility of the insertion 
in an act of Congress of a declaration that the 
appropriation made should be in full of a claim ; 
and in this, as in other like cases, should this 
bill pass, he did not expect that it would be, 
in practice, any thing more than an instalment 
upon the claims which would be sustained before 
the commission. The files of the state depart- 
ment would contain the record evidence of the 
balance, with the admission of the government, 
in the passage of this bill, that an equal liability 
remained to j)ay that balance, whatever it might 
be. Even a release from the respective claimants 
he should consider as likely to have no other 
effect than to change their futuTe applications 
from a demand of legal right, which lliey now 
assume to have, to one of equity and favor ; and 
he was j-et to see that the latter would not be 
as successful as the former. He must give his 
vote against the bill, whether modified in that 
particular or not, and he should do so under the 
most full and clear conviction, that it was a pro- 
position fraught with greater dangers to the 
public treasur}-, than any law which had ever 
yet received the assent of Congress." 



ANNO 1835. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



505 



CHAPTER CXIX. 

FRENCH SPOLIATIONS— MR. WEBSTER'S SPEECH. 

" The question, sir, involved in this case, is es- 
sentiallj'^ a judicial question. It is not a question 
of public policy, but a question of private right ; 
a question between the government and the pe- 
titioners : and, as the government is to be judge 
in its own case, it would seem to be the duty 
of its members to examine the subject with the 
most scrupulous good foith, and the most soli- 
citous desire to do justice. 

" There is a propriety in commencing the ex- 
amination of these claims in the Senate, because 
it was the Senate which, by its amendment of 
the treaty of 1800, and its subsequent ratifica- 
tion of that treaty, and its recognition of tlie 
declaration of the French government, effectually 
released the claims as against France, and for 
ever cut off the petitioners from all hopes of re- 
dress from that quarter. The claims, as claims 
against our own government, have their founda- 
tion in these acts of the Senate itself; and it 
may certainly be expected that the Senate will 
consider the effects of its own proceedings, on 
private rights and private interests, with that 
candor and justice which belong to its high char- 
acter. 

" It ought not to be objected to these peti- 
tioners, that their claim is old, or that they are 
now reviving any thing which has heretofore 
been abandoned. There has been no delay which 
is not reasonably accounted for. The treaty by 
which the claimants say their claims on France 
for these captures and confiscations were released 
was concluded in 1800. They immediately ap- 
plied to Congress for indemnity, as will be seen 
by the report made in 1802, in the House of 
Representatives, by a committee of which a dis- 
tinguished member from Virginia, not now living 
|]Mr. Giles], was chairman. 

" In 1807, on the petition of sundry merchants 
and others, citizens of Charleston, in South Ca- 
rolina, a committee of the House of Representa- 
tives, of which jNIr. Marion, of that State, was 
chairman, made a report, declaring that the 
committee was of opinion that the government 
of the United States was bound to indemnify 
the claimants. But at this time our affairs with 
the European powers at war had become exceed- 
ingly embarrassed ; our government had felt 
itself compelled to withdraw our commerce from 
the ocean ; and it was not until after the con- 
clusion of the war of 1812, and after the general 
pacification of Europe, that a suitable opportunity 
occurred of presenting the subject again to the 
serious consideration of Congress. From that 
time the petitioners have been constantly before 
us, and the period has at length arrived i)roper 
for a final decision of their case. 



"Another objection, sir, has been urged against 
these claims, well calculated to diminish the favor 
with which they might otherwise be received, 
and which is without any substantial foundation 
in fact. It is, that a great portion of them has 
been bought up, as a matter of speculation, and 
it is ROW holden by these purchasers. It has 
even been said, I think, on the floor of the Se- 
nate, that nine tenths, or ninety hundredths, of 
all the claims are owned by speculators. 

" Such unfounded statements are not only 
wholly unjust towards these petitioners them- 
selves, but they do great mischief to other inter- 
ests. I have observed that a French gentleman 
of distinction, formerly a resident in this country, 
is represented in the public newspapers as having 
declined the offer of a seat in the French ad- 
ministration, on the ground that he could not 
support the American treaty ; and he could not 
support the treaty because he had learned, or 
heard, while in America, that the claims were no 
longer the property of the original sufferers, but 
had passed into unworthy hands. If any such 
thing has been learned in the United Sjatcs, it 
has been learned from sources entirely incorrect. 
The general fact is not so ; and this prejudice, 
thus operating on a great national interest — an 
interest in regard to which we are in danger of 
being seriously embroiled with a foreign state — 
was created, doubtless, by the same incorrect 
and unfounded assertions which have been made 
relative to this other class of claims. 

" In regard to both classes, and to all classes 
of claims of American citizens on foreign govern- 
ments, the statement is at variance with the 
facts. Those who make it have no proof of it. 
On the contrar}', incontrovertible evidence ex- 
ists of the truth of the very reverse of this state- 
ment. The claims against France, since 1800, 
ire now in the coui'se of adjudication. They are 

1, or very nearly all, presented to the proper 
t, bunal. Proofs accompan}" them, and the 
ruies of the tribunal require that, in each case, 
the true ownership should be fully and exactly 
set out, on oath ; and be proved by tlie papers, 
vouchers, and other evidence. Now, sir, if any 
man is acquainted, or will make himself ac- 
quainted, with the proceedings of this tribunal, 
so far as to see who are the parties elaiming 
the iudemuity, he will see the al)solute and 
enormous error of those who represent these 
claims to bo owned, in great part, by specu- 
lators. 

•'Tlie truth is, sir, that these claims, as well 
those since 1800 as before, are oAvned and pos- 
sessed by the original sufferers, with such 
changes oidy as happen in regard to all other 
projicrty. The original owner of ship and cargo ; 
his representative, ^vhere sueli o\rner is dead ; 
underwriters who have paid loss-^s on account 
of captures and confiscations ; and creditors of 
insolvents and Imnknipts who were interested 
in the claims — these arc the descriptions of 
persons who, in all these cases, own vastly the 
larger portion of the claims. This is true of 



506 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



the claims on Spain, as is most manifest from 
the proceerlinjcs of thn commissioners under 
the Spanisli treaty. It is true of the claims 
on France arising since 1800, as is equally 
manifest by the proceedings of the commis- 
sioners now sitting ; and it is equally true of 
the claims Avhicli are the subject of this dis- 
cussion, and provided for in this bill. In some 
instances claims have been assigned from one 
to another, in the settlement of family affairs. 
They have been transferred, in other instances, 
to secure or to pay debts ; they have been 
transferred, sometimes, in the settlement of in- 
surance accounts ; and it is probable there are 
a few cases in which the necessities of the hold- 
ers have compelled them to sell them. But 
nothing can be further from the truth than that 
they have been the general subjects of purchase 
and sale, and that they are now holden mainly 
by purchasers from the original owners. They 
have been compared to the unfunded debt. But 
that consisted in scrip, of fixed amount, and 
which passed from hand to hand by delivery. 
These claims cannot so pass from hand to hand. 
In each case, not only the value but the amount 
is uncertain. "Whether there be any claim, is 
in each case a matter for investigation and 
proof; and so is the amount, when the justice of 
the claim itself is established. These circum- 
stances are of themselves quite sufficient to pre- 
vent the easy and frequent transfer of the claims 
from hand to hand. They would lead us to 
expect that to happen which actually has hap- 
pened ; and that is, that the claims remain with 
their original owners, and their legal heirs and 
representatives, with such exceptions as I have 
already mentioned. As to the portion of the 
claims now owned by underwriters, it can hardly 
be necessary to say that they stand on the same 
equity and justice as if possessed and presented 
by the owners of ships and goods. There i 
no more universal maxim of law and justir- , 
throughout the civilized and commercial wor.d, 
than that an underwriter, who has paid a loss 
on ships or merchandise to the owner, is entitled 
to whatever may be received from the property. 
His right accrues by the verj'^ act of payment ; 
and if the property, or its proceeds, be after- 
wards recovered, in whole or in part, whether 
the recovery be from the sea, from captors, or 
from the justice of foreign states, such recovery 
is for the benefit of the underwriter. Any at- 
tempt, therefore, to prejudice these claims, on 
the ground that many of them belong to insur- 
ance coin])anies, or other underwriters, is at war 
with the first principles of justice. 

"A short, but accurate, general view of the 
history and character of these claims is pre- 
sented in the report of the Secretary of State, 
on tlie 2iith of M;iy. 182('). in conij)liance with a 
resolution of the Senate. Allow me, sir, to read 
the paragraphs : 

" ' The Secretary can hardly suppose it to 
have been the intention of the resolution to re- 
quire the expression of an argumentative opinion 



as to the degree of responsibility to the Amerj 
can sufferers from French spoliations, which tht 
convention of 1800 extinguished, on the part of 
France, or devolved on the United States, the 
Senate itself being most competent to decide 
that question. Under this impression, he hopes 
that he will have sufficiently conformed to the 
purposes of the Senate, by a brief statement 
prepared in a hurried moment, of what he'unr' 
derstands to be the question. 

" ' The second article of the convention of 
1800 v.-as in the following words : " The minis- 
ters plenipotentiary of the two parties, not be- 
ing able to agree, at present, respecting the 
treaty of alliance of the Gth of February, 1778, 
the treaty of amity and commerce of the same 
date, and the convention of the 14th of Novem- 
ber, 1788, nor upon the indemnities mutually 
due or claimed, the parties will negotiate further 
on these subjects, at a convenient time ; and, 
until they may have agreed upon these points, 
the said treaties and convention shall have no 
operation, and the relations of the two coun- 
tries shall be regulated as follows." 

" ' When that convention was laid before the 
Senate, it gave its consent and advice that it 
should be ratified, provided that the second arti- 
cle be expunged, and that the following article 
be added or inserted: "It is agreed that the 
present convention shall be in force for the term 
of eight years from the time of the exchange of 
the ratifications;" and it was accordingly so 
ratified by the President of the United States, 
on the 18th day of Februar}', 1801. On the 
31st of July of the same j'car, it was ratified 
by Bonaparte, First Consul of the French Re- 
public, who incorporated in the instrument of 
his ratification the following clause as part of 
it : "The government of the United States, hav- 
ing added to its ratification that the convention 
should be in force for the space of eight years, 
and having omitted the second article, the gov- 
ernment of the French Republic consents to 
accept, ratify, and confirm the above convention, 
with the addition, importing that the conven- 
tion shall be in force for the space of eight years, 
and with the retrenchment of the second arti- 
cle : Provided, That, by this retrenchment, the 
two states renounce the respective pi-etensions 
which are the object of the said article." 

'•'The French ratification being thus condi- 
tional, was, nevertheless, exchanged against that 
of the United States, at Paris, on the same 31st 
of July. The President of the United States 
considei-ing it necessary again to submit the 
convention, in this state, to the Senate, on the 
lOtli day of December, 1801, it was resolved by 
the Senate that they considered the said convei>- 
tion as fully ratified, and returned it to the Pre- 
sident for the usual pronuilgation. It was ac- 
cordingly pronnUgated, and thei-eafter regarded 
as a valid and binding compact. The two con- 
tracting parties thus agreed, by the retrench- 
ment of the second article, mutually to renounce 
the respective pretensions which were the ob- 



ANNO 1835. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



507 



ject of that article. The pretensions of the 
United States, to which alhision is thus made, 
arose out of the spoliations under color of French 
authority, in contravention of law and existing 
treaties. Those of France sprung from the treaty 
of alliance of the 6th of February, 1778, the 
treaty of amity and commerce of the same date, 
and the convention of the 14th of November, 
1788. Whatever obligations or indemnities, from 
these sources, either party had a right to de- 
mand, were respectively waived and abandoned ; 
and the consideration which induced one party 
to renounce his pretensions, was that of renun- 
ciation by the other party of his pretensions. 
What was the value of the obligations and in- 
demnities, so reciprocally renounced, can only 
be matter of speculation. The amount of the 
indemnities due to the citizens of the United 
States was very large ; and, on the other hand, 
the obligation was great (to specify no other 
French pretensions), under which the United 
States were placed, in the eleventh article of the 
treaty of alliance of the Gth of February, 1778, 
by which they were bound for ever to guarantee 
from that time the then possessions of the 
Crown of France in America, as well as those 
which it might acquire by the future treaty of 
peace with Great Britain ; all these possessions 
having been, it is believed, conquered at, or not 
long after, the exchange of the ratifications of 
the convention of September, 1800, by the arms 
if Great Britain, from France. 

"'The fifth article of the amendments to the 
constitution provides : " Nor shall private pro- 
perty be taken for public use, without just com- 
pensation." If the indemnities to which citi- 
zens of the United States were entitled for 
French spoliations pi'ior to the 30th of Septem- 
ber, 1800, have been appropriated to absolve the 
United States from the fulfilment of an obliga- 
tion which they had contracted, or from the 
payment of indemnities which they were bound 
to make to France, the Senate is most compe- 
tent to determine how far such an appropriation 
is a public use of private propertj^ within the 
spirit of the constitution, and whether equitable 
considerations do not require some compensa- 
tion to be made to the claimants. The Senate 
is also best able to estimate the probability 
which existed of an ultimate recovery from 
France of the amount due for those indemnities, 
if they had not been renounced ; in making 
which estimate, it will, no doubt, give just weight 
to the painful consideration that repeated and 
urgent appeals have been, in vain, made to the 
justice of France for satisiiiction of flagrant 
wrongs committed upon property of other citi- 
zens of the United States, subsequent to the 
period of the 30th of September, 1800.' 

" Before the interference of our government 
with these claims, they constituted just demands 
against the government of France. They were 
not vague expectations of possible future in- 
demnity for injuries received, too uncertain to 
be regarded as valuable, or be esteemed pro- 



perty. They were just demands, and, as such, 
they were property. The courts of law took 
notice of them as property. They were capable 
of being devised, of being distributed among 
heirs and next of kin, and of being transferred 
and assigned, like other legal and just debts. A 
claim or demand for a ship unjustly seized and 
confiscated is property, as clearlj' as the ship 
itself. It may not be so valuable, or so certain ; 
but it is as clear a right, and has been uniformly 
so regarded by the courts of law. The papers 
show that American citizens had claims against 
the French government for six hundred and fif- 
teen vessels unlawfully seized and confiscated. 
If this were so, it is difficult to see how the gov- 
ernment of the United States can release these 
claims for its own benefit, with any more pro- 
priety than it could have applied the money to 
its own use, if the French government had been 
ready to make compensation, in money, for the 
property thus illegally seized and confiscated; 
or how the government could appropriate to it- 
self the just claims which the owners of these 
six hundred and fifteen vessels held against the 
wrong-doers, without making compensation, any 
more than it could appropriate to itself, without 
making compensation, six hundred and fifteen 
ships which had not been seized. I do not mean 
to say that the rate of compensation should be 
the same in both cases ; I do not mean to say 
that a claim for a ship is of as much value as a 
ship ; but I mean to say that both the one and 
the other are property, and that government 
cannot, with justice, deprive a man of either, for 
its own benefit, without making a fair compen- 
sation. 

" It will be perceived at once, sir, that these 
claims do not rest on the ground of any neglect 
or omission, on the part of the government of 
the United States, in demanding satisfaction from 
France. That is not the ground. The govern- 
ment of the United States, in that respect, per- 
formed its full duty. It remonstrated against 
these illegal seizures ; it insisted on redress ; it 
sent two special missions to France, charged ex- 
pressly, among other duties, with the duty of 
demanding indemnity. But France had her sub- 
jects of complaint, also, against the governnient 
of the United States, which she pi'cssed with 
equal earnestness and confidence, and wliioh she 
would neither postpone nor rclinquisli, except 
on the condition that the United States would 
postpone or relinquish these claims. And to 
meet this condition, and to restore liarmony be- 
tween the two nations, the United States did 
agree, first to postpone, and afterwards to relin- 
quish, these claims of its own citizens. In other 
words, the government of tlie United States 
bought off the claims of France against itself, 
by discharging claims of our own citizens against 
France. 

"This, sir, is the ground on which these citi- 
zens think tlie}' have a claim fur reasonable in- 
demnity against their own government. And 
now, sir, before proceeding to the disputed 



508 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



part of the case, permit me to state what is ad- 
mitted. 

" In the first place, then, it is universally ad- 
mitted that these petitioners once had just 
claims against the government of France, on ac- 
coimt of those illegal captures and condemna- 
tions. 

'' In the next place, it is admitted that these 
claims no longer exist against France ; that they 
have, in some Avay, been extinguished or re- 
leased, as to her ; and that she is for ever dis- 
charged from all dutj^ of paying or satisfying 
them, in whole or in part. 

" These two points being admitted, it is then 
neccssar}', in order to support the present bill, 
to maintain four propositions ; 

" 1. That these claims subsisted against France 
up to the time of the treaty of September, 1800, 
between France and the United States. 

" 2. That they were released, surrendered, or 
extinguished by that treaty, its amendment in 
the Senate, and the manner of its tinal ratifica- 
tion. 

'• 3. That they were thus released, surrender- 
ed, or extinguished, for political and national 
considerations, for objects and purposes deemed 
important to the United States, but in which 
these claimants had no more interest than any 
other citizens. 

"4. That the amount or measure of indem- 
nitj- proposed by this bill is no more than a fair 
and reasonable compensation, so far as we can 
judge by what has been done in similar cases. 

" I. Were tlieso subsisting claims against 
France up to the time of the treaty ? It is a 
conclusive answer to this question, to say that 
the government of the United Sfcitcs insisted 
that thej^ did exist, uj) to the time of the treaty, 
and demanded indemnity for them, and that the 
French government fully admitted their exist- 
ence, and acknowledged its obligation to make 
such indemnity. 

"The negotiation, which terminated in the 
treat}-, was opened by a direct proposition for 
indemnity, made by our ministers, the justice 
and propriety of which was inunediately acceded 
to by the ministers of France. 

" On the 7th of Anril, 1800, in their first let- 
ter to the ministers of France, Messrs. Ells- 
worth, Davie, and Murray, say : 

'• ' Citizen ministers : — The undersigned, ap- 
preciating the value of time, and wishing by 
frankness to CA-ince their sincerity, enter directh' 
upon the great object of their mission — an ob- 
ject whicli they believe may be best obtained 
by avoiding to retrace minutely the too well- 
known and too painful incidents which have 
rendered a negotiation necessary. 

" ' To satisfy the demands of justice, and ren- 
der a reconciliation cordial and permanent, the}- 
propose an arrangement, such as shall be com- 
patible with national liouor and existing circum- 
stances, to ascertain and discharge the equitaljle 
claims of the citizens of either nation upon the 
other, whether founded on contract, treat}'^, or 



the law of nations. The way being thus pre* 
pared, the undersigned will be at liberty to stipu- 
late for tliat reciprocit}^ and freedom of com- 
mercial intercourse between the two countries 
which must essentially contribute to their mu- 
tual advantage. 

" 'Should this general view of the subject be 
approved by the ministers plenipotentiary to 
whom it is addressed, the details, it is presumed, 
may be easily adjusted, and that confidence re- 
stored which ought never to have been shaken.* 

" To this letter the French ministers imme- 
diately returned the following answer : 

" ' The ministers plenipotentiary of the French 
Republic have read attentively the proposition 
for a plan of negotiation which was communi- 
cated to them b}' the envoys extraordinary and 
ministers plenipotentiary of the United States 
of America. 

" ' They think that the first object of the ne- 
gotiation ought to be the determination of the 
regulations, and the steps to be followed for 
the estimation and indemnification of injuries 
for which either nation may make claim for it- 
self, or for any of its citizens. And that the 
second object is to assure the execution of trea- 
ties of friendship and commerce made between 
the two nations, and the accomplishment of the 
views of reciprocal advantages which suggested 
them.' 

" It is certain, therefore, that the negotiation 
conunenced in tlie recognition, by both parties, 
of the existence of individual claims, and of the 
justice of making satisfaction for them ; and it 
is equalljr clear that, throughout the whole ne- 
gotiation, neither party suggested that these 
claims had alreacjy been either satisfied or ex- 
tinguished ; and it is indisputable that the treatv 
itself, in the second article, express!}^ adniittiTd 
their existence, and solemly recognized the duty 
of providing for them at some future i)criod. 

■' It will be observed, sir, that the French ne- 
gotiators, in their first letter, while the}- admit 
the justice of providing indemnity for individual 
claims, bring forward, also, claims arising under 
treaties ; taking cai'e, thus early, to advance the 
pi'etensions of France on account of alleged vio- 
lations by the United States of the treaties of 
1778. On that part of the case, I shall say 
something hereafter ; but T use this first letter 
of the French ministers at present only to show 
that, from the first, the French government ad- 
mitted its obligation to indeninif\' individuf«s 
who had sulfered wrongs and injinies. 

"The honorable menil)erfrom New- York [Mr. 
"Wright] contends, sir, that, at tlie time of con- 
cluding the treaty, these claims had ceased to 
exist. He says that a war had taken place be- 
tween the United States and France, and by the 
war the claims had become extinguished. I dif- 
fer from the honorable member, both as to the 
fact of war, and as to the consequences to be de- 
duced from it, in this case, even if public war 
had existed. If we admit, for argument sake, 
that war had existed, yet we find that, on the 



ANNO 1835. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



509 



restoration of amity, both parties admit the jus- 
tice of these claims and their continued exist- 
ence, and the party against which they are pre- 
ferred ackno\\'ledges her obligation, and express- 
es her willingness to pay them. The mere fact 
of war can never extinguish any claim. If, in- 
deed, claims for indemnity be the professed 
ground of a war, and peace be afterwards con- 
cluded without obtaining any acknowledgment 
of the right, such a peace may be construed 
to be a rchnquishment of the right, on the ground 
that the question has been put to the arbitration 
of the sword, and decided. But, if a war be 
waged to enforce a disputed claim, and it be car- 
ried on till the adverse party admit the claim, 
and agree to provide for its payment, it would 
be strange, indeed, to hold that the claim itself 
was extinguished by the very war which had 
compelled its express recognition. Now, what- 
ever we call that state of things which existed 
between the United States and France from 1798 
to 1800, it is evident that neither party contend- 
ed or supposed that it had been such a state of 
things as had extinguished individual claims for 
indemnity for illegal seizures and confiscations. 

" The honorable member, sir, to sustain his 
point, must prove that the United States went 
to war to vindicate these claims ; that they waged 
that war unsuccessfully; and that they were 
therefore glad to make peace, without obtaining 
payment of the claims, or any admission of their 
justice. I am hajjpy, sir, to say that, in my 
opinion, facts do not authorize any such record 
to be made up against the United States. I think 
it is clear, sir, that whatever misunderstanding 
existed between the United States and France, 
it did not amount, at any time, to open and pub- 
lic war. It is certain that the amicable relations 
of the two countries were much disturbed ; it is 
certain that the United States authorized armed 
resistance to French captures, and the captures 
of French vessels of war found hovering on our 
coast ; but it is certain, also, not only that there 
was no declaration of war, on either side, but 
that the United States, under all their provoca- 
tions, did never authorize general reprisals on 
French commerce. At the very moment when 
the gentleman says war raged between the Uni- 
ted States and France, French citizens came into 
our courts, in their own names, claimed restitu- 
tion for property seized by American cruisers, 
and obtained decrees of restitution. They claimed 
as citizens of France and obtained restoration, 
in our courts, as citizens of France. It must 
have been a singular war, sir, in which such pro- 
ceedings could take place. Upon a fair view of 
the whole matter, Mr. President, it will be found, 
I think, that ever}' thing done by the United 
States was defensive. No part of it was ever 
retahatory. The United States do not take jus- 
tice into their own hands. 

" The strongest measui'e, perhaps, adopted by 
Congress, was the act of May 28, 1798. The 
honorable member from New- York has referred 
to this act, and chiefly relies upon it, to prove 



the existence, or the commencement, of actual 
war. But does it prove either the one or the 
other ? 

"It is not an act declaring war; it is not an 
act authorizing reprisals ; it is not an act 
which, in any way, acknowledges the actual ex- 
istence of war. Its whole implication and im- 
port is the other wa}^ Its title is. 'An act more 
effectually to protect the commerce and coasts 
of the United States.' 

" This is its preamble : 

" ' Whereas armed vessels, sailing under au- ■ 
thority, or pretence of authority, from the Re- 
public of France, have committed depredations 
on the commerce of the United States, and have 
recently captured the vessels and property of 
citizens thereof, on and near the coasts, in viola- 
tion of the law of nations, and treaties between 
the United States and the French nation : there- 
fore ' — 

" And then follows its only section, in these 
words : 

" ' Sec. 1. Be it enacted, <f c. That it shall 
be lawful for the President of the United States, 
and he is hereby authorized, to instruct and di- 
rect the commanders of the armed vessels belong- 
ing to the United States, to seize, take, and bring 
into any port of the United States, to be pro- 
ceeded against according to the laws of nations, 
any such armed vessel which shall have com- 
mitted, or which shall be found hovering on the 
coasts of the United States for the purpose of 
committing, depredations on the vessels belong- 
ing to citizens thereof; and also retake any ship 
or vessel, of any citizen or citizens of the Uni- 
ted States, which may have been captured by any 
such armed vessel.' 

"This act, it is true, authorized the use of 
force, under certain circumstances, and for cer- 
tain objects, against French vessels. But there 
may be acts of authorized force, there may be 
assults, there may be battles, there may be cap- 
tures of ships and impi'isonment of persons, and 
yet no general war. Cases of this kind may 
occur under that practice of retortion which is 
justified, when adopted for just cause, by the 
laws and usages of nations, and which all the 
writers distinguish from general war. 

" The first provision in this law is purely pre- 
ventive and defensive; and the other hardly 
goes beyond it. Armed vessels hovering on our 
coast, and capturing our vessels, under autliority, 
or pretence of authority, from a foreign state, 
might be captured and brought in, and vessels 
already seized by them retaken. The act is 
Umited to armed vessels ; but why was this, if 
general war existed ? Why was not the naval 
power of the country let loose at once, if there 
were war, against the commerce of the enemy 1 
The cruisers of France were preying on our com- 
merce ; if there was war, why were wc restrain- 
ed from general reprisals on her commerce? 
This restaining of the operation of our naval 
marine to armed vessels of France, and to such 
of them only as should be found hovering on our 



510 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



coast, for the purpose of committing depredations 
on our commerce, instead of proving a state of 
war, proves, I think, irresistibl}', that a state of 
general war did not exist. But even if this act 
of Congress left the matter doubtful, other acts 
passed at and near the same time demonstrate 
the understanding of Congress to have been, that 
althougli the relations between the two countries 
were greatly disturbed, yet that war did not 
exist. On the same day (^lay 28, 1798) in 
which this act passed, on which the member 
from New-York lays so much stress, as proving 
the actual existence of war with France, Con- 
gress passed another act, entitled ' An act author- 
izing the President of the United States to 
raise a provisional army;' and the first section 
declared that the President should be autho- 
rized, ' in the event of a declaration of war 
against the United States, or of actual invasion 
of their tei-ritory by a foreign power, or of 
imminent darker of such invasion, to cause to be 
enlisted,' &c., ten thousand men. 

" On the ICth of July following, Congress 
passed the law for augmenting the army, the 
second section of which authorized the President 
to raise twelve additional regiments of infantrj', 
and six troops of light dragoons, ' to be enlisted 
for and during the continuance of the existing 
diflVrences between the United States and the 
French Republic, imless sooner discharged,' &c. 

" The following spring, by the act of the 2d 
of March, 1799, entitled ' An act giving eventual 
authoritj' to the President of the United States 
to augment the army,' Congress provided that 
it should be lawful for the President of the 
United States, in case war should break out be- 
tween the United States and a foreign Euroj)ean 
power, &c., to raise twenty-four regiments of in- 
fantry, &c. And in the act for better organizing 
the army, passed the next daj', Congress repeats 
the declaration, contained in a former act, that 
certain provisions shall not take effect unless 
war shall break out between the United States 
and some European pi-ince, potentate, or state. 

" On the 20th of February, 1800, an act was 
passed to suspend the act for augmenting the 
army ; and this last act declared that further 
enlistments should be suspended until the fur- 
ther order of Congress, unless in the recess of 
Congress, and during the continuance of the 
existuig differences between the United States 
and the French Ilcpublic, war should break out 
between the United States and the French Re- 
public, or imminent danger of an invasion of 
their territory by the said Republic should be 
discovered. 

'• On the 14th of May, 1800, four months before 
the conclusion of the treaty. Congress passed an 
act authorizing the suspension of militar}- ap- 
pointments, and the discharge of troops under 
the provisions of the previous laws. No com- 
mentary is necessary, sir, on the texts of these 
st;itutes, to show that Congress never recognized 
the existence of war Vjctween the United States 
and France. They apprehended war might 



break out; and they made suitable provisioi; 
for that exigency, should it occur; but it is 
quite impossible to reconcile the express and so 
often repeated declarations of these statutes, 
commencing in 1798, running through 1799, and 
ending in 1800, with the actual existence of war 
between the two countries at any period Avithin 
those years. 

" The honorable member's second principal 
source of argument, to make out the fact of a 
state of war, is the several non-intercourse acts. 
And here again it seems to me an exactly oppo- 
site inference is the true one. In 1798, 1799. 
and 1800, acts of Congress were passed suspend- 
ing the commercial intercourse between the 
United States, each for one year. Did any gov- 
ernment ever pass a law of temporary non-in- 
tercourse with a public encmj^? Such a law 
would be little less than an absurdity. War it- 
self effectually creates non-intercourse. It ren- 
ders all trade with the enemy illegal, and, of 
course, subjects all vessels found so engaged, with 
their cargoes, to capture and condemnation as 
enemy's property. The first of these laws 
was passed June 13, 1798, the last, Februaiy 27, 
1800. Will the honorable member from New- 
York tell us when the war commenced ? AYhen 
did it break out? "When did those 'differences,' 
of which the acts of Congress speak, assume a 
character of general hostility? Was there a 
state of war on the 13th of June. 1798, when 
Congress passed the first non-intercourse act ; 
and did Congress, in a state of public war, limit 
non-intercourse with the enemy to one year? 
Or was there a state of peace in June, 1798 ? 
and, if so, I ask again, at what time after that 
period, and before September, 1800, did the war 
bi-eak out? Difficulties of no small magnitude 
surround the gentleman, I think, whatever course 
he takes through these statutes, while he at- 
tempts to ])rove from them a state of war. The 
truth is, they prove, incontestably, a state of 
peace ; a state of endandgered, disturbed, agitated 
pciice; but still a state of peace. Finding them- 
selves in a state of great misunderstanding and 
contention with France, and seeing our commerce 
a dailj' prej' to the rapacitj' of her cruisers, the 
United States preferred non-intercourse to war. 
This is the ground of the non-intercourse acts. 
Apprehending, nevertheless, that war might 
break out. Congress made prudent provision for 
it b}' augmenting the military force of the coun- 
try. This is the ground of the laws for raising 
a provisional army. The entire provisions of all 
these laws necessarilv suppose an existing state 
of peace ; but they imply also an apprehension 
that war might commence. For a state of actual 
war they were all unsuited; and some of them 
would have been, in such a state, preposterous 
and absurd. To a state of present peace, 
but disturbed, interrupted, and likely to termi- 
nate in open hostilities, they were all perfectly 
well adapted. And as many of these acts, in 
exi)ress terms, speak of war as not actuallj^ ex- 
isting, but as likely or liable to break out, it is 



ANNO 1835. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



511 



clear, beyond all reasomible question, that Con- 
gress never, at any time, regarded the state of 
things existing between the United States and 
France as being a state of war. 

"As little did the executive government so 
regard it, as must be apparent from the instruc- 
tions given to our ministers, when the mission 
was sent to France. Those instructions, having 
recurred to the numerous acts of wrong commit- 
ted on the commerce of the United States, and 
the refusal of indemnity by the government of 
France, proceed to say : ' This conduct of the 
French Republic would well have justified an 
immediate declaration of war on the part of the 
United States ; but, desirous of maintaining 
peace, and still willing to leave open the door 
of reconciliation with France, the United States 
contented themselves with preparations for de- 
fence, and measures calculated to protect their 
commerce.' 

" It is equally clear, on the other hand, that 
neither the French government nor the French 
ministers acted on the supposition that war had 
existed between the two nations. And it was 
for this reason that they held the treaties of 1778 
still binding. Within a month or two of the 
signature of the treaty, the ministers plenipo- 
tentiary of the French llepublic write thus to 
jNIessi-s. Ellsworth, Davie, and Murray : ' In the 
first place, they will insist upon the principle 
already laid down in their- former note, viz. : 
that the treaties which united France and the 
United States are not broken; that even war 
could not have broken them ; but that the state 
of misunderstanding which existed for some time 
between France and the United States, by the 
act of some agents rather than by the will of 
the respective governments, has not been a state 
of war, at least on the side of Finance.' 

" Finally, sir, the treaty itself, what is it ? 
It is not called a treaty of peace ; it does not 
provide for putting an end to hostilities. It says 
not one word of any preceding war; but it does 
saj'' that ' differences ' have arisen between the 
two states, and that they have, therefore, re- 
spectivelj^, appointed their plenipotentiaries, and 
given them full powers to treat upon those ' dif- 
ferences,' and to terminate the same. 

" But the second article of the trcatj^, as nego- 
tiated and agreed on by the ministers of both 
governments, is, of itself, a complete refutation 
of the whole argument which is urged against 
this bill, on the ground that the claims had been 
extinguished by war, since that article distinctly 
and expressly acknowledges the existence of the 
claims, and contains a solemn pledge that the 
two governments, not being able to agree on 
them at present, will negotiate further on them, 
at convenient time thereafter. Whether we 
look, then, to the decisions of the American 
courts, to the acts of Congress, to the instruc- 
tions of the American executive government, 
to the language of our ministers, to the declara- 
tions of the French government and the French 
ministers, or to the unequivocal language of the 



treaty itself, as originally agreed to, we meet 
irresistible proof of the truth of the declara- 
tion, that the state of misunderstanding which 
had existed between the two countries was 
not waii. 

" If the treaty had remained as the ministers 
on both sides agreed upon it, the claimants, 
though their indemnity was postponed, would 
have had no just claim on their own government. 
But the treaty did not remain in this state. Tliis 
second article was stricken out by the Senate ; 
and, in order to see the obvious motive of the 
Senate in thus striking out the second article, 
allow me ]to read the whole article. It is in 
these words : 

" ' The ministers plenipotentiary of the two 
parties not being able to agree, at present, re- 
specting the treaty of alliance of the 6th of 
February-, 1778, the treaty of amity and com- 
merce of the .same date, and the convention of 
the 14th of jSTovember, 1788, nor upon the in- 
demnities mutually due or claimed, the parties 
will negotiate further on these subjects at a 
convenient time ; and until they may have 
agreed upon these points, the said treaties and 
convention shall have no operation, and the re- 
lations of the two countries shall be regulated 
as follows.' 

" The article thus stipulating to make the 
claims of France, under the old treaties, matter 
of further negotiation, in order to get rid of 
such negotiation, and the whole subject, the 
Senate struck out the entire article, and ratified 
the treaty in this corrected form. France ratified 
the treaty, as thus amended, with the further 
declaration that, by thus retrenching the second 
article, the two nations renounce the respective 
pretensions which were the object of the article. 
In this declaration of the French government, 
the Senate afterwai'ds acquiesced; so that the 
government of France, by this retrenchment, 
agreed to renounce her claims under the treaties 
of 1778, and the United States, in like manner, 
renounced the claims of their citizens for in- 
demnities due to them. 

" And this proves, sir, the second proposition 
which I stated at the commencement of my re- 
marks, viz. : that these claims were released, re- 
linquished, or extinguished, by the anienduK'nt 
of the treaty, and its ratification as amended. 
It is only necessary to add, on this point, that 
these claims for captures before IStX) would have 
been good claims under the late treaty with 
France, and would have come in for a dividend 
in the fund provided by that treaty, if they had 
not been released by the treaty of 1800. And 
they iire )io\v excluded from all luirticipation 
in the benefit of the late treaty, because of such 
release or extinguishment by that of 1800. 

"In the third ])lace. sir, it is to be proved, if it 
be not proved already, that these claims were 
surrendered, or released by the govermuont of 
the United States, on national considerations, 
and for objects in which these claimants had no 
more interest than any other citizens. 



512 



THIRTY 1 EARS' VIEW. 



" Now, sir, I do not feci called on to make out 
that the claims and complaints of France against 
the government of the United States were well 
founded. It is certain that she put forth such 
claims and complaints, and insisted on them to 
the end. It is certain that, by the treaty of al- 
liance of 1778, the United States did guaranty 
to France her West India possessions. It is 
certain that, by the treaty of commerce of the 
same date, the United States stipulated that 
French vessels of war might bring their prizes 
into the ports of the United States, and that the 
enemies of France should not enjoy that privi- 
lege ; and it is certain that France contended 
that the United States had plainly violated this 
article, as well by their subsequent treaty with 
England as by other acts of the government. 
For the violation of these treaties she claimed 
indemnity from the government of the United 
States. Without admitting the justice of these 
pretensions, the government of the United States 
found them extremely embarrassing, and they 
authorized our ministers in France to buy them 
off by money. 

" For the purpose of showing the justice of 
the present bill, it is not necessary to insist that 
France was right in these pretensions. Right 
or wrong, the United States were anxious to 
get rid of the embarrassments which they occa- 
sioned. They were willing to compromise the 
matter. The existing state of things, then, was 
exactl}' this : 

" France admitted that citizens of the United 
States had just claims against her ; but she in- 
sisted that she, on the other hand, had just 
claims against the government of the United 
States. 

" She would not satisfy ©ur citizens, till our 
government agreed to satisfy' her. Finally, a 
treaty is ratified, by which the claims on both 
sides are renounced. 

" The onl}- question is, whether the relinquish- 
ment of those individual claims was the price 
which the United States paid for the relinquish- 
ment, b}' France, of her claims against our gov- 
ernment ? And who can doubt it ? Look to 
the negotiation ; the claims on both sides were 
discussed together. Look to the second article 
of the treaty, as originally agreed to ; the claims 
on both sides are there reserved together. And 
look to the Senate's amendment, and to the sub- 
sequent declaration of the French government, 
acquiesced in b}^ the Senate ; and there the 
claims on both sides are renounced together. 
What stronger proof could there be of nuituali- 
ty of consideration ? Sir, allow me to put this 
direct question to the honorable member from 
New-York. If the United Stales did not agree 
to renounce these claims, in consideration that 
France would renounce hers, what was the rea- 
son why they surrendered thus the claims of 
their own citizens ? Did they do it without 
any consideration at all ? AVas the .surrender 
wholly gratuitous ? Did they thus solemnly 
renounce claims for indemnity, so just, so long 



insisted on by themselves, the object of two 
special missions, the subjects of so much pre- 
vious controversy, and at one time so near being 
the cause of open war — did the government sur- 
render and renounce them gratuitously, or for 
nothing ? Had it no reasonable motive in the 
relinquishment ? Sir, it is impossible to main- 
tain any such ground. 

" And, on the other hand, let me ask, was it 
for nothing that France relinquished, what she 
had so long insisted on, the obligation of the 
United States to fulfil the treaties of 1778? 
For the extinguishment of this obligation we 
had already ofi'ered her a large sum of money, 
which she had declined. Was she now wiUing 
to give it up without any equivalent ? 

" Sir, the whole history of the negotiation is 
full of proof that the individual claims of our 
citizens, and the government claims of France 
against the United States, constituted the re- 
spective demands of the two parties. They 
were brought forward together, discussed to- 
gether, insisted on together. The French min- 
isters would never consent to disconnect them. 
While the}^ admitted, in the fullest manner, the 
claims on our side, they maintained, with perse- 
severing resolution, the claims on the side of 
France. It would fatigue the Senate were I to 
go through the whole correspondence, and show, 
as I could easily do, that, in every stage of the 
negotiation, these two subjects were kept to- 
gether. I will only refer to some of the more 
^irominent and decisive parts. 

"In the fu'st place, the general instructions 
which our ministers received from our own gov- 
ernment, when they undertook the mission, di- 
rected them to insist on the claims of American 
citizens against France, to propose a joint board 
of commissioners to state those claims, and to 
agree to refer the cLiims of France for infringe- 
ments of the treaty of commerce to the same 
board. I will read, sir, so much of the instruc- 
tions as comprehend these points : 

"'1. At the opening of the negotiation you 
will inform the French ministers that the Uni- 
ted States expect from France, as an indispen- 
sable condition of the treaty, a stipulation to 
make to the citizens of the United States full 
compensation for all losses and damages which 
they shall have sustained by reason of irregular 
or illegal captures or condemnations of their 
vessels and other property, under color of au- 
thority or commissions from the French Repub- 
lic or its agents. And all captures and con- 
demnations are deemed irregular or illegal when 
contrary to the law of nations, generallj'- re- 
ceived and acknowledged in Europe, and to the 
stipulations in the treaty of amity and com- 
merce of the Cth of February, 1778, fairly and 
ingenuously interpreted, while that treaty re- 
mained ill force.' 

" ' 2. If these preliminaries should be satis- 
liictorily arranged, then, for the purpose of ex- 
amining and adjusting all the claims of our citi- 
zens, it will be necessary to provide for the ap- 



ANNO 1835. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



513 



pointment of a board of commissioners, similar 
to that described in the sixth and seventh arti- 
cles of the treaty of amity and commerce be- 
tween the United States and Great Britain.' 

" ' As the French government have hereto- 
fore complained of infringements of the treaty 
of amity and commerce, by the United States 
or their citizens, all claims for injuries, thereby 
occasioned to France or its citizens, are to be 
submitted to the same board ; and whatever 
damages they award will be allowed by the 
United States, and deducted from the sums 
awarded to be paid by France.' 

" Now, sir, suppose this board had been con- 
stituted, and suppose that it had made awards 
against France, in behalf of citizens of the Uni- 
ted States, and had made awards also in favor 
of the government of France against the gov- 
ernment of the United States ; and then these 
last awards had been deducted from the amount 
of the former, and the property of citizens thus 
applied to discharge the public obligations of 
the country, would any body doubt that such 
citizens would be entitled to indemnity ? And 
are they less entitled, because, instead of being 
first liquidated and ascertained, and then set 
off, one against the other, they are finally 
agreed to be set off against each other, and mu- 
tually relinquished in the lump ? 

"Acting upon their instructions, it will be 
seen that the American ministers made an ac- 
tual offer to suspend the claim for indemnities 
till France should be satisfied as to her politi- 
cal rights under the treaties. On the 15th of 
July they made this proposition to the French 
negotiators : 

" ' Indemnities to be ascertained and secured 
in the manner proposed in our project of a trea- 
ty, but not to be paid until the United States 
shall have offered to France an article stipulat- 
ing free admission, in the ports of each, for the 
privateers and prizes of the other, to the exclu- 
sion of their enemies.' 

'■ This, it will be at once seen, was a direct 
offer to suspend the claims of our own citizens 
till our government should be willing to renew 
to France the obligation of the treaty of 1778. 
Was not this an offer to make use of private 
property for public purposes ? 

"On the 1 1th of August, the French pleni- 
potentiaries thus write to the ministers of the 
United States : 

" ' The propositions which the French minis- 
ters have the honor to communicate to the min- 
isters plenipotentiary of the United States are 
reduced to this simple alternative : 

'• ' Either the ancient treaties, with the privi- 
leges resulting from priority, and a stipulation 
of reciprocal indemnities ; 

" ' Or a new treaty, assuring equality without 
indemnity.' 

"In other words, this offer is, 'if you will ac- 
knowledge or renew the obligation of the old 
treaties, which secure to us privileges in your 
ports which our enemies are not to enjoy, then 

Vol. I.— 33 



we will make indemnities for the losses of your 
citizens ; or, if you will give up all claim for 
such indemnities, then we will relinquish our 
especial privileges under the former treaties, 
and agree to a new treaty wliich shall only p\it 
us on a footing of equality with Great Britain, 
our enemy.' 

" On the 20th of August our ministers pro- 
pose that the former treaties, so far as they re- 
spect the rights of privateers, shall be renewed ; 
but that it shall be optional with the United 
States, by the pa^yment, within seven j'cars, of 
three millions of francs, cither in money or in 
securities issued by the French govenmient for 
indemnities to our citizens, to buj^ off this ob- 
ligation, or to buy off all its political obligations, 
under both the old treaties, by payment in like 
manner of five millions of francs. 

" On the 4th of September the French minis- 
ters submit these propositions. 

" ' A commission shall regulate the indemnities 
which either of the two nations may owe to the 
citizens of the other. 

" ' The indemnities which shall be due by 
France to the citizens of the United States shall 
be paid for by the United States, and in return 
for which France yields the exclusive privilege 
resulting from the 17th and 22d articles of 
the treaty of commerce, and from the rights of 
guaranty of the 11th article of the treaty of al- 
liance.' 

"The American ministers considered these 
propositions as inadmissible. They, however, 
on their part, made an approach to them, by 
proposing, in substance, that it should be left 
optional with the United States, on the exchange 
of the ratification, to relinquish the indemnities, 
and in that case, the old treaties not to be ob- 
ligatory on the United States, so far as they 
conferred exclusive privileges on France. This 
will be seen in the letter of the American min- 
isters of the 5 th of September. 

" On the 18th of September the American 
ministers say to those of France ; 

" ' It remains only to consider the expediency 
of a temporary arrangement. Should such an 
arrangement comport with the views of France, 
the following principles are offered as the basis 
of it: 

" ' 1st. The ministers plcnipotcntiar}- of the 
respective parties not being able at present to 
agree respecting the former treaties and indem- 
nities, the parties will, in due and convenient 
time, further treat on those subjects ; and, uritil 
they shall have agreed respecting the same, the 
said treaties shall have no operation.' 

"This, the Senate will sec, is substantially the 
proposition which was ultimately accepted, and 
which formed the second article of the treaty. 
By that article, these claims, on botli sides, were 
postponed for the present, and afterwards, by 
other acts of the two governments, they were 
mutually and for ever renounced and relin- 
quished. 

" And now, sir, if any gentleman can look to 



514 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



the treaty, look to the instructions tmdor which 
it was conchided, look to the correspondence 
which preceded it, and look to the subsequent 
agreement t)f the two governments to renounce 
claims, on both sides, and not admit that the 
property of these private citizens has been 
taken to buy o(F embarrassing claims of France 
on the government of the United States, I know 
not what other or further evidence could ever 
force that conviction on his mind. 

"I will conclude this part of the case by 
showing you how this matter was understood 
by the American administration wliich finally 
accepted the treaty, with this renouncement of 
indemnities. The treaty was negotiated in the 
administration of Mr. Adams. It was amended 
in the Senate, as already stated, and ratified on 
the third day of February, 1801, Mr. Adams 
being still in office. Being thus ratified, with 
the amendment, it was sent back to France, and 
on the tliirty-first day of July, the first Consul 
ratified the treaty, as amended by striking out 
the second article, but accompanied the ratifica- 
tion with this declaration, ' provided that, by 
this retrenchment, the two states renounce 
their respective pretensions, which are the ob- 
ject of the said article.' 

" With this declaration appended, the treaty 
came back to the United States. Mr. JelJerson 
had now become President, and Mr. Madison 
was Secretary of State. In consequence of the 
declaration of the French government, accom- 
panying its ratification of the treaty and now 
attached to it, Mr. Jefferson again referred the 
treat}' to the Senate, and on the 19th of Decem- 
hev, 1801, the Senate resolved that they consi- 
dered the treaty as duly ratified. Now, sir, in 
order to show what Mr. Jefferson and his ad- 
ministration thought of this treatv, and the 
eflcct of its ratification, in its then exist- 
ing form, I beg leave to read an extract of an 
official letter from Mr. ]Madison to Mr. Pinck- 
ney, then our minister in Spain. Mr. Pinckney 
was at that time negotiating for the adjustment 
of our claims on Spain ; and, among others, for 
captures connnittcd within the territories of 
Spain, by French subjects. Spain objected to these 
claims, on the ground that the United States had 
claimed redress of such irijuries from France. 
In writing to Mr. Pinckney (under date of Feb- 
ruar}^ Gth. 18o4), and commenting on this plea 
of Spain, !Mr. Madison says : 

" ' The plea on which it seems the Spanish gov- 
ernment now principally relies, is the erasure of 
the second article from our late convention with 
France, by which France was released from the 
indemnities due for spoliations committed under 
her immediate responsibilit}' to the United 
States. This plea did not appear in the early 
objections of Spain to our claims. It was an 
afterthought, resulting from the insufficiency 
of every other plea, and is certainly as little 
valid as any other.' 

••'The injuries for which indemnities are 
claimed from Spain, though committed by 



Frenchmen, took place under Spanish authority 
Spain, therefore, is answerable for them. To 
her we have looked, and continue to look for 
redress. If the injuries done to us by her re- 
sulted in any manner from injuries done to 
her by France, she may, if she pleases, resort 
to France as we resort to her. But whether 
her resort to France would be just or unjust is 
a question between her and France, not between 
either her and ns, or us and France. Wo claim 
against her, aot against France. In releasing 
France, therefore, we have not released her. 
The claims, again, from which France was re- 
leased, were admitted by France, and the release 
was for a valuable consideration, in a correspon- 
dent release of the United States from certain 
claims on them. The claims we make on Spain 
were never admitted by France, nor made on 
France by the United States ; they made, there- 
fore, no part of the bargain with hei*, and could 
not be included in the release.' 

" Certainly, sir, words could not have been 
used which should more clcaily afhrm that 
these individual claims, these private rights of 
property, had been applied to public uses. Mr. 
^ladison here declares, unequivocally, that these 
claims had been admitted by France ; that they 
were relinquished by the government of the 
United States ; that they were relinquished for 
a valuable consideration ; that that considera- 
tion was a correspondent release of tlie United 
States from certain claims on them ; and that 
the whole transaction was a bargain between 
the two governments. This, sir, be it remem- 
bered, was little more than two years after the 
final promulgation of the treaty ; it was by the 
Secretary of State imder that administration 
which gave effect to the treaty in its amended 
form, and it proves, beyond mistake and beyond 
doubt, the clear judgment which that adminis- 
tration had formed upon the true nature and 
character of the whole transaction. 



CHAPTER CXX. 

FRENCH SPOLIATIONS— ME. BENTONS SPEECH. 

"Thf, whole .stress of the question lies in a few 
simple facts, which, if disembarrassed from the 
confusion of terms and conditions, and viewed 
in their plain and time character, render it diffi- 
cult not to arrive at a just and correct view of 
the case. The advocates of this measure have 
no other grounds to rest their case upon than 
an assumption of facts ; they assume that the 
United States lay under binding and onerous 
stipulations to France; that the claims of this 
bill were recognized by France ; and that the 



AJ!fNO 1835. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



515 



United States made herself responsible for these 
claims, instead of France ; took them upon her- 
self, and became bound to pay them, in con- 
sideration of getting rid of the burdens which 
weighed upon her. It is assumed that the 
claims were good when the United States aban- 
doned them ; and that the consideration, which 
it is pretended the United States received, was 
of a nature to make her fully responsible to the 
claimants, and to render it obligatory upon her 
to satisfy the claims. 

" The measure rests entirely upon these as- 
sumptions; bxit I shall show that they are 
nothing more than assumptions ; that these 
claims were not recognized, by France, and could 
not be, by the law of nations ; they wei'e good 
for nothing when they were made ; they wei'e 
good for nothing when we abandoned them. 
The United States owed nothing to France, and 
received no consideration whatever from her, to 
make us responsible for payment. What I here 
maintain, I shall proceed to prove, not by any 
artful chain of argument, but by plain and Iiis- 
torical facts. 

'• Let me ask, sir, on what grounds is it main- 
tained that the United States received a valuable 
consideration for these claims ? Under what 
onerous stipulations did she lie ? In what did 
her debt consist, which it is alleged France gave 
up in payment for these claims ? By the treaty 
of '78, the United States was bound to guarantee 
the French American possessions to France ; 
and France, on her part, guaranteed to the 
United States her sovereignty and territory. 
In '93, the war between Great Britain and 
France broke out; and this rupture between 
those nations immediately gave rise to the 
question how far this guaranty was obligatory 
upon the United States? Whether we were 
bound by it to protect France on the side of her 
American possessions against any hostile at- 
tack of Great Britain ; and thus become involved 
as subalterns in a war in which we had no con- 
cern or interest whatever ? Here we come to 
the point at once • for if it should appear that 
we w^ere not bound by this guaranty to become 
parties to a distant E iropean war, then, sir, it will 
be an evident, a decided result and conclusion, 
that we were under no obligation to France — that 
we owed her no debt on account of this guaranty ; 
and, plainly enough, it will follow, we received 
no valuable consideration for the claims of this 



bill, when France released us from an obligation 
which it will appear we never owed. Let us 
briefly see how the case stands. 

'■ France, to get rid of claims made by us, puts 
forward counter claims under this guaranty ; 
proposing by such a diplomatic manoeuvre to 
get rid of our demand, the injustice of which 
she protested against. She succeeded, and both 
parties abandoned their claims. And is it now 
to be urged upon us that, on the grounds of this 
astute diplomacy, we actually received a valuable 
consideration for claims which were considered 
good for nothing ? France met our claims, 
which were good for nothing, by a counter claim, 
which was good for nothing ; and when we 
found ourselves thus encountered, we abandoned 
our previous claim, in order to be released from 
the counter one opposed to it. After this, is it, 
I would ask, a suitable return for our over- 
wrought anxiety to obtain satisfaction for our 
citizens, that any one of them should, some 
thirty years after this, turn round upon us and 
say: "now you have received a valuable con- 
sideration for our claims ; now, then, you are 
bound to pay us ! " But this is in fact, sir, the 
language of this bill. I unhesitatingly saj- that 
the guai-anty (a release from which is the pre- 
tended consideration by which the whole people 
of the United States are brought in debtors to 
a few insui-ance oflBces to the amount of mil- 
lions), this guaranty, sir, I affirm, was good for 
nothing. I speak on no less authority, and in 
no less a name than that of the great father of 
his country, Washington himself, when I aflQrm 
that this guaranty imposed upon us no obliga- 
tions towards France. How, then, shall we be 
persuaded that, in virtue of this guarant)-, we 
are boimd to pay the debts and make good the 
spoliations of France ? 

"When the war broke out between Great Bri- 
tain and France in 1793, Washington addressed 
to his cabinet a series of questions, inquiring 
their opinions on this very question — how flir 
the treaty of guaranty of 1778 was obligatory 
upon the United States — intending to take their 
opinions as a guidance for his conduct in such a 
difficult situation. [Here the honorable Senator 
read extracts from Washington's queries to his 
cabinet, with some of the opinions themselves.] 

" In consequence of the opinions of his cabinet 
concurring with his own sentiments, President 
Washington issued a proclamation of neutrality, 



516 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



disregarding the guaranty, and proclaiming that 
we were not bound by any preceding treaties to 
defend American France against Great Britain. 
The wisdom of this measure is apparent. He 
wisely thought it was not prudent our infant 
llepublic should become absorbed in the vortex 
of European politics ; and therefore, sir, not 
without long and mature deliberation how far 
this treaty of guai-ant}^ was obligatory upon 
us, he pronounced against it ; and in so doing 
he pronounced against the very bill before us ; 
for the bill has nothing to stand upon but this 
guarant}' ; it pretends that the United States 
is bound to pay for injuries inflicted by France, 
because of a release from a guaranty by which 
the great Washington himself solemnly pro- 
nounced we were not bound ! What do we 
now behold, sir ? We behold an array in this 
House, and on this floor, against the policy of 
Washington ! Tl^ey seek to undo his deed ; they 
condemn his principles ; they call in question 
the wisdom and justice of his wise and paternal 
counsels ; they urge against him that the guar- 
anty bound us, and what for ? What is the 
motive of this opposition against his measures ? 
Why, sir, that this bill may pass ; and the 
people, the burden-bearing people, be made to 
pay away a few millions, in consideration of 
obligations which, after mature deliberation, 
Wasliington pronounced not to lie upon us ! 

'• I think, sir, enough has been said to put to 
rest for ever the question of our obligations 
under this guaranty. Whatever the claims 
may be, it must be evident to the common sense 
of every individual, that we are not, and cannot 
be, bound to pay them in the stead of France, 
because of a pretended release from a guaranty 
which did not bind us ; I say did not bind us, 
because, to have observed it, would have led to 
our ruin and destruction ; and it is a clear prin- 
ciple of the law of nations, that a treaty is not 
obligatory when it is impossible to observe it. 
But, sir, leaving the question whether we were 
made responsible for the debts of France, 
whether we were placed under an obligation to 
atone to our own citizens for injuries which a 
foreign power had committed ; leaving this ques- 
tion as settled (and I trust settled for ever), I 
come to consider the claims themselves, their 
justice, and their validity. And here the prin- 
ciple of this bill will prove, on this head, as 
weak and imtenable — nay, more — as outrageous 



to every idea of common sense, as it was on th/ 
former head. With what reason, I would ask 
can gentlemen press the Amei'ican people to 
pay these claims, when it would be unreason- 
able to press France herself to pay them ? If 
France, who committed the wrong, could not 
justly be called upon to atone for it, how can 
the United States now be called upon for this 
money ? In 1798, the treaty of peace with 
France was virtually abolished by various acts 
of Congress authorizing hostilities, and by pro- 
clamation of the President to the same eflect; 
it was abolished on account of its violation bj"- 
France ; on account of those depredations which 
this bill calls upon us to make good. By those 
acts of Congress we sought satisfaction for 
these claims ; and, having done so, it was too 
late afterwards to seek fresh satisfaction by 
demanding indemnity. There was war, sir, as 
the gentleman from Georgia has clearly shown 
— war on account of these spoliations — and 
when we sought i-edress, by acts of -vvaifare, we 
precluded ourselves from the right of demand- 
ing redress by indemnity. We could not, there- 
fore, justly urge these claims against France ; 
and I therefore demand, how can they be urged 
against us ? What are the invincible argu- 
ments by which gentlemen establish the justice 
and validity of these claims 1 For, surely, be- 
fore we consent to sweep away millions from 
the public treasury, we ought to hear at least 
some good reasons. Let me examine their good 
reasons. The argument to prove the validity 
of these claims, and that we are bound to pay 
them, is this : France acknowledged them, and 
the United States took them upon herself; that 
is, they were paid by way of offset, and the 
valuable consideration the United States re- 
ceived was a release from her pretended obliga- 
tions ! Now, sir, let us see how France acknow- 
ledged them. These very claims were denied, 
resisted, and rejected, by every successive gov- 
ernment of France ! The law of nations was 
urged against them; because, having engaged 
in a state of war, on the account of them, we 
had no right to a double redress — first by re- 
prisals, and afterwards by indemnity ! Besides, 
France justified her spoliations, on the ground 
that we violated our neutrality ; that the ships 
seized were laden with goods belonging to the 
English, the enemies of France ; and it is well 
known, that, in ninety-nine cases out of a hun- 



ANNO 1835. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



517 



dred, this was the fact — that American citizens 
lent their names to the English, and were ready- 
to risk all the dangers of French spoliation, for 
sake of the great profits, which more than 
covered the risk. And, in the face of all these 
facts, wo are told that the French acknowledged 
the claims, paid them by a release, and we are 
now bound to satisfy them ! And how is this 
proved? Where are the invincible arguments 
by which the public treasury is to be emptied ? 
Hear them, if it is possible even to hear them 
with patience ! When we urged these claims, 
the French negotiators set up a counter claim ; 
and. to obtain a release from this, we abandoned 
them ! Thus it is that the French acknowledged 
these claims ; and, on this pretence, because of 
this diplomatic cunning and ingenuity, we are 
now told that the national honor calls on us to 
pay them i Was ever such a thing heard of 
before 1 Why, sir, if we pass this bill, we 
shall deserve eternal obloquy and disgrace from 
the whole American people, France, after re- 
peatedly and perseveringly denying and resist- 
ing these claims, at last gets rid of them for ever 
by an ingenious trick, and by pretending to ac- 
knowledge them; and now her debt (if it was 
a debt) is thrown upon us ; and, in consequence 
of this little trick, the public treasury is to be 
tricked out of several millions ! Sir, this is mon- 
strous ! I say it is outrageous ! I intend no 
personal disrespect to any gentleman by these 
observations 5 but I must do my duty to my 
country, and I repeat it, sir, this is outrage- 
ous ! 

" It is strenuously insisted upon, and appears 
to be firmly relied upon by gentlemen who have 
advocated this measure, that the United States 
has actually received from France full consider- 
ation for these claims ; in a word, that France 
has paid them ! I have already shown, by his- 
torical facts, by the law of nations, and, further, 
by the authority and actions of Washington 
himself, the father of his country, that we 
were placed under no obligations to France by 
the treaty of guaranty ; and that, therefore, a 
release from obligations which did not exist, is 
no valuable consideration at all ! But, sir, how 
can it be urged upon us that France actually 
paid us for claims which were denied and re- 
sisted, when we all know very well that, for 
undisputed claims, for claims acknowledged by 
treaty, for claims solemnly^ engaged to be paid. 



we could never succeed in getting one farthing 
I thank the senator from New Hampshire (Mr. 
Hill), for the enlightened view he has given on 
this case. What, sir, was the conduct of Napo- 
leon, with respect to money ? He had bound 
himself to pay us twenty millions of francs, 
and he would not pay one farthing ! And yet, 
sir, we are confidently assured by the advocates 
of this bill that these claims were paid to us by 
Napoleon ! When Louisiana was sold, ne or- 
dered Mai^bois to get fifty millions, and did not 
even then, intend to pay us out of that sum the 
twenty millions he had bound himself by trea- 
ty to pay. Marbois succeeded in getting thirty 
millions of francs more from us, and from this 
the twenty millions due was deducted; thus, 
sir, we were made to pay ourselves our own 
due, and Napoleon escaped the payment of a 
farthing. I mean to make no reflection upon 
our negotiators at that treaty ; we may be glad 
that we got Louisiana at any amount ; for, if 
we had not obtained it by money, we should 
soon have possessed it by blood: the young 
West, like a lion, would have sprung upon the 
delta of the IMississippi, and we should have 
had an earlier edition of the battle of New Or- 
leans. It is not to be regretted, therefore, that 
we gained Louisiana by negotiation, although 
we paid our debts ourselves in that bargain. 
But Napoleon absolutely scolded Marbois for 
allowing the deduction of twenty millions out 
of the sum we paid for Louisiana, forgetting 
that his minister had got thirty millions more 
than he ordered him to ask, and that we had 
paid ourselves the twenty millions due to us 
under treaty. Having such a man to deal with, 
how can it be maintained on this floor that 
the United States has been paid by him the 
claims in this bill, and that, therefore, the trea- 
surj^ is bound to satisfy them ? Let senators, 
I entreat them, but ask themselves the ques- 
tion, what these claims were worth in the view 
of Napoleon, that they may not form such an 
unwarranted conclusion .as to (Iiink he ever paid 
them. Every goverament of France which pre- 
ceded him had treated them as English claims, 
and is it likely that he who refused to pay claims 
subsequent to these, under treaty signed by 
himself, would pay old claims anterior to ISOO? 
The claims were not worth a straw ; they were 
considered as lawful spoliations ; that by our 
proclamation we h.ad broken the neutrality; 



518 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



and, after all, that they were incurred by 
English enterprises, covered b^^ the American 
flag. It is pretended he acknowledged them ! 
Would he have inserted two lines in the trea- 
ty to rescind them, to get rid of such claims, 
when he would not pay those he had acknow- 
ledged ? 

To recur once more, sir, to the valuable con- 
sideration which it is pretended we received for 
these claims. It is maintained that we were 
paid by receiving a release from onerous ob- 
ligations imposed upon us by the treaty of 
guaranty, which obligations I have already 
shown that the great "Washington himself pro- 
nounced to be nothing; and therefore, sir, it 
plainly follows that this valuable consideration 
was — nothing ! 

What, sir ! Is it said we were released from 



obligations ? 



From what obligations, I would 



ask, were we relieved? From the obligation 
of guaranteeing to France her American posses- 
sions ; from the obligation of conquering St. 
Domingo for France ! From an impossibility, 
sir ! for do we not know that this was im- 
possible to the fleets and armies of France, 
under Le Clerc, the brother-in-law of Napoleon 
himself? Did they not perish miserably by the 
knives of infuriated negroes and the desolating 
ravages of pestilence ? Again, we were released 
from the obligation of restoring Guadaloupe to 
the French ; which also was not possible, unless 
we had entered into a war with Great Britain ! 
And thus, sir, the valuable consideration, the 
release by which these claims are said to be 
fully paid to the United States, turns out to be 
a release from nothing ! a release from absolute 
impossibilities; for it was not possible to guar- 
antee to France her colonies ; she lost them, and 
there was nothing to guarantee ; it was a one- 
sided guaranty ! She surrendered them bj^ 
treat}^, and there is nothing for the guaranty 
to operate on. 

The gentleman from Georgia [Mr. King], has 
given a vivid and able picture of the exertions 
of the United States government in behalf of 
these claims. lie has shown that they have 
been paid, and more than paid, on our part, by 
ihe invaluable blood of our citizens ! Such, 
indeed, is the fact. What has not been done 
by the United States on behalf of these claims ? 
For these very claims, for the protection of 
those very claimants, we underwent an in- 



credible expense both in military and nava 
armaments. 

[Here the honorable senator read a long lis 
of military and naval preparations made by Con- 
gress for the protection of these claims, specify- 
ing the dates and the numbers.] 

Nor did the United States confine herself 
solely to these strenous exertions and expensive 
armaments ; besides raising fleets and armies, she 
sent across the Atlantic embassies and agents ; 
she gave letters of marque, by which every 
injured individual might take his own remedy 
and repay himself his losses. For these very 
claims the people were laden at that period with 
heavy taxes, besides the blood of our people 
which was spilt for them. Loans were raised 
at eight per cent, to obtain redress for these 
claims ; and what was the consequence ? It 
overturned the men in power at that period ; 
this it was which produced that result, more 
than jjolitical differences. 

The people M-ex'e taxed and suffered for these 
same claims in that day ; and now they are 
brought forward again to exhaust tlie public 
ti'easury and to sweep away more millions yet 
from the people, to impose taxes again upon them, 
for the very same claims for which the people 
have already once been taxed ; reviving the sj^s- 
tem of '98, to render loans and debts and en- 
cimibrances again to be required ; to embarrass 
the government, entangle the State, to impover- 
ish the people ; to dig, in a word, by gradual 
measures of this description, a pit to plunge the 
nation headlong into inextricable diflBculty and 
ruin ! 

The government, in those days, performed its 
duty to the citizens in the protection of their 
commerce ; and by vindicating, asserting, and 
satisfying these claims, it left nothing undone 
which now is to be done ; the pretensions of this 
bill are therefore utterly unfounded ! Duties 
are reciprocal ; the duty of government is pro- 
tection, and that of citizens allegiance. This 
bill attempts to throw upon the present gov- 
ernment the duties and expenses of a former 
government, which have been already once ac- 
quitted. On its part, government has fulfilled, 
with energy and zeal, its duty to the citizens ; 
it has protected and now is protecting their 
rights, and asserting their just claims. Witness 
our navy, kept up in time of peace, for the pro- 
tection of commerce and for the profit of our 



ANNO 1835. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



519 



citizens; witness our cruisers on every point 
of the globe, for the security of citizens pursu- 
ing every kind of lawful business. But, there 
are limits to the protection of the interests of 
individual citizens ; peace must, at one time or 
other, be obtained, and sacrifices are to be made 
for a valuable consideration. Now, sir, peace is 
a valuable consideration, and claims are often 
necessarily abandoned to obtain it. In 1814, 
we gave up claims for the sake of peace ; we 
gave up claims for Spanish spoliations, at the 
treaty of Florida ; we gave up claims to Den- 
mark. These claims also were given up, long 
anterior to others I have mentioned. When 
peace is made, the claims take their chance ; 
some are given up for a gi'oss sum, and some, 
such as these, when they are worth nothing, 
will fetch nothing. How monstrous, therefore, 
that measure is, which would transfer abandon- 
ed and disputed claims from the country, by 
which they were said to be due, to our own 
country, to our own government, upon our ovra 
citizens, requiring us to pay what others owed 
(nay, what it is doubtful if they did owe); re- 
quiring us to pay what we have never received 
one farthing for, and for which, if we had re- 
ceived millions, we have paid away more than 
those millions in arduous exertions on their be- 
half! 

I should not discharge the duty I owe to my 
country, if I did not probe still deeper into 
these transactions. What were the losses which 
led to these claims 1 Gentlemen have indulo-ed 
themselves in all the flights and raptures of 
poetry on tliis pathetic topic ; we have heard 
of " ships swept from the ocean, families plunged 
in want and ruin ;" and such hke ! What is the 
fact, sir ? It is as the gentleman from New 
Hampshire has said: never, sir, was there known, 
before or since, such a flourishing state of com- 
merce as the very time and period of these 
spoliations. At that time, men made fortunes if 
they saved one ship only, out of every four or five, 
from the French cruisers ! Let us examine the 
stubborn facts of sober arithmetic, in this case, 
and not sit still and see the people's mone}' 
charmed out of tlie treasury by the persuasive 
notes of poetry. [Mr. B here referred to pub- 
lic documents showing that, in the years 1793, 
•94, '95, '9G, '97, '98, '^99, up to 1800, the ex- 
ports, annually increased at a rapid rate, till, in 
1800, they amounted to more than S$91,000,000]. 



It must be taken into consideration that, at 
this period, our population was less than it is 
now, our territory was much more limited, we 
had not Louisiana and the port of New Orleans, 
and 3^et our commerce was far more flourishing 
than it ever has been since ; and at a time, too, 
when we had no mammoth banking coi-poration 
to boast of its indispensable, its vital necessity 
to commerce ! These are the facts of numbers. 
of arithmetic, which blow away the edifice of 
the gentlemen's poetrj^, as the wind scatters 
straws. 

With respect to the parties in whose hands 
these claims are. They are in the hands of insur- 
ance offices, assignees, and jobbers ; they are in 
the hands of the knowing ones who have bought 
them up for two, three, five, ten cents in the 
dollar ! What has become of the screaming 
babes that have been held up after the ancient 
Roman method, to excite pity and move our 
sympathies ? What has become of the widows 
and original claimants ? They have been bought 
out long ago by the knowing ones. If we 
countenance this bill, sir, we shall renew the 
disgraceful scenes of 1793, and witness a repeti- 
tion of the infamous fraud and gambling, and all 
the old artifices which the certificate funding act 
gave rise to. (Mr. B. here read several interest- 
ing extracts, describing the scenes which then 
took place.) 

One of the most revolting features of this bill 
is its relation to the insurers. The most in- 
famous and odious act ever passed by Congress 
was the certificate funding act of 1793, an act 
passed in favor of a crowd of speculators ; but 
the principle of this bill is more odious than 
even it ; I mean that of paying insurers for their 
losses. The United States, sir, insure ! Can 
any thing be conceived more revolting and atro- 
cious than to direct the funds of the treasury, 
the property of the people, to such iniquitous 
uses ? On what principle is this groiuided ? 
Their occupation is a safe one ; they make cal- 
culations against all probabilities ; they make 
fortunes at all times ; and especially at this very 
time when we are called upon to refund their 
losses, they made immense fortunes. It would 
be far more just and equitable if Congress were 
to insure the farmers and planters, and pay theui 
their losses on the failure of (he cotton crop ; 
they, sir, are more entitled to put forth such 
claims than speculators and gamblers, whose 



520 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



trade and business it is to make money by 
losses. This bill, if passed, would bo the 
most odious and unprincipled ever passed by 
Congress. 

Another question, sir, occurs to me : what 
sum of money will this bill abstract from the 
treasurj^ ? It says five millions, it is true ; but 
it does not say " and no more ; " it does not say 
that they will be in full. If the project of pass- 
ing this bill should succeed, not only will claims 
be made, but next will come interest upon them ! 
Reflect, sir, one moment : interest from 1798 and 
1800 to this daj^ ! Nor is there any limitation 
of the amount of claims ; no, sir, it would not 
be possible for the imagination of man, to invent 
more cunning words than the wording of this 
bill. It is made to cover all sorts of claims ; 
there is no kind of specification adequate to ex- 
clude them ; the most illegal claims will be ad- 
mitted by its loose phraseo-logy ! 

Again suffer me to call your attention to an- 
other feature of tl^is atrocious measure ; let me 
warn my country of the abj^ss which it is at- 
temped to open before it, by this and other 
similar measures of draining and exhausting the 
public treasury ! 

These claims rejected and spurned by France ; 
these claims for which we have never received 
one cent, all the payment ever made for them 
urged upon us by their advocates being a meta- 
physical and imaginary payment ; these claims 
which, under such deceptive circumstances as 
these, we, sir, are called upon to pay, and to pay 
to insurers, usurers, gamblers, and speculators ; 
these monstrous claims which are foisted upon 
the American people, let me ask, how are they 
to be adjudged by this bill ? Is it credible, sir? 
They are to be tried by an ex parte tribunal ! 
Commissioners arc to be appointed, and then, 
once seated in this berth, they are to give away 
and dispose of the public money according to 
the cases proved ! No doubt sir, they will be 
all honorable men. I donot dispute that ! No 
doubt it will be utterly impossible to prove 
con-uption, or bribery, or interested motives, or 
partialities against them; nay, sir, no doubt it 
will be dangerous to suspect such honorable 
men; we shall be replied to at once bj^ the in- 
dignant question, " are they not all honorable 
men 1 " But to all intents and purposes this 
tribunal w\\\ be an ex parte, a one-sided tribu- 
nal and passive to the action of the claimants. 



Again, look at the species of evidence which 
will be invited to appear before these commis- 
sioners ; of what description will it be ? Here 
is not a thing recent and fresh upon which evi 
dence, may be gained. Here are transactions oi 
thirty or forty years ago. The evidence is gone, 
witnesses dead, memories failing, no testimony 
to be procured, and no lack of claimants, notwith- 
standing. Then, sir, the next best evidence, 
that suspicious and worthless sort of evidence, 
will have to be restored to ; and this wiU be 
ready at hand to suit everj^ convenience in any 
quantity. There could not be a more effective 
and deeper plan than this devised to empty the 
treasury ! Here will be sixty millions exhibit- 
ed as a lure for false evidence, and false claims; 
an awful, a tremendous temptation for men to 
send their souls to hell for the sake of money. 
Onthebehalf of the moral interests of my coun- 
try, while it may yet not be too late, I denounce 
this bill, and warn Congress not to lend itself to 
a measure by which it will debauch the public 
morals, and open a wide gulf of wrong-doing 
and not-to-be-imagined evil I 

The bill proposes the amount of only five 
millions, while, by the looseness of its wording, 
it will admit old claims of all sorts and different 
natures ; claims long since abandoned for gross 
sums ; all will come in by this bill ! One hun- 
dred millions of dollars wiU not pay all that 
will be patched up under the cover of this bill ! 
In bills of this description w^e may see a covert 
attempt to renew the public debt, to make loans 
and taxes necessary, and the engine of loans 
necessary with them ! There are those who 
would gladly overwhelm the country in debt ; 
that corporations might be maintained which 
thrive by debt, and make their profits out of the 
misery and encumbrances of the people. Shall 
the people be denied the least repose from tax- 
ation ? Shall all the labor and exertions of gov- 
ernment to extinguish the public debt be in 
vain? Shall its great exertions to establish 
economy in the State, and do away with a .sys- 
tem of loans and extravagance, be thwarted 
and resisted by bills of this insidious aim and 
character ? Shall the people be prevented from 
feeling in reality that we have no debt : shall 
they only know it by dinners and public rejoic- 
ings ? Shall such a happy and beneficial result 
of wise and wholesome measures be rendered all 
in vala by envious efforts to destroy the whole, 



ANNO 1835. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



521 



and render it impossible for the country to go 
on without borrowing and being in debt?" 

The bill passed the Senate by a vote of 25 to 
20 ; but failed in the House of Representatives. 
It still continues to importune the two Houses ; 
and though baffled for fifty years, is as perti- 
nacious as ever. Surely there ought to be some 
limit to these presentations of the same claim. 
It is a game in which the government has no 
chance. No number of rejections decides any 
thing in favor of the government ; a single de- 
cision in their favor decides all against them. 
Kenewed applications become incessant, and 
endless ; and eventually must succeed. Claims 
become stronger upon age — gain double strength 
upon time— often directly, by newly discovered 
evidence — always indirectly, by the loss of ad- 
versary evidence, and by the death of contem- 
poraries. Two remedies are in the hands of 
Congress — one, to break up claim agencies, by 
allowing no claim to be paid to an agent ; the 
other, to break up speculating assignments, by 
allowing no more to be received by an assignee 
than he has actually paid for the claim. As- 
signees and agents are now the great prosecutors 
of claims against the government. They con- 
stitute a profession — a new one — resident at 
Washington city. Their calling has become a 
new industrial pursuit — and a most industrious 
jne — skilful and persevering, acting on system 
and in phalanx ; and entirely an overmatch for 
the succession of new members who come ig- 
norantly to the consideration of the cases which 
they have so well dressed up. It would be to 
the honor of Congress, and the protection of 
the treasury, to institute a searching examina- 
tion into the practices of these agents, to see 
whether any undue means are used to procure 
the legislation they desire. 



CHAPTER CXXI. 

ATTEMPTED ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT JACK- 
SON. 

On Friday, the 30th of January, the President 
with some members of his Cabinet, attended the 
funeral ceremonies of Warren R. Davis, Esq., in 
the hall of the House of Representatives- -of 



which body Mr. Davis had been a member from 
the State of South Carolina. The procession 
had moved out with the body, and its front had 
reached the foot of the broad steps of the eastern 
portico, when the President, with Mr. Wood- 
bury, Secretary of the Treasury, and Mr. Mahlon 
Dickerson. Secretary of the Navy, were issuing 
from the door of the great rotunda — which 
opens upon the portico. At that instant a per- 
son stepped from the crowd into the little open 
space in front of the President, levelled a pistol 
at him. at the distance of about eight feet, and 
attempted to fire. It was a percussion lock, 
and the cap exploded, vnthout firing the powder 
in the barrel. The explosion of the cap was so 
loud that many persons thought the pistol had 
fired : I heard it at the foot of the steps, far 
from the place, and a great crowd between. In- 
stantly the person dropped the pistol which 
had missed fire^ took another which he held 
ready cocked in the left hand, concealed by a 
cloak — levelled it — and pulled the trigger. It 
was also a percussion lock, and the cap exploded 
without firing the powder in the barrel. The 
President instantly rushed upon him with his 
uplifted cane : the man shrunk back ; Mr. Wood- 
bury aimed a blow at him ; Lieutenant Gedney 
of the Navy knocked him down ; he was secured 
by the bystanders, who delivered him to the 
officers of justice for judicial examination. The 
examination took place before the chief justice 
of the district, Mr. Cranch ; by whom he was 
committed in default of bail. His name was 
ascertained to be Richard Lawrence, an English- 
man by birth, and house-painter by trade, at 
present out of employment, melancholy and 
irascible. The pistols were examined, and found 
to be well loaded ; and fired afterwards without 
fail, carrying their bullets true, and driving them 
through inch boards at thirty feet distance; 
nor could any reason be found for the two fiiil- 
ures at the door of the rotunda. On his ex- 
amination the prisoner seemed to be at his case, 
as if unconscious of having done any thing 
wrong — refusing to cross-examine the witnesses 
who testified against liim, or to give any ex- 
planation of his conduct. The idea of an un- 
sound mind strongly impressing itself upon the 
public opinion, the marshal of the district in- 
vited two of the most rcsjicctable physicians of 
the city (Dr. Caussin and Dr. Tliomas Sewell), 
to visit him and examine into his hicntal con- 



522 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



dition. They did so : and the following is the 
report which they made upon the case : 

" The undersigned, having been requested by 
the marshal of the District of Columbia to visit 
Richard Lawrence, now confined in the jail of 
the county of Washington, for an attempt to 
assassinate the President of the United States, 
with a view to ascertain, as far as practicable, 
the present condition of his bodily health and 
state of mind, and believing that a detail of the 
examination will be more satisfactory than an 
abstract opinion on the subject, we therefore 
give the following statement. On entering his 
room, we engaged in a fi-ee conversation with 
him, in which he participated, apparentl}', in the 
most artless and unreserved manner. The first 
interrogatory propounded was, as to his age — 
which question alone he sportively declined an- 
swering. We then inquired into the condition 
of his health, for several years past — to which 
he replied that it had been uniformlj^ good, and 
that he had never labored under any mental 
derangement; nor did he admit the existence 
of any of those symptoms of physical derange- 
ment which usually attend mental alienation. 
He said he was born in England, and came to 
this country when twelve or thirteen years of 
age, and that his Aither died in this District, 
about six or eight years since ; that his father 
was a Protestant and his mother a Methodist, 
and that he was not a professor of an}' religion, 
but sometimes read the Bible, and occasional- 
ly attended church. He stated that he was a 
painter by trade, and had followed that occupa- 
tion to the present time ; but, of late, could not 
find steady employment — which had caused 
much pecuniary embarrassment with him ; that 
he had been generally temperate in his habits, 
using ardent spirits moderately when at work ; 
but, for the last three or four weeks, had not 
taken any ; that he had never gambled, and, in 
other resjiects, had led a regular, sober life. 

" Upon being interrogated as to the circum- 
stances connected with the attempted assassina- 
tion, he said that he had been deliberating on 
it for some time jKi.-t, and that he had called at 
the President's house about a week previous 
to the attempt, and being conducted to the 
President's apartment by the porter, found him 
in conversation with a member of Congress, 
whom he believed to have been jMr. Sutherland, 
of Pennsylvania ; that he stated to the Presi- 
dent that he wanted money to take him to Eng- 
land, and that he must give him a check on the 
bank, and the President remarked, that he was 
too much engaged to attend to him — he must 
call another time, for Mr. Dibble was in waiting 
for an interview. When asked al)0ut the pis- 
tols which he had used, he stated that his father 
left him a pair, but not being alike, about four 
years since he exchanged one for another, which 
exactly matched the best of the pair ; these 
were ooth flint locks, which he recently had 
altered to percussion locks, by a Mr. IJoteler j 



that he had been frequently in the habit of 
loading and firing those pistols at marks, and 
that he had never known them to fail going off 
on any other occasion, and that, at the distance 
of ten yards, the ball always passed through an 
inch plank. He also stated that he had loaded 
those jiistols three or four days previous, with 
ordinary care, for the purpose attempted ; but 
that he used a pencil instead of a ramrod, and 
that during that period, they wei-e at all times 
carried in his pocket ; and when asked why 
they failed to explode, he replied he knew no 
cause. When asked why he went to the capitol 
on that daj^, he replied that he expected that 
the President would be there. He also stated, 
that he was in the rotunda when the President 
arrived; and on being asked why he did not 
then attempt to shoot him, he replied that he 
did not wish to interfere with the funeral cere- 
mony, and therefore waited till it was over. He 
also observed that he did not enter the hall, 
but looked through a window from a lobby, and 
saw the President seated with members of Con- 
gress, and he then returned to the rotunda, and 
waited till the President again entered it, and 
then passed through and took his position in 
the east portico, about two j^ards from the door, 
drew his pistols from his inside coat pocket, 
cocked them and held one in each hand, con- 
cealed by his coat, lest he should alarm the 
spectators — and states, that as soon as the one 
in the right hand missed fire, he inmiediately 
dropped or exchanged it, and attempted to fire 
the second, before he was seized ; ho further 
stated that he aimed each pistol at the Presi- 
dent's heart, and intended, if the first pistol had 
gone off, and the president had fallen, to havi 
defended himself with the second, if deionce had 
been necessary. On being asked if he did not 
expect to have been killed on the spot, if he had 
killed the President, he replied he did not ; and 
that lie had no doubt but that he would have 
been protected by the spectators. He was fre- 
quently questioned whether he had any friends 
present, from whom he expected protection. To 
this he replied, that he never had mentioned his 
intention to an}- one, and that no one in particu- 
lar knew his design ; but that he presumed it 
was generally known that he intended to put 
the President out of the way. He further stated, 
that when the Pi-esident arrived at the door, 
near which he stood, finding him supported on 
the left by Mr. Woodbury, and tibserving many 
persons in his rear, and being himself rather to 
the right of the President, in order to avoid 
wounding ]Mr. Woodbury, and those in the rear, 
he stepped a little to his own right, so that 
should the ball jiass through the body of the 
President, it woidd be received by the door- 
frame, or stone wall. On being asked if he felt 
no trepidation during the attempt: He rejilicd, 
not tlie slightest, until he fuund that the second 
pistol had missed fire. Then observing that the 
President was advanciiig upon him, with an up- 
lifted cane, he feared that it contained a sword^ 



ANNO 1835. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



523 



which miglit have been thrust through him be- 
fore he could have been protected by the crowd. 
And when interrogated as to the motive which 
induced hira to attempt the assassination of the 
President, he rcpUed, that he had been told that 
the President had caused his loss of occupation, 
and the consequent want of money, and he be- 
lieved that to put him out of the way, was tlie 
only remedy for this evil ; but to the interroga- 
tory, who told you this ? he could not identify 
any one, but remarked that his brother-in-law, 
Mr. Redfern, told him that he would have no 
more business, because he was opposed to the 
President — and he believed Redfern to be in 
league with the President against him. Again 
being questioned, whether he had often attended 
the debates in Congress, during the present 
session, and whether they had influenced him 
in making this attack on the person of the Pre- 
sident, he replied that he had frequently attend- 
ed the discussions in both branches of Con- 
gress, but that they had, in no degree, influenced 
his action. 

" Upon being asked if he expected to become 
the president of the United States, if Gen. Jack- 
son had fallen, he replied no. 

" When asked whom he wished to be the Pre- 
sident, his answer was, there were many persons 
in the House of Repi'esentatives. On being asked 
if there were no persons in the Senate, yes, se- 
veral ; and it was the Senate to which I alluded. 
Who, in your opinion, of the Senate, would 
make a good President? He answered, Mr. 
Clay, Mr. Webster, Mr. Calhoun. What do 
you think of Col. Benton, Mr. Van Buren. or 
Judge White, for President ? He thought they 
would do well. On being asked if he knew 
any member of either house of Congress, he re- 
plied that he did not — and never spoke to one 
in his life, or they to him. On being asked what 
benefit he expected himself from the death of 
the President, he answered he could not rise 
unless the President fell, and that he expected 
thereby to recover his liberty, and that the 
mechanics would all be benefited ; that the me- 
chanics would have plenty of work ; and that 
money would be more plenty. On being asked 
why it would be more plenty, he replied, it 
would be more easily obtained from the bank. 
On being asked what bank, he I'eplied, the Bank 
of the United States. On being asked if he 
knew the president, directors, or any of the ofli- 
cers of the bank, or had ever hekl any inter- 
course with them, or knew how he could get 
money out of the bank, he replied no — that he 
slightly knew Mr. Smith only. 

" On being asked with respect to the speeches 
which he had heard in Congress, and whether 
he was particularly pleased with those of Messrs. 
Calhoun, Clay, and Webster, he replied that he 
was, because they were on his side. He was 
then asked if he vras well pleased with the 
speeches of Col. Benton and Judge White ? He 
said he was and thought Col. Benton highly 
talented. 



"When asked if he was friendly to Gen. 
Jackson, he replied, no. Why not ? He an- 
swered, because he was a tyrant. Who told 
you he was a tyrant ? He answered, it was a 
common talk with the people, and that he had 
read it in all the papers. He was asked if he 
could name any one who had told him so ? Ho 
replied, no. He was asked if he ever threatened 
to shoot Mr. Clay, Mr. Webster, or Mr. Calhoun, 
or whether he would shoot them if he had an 
opportunity ? He replied, no. When asked if 
he would shoot Mr. Van Buren? He replied, 
no, that he once met with Mr. Van Buren in 
the rotunda, and told him he was in want of 
money and must have it, and if he did not get 
it he (Mr. Van Buren), or Gen. Jackson must 
Ml. He was asked if any person were present 
during the conversation? He replied, that 
there were several present, and when asked if he 
recollected one of them, he replied that he did 
not. When asked if any one advised hira to 
shoot Gen. Jackson, or say that it ought to be 
done ? He replied, I do not like to say. On 
being pressed on this point, he said no one in 
particular had advised him. 

" He further stated, that believing the Presi- 
dent to be the source of all his difficulties, he 
was still fixed in his purpose to kill hira, and if 
his succcessor pursued the same course, to put 
him out of the way also — and declared that no 
power in this country could punish him for 
having done so, because it would be resisted by 
the powers of Europe, as well as of this country. 
He also stated, that he had been long in corre- 
spondence with the powers of Europe, and that 
his family had been wrongfully deprived of the 
crown of England, and that he should yet live 
to regain it — and that he considered the Presi- 
dent of the United States nothing more than 
his clerk. 

" We now think proper to add, that the young 
man appears perfectly tranquil and unconcerned, 
as to the final result, and seems to anticipate no 
punishment for what he has done. The above 
contains the leading, and literally expressed 
facts of the whole conversation we had with 
him, which continued at least two hours. The 
questions were frequently repeated at ditleront 
stages of the examination ; and presented in 
various -forms." 

It is clearly to be seen from this medical ex- 
amination of the man, that this attempted 
assassination of the President, was one of tiiose 
cases of which history presents many instances 
— a diseased mind acted upon by a general outcry 
against a public man. Lawrence was in the 
particular condition to be acted upon by what 
he heard against General Jackson:— a work- 
man out of employment — needy — idle — men- 
tally morbid ; and with reason enough to argue 
regularly from false premises. He heard the 



524 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



President accused o.' breaking up the labor of the 
countr}' ! and believed it — of making money 
scarce ! and he believed it — of producing the 
distress ! and believed it — of being a tyrant ! 
and believed it — of being an obstacle to all re- 
lief ! and believed it. And coming to a regular 
conclusion from all these beliefs, he attempted 
to do what he believed the state of things re- 
quired him to do — take the life of the man 
whom he considered the sole cause of his own 
and the general calamity — and the sole obstacle 
to his own and the general happiness. Halluci- 
nation of mind was evident ; and the wretched 
victim of a dreadful delusion was afterwards 
treated as insane, and never brought to trial. 
But the circumstance made a deep impression 
upon the public feeling, and irresistibly carried 
many minds to the belief in a superintending 
Providence, manifested in the extraordinary case 
of two pistols in succession — so well loaded, so 
coolly handled, and which afterwards fired with 
such readiness, force, and precision — missing 
fire, each in its turn, when levelled eight feet at 
the President's heart. 



CHAPTER CXXII. 

ALABAMA EXPUNGING RESOLUTIONS. 

Mr. King, of Alabama, presented the preamble 
and joint resolution of the general assembly of 
his State, entreating their senators in Congress 
to use their " untiring efforts " to cause to be 
expunged from the journal of the Senate, the 
resolve condemnatory of President Jackson, for 
the removal of the deposits. Mr. Clay desired 
to know, before any order was taken on these 
resolutions, whether the senator presenting 
them, proposed to make any motion in relation 
to expunging the journal ? This inquiry was 
made in a way to show that Mr. King was to 
meet resistance to his motion if he attempted it. 
The expunging process was extremely distaste- 
ful to the senators whose act was proposed to 
be stigmatized ; — and they now began to be 
sensitive at its mention. — When Mr. Benton 
first gave notice of his intention to move it, his 
notice was looked upon as an idle menace, which 
would end in nothing. Now it was becoming a 



serious proceeding. The States were taking i 
up. Several of them, through their legislatures 
— Alabama, Jlississippi, New Jersey, New- York, 
North Carolina — had already given the fatal in- 
structions ; and it was certain that more would 
follow. Those of Alabama were the first pre- 
sented ; and it was felt necessary to make head 
against them from the beginning. Hence, the inter- 
rogatory put by Mr. Clay to Mr. King — the inqui- 
ry whether he intended to move an expunging 
resolution ? — and the subsequent motion to lay 
the resolutions of the State upon the table if he 
answered negatively. Now it was not the in- 
tention of Mr. King to move the expunging re- 
solution. It was not his desire to take that bu- 
siness out of the hands of Mr. Benton, who had 
conceived it — made a speech for it — given notice 
of it at the last session as a measure for the pre- 
sent one — and had actually given notice at the 
present session of his intention to offer the re- 
solution. Mr. King's answer would necessarily, 
therefore, be in the negative, and Mr. Clay's 
motion then became regular to lay it upon the 
table. Mr. Benton, therefore, felt himself called 
upon to answer Mr. Clay, and to recall to the 
recollection of the Senate what took place at 
the time the sentence of condemnation had 
passed ; and rose and said : 

" He had then (at the time of passing the 
condemnatory resolution), in his place, given im- 
mediate notice that he should commence a series 
of motions for the purpose of expunging the 
resolutions from the journals. He had then 
made use of the word expunge, in contradistinc- 
tion to the word repeal, or the word reverse, 
because it was his opinion then, and that opinion 
had been confirmed b}- all his subsequent reflec- 
tion, that repeal or reversal of the resolution 
would not do adequate justice. To do that 
would require a complete expurgation of the 
journal. It would require that process which 
is denominated expunging, by which, to the pre- 
sent, and to all future times, it woidd be indi- 
cated that that had been placed upon the jour- 
nals which should never have gone there. He 
had given that notice, after serious reflection, 
that it might be seen that the Senate was 
trampling tlie constitution of the United States 
under foot ; and not only that, but also the very 
forms, to s-ay nothing of the substance, of all 
criminal justice. 

"He had given this notice in obedience to 
the dictates of his bosom, which were after- 
wards sustained by the descision of his head, 
without consultation with any other person, but 
after conference only with himself and his God. 
To a single human being he had said that ho 



ANNO 1835. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



525 



should do it, but he had not consulted with any 
one. In the ordinary routine of business, no 
one was more ready to consult with his friends, 
and to defer to their opinions, than he was ; but 
there were some occasions on which he held 
council with no man, but took his own course, 
without regard to consequences. It would have 
been a matter of entire indiiference with him, had 
the whole Senate risen as one man, and declared 
a determination to give a unanimous vote against 
him. It would have mattered nothing. He 
would not have deferred to any human being. 
Actuated by these feelings he had given notice 
of his intention in the month of May ; and in 
obedience to that determination he had, on the 
last day of the session, laid his resolution on 
the table, in order to keep the matter alive. 

" This brought him to the answer to the ques- 
tion proposed. The presentation of the resolu- 
tions of the legislature of Alabama afforded a 
fit and proper occasion to give that public notice 
which he had already informally and privately 
given to many members of the Senate. He had 
said that he should bring forward his resolution 
at the earliest convenient time. And yesterday 
evening, when he saw the attempt which was 
made to give to a proceeding emanating from 
the Post" Office Committee, and to which, by 
the unanimous consent of that committee, a 
legislative direction had been assigned, a new 
form, by one of the senators from South Caro- 
lina, so as to make it a proceeding against per- 
sons, in contradistinction to the public matters 
embodied in the report ; when he heard these 
persons assailed by one of the senators from 
South Carolina, in such a manner as to prevent 
any possibility of doubt concerning them ; and 
when he discovered that the object of these gentle 
men was impeachment in substance, if not in form, 
he did at once form the determination to give 
notice this morning of his intention to move his 
resolution at the earliest convenient period. 

" This was his answer to the question which 
had been proposed. 

" Mr. King, of Alabama, said he was surprised 
to hear the question of the honorable senator 
from Kentucky, as he did not expect such an 
inquiry : for he had supposed it was well under- 
stood by every member of the Senate what liis 
sentiments were in regard to the right of in- 
struction. The legislature of Alabama had in- 
structed him to pursue a particular course, and 
he should obey their instructions. With regard 
to the resolution to which the legislature alluded, 
he could merely say that he voted against it at 
the time it was adopted by the Senate. His 
opinion as to it was then, as well as now, per- 
fectly vuidcrstood. if the gentleman from 
Missouri [Mr. Benton] declined bringing the 
subject forward relative to the propriety of ex- 
punging the resolution in question from the 
journal of the Senate, he, liimself should, at 
some proper time, do so, and also say something 
on the great and important question as to the 
right of instruction. Now, that might be ad- 



mitted in its fullest extent. He held his place 
there, subject to the control of the legislature 
of Alabama, and whenever their instructions 
reached him, he should be governed bv them. 
He made this statement without entering into 
the consideration of the propriety or impropriety 
of senators exercising their own judgment as to 
the course they deemed most proper to pursue. 
For himself, never having doubted the right of 
a legislature to instruct their senators in Con- 
gress, he should consider himself culpable if he 
did not carry their wishes into effect, when pro- 
perly expressed. And he had hoped there would 
have been no expression of the Senate at this 
time, as he was not disposed to enter into a dis- 
cussion then, for particular reasons, whirli it 
was not necessary he should state. 

"As to the propriety of acting on the sub- 
ject then, that would depend upon the opinions 
of gentlemen as to the importance, the great im- 
portance, of having the journal of the Senate 
freed from what many supposed to be an uncon- 
stitutional act of the Senate, although the 
majority of it thought otherwise. He would 
now say that, if no one should bring forward a 
proposition to get the resolution expunged, he, 
feeling himself bound to obey the opinions of 
the legislature, should do so, and would vote for 
it. If no precedent was to be found for such 
an act of the Senate, he should most unhesita- 
tingly vote for expunging the resolution from the 
journal of the Senate, in such manner as should 
be justified by precedent. 

''Mr. Clay said the honorable member from 
Alabama had risen in his place, and presented 
to the Senate two resolutions, adopted by the 
legislature of his State, instructing him and his 
colleague to use their untiring exertions to cause 
to be expunged from the journals of the Senate 
certain resolutions passed during the last ses- 
sion of Congress, on the subject of the removal 
of the deposits from the Bank of the United 
States. The resolutions of Alabama had been 
presented ; they were accompanied by no mo- 
tion to carry the intentions of that State into 
effect ; nor were they accomi)anied by an}- inti- 
mation from the honorable senator, who pre- 
sented them, of his intention to make any pro- 
position, in relation to them, to the Senate. 
Under these circumstances, the inquiry was 
made by him (Mr. C.) of the senator from Ala- 
bama, which he thought the occasion ciilled for. 
The inquiry Avas a very natural one, and he had 
learned with unfeigned surprise th;it the senator 
did not expect it. He would now say to the 
senator from Alabama, that of him, and of him 
alone, were these inquiries made ; and with re- 
gard to the reply made by anotlier senati)r (.Mr. 
Benton), lie would further say, that his relations 
to him were not such as to enable him to know 
what were that senator's intentions, at any time, 
and on any subject, nor was it necessary he 
should know them. 

" He had nothing further to say, tlian to ex- 
press the hope that the senator from Alabama 



526 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



would, for the present, withdraw tlie resolu- 
tions he had presented ; and if, after he had 
consulted precedents, and a careful examination 
of the constitution of the United States, he finds 
that he can, consistently with them, make any 
propositions for the action of the Senate, he 
(Mr. C.) would be willing to receive the resolu- 
tions, and pay to them all that attention and re- 
spect which the proceedings of one of the States 
of this Union merited. If the gentleman did 
not pursue tliat course, he should feel himself 
bound, by every consideration, by all the obli- 
gati(ms which bound a public man to discharge 
liis duty to his God, his country, and his own 
honor, to resist such an unconstitutional proce- 
dure as the reception of these resolutions, -vvith- 
out the expressed wish of the legislature of Ala- 
bama, and without any intimation from her 
senators, of any proposition to be made on them, 
at the very threshold. He did hope that, for 
the present, the gentleman would withdraw these 
resolutions, and at a proper time present them 
with some substantive proposition for the con- 
sideration of the Senate. If he did not, the de- 
bate must go on, to the exclusion of the impor- 
tant one commenced yesterday, and which every 
gentleman expected to be continued to-da}^, as 
he should in such case feel it necessary to sub- 
mit a motion for the Senate to decide whether, 
under present circumstances, the resolutions 
could be received. 

'•Mr. Clay declared that when such a resolu- 
tion should be offered he should discharge the 
duty which he owed to his God, his country and 
his honor. 

" Mr. King of Alabama, had felt an imwilling- 
ness from the first to enter into this discussion. 
for reasons which would be understood by every 
gentleman. It was his wish, and was so under- 
stood b}-- one or two friends whom he had con- 
sulted, that the resolutions should lie on the 
table for the present, until the debate on another 
subject was disposed of. In reply to the sena- 
tor from Kentucky, he must say that he could 
not, situated as he was, accede to liis proposition. 
His object certainly was to carry into effect the 
wishes of the legislature of his State ; and he, as 
well as his colleague, felt bound to obey the will 
of the sovereign State of Alabama, whenever made 
known to them. He certainl^y should, .at a pro- 
per time, present a distinct proposition in rela- 
tion to these resolutions for the consideration of 
the Senate ; and Uie .senator from Kentuckv 
could then have an opportunity of discharging 
"liis duty to his God, to his country, and his 
own honor,' in a manner most consistent with 
his own sense of propriety. 

"Mr. Cla}^ would not renew the iTitimation of 
any intention on hi.s jtart, to submit a motion to 
the Senate, if there was an}- pr()1)al)ility that the 
senator from Alabama would withdraw the reso- 
lutions he had submitted. He now gave notice 
that, if the senator did not think fit to withdraw 
them, he should feel it his duty to submit a pro- 
position which would most probably lead to a 



debate, and prevent the one commenced yester- 
day from being resumed to-day. 

" Mr. Calhoun moved that the resolution be 
laid upon the table, to give the senator from 
Alabama [Mr. King], an opportunity to prepare 
a resolution to accomplish the meditated purpose 
of rescinding the former resolutions of the Senate. 
I confess, sij- (observed ]Mr. C), I feel some cu- 
riosity to see how the senator from Alabama 
will reconcile such a proceeding with the free 
and independent existence of a Senate. I feel, 
sir, a great curiosity to hear how that gentleman 
proposes that the journals are to be kept, if such 
a procedure is allowed to take effect. I should 
like to know how he proposes to repeal a jour- 
nal. By what strange process he would destroy 
facts, and annihilate events and things which are 
now the depositories of history. AY hen he shall 
have satisfied my curiosity on this particular, 
then there is another thing I am anxious to be in- 
formed upon, and that is, what form, what strange 
and new plan of proceeding, will he suggest for the 
adoption of the Senate ? I will tell him ; I will 
show him the only resource that is left, the point 
to which he nece.s.sarily comes, and that is this : 
he will be obliged to declare, in his resolution, 
that the principle upon which the Senate acted 
was not correct ; that it was a false and errone- 
ous principle. And let me ask, what was that 
principle, which now, it seems, is to be destroy- 
ed ? The principle on which the Senate acted, 
the principle which that gentleman engages to 
overthrow, is this : ' we have a right to express 
our opinion.' He will be compelled to deny 
that ; or, perhaps, he maj^ take refuge from such 
a predicament by qualifying his subversion of 
this first principle of legislative freedom. And 
how will he qualify the denial of this principle ? 
that is, how Avill he deny it, and j'et apparently 
maintain it? He has only one resource left, 
and that is, to pretend that we have a right to 
express our oi)inions, but not of the President. 
This is the end and aim ; yes, this is the inevitable 
consequence and result of such an extraordinary, 
such a monstrous procedure. 

'• So then, it is come to this, that the Senate 
has no right to express its opinion in relation to 
the Executive ? A distinction is now set up be- 
tween the President'and all other officers, and 
the gentleman is prepared with, a resolution to 
give etfect and energy to the distinction ; and 
now, for the first time that such a doctrine has 
ever been heard on the American soil, he is pre- 
pared to profess and publish, in the face of the 
American people, that old and worn-out dogma 
of old and worn-out nations, ' the King can do no 
wrong ! ' that his officers, his ministers, are alone 
responsible ; that we shall be permitted perhaps 
to utter our opinions of them ; but a unanimous 
opinion expressed by the Senate, in relation to 
the President himself, is no longer suffered to 
exist, is no longer permitted to be given ; it must 
be expunged from the journals. 

I confess I am agitated with an intense curi- 
osit}^ : I wish to see with what ingenuity of art- 



ANNO 1835. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



527 



ful disguise the Senate is to be reduced to the 
dumb legislation of Bonaparte's Senate. This 
very question brings on the issue. This very 
proposition of expunging our resolutions is the 
question in which the expunging of our legisla- 
tive freedom and independence is to be agitated. 
I confess I long to see the strange extremities 
to which the gentleman will come. It is a ques- 
tion of the utmost magnitude ; I an anxious to 
see it brought on ; two senators [^Messrs. Ben- 
ton, and King of Alabama] have pledged them- 
selves to bring it forward. They cannot do it 
too soon — they cannot too soon expose the hor- 
rible reality of the condition to which our coun- 
try is reduced. I hope they will make no de- 
lay ; let them hasten in their course ; let them 
lose no time in their effort to expunge the Se- 
nate, and dissolve the system of government and 
constitution. Yes, I entreat them to push their 
deliberate purpose to a resolve. They have now 
given origin to a question than which none 
perhaps is, in its effects and tendencies, of deep- 
er and more radical importance ; it is a question 
more important than that of the bank, or than 
that of the Post Office, and I am exceedingly 
anxious to ^-ee how far they will carrv out the 
doctrine they have advanced ; a doctrine as en- 
slaving and as despotic as any that is maintained 
by the Autocrat of all the Russias. To give them 
an opportunit)', f move to lay the resolutions 
on the table, and I promise them that, when they 
move their resolution, I will be ready to take it 
up. 

" Mr. Clay said that the proposition to receive 
the resolutions was a preliminary one, and was 
the question to which he had at first invited the 
attention of the Senate. The debate, certainly, 
had been very irregular, and not strictly in or- 
der. He had contended, from the first, for the 
purpose of avoiding an interference with a de- 
bate on another subject, that the subject of the 
Alabama resolutions should not be agitated at 
that time. The senator from Alabama having 
refused to withdraw these resolutions, he was 
compelled to a course which would, in all pro- 
bability, lead to a protracted debate. 

'•Mr. Clay then submitted the following : 

^^ Resolved, That the resolutions of the legis- 
lature of Alabama, presented by the senator 
from that State, ought not to be acted upon by 
the Senate, inasmuch as they are not addressed 
to the Senate, nor contain any request that the}- 
be laid before the Senate ; and inasmuch, also, 
as that which those resolutions direct should be 
done, cannot be done without violating the con- 
stitution of the United States." 

"Mr. Calhoun here moved to lay the resolu- 
tions on the table, which motion took prece- 
dence of Mr. Clay's, and was not debatable. 
He withdrew it, however, at the request of INIr. 
Clayton. 

" Mr. Benton said an objection had been raised 
to the resolutions of Alabama, by the senator 
from South Carolina and the senator from Dela- 
ware, to which he would briefly reply. Need 



he refer those gentlemen to the course of tbcir 
own reading ? he would refer them to the case 
in a State contiguous to South Carolina, where 
certain proceedings of its legislature were pub- 
licly burnt. (The journal of the Yazoo fraud, 
in Georgia.) Need he refer them to the case of 
Wilkes ? where the British House of Commons 
expunged certain proceedings from their journal 
— expunged ! not by the childish process of send- 
ing out for every copy and cutting a leaf from 
each, but by a more effectual process. He would 
describe the modus as he read it in the parlia- 
mentary history. It was this : There was a 
total suspension of business in the House, and 
the clerk, taking the official journal, the original 
record of its proceedings, and reading the clause 
to be expunged, obliterated it, word after word, 
not by making a Saint Andrew's cross over the 
clause, as is sometimes done in old accounts, 
but by completely erasing out every letter. 
This i^ the way expunging is done, and this is 
what I propose to get done in the Senate, through 
the power of the people, upon this lawless con- 
demnation of President Jackson : and no sys- 
tem of tactics or manoeuvres shall prevent me 
from following up the design according to the 
notice given yesterday. 

"Mr. King of Alabama, in reph', said that 
when the proper time arrived — and he should 
use his own time, on his own responsibility — he 
would bring forward the resolution, of which the 
senator from jNIissouri had given notice, if not 
prevented by the previous action of that gentle- 
man. He had no doubt of the power of the 
Senitte to repeal any resolution it had adopted. 
What ! repeal facts ? asked the senator from 
South Carolina. He would ask that gentleman 
if they had it not in their power to retrace their 
steps when they have done wrong ? If they 
had it not in their power to correct their own 
journal when asserting what was not true ? The 
democratic party of the countrj- had spoken, pro- 
nounced judgment upon the facts stated in that 
journal. They had declared that these facts 
were not true; that the condemnation pro- 
nounced against the Chief Magistrate, for having 
violated the constitution of the United States, 
was not true ; and it was high time that it was 
stricken from the journal it disgraced. 

"Mr. Calhoun observed tliat'the senator from 
Alabama having made some personal allusions 
to him, he felt bound to notice them, although 
not at all disposed to intrude ujion the patience 
of the Senate. The senator had said that he 
(jMr. C.) was truly connected witli party. Now, 
if by 'party' the gentleman meant that he was 
enlisted in any pofitical scheme, that he desired 
to promote th'c success of any party, or wa.s anx- 
ious to see any particular man elevated to the 
Chief Magistracy, he did liim great injustice. It 
was a long time since he (Mr. C.) had taken any 
active part in the political allairs of the country. 
The senator need onl}- to have looked back to 
his vote, for the last eight years, to have been 
satisfied that he (Mr. C.) "had voluntarily put 



528 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



himself in the very small minority to which he 
belonged, and that he had done this to serve the 
gallant and patriotic State of South Carolina. 
Would the gentleman say that he did not step 
forward in defence of South Carolina, in the 
great and magnanimous stand which sliu took 
in defence of her rights ? Now, he wished the 
senator to understand him, that he had jmt him- 
self in a minority of at least one to a hundred ; 
that he had abandoned party voluntarily, freely; 
and he would tell every senator — for he was con- 
strained to speak of himself, and thei-efore he 
should speak boldly— he would not turn upon 
his heel for the administration of the affairs of 
this government. He believed that such was 
the hold which corruption had obtained in this 
government, that any man who shovdd under- 
take to reform it would not be sustained." 

Mr. King of Alabama moved that the resolu- 
tions be printed, which motion was superseded 
by a motion to laj it on the table, which pre- 
vailed — ^yeas twenty-seven, nays twenty — as fol- 
lows: 

" Yeas.— Messrs. Bell, Bibb, Black, Calhoun, 
Clay, Clayton, Ewing, FreUnghuysen, Golds- 
borough, Hendricks, Kent, Knight, Leigh, Man- 
gum, Naudain, Poindexter, Porter, Prentiss, 
llobbins, Silsbee, Smith, Southard, Swift, Tom- 
linson, Tyler. AV^aggaman, Webster. 

"Nays. — Messrs. Benton, Brown, Buchanan, 
Cuthbert, Grundy, Hill, Kane, King of Alaba- 
ma, King of Georgia, Linn, IMcKean, Moore, 
Morris, Preston, Robinson, Shepley, Talhnadge, 
Tipton, White, Wright." 

And thus the resolutions of a sovereign State, 
in favor of expunging what it deemed to be a 
lawless sentence passed upon the President, were 
refused even a reception and a printing — a cir- 
cumstance which seemed to augur badly for the 
final success of the series of expunging motions 
which I had pledged myself to make. But, in 
fact, it was not discouraging — but the contrary. 
It strengthened the conviction that such conduct 
would sooner induce the change of senators in 
the democratic States, and permit the act to be 
done. 



CHAPTER CXXIII. 

THE EXPUNGING RESOLUTION. 

From the moment of the Senate's condemnation 
of General Jackson, Mr. Benton gave notice of 
his intention to move the expunction of the 



sentence from the journal, periodically and con- 
tinually until the object should be effected, or 
his political life come to its end. In conformity 
to this notice, he made his formal motion at the 
session '34-'35 ; and in these words : 

^^ Resolved, That the resolution adopted by 
the Senate, on the 28th day of March, in the 
year 1834, in the following words: 'Resolved^ 
That the President, in the late executive pro- 
ceedings in relation to the public revenue, has 
assumed upon himself authority and power not 
conferred by the constitution and laws, but in 
derogation of both,' be, and the same hereby is, 
ordered to be expunged from the journals of 
the Senate ; because the said resolution is ille- 
gal and unjust, of evil example, indefinite and 
vague, expressing a criminal charge without 
specification ; and was irregularly and uncons titu- 
tionally adopted by the Senate, in subversion of 
the rights of defence which belong to an accused 
and impeachable officer; and at a time and 
under circumstances to endanger, the political 
rights, and to injure the pecuniary interests of 
the people of the United States." 

This proposition was extremely distasteful to 
the Senate — to the majority whicli passed the 
sentence on General Jackson ; and iMr. Southard, 
senator from New Jersey, spoke their senti- 
ments, and his own, when he thus bitterly cha- 
racterized it as an indictment which the Senate 
itself was required to try, and to degrade itself 
in its own condemnation, — he said : 

" The object of this resolution (said Mr. S.), 
is not to obtain an expression from the Senate 
that their former opinions were erroneous, nor 
that the Executive acted correctly in relation to 
the public treasury. It goes further, and de- 
nounces the act of the Senate as so unconstitu- 
tional, unjustifiable, and offensive, that the evi- 
dence of it ought not to be permitted to remain 
upon the recoi-ds of the government. It is an 
indictment against the Senate. The senatoi- 
from Missouri calls upon us to sit in judgment 
upon our own act, and warns us that we can 
save ourselves from future and lasting denun- 
ciation and reproach only by pronouncing our 
own condemnation by our votes. lie assures 
us that he has no desire or intention to degrade 
the Senate, but the position in which he would 
place us is one of deep degradation — degrada- 
tion of the most humiliating character — which 
not only acknowledges error, and admits inex- 
cusable misconduct in this legislative branch of 
the government, but bows it down before the 
majesty of the Executive, and makes us offer 
incense to his infallibility.'' 

The bitterness of this self trial was aggravat- 
ed by seeing the course which the public mind 



ANNO 1835. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



529 



was taking. A current, strong and steady, and 
constantly swelling, was setting in for the 
President and against the Senate ; and resolu- 
tions from the legislatures of several States — 
Alabama, Mississippi, New Jersey, North Caro- 
lina — had already arrived instructing their sena- 
tors to vote for the expurgation which Mr. 
Benton proposed. In the mean time he had 
not yet made his leading speech in favor of his 
motion ; and he judged this to be the proper 
time to do so, in order to produce its effects on 
the elections of the ensuing summer ; and ac- 
cordingly now spoke as follows : 

"Mr. Benton then rose and addressed the 
Senate in support of his motion. He said that 
the resolution which he had offered, though re- 
solved upon, as he had heretofore stated, with- 
out consultation with any person, was not re- 
solved upon without great deliberation in his 
own mind. The criminating resolution, which 
it was his object to expunge, was presented to 
the Senate, December 26th, 1833. The senator 
from Kentucky who introduced it [Mr. Clay], 
commenced a discussion of it on that day, which 
was continued through the months of January 
and February, and to the end, nearly, of the 
month of March. The vote was taken upon it 
the 28th of March ; and about a fortnight there- 
after he announced to the Senate his intention 
to commence a series of motions for expunging 
the resolution from the journal. Here, then, 
were nearly four months for consideration ; for 
the decision was expected; and he had very 
anxiously considered, during that period, all the 
diflSculties, and all the proprieties, of the step 
which he meditated. Was the intended motion 
to clear the journal of the resolution right in 
itself? The convictions of his judgment told 
him that it was. Was expurgation the proper 
mode ? Yes ; he was thoroughly satisfied that 
that was the proper mode of proceeding in this 
case. For the criminating resolution which he 
wished to get rid of combined all the charac- 
teristics of a case which required erasure and 
obliteration : for it was a case, as he believed, 
of the exercise of power without authority 
without even jiK'sdiction ; illegal, irregular, and 
unjust. Other modes of annulling the resolu- 
tion, as rescinding, reversing, repealing, could 
not be proper in such a case ; for they would 
imply rightful jurisdiction, a lawful authority 
a legal action, though an erroneous judgment. 

Vol. I.— 34 



All that he denied. He denied the authority 
of the Senate to pass such a resolution at all ; 
and he affirmed that it was unjust, and contra- 
ry to the truth, as well as contrary to law. 
This being his view of the resolution, he held 
that the true and proper course, the parlia- 
mentary course of proceeding in such a case, 
was to expunge it. 

But, said Mr. B., it is objected that the Senate 
has no right to expunge any thing from its 
journal ; that it is required by the constitu- 
tion to keep a journal ; and, being so required, 
could not destroy any part of it. This, said 
Mr. B., is sticking in the bark ; and in the thin- 
nest bark in which a shot, even the smallest, 
was ever lodged. Various are the meanings of 
the word keep, used as a verb. To keep a jour- 
nal is to write down, daily, the history of what 
you do. For the Senate to keep a journal is to 
cause to be written down, every day, the ac- 
count of its proceedings ; and, having done that, 
the constitutional injunction is satisfied. The 
constitution was satisfied by entering this crim- 
inating resolution on the journal ; it will be 
equally satisfied by entering the expunging res- 
olution on the same journal. In each case the 
Senate keeps a journal of its ovm proceedings. 

It is objected, also, that we have no right to 
destroy a part of the journal ; and that to ex- 
punge is to destroy and to prevent the expung- 
ed part from being known in future. Not so 
the fact, said Mr. B. The matter expunged is 
not destroyed. It is incorporated in the ex- 
punging resolution, and lives as long as that 
lives ; the only effect of the expurgation being 
to express, in the most emphatic manner, the 
opinion that such matter ought never to have 
been put in the journal. 

Mr. B. said he would support these positions 
by authority, the authority of eminent exam- 
ples ; and would cite two cases, out of a multi- 
tude that might be adduced, to show that ex- 
punging was the proper course, the parliamcn- 
mentary course, in such a case as the one now 
before the Senate, and that the expunged mat- 
ter was incorporated and preserved in (he ex 
punging resolution. 

Mr. B. then read, from a volume of British 
Parliamentary History, the celebrated case of 
the Middlesex election, in which the resolution 
to expel the famous John Wilkes was expunged 
from the journal, but preserved in the expui-ga- 



530 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



tory resolution, so as to be just as well read 
now as if it had never been blotted out from 
the journals of the British House of Commons. 
The resolution ran in these words : " That the 
resolution of the House of the 17th February, 
1769, 'that John Wilkes, Esq., having been, in 
this session of Parliament, expelled this House, 
was and is incapable of being elected a member 
to serve in the present Parliament,' be expung- 
ed from the journals of this House, as being 
subversive of the rights of the whole body of 
electors of this kingdom." Such, said Mr. B., 
were the terms of the expunging resolution in 
the case of the Middlesex election, as it was 
annually introduced from 1709 to 1782 ; when it 
was finally passed by a vote of near three to 
one, and the clause ordered to be expunged was 
blotted out of the journal, and obliterated, by 
the clerk at the table, in the presence of the 
whole House, which remained silent, and all 
business suspended until the obliteration was 
complete. Yet the history of the case is not 
lost. Though blotted out of one part of the 
journal, it is saved in another ; and here, at the 
distance of half a century, and some thousand 
miles from London, the whole case is read as 
fully as if no such operation had ever been per- 
formed upon it. 

Having given a precedent from British par- 
liamentary history, Mr. B. would give another 
from American history ; not, indeed, from the 
Congress of the assembled States, but from one 
of the oldest and most respectable States of the 
Union : he spoke of ^lassachusetts, and of the 
resolution adopted in the Senate of that State 
during the late war, adverse to the celebration 
of our national victories ; and which, some ten 
years afterwards, was expunged from the jour- 
nals by a solemn vote of the Senate. 

A year ago, said Mr. B., the Senate tried 
President Jackson ; now the Senate itself is on 
trial nominally before itself; but in reality be- 
fore America, Europe, and posteritj'. We shall 
give our voices in our own case ; we shall vote 
for or against this motion ; and the entry upon 
the record will be according to the majority' of 
voices. But that is not the end, but the be- 
ginning of our trial. We shall be judged by 
others , by the public, by the present age, and 
by all posterity ! The proceedings of this case, 
and of this diiy, will not be limited to the present 
age ; they will go down to posterity, and to the 



latest .ages. President Jackson is not a character 
to be forgotten in history. His name is not to 
be confined to the dry catalogue and official 
nomenclature of mere American Presidents. 
Like the great Romans who attained the con- 
sulship, not by the paltry arts of electioneering, 
but through a series of illustrious deeds, his 
name will live, not for the offices he filled, but 
for the deeds which he performed. He is the 
first President that has ever received the con- 
demnation of the Senate for the violation of the 
laws and the constitution, the first whose name 
is borne upon the journals of the American Se- 
nate for the violation of that constitution which 
he is sworn to observe, and of those laws which 
he is bound to see faithfully executed. Such 
a condemnation cannot escape the observation 
of history. It will be read, considered, judged ! 
when the men of this day, and the passions of 
this hour, shall have passed to eternal repose. 

Before he proceeded to the exposition of the 
case which he intended to make, he wished to 
avail himself of an argument which had been 
conclusive elsewhere, and which he trusted 
could not be without effect in this Senate. It 
was the argument of public opinion. In the 
case of the Middlesex election, it had been de- 
cisive with the British House of Commons ; in 
the Massachusetts case, it had been decisive 
with the Senate of that State. In both these 
cases many gentlemen yielded their private 
opinions to public sentiment ; and public senti- 
ment having been well pronounced in the case 
now before the Senate, he had a right to look 
for the same deferential respect for it here which 
had been shown elsewhere." 

Mr. B. then took up a volume of British par- 
liamentary history for the year 1782, the 22d 
volume, and read various passages from pages 
1407, 1408, 1410, 1411, to show the stress which 
had been laid on the argument of public opinion 
in favor of expunging the Middlesex resolutions ; 
and the deference which was paid to it by the 
House, and by members who had, until then, 
opposed the motion to expunge. He read first 
from Mr. Wilkes' opening speech, on renewing 
his annual motion for the fourteenth time, as 
follows : 

"If the people of England, sir, have at any 
time explicitly and fully declared an opinion 
respecting a momentous constitutional question, 
it has been in regard to the Middlesex election 



ANNO 1835. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



531 



in 1768." * * * * " Their voice was never 
heard in a more clear and distinct manner than 
on this point of the first magnitude for all the 
electors of the kingdom, and I tmst will now 
be heard favorably." 

He then read from Mr. Fox's speech. Mr. 
Fox had heretofore opposed the expunging reso- 
lution, but now yielded to it in obedience to the 
voice of the people. 

" He (^Mr. Fox) had turned the question often 
in his mind, he was still of opinion that the re- 
solution which gentlemen wanted to expunge 
was founded on proper principles." * * * * 
" Though he opposed the motion, he felt very 
little anxiety for the event of the question ; for 
when he found the voice of the people was 
against the privilege, as he believed was the case 
at present, he would not preserve the privilege." 
* * * * " The people had associated, they 
had declared their sentiments to Parliament, 
and had taught Parliament to listen to the voice 
of their constituents." 

Having read these passages, Mr. B. said they 
were the sentiments of an English whig of the 
old school. Mr. Fox was a whig of the old 
school. He acknowledged the right of the peo- 
ple to instruct their representatives. He yielded 
to the general voice himself, though not specially 
instructed ; and he uses the remarkable expres- 
sion which acknowledges the duty of Parliament 
to obey the will of the people. " They had de- 
clared their sentiments to Parliament, and had 
taught Parliament to listen to the voice of their 
constituents." This, said Mr. B., was fifty years 
ago ; it was spoken by a member of Parliament, 
who, besides being the first debater of his age, 
was at that time Secretary at War. He ac- 
knowledged the duty of Parliament to obey the 
voice of the people. The son of a peer of the 
realm, and only not a peer himself because he 
was not the eldest son, he still acknowledged 
the great democratic principle which lies at the 
bottom of all representative government. After 
this, after such an example, will American Se- 
nators be unwilling to obey the people ? "Will 
they require people to teach Congress the lesson 
which ^Ir. Fox says the English people had 
taught their Parliament fifty years ago ? The 
voice of the people of the United States had 
been heard on this subject. The elections 
declared it. The vote of many legislatures de- 
declared it. From the confines of the Republic 



the voice of the people came rolling in — a swell- 
ing tide, rising as it flowed — and covering the 
Capitol with its mountain waves. Can that 
voice be disregarded ? Will members of a re- 
publican Congress be less obedient to the voice 
of the people than were the representatives of 
a monarchical House of Commons ? 

]Mr. B. then proceeded to the argument of his 
motion. He moved to expunge the resolution 
of March 28, 1834, from the journals of the 
Senate, because it was illegal and unjust ; vague 
and indefinite ; a criminal charge without spe- 
cification ; unwarranted by the constitution and 
laws ; subversive of the rights of defence which 
belong to an accused and impeachable officer ; 
of evil example ; and adopted at a time and under 
circumstances to involve the political rights 
and the pecuniary interests of the people of the 
United States in peculiar danger and serious in- 
jury. 

These reasons for expunging the criminating 
resolution from the journals, Mr. B. said, were 
not phrases collected and paraded for effect, or 
strung together for harmony of sound. They 
were each, separately and individually, substan- 
tive reasons ; every word an allegation of fact, 
or of law. Without going fully into the argu- 
ment now, he would make an exposition which 
would lay open his meaning, and enable each 
allegation, whether of law or of fact, to be fully 
understood, and replied to in the sense intended. 

1. niegal and unjust. — These were the first 
heads under which Mr. B. would develope his 
objections, he would say the outline of his ob- 
jections, to the resolution proposed to be ex- 
punged. He held it to be illegal, because it 
contained a criminal charge, on which the Pres- 
ident might be impeached, and for which he 
might be tried by the Senate. The resolution 
adopted by the Senate is precisely the first step 
taken in the House of Representatives to bring 
on an impeachment. It was a resolution offered 
by a member in his place, containing a criminal 
charge against an impeachable ofiicer, debated 
for a hundred days ; and then voted upon by the 
Senate, and the officer voted to be guilty. Thi.s 
is the precise mode of bringing on an impeach- 
ment in the House of Representatives ; and, to 
prove it, Mr. B. would read from a work of ap- 
proved authority on parliamentary practice ; it 
was from 'Mr. Jefferson's jManual. !\Ir. B. then 
read from the ^Manual, under the section entitled 



532 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



Impeachment, and from that head of the section 
entitled accusation. The writer was giving the 
British Parliamentary practice, to which our 
own constitution is conformable. " The Com- 
mons, as the grand inquest of the nation, became 
suitors for penal justice. The general course is 
to pass a resolution containing a criminal charge 
against the supposed delinquent ; and then to 
direct some member to impeach him by oral 
accusation at the bar of the House of Lords, in 
the name of the Commons." 

Repeating a clause of what he had read, Mr. 
B. said the general course is to pass a criminal 
charge against the supposed delinquent. This is 
exactly what the Senate did ; and what did it 
do next? Nothing. And why nothing ? Be- 
cause there was nothing to be done by them but 
to execute the sentence thej' had passed ; and 
that they could not do. Penal justice was the 
consequence of the resolution ; and a judgment 
of penalties could not be attempted on such an 
irregular proceeding. The only kind of penal 
justice which the Senate could inflict was that 
of public opinion ; it was to ostracize the Presi- 
dent, and to expose him to public odium, as 
a violator of the laws and constitution of his 
country. Having shown the resolution to be 
illegal, Mr. B. would pronounce it to be unjust ; 
for he affirmed the resolution to be untrue ; he 
maintained that the President had violated no 
law, no part of the constitution, in dismissing 
Mr. Duane from the Treasury, appointing Mr. 
Taney, or causing the deposits to be removed ; 
for these were the specifications contained in the 
original resolution, also in the second modifica- 
tion of the resolution, and intended in the third 
modification, when stripped of specifications, and 
reduced to a vague and general charge. It was 
in this shape of a general charge that the reso- 
lution passed. No new specifications were even 
suggested in debate. The alterations were made 
voluntarily, by the friends of the resolution, at 
the last moment of the debate, and just when 
the vote was to be taken. And why were the 
specifications then dropped? Because no ma- 
jority could be found to agree in them ? or be- 
cause it was thought prudent to drop the name 
of the Bank of the United States ? or for both 
these reasons together? Be that as it may, said 
Mr. B., the condemnation of the President, and 
the support of the bank, were connected in the 
resolution, and will be indissolubly connected 



in the pubMc mind ; and the President was un- 
justly condemned in the same resolution that 
befriended and sustained the cause of the bank, 
lie held the condemnation to be untrue in point 
of fact, and therefore unjust ; for he maintained 
that there was no breach of the laws and con- 
stitution in any thing that President Jackson 
did, in removing JNIr. Duane, or in appointing Mr. 
Taney, or in causing the deposits to be removed. 
There was no violation of law, or constitution, 
in any part of these proceedings ; on the con- 
trary, the whole country, and the government 
itself, was redeemed from the dominion of a 
great and daring moneyed coi'poration, by the 
wisdom and energy of these very proceedings. 

2. Vague and indefinite; a criminal charge 
withcut specification. Such was the resolution, 
Mr. B. said, when it passed the Senate; but 
such it was not when fiii'st introduced, nor even 
when first altered ; in its first and second forms 
it contained specifications, and these specifica- 
tions identified the condemnation of the Presi- 
dent with the defence of the bank ; in its third 
form, these specifications were omitted, and no 
others were substituted ; the bank and the re- 
solution stood disconnected on the record, but 
as much connected, in fact, as ever. The reso- 
lution was reduced to a vague and indefinite 
form, on purpose, and in that circumstance, ac- 
quired a new character of injustice to President 
Jackson. His accusers should have specified 
the law, and the clause in the constitution, 
which was violated ; they should have specified 
the acts which constituted the violation. This 
was due to tlie accused, that he might know on 
what points to defend himself; it was- due to 
the public, that they might know on what points 
to hold the accusers to their responsibility, and 
to make them accountable for an unjust accusa- 
tion. To sustain this position, Mr. B. had re- 
course to history and example, and produced 
the case of Mr. Giles's accusation of General 
Hamilton, then Secretary of the Treasury, in 
the year 1793. Mr. Giles, he said, proceeded 
in a manly, responsible manner. He specified 
the law and the alleged violations of the law, 
so that the friends of General Hamilton could 
see what to defend, and so as to make himself 
accountable for the accusation. He specified the 
law, which he believed to be violated, by its date 
and its title ; and he specified the two instances 
in which he held that law to have been infringed. 



ANNO 1836. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESmENT. 



533 



Mr. B. said he had a double object in quoting 
this resolution of Mv. Giles, which was intended 
to lay the foundation for an impeachment against 
General Hamilton ; it was to show, first, the 
speciality with which these criminating resolu- 
tions should be drawn ; next, to show the ab- 
sence of any allegations of corrupt or wicked 
intention. The mere violation of law was 
charged as the offence, as it was in three of the 
articles of impeachment against Judge Chase ; 
and thus, the absence of an allegation of cor- 
rupt intention in the resolution adopted against 
President Jackson, was no argument against its 
impeachment character, especially as exhibited 
in its first and second form, with the criminal 
averment, "dangerous to the liberties of the 
people." 

For the purpose of exposing the studied 
vagueness of the resolution as passed, detect- 
ina; its connection with the Bank of the United 
States, demonstrating its criminal character in 
twice retaining the criminal averment, " danger- 
ous to the liberties of the people," and showing 
the progressive changes it had to undergo be- 
fore it could conciliate a majority of the votes, 
Mr. B. would exhibit all three of the re- 
solutions, and read them side by side of each 
other, as they appeared before the Senate, in 
the first, second, and third forms which they 
were made to wear. They appeared first in the 
embryo, or primordial form ; then they assumed 
their aurelia, or chrysalis state; in the third 
stage, they reached the ultimate perfection of 
their imperfect nature. 

First Form.— December 26, 1833. 

" Besoiced, That by dismissing the late Secre- 
tary of the Treasury, because he would not, 
contrary to his sense of his own duty, remove 
the monej- of the United States, in deposit with 
the Bank of the United States and its branches, 
in conformity with the President's opinion, and 
by appointing his successor to make such re- 
moval, which has been done, the President has 
assumed the exercise of a power over the trea- 
sury of the United States not granted to him 
by the constitution and laws, and dangerous to 
the liberties of the people." 

Second Form.— MarcA. 28, 1834. 

^^ Resolved, That, in taking upon himself the 
responsibility of removing the deposit of the 



public money from the Bank of the United 
States, the President of the United States ha.? 
assumed the exercise of a power over the trea- 
sury of the United States not granted to him 
by the constitution and laws, and dangerous to 
the liberties of the people." 

Third Form.— MarcA, 28, 1834. 

^^ Resolved, That the President, in the late 
executive proceedings, in relation to the public 
revenue, has assumed upon himself authority 
and power not conferred by the constitution 
and laws, but in derogation of both." 

Having exhibited the original resolution, with 
its variations, Mr. B. would leave it to others 
to explain the reasons of such extraordinary 
metamorphoses. Whether to get rid of the 
bink association, or to get rid of the impeach- 
ment clause, or to conciliate the votes of all who 
were willing to condemn the President, but 
could not tell for what, it was not for him to 
say ; but one thing he would venture to say, 
that the majority who agreed in passing a gene- 
ral resolution, containing a criminal charge 
against President Jackson, for violating the laws 
and the constitution, cannot now agree in 
naming the law or the clause in the constitu- 
tion violated, or in specifying any act constitu- 
ting such violation. And here Mr. B. paused, 
and offered to give way to the gentlemen of 
the opposition, if they would now undertake to 
specify any act which President Jackson had 
done in violation of law or constitution. 

3. Unwarranted by the constitution and 
latos. — Mr. B. said this head explained itself. 
It needed no development to be understood by 
the Senate or the country. The President was 
condemned without the form of a trial ; and, 
therefore, his condemnation was unwarranted 
by the constitution and laws. 

4. Snbvei^sive of the rights of defence, which 
belong to an accused and impeachable officer. — 
This head, also (Mr. B. said), explained itself. 
An accused person had a riglit to be heard be- 
fore he was condemned ; an impeachable officer 
could not be condemned unheard by the Senate, 
without subverting all the rights of defence 
which belong to him, and disqualifying tlie S(>n- 
ate to act as inqwrtial judges in (he event of his 
being regularly impeached for the same offence. 
In this case, the House of Representatives, if 
they confided in the Senate's condemnation, 



534 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



would send up an impeachment; that they had 
not done so, was proof that they had no confi- 
dence in the correctness of our decision. 

5. Of evil example. — Nothing, said Mr. B., 
could be more unjust and illegal in itself, and 
therefore more evil in example, than to try peo- 
ple without a hearing, and condemn them with- 
out defence. In this case, such a trial and such 
a condemnation was aggravated by the refusal 
of the Senate, after their sentence was pro- 
nounced, to receive the defence of the President, 
and let it be printed for the inspection of pos- 
terity ! So that, if this criminating resolution 
Is not expunged, the singular spectacle will go 
down to posterity, of a condemnation, and a 
refusal to permit an answer from the condemned 
person standing recorded on the pages of the 
same journal ! Mr. B. said the Senate muftt 
look forward to the time — far ahead, perhaps, 
but a time which may come — when this body 
may be filled with disappointed competitors, 
or personal enemies of the President, or of 
aspirants to the very ofiice which he holds, 
and who may not scruple to undertake to crip- 
ple him by senatorial condemnations ; to at- 
taint him by convictions ; to ostracise him by 
vote ; and lest this should happen, and the pre- 
sent condemnation of President Jackson should 
become the precedent for such an odious pro- 
ceeding, the evil example should be arrested, 
should be removed, by expunging the present 
sentence from the journals of the Senate. And 
here Mr. B. would avail himself of a voice 
. which had often been heard in the two Houses 
of Congress, and always with respect and ven- 
eration. It was the voice of a wise man, an 
honest man, a good man, a patriot ; one who 
knew no cause but the cause of his country ; 
and who, a quarter of a century ago, foresaw 
and described the scenes of this day, and fore- 
told the consequences which must have happen- 
ed to any other President, under the circum- 
stances in which President Jackson has been 
placed. He spoke of Nathaniel Macon of North 
Carolina, and of the sentiments which he ex- 
pressed, in the year 1810, when called upon to 
give a vote in approbation of Mr. Madison's 
conduct in dismissing Mr. Jackson, the then 
British minister to the United States. He op- 
posed the resolution of approbation, because 
the House had nothing to do with the Presi- 
dent, in their legislative character, except the 



passing of laws, calling for information, or im' 
peaching ; and, looking into the evil conse- 
qucnces of undertaking to judge of the Presi 
dent's conduct, he foi-etold the exact predica- 
ment in which the Senate is now involved, with 
respect to President Jackson. INIr. B. then 
read extracts from the speech of Mr. Macon, on 

the occasion referred to : 

" I am opposed to the resolution, not for the 
reasons which have been offered against it, nor 
for any which can be drawn from the documents 
before us, but because I am opposed to address- 
ing the President of the United States upon any 
subject whatever. We have nothing to do with 
him, in our legislative character, except the 
passing of laws, calling on him for information, 
or to impeach. On the day of the presidential 
election, we, in common with our fellow-citi- 
zens, are to pass on his conduct, and resolutions 
of this sort will have no weight on that day. It 
is on this ground solely that I am opposed to 
adopting any resolution whatever in relation to 
the Executive conduct. If the national legisla- 
ture can pass resolutions to approve the con- 
duct of the President, may they not also pass 
resolutions to censure ? And what would be 
the situation of the country, if we were now 
discussing a motion to request the President to 
recall Mr. Jackson, and again to endeavor to 
negotiate with him ?" 

6. At a time, and xmcler circumstances^toin- 
volve the political rights and pecuniary inte- 
rests of the people of the United States in serious 
injury and peculiar danger. — This head of his 
argument, Mr. B. said, would require a develop- 
ment and detail which he had not deemed 
necessary at this time, considering what had 
been said by him at the last session, and what 
would now be said by others, to give the 
reasons which he had so briefly touched. But 
at this point he approached new ground; he 
entered a new field ; he saw an extended 
horizon of argument and fact expand before 
him, and it became necessary for him to expand 
with his subject. The condemnation of the 
President is indissolubly connected with the 
cause of the bank ! The first form of the re- 
solution exhibited the connection; the second 
form did also ; every speech did the same ; for 
every speech in condemnation of the President 
was in justification of the bank ; every speech 
in justification of the President was in con- 



ANNO 1835. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



535 



demnation of the bank ; and thus the two ob- 
jects were identical and reciprocal. The at- 
tack of one was a defence of the other ; the 
defence of one was the attack of the other. 
And thus it continued for the long protracted 
period of nearly one hundred days — from De- 
cember 26th, 1833, to March 28th, 1834— when, 
for reasons not explained to the Senate, upon a 
private consultation amonj? the friends of the 
resolution, the mover of it came forward to the 
Secretary's table, and voluntarily made the alter- 
ations which cut the connection between the 
bank and the resolution ! but it stood upon the 
record, by striking out every thing relative to 
the dismissal of Mr. Duane, the appointment of 
Mr. Tanejr, and the removal of the deposits. 
But the alteration was made in the record only. 
The connection still subsisted in fact, now lives 
in memory, and shall live in history. Yes, sir, 
said Mr. B., addressing himself to the President 
of the Senate ; yes, sir, the condemnation of the 
President was indissolubly connected Avith the 
cause of the bank, with the removal of the de- 
posits, the renewal of the charter, the restora- 
tion of the deposits, the vindication of Mr. 
Duane, the rejection of Mr. Taney, the fate of 
elections, the overthrow of Jackson's adminis- 
tration, the fall of prices, the distress meetings, 
the distress memorials, the distress committees, 
the distress speeches ; and all the long list of 
hapless measures which astonished, terrified, 
afflicted, and deeply injured the country during 
the long and agonized protraction of the famous 
panic session. All these things are connected, 
said Mr. B. ; and it became his duty to place a 
part of the proof which established the connec- 
tion before the Senate and the people. 

Mr. B. then took up the appendix to the re- 
port made by the Senate's Committee of Finance 
on the bank, commonly called Mr. Tyler's re- 
port, and read extracts from instructions sent to 
two-and-twenty branches of the bank, contem- 
poraneously with the progress of the debate on 
the criminating resolutions ; the object and ef- 
fect of which, and their connection with the 
debate in the Senate, would be quickly seen. 
Premising that the bank had dispatched orders 
to the same branches, in the month of August, 
and had curtailed $4,006,000, and again, in the 
month of October, to curtail $55,825,000, and to 
increase the rates of their exchange, and had 
expressly stated in a circular, on the 17th of 



that month, that this reduction would place the 
branches in a position of entire securit}', I\Ir. B. 
invoked attention to the shower of orders, and 
their dates, which he was about to read. He 
read passages from page 77 to 82, inclusive. 
They were all extracts of letters from the pre- 
sident of the bank in person, to the presidents 
of the branches ; for Mr. B. said it must be re- 
membered, as one of the peculiar features of the 
bank attack upon -the country last winter, that 
the whole business of conducting this curtail- 
ment, and raising exchanges, and doing whatever 
it pleased with the commerce, currency, and 
business of the country, was withdrawn from 
the board of directors, and confided to one of 
those convenient committees of which the pres- 
ident is ex officio member and creator; and 
which, in this case, was expressly absolved from 
reporting to the board of directors ! The letters, 
then, are all from Nicholas Biddle, president, 
and not from Samuel Jaudon, cashier, and are 
addressed direct to the presidents of the branch 
banks. 

When IMr. B. had finished reading these ex- 
tracts, he turned to the report made by the sen- 
ator from Virginia, who sat on his right [Mr. 
Tyler], where all that was said about these new 
measures of hostility, and the proprietj^ of the 
bank's conduct in this tliird curtailment, and in 
its increase upon rates of exchange, was com- 
pressed into twenty lines, and the wisdom or ne- 
cessity of them were left to be pronounced upon 
by the judgment of the Senate. Mr. B. would 
read those twenty lines of that report : 

" The whole amount of reduction ordered by 
the above proceedings (curtailment ordered on 
8th and 17th of October) was !55,825,90fi. The 
same table. No. 4, exhibits the fiict, that on the 
23d of January a further reduction was ordered 
to the amount of $3,320,000. This was com- 
municated to the offices in letters from the pre- 
sident, stating ' that the present situation of the 
bank, and the new measures of hostility which 
are understood to be in contemplation, make it 
expedient to place the institution beyond the 
reach of all danger; for this purpn.<;e, T am di- 
rected to instruct your office to conduct its busi- 
ness on the following footing' (appendix, No. 
9, copies of letters). The offices of Cincinnati, 
Louisville, Lexington, St. Louis, Nashville, and 
Natchez, were further directed to confine thcTu- 
selves to ninety days' bills on Baltimorc, and the 



536 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



cities north of it, of which they were allowed 
to purchase any amount their means would jus- 
tify : and to bills on New Orleans, which they 
were to take only in payment of pre-existing debts 
to the bank and its oflBces ; while the office at 
New Orleans was^irected to abstain from drawing 
on the Western offices, and to make its pur- 
chases mainly on the North Atlantic cities. The 
committee has thus given a full, and somewhat 
elaborate detail of the various measures resorted 
to by the bank, from the 13th of August, 1833 ; 
of their wisdom and necessity the Senate will 
best be able to pronounce a correct judgment." 

This, Mr. B. said, was the meagre and stinted 
manner in which the report treated a transac- 
tion which he would show to be the most cold- 
blooded, calculating, and diabolical, which the 
annals of any country on this side of Asia could 
exhibit. 

[Mr. Tyler here said there were two pages on 
this subject to be found at another part of the 
report, and opened the report at the place for 
Mr. B.] 

Mr. B. said the two pages contained but few 
allusions to this subject, and nothing to add to 
or vary what was contained in the twenty lines 
he had read. He looked upon it as a great 
omission in the report ; the more so as the com- 
mittee had been expressly commanded to re- 
port upon the curtailments and the conduct of 
the bank in the business of internal exchange. 
He had hoped to have had searching inquiries 
and detailed statements of facts on these vital 
points. lie looked to the senator from Virginia 
[Mr. Tyler] for these inquiries and statements. 
He wished him to show, by the manner in which 
he would drag to light, and expose to view, the 
vast crimes of the bank, that the Old Dominion 
was still the mother of the Gracchi ; that the 
old lady was not yet forty-five ; that she could 
breed sons ! Sons to emulate the fame of the 
Scipios. But he was disappointed. The report 
was dumb, silent, speechless, upon the opera- 
tions of the bank during its terrible campaign 
of panic and pressure upon tho American people. 
And nr w he would pay one instalment of the 
speech which had been promised some time ago 
on the suljcct of this report ; for there was part 
of that speech which was strictly applicable and 
appropriate to the head he was now discussing. 

Mr. B. then addressed himself to the senator 
from Virginia, who sat on his right [Mr. Tyler], 



and requested him to supply an omission in hit 
report, and to inform what were those new 
measures of hostility alluded to in the two-and- 
twenty letters of instruction of the bank, and 
repeated in the report, and which were made 
the pretext for this third curtailment, and these 
new and extraordinary restrictions and impo- 
sitions upon the purchase of bills of exchange. 

[Mr. Tyler answered that it was the ex- 
pected prohibition upon the receivability of the 
branch bank drafts in payment of the federal 
revenue.] 

Mr. B. resumed : The senator is right. These 
drafts arc mentioned in one of the circular let- 
ters, and but one of them, as the new measure 
understood to be in contemplation, and which 
understanding had been made the pretext for 
scourging the country. He (Mr. B.) was in- 
capable of a theatrical artifice — a stage trick — 
in a grave debate. He had no question but that 
the senator could answer his question, and he 
knew that he had answered it truly ; but ho 
wanted his testimony, his evidence, against the 
bank ; he wanted proof to tie the bank down to 
this answer, to. this pretext, to this thin disguise 
for her conduct in scourging the country. The 
answer is now given ; the proof is adduced ; and 
the apprehended prohibition of the receivability 
of the branch drafts stands both as the pretext 
and the sole pretext for the pressure commenced 
in January, the doubling the rates of exchange, 
breaking up exchanges between the five Western 
branch banks, and concentrating the collection 
of bills of exchange upon four great commercial 
cities. 

Mr. B. then took six positions, which he enu- 
merated, and undertook to demonstrate to be 
true. They were : 

1. That it was untrue, in point of fact, that 
there were any new measures in contemplation, 
or action, to destroy the bank. 

2. That it was untrue, in point of fact, that the 
President harbored hostile and revengeful de- 
signs against the existence of the bank. 

3. That it was untrue, in point of fact, that 
there was any necessity for this third curtail- 
ment, which was ordered the last of January. 

4. That there was no excuse, justification, or 
apology for the conduct of the bank in relation 
to domestic exchange, in doubling its rates, break- 
ing it up between the five Western branches 
turning the collection of bills upon the principa. 



ANNO 1835. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT, 



537 



commercial cities, and forbidding the branch at 
New Orleans to purchase bills on any part of the 
West. 

5. That this curtailment and these exchange 
regulations in January were political and re- 
volutionary, and connected themselves with the 
resolution in the Senate for the condemnation 
of President Jackson. 

6. That the distress of the country was oc- 
casioned by the Bank of the United States and 
the Senate of the United States, and not by the 
removal of the deposits. 

Having stated his positions, Mr. B. proceeded 
to demonstrate them. 

1. As to the new measures to destroy the 
bank. Mr. B. said there were no such measures. 
The one indicated, that of stopping the re- 
ceipt of the branch bank drafts in payments 
to the United States, existed nowhere but in 
the two-and-twenty lettei's of instruction of the 
president of the bank. There is not even an 
allegation that the measure existed ; the language 
is " in contemplation " — " understood to be in 
contemplation , " and upon this flimsy pretext 
of an understanding of something in contempla- 
tion, and which something never took place, a 
set of ruthless orders are sent out to every quar- 
ter of the Tj uion to make a pressure for money, 
and to embarrass the domestic exchanges of the 
Union. Three days would have brought an 
answer from "Washington to Philadelphia — from 
the Treasury to the bank ; and let it be known 
that there was no intention to stop the receipt 
of these drafts at that time. But it would seem 
that the bank did not recognize the legitimacy 
of Mr. Taney's appointment ! and therefore 
would not condescend to correspond with him 
as Secretary of the Treasury ! But time gave 
the answer, even if the bank would not inquire 
at the Treasury. Day after day, week after 
week, month after month passed off, and these 
redoubtable new measures never made their ap- 
pearance. Why not then stop the curtailment, 
and restore the exchanges to their former foot- 
ing ? February, March, April, May, June, five 
months, one hundred and fifty days, all passed 
away ; the new measures never came ; and yet 
the pressure upon the country was kept up; the 
two-and-twenty orders were continued in force. 
What can be thought of an institu ''on which 
being armed by law with powei over the 
moneyed system of the whole country, should 



proceed to exercise that power to distress that 
country for mone}^, upon an understanding that 
something was in contemplation; and never in- 
quire if its understanding was correct, nor cease 
its operations, when each successive day, for 
one hundred and fifty days, proved to it that 
no such thing was in contemplation ? At last, 
on the 27th of June, when the pressure is to be 
relaxed, it is done upon another ground; not 
upon the ground that the new measures had 
never taken effect, but because Congress was 
about to rise without having done any thing for 
the bank. Here is a clear confession that the 
allegation of new measures was a mere pretext; 
and that the motive was to operate upon Con- 
gress, and force a restoration of the deposits, and 
a renewal of the charter. 

Mr. B. said he knew all about these drafts. 
The President always condemned their legality, 
and was for stopping the receipt of them. !Mr. 
Taney, when Attorney General, condemned them 
in 1831. Mr. B. had applied to Mr. McLane, in 
1832, to stop them ; but he came to no decision. 
He applied to Mr. Duane, by letter, as soon as 
he came into the Treasury; but got no answer. 
He applied to Mr. Taney as soon as he arrived 
at Washington in the fall of 1833 ; and Mr. Taney 
decided that he would not stop them until the 
moneyed concerns of the country had recovered 
their tranquillity and prospei-ity, lest the bank 
should make it the pretext of new attempts to 
distress the country ; and thus the very thing 
which Mr. Taney refused to do, lest it should 
be made a pretext for oppression, was falsely 
converted into a pretext to do what he was de- 
termined they should have no pretext for doing. 

But Mr. B. took higher ground still ; it was 
this : that, even if the receipt for the drafts had 
been stopped in January or February, there 
would have been no necessity on that account 
for curtailing debts and embarrassing exchanges. 
This ground he sustained by showing — 1st. 
That the bank had at that time two millions of 
dollars in Europe, lying idle, as a fund to draw 
bills of exchange upon ; and the mere sale of 
bills on this sura would have met every demand 
which the rejection of the drafts could have 
thrown upon it. 2. That it sent the money it 
raised by this curtailment to Europe, to the 
amount of three and a half millions; and thereby 
showed that it was not collected to meet any 
demand at home. 3d. That the bank had at 



538 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



that time (Januarj-, 1834) the sum of $4,230,509 
of public money in hand, and therefore had Uni- 
ted States money enough in possession to bal- 
ance any injury from rejection of drafts. 4th. 
That the bank had notes enough on hand to sup- 
ply the place of all the drafts, even if they were 
all driven in. 5th. That it had stopped the re- 
ceipt of these branch drafts itself at the branches, 
except each for its own in November, 1833, and 
was compelled to resume their receipt \y the 
energetic and just conr^uct of Mr. Taney, in giv- 
ing transfer drafts to be used against the branch- 
es which would not honour the notes and drafts 
of the other branches. Here Mr. B. turned up- 
on Mr. Tyler's report, and severely arraigned it 
for alleging that the bank always honored its 
paper at every point, and furnishing a supplj- of 
negative testimony to prove that assertion, 
when there was a large mass of positive testi- 
mony, the disinterested evidence of numerous 
respectable persons, to prove the contrary, and 
which the committee had not noticed. 

Finally, M. B. had recourse to Mr. Biddle's 
own testimony to annihilate his (Mr. Biddle's) 
affected alarm for the (destruction of the bank, 
and the injury to the country from the repulse 
of these fiimous branch drafts from revenue pay- 
ments. It was in a letter of Mr. Biddle to Mr. 
Woodbury in the fall of 1834, when the receipt 
of these drafts was actually stopped, and in the 
order which was issued to the branches to con- 
tinue to issue them as usual. Mr. B. read a 
passage from this letter to show that the receipt 
of these drafts was always a mere Treasury ar- 
rangement, in which the bank felt no interest ; 
that the refusal to receive them was an object 
at all times of perfect indifference to the bank, 
and would not have been even noticed 1)y it, if Mr. 
Woodbury had not sent him a copy of his circular. 

Mr. B. invoked the attention of the Senate 
upon the fatal contradictions which this letter 
of November, and these instructions of January, 
1834, exhibit. In January, the mere under- 
standing of a design in contemplation to exclude 
these drafts from revenue payments, is a daxxger 
of such alarming magnitude, an invasion of the 
rights of the bank in such a flagrant manner, a 
proof of such vindictive determination to pros- 
trate, sacrifice, and ruin the institution, that the 
entire continent must be laid under contribution 
to raise money to enable the institution to stand 
the shock ! November of the same year when 



the order for the rejection actually comes, then 
the same measure is declared to be one of the 
utmost indifference to the bank ; in which il 
never felt any interest; which the Treasury 
adopted for its own convenience ; which was al- 
ways under the exclusive control of the Trea- 
sury ; about which the bank had never express- 
ed a wish ; of which it would have taken no 
notice if the Secretary had not sent them a cir- 
cular ; and the expediency of which it was not 
intended to question in 'the remotest degree! 
Having pointed out these fatal contradictions, 
Mr. B. said it was a case in which the emphatic 
ejaculation might well be repeated: Oh! that 
mine enemy would write a book ! 

To put the seal of the bank's contempt on the 
order prohibiting the receipt of these drafts, to 
show its disregard of law, and its ability to sus- 
tain its drafts upon its own resources, and with- 
out the advantage of government receivability, 
Mr. B. read the order which the president of the 
bank addressed to all the branches on the receipt 
of the circular which gave him information of 
the rejection of these drafts. It was in these 
words : " This will make no alteration whatever 
in your practice, with regard to issuing or pay- 
ing these drafts, wliich you will continue as here- 
tofore." What a pity, said Mr. B., that the pre- 
sident of the bank could not have thought of 
issuing such an order as this in January, instead 
of sending forth the mandate for curtailing debts, 
embarrassing exchange, levying three millions 
and a half, alarming the country with the cry 
of danger, and exhibiting President Jackson as 
a vindictive tyrant, intent upon the ruin of the 
bank! 

2. The hostility of the President to the bank. 
This assertion, said Mr. B., so incontinently re- 
iterated by the president of the bank, is taken 
up and repeated by our Finance Committee, to 
whose report he was now paying an instalment 
of those respects which he had promised them. 
This assertion, so far as the bank and the com- 
mittee are concerned in making it, is an asser- 
tion without evidence, and, so far as the facts are 
concerned, is an assertion against evidence. If 
there is any evidence of the bank or the committee 
to support tnis assertion, in the fort\' pages of the 
report, or the three hundred pages of the appendix, 
the four members of the Finance Committee can 
produce it svhen they come to reply. That there 
was evidence to contradict it, he was now ready 



ANNO 1835. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESmENT. 



539 



to show. This evidence consisted in four or five 
public and prominent feicts, which he would now 
mention, and in other circumstances, which he 
would show hereafter. The first was the fact 
which he mentioned when this report was first read 
on the 18th of December last, namely, that Presi- 
dent Jackson had nominated Mr. Biddle at the 
head of the government directors, and thereby 
indicated him for the presidency of the bank, for 
three successive years after this hostility was 
supposed to have commenced. The second was, 
that the President had never ordered a scire 
facias to issue against the bank to vacate its 
charter, which he has the right, under the 
twenty-third section of the charter, to do, 
whenever he believed the charter to be violated. 
The third, that during many years, he has never 
required his Secretaries of the Treasury to stop the 
governmental receipt of the branch bank drafts, 
although his own mind upon their illegality had 
been made up for several years past. The fourth, 
that after all the clamor — all the invocations 
upon heaven and earth against the tyranny of 
removing the deposits — those deposits have 
never happened to be quite entirely removed ! 
An average of near four millions of dollars of 
public money has remained in the hands of the 
bank for each month, from the 1st of October, 
1833, to the 1st of January, 1835, inclusively! 
embracing the entire period from the time the 
order was to take effect against depositing in the 
Bank of the United States down to the com- 
mencement of the present year ! So far are the 
deposits from being quite entirely removed, as 
the pul)lic are led to believe, that, at the distance 
of fifteen months from the time the order for the 
removal began to take effect, there remained in 
the hands of the bank the large sum of three 
millions eight hundred and seventy-eight thou- 
sand nine hundred and fifty-one dollars and 
ninety-seven cents, according to her own show- 
ing in her monthly statements. That President 
Jackson is, and always has been, opposed to the 
existence of the bank, is a fact as true as it is 
honorable to him ; that he is hostile to it, in the 
vindictive and revengeful sense of the phrase, is 
an assertion, Mr. B. would take the liberty to 
repeat, without evidence, so far as he could see 
into the proofs of the committee, and against evi- 
dence, to the full extent of all the testimonj' 
within his view. Far from indulging in revenge- 
ful resentment against the bank, he has been 



patient, indulgent, and forebearing towards it, to 
a degree hardly compatible with his duty to his 
country, and with his constitutional supervision 
over the faithful execution of the laws ; to a de- 
gree which has drawn upon him, as a deduction 
from his own conduct, an argument in favor of 
the legality of this very branch bank currency, 
on the part of this very committee, as may be 
seen in their report. Again, the very circum- 
stance on which this charge of hostility rests in 
the two-and-twenty letters of Mr. Biddle, proves 
it to be untrue : for the stoppage of the drafts, 
understood to be in contemplation, was not in 
contemplation, and did not take place until the 
pecuniary concerns of the country were tranquil 
and prosperous; and when it did thus take 
place, the president of the bank declared it to 
have been always the exclusive right of the gov- 
ernment to do it, in which the bank had no in- 
terest, and for which it cared nothing. No, said 
Mr. B., the President has opposed the recharter 
of the bank; he has not attacked its present 
charter ; he has opposed its future, not its pre- 
sent existence ; and those who characterize this 
opposition to a future charter as attacking the 
bank, and destroying the bank, must admit that 
they advocate the hereditary right of the bank 
to a new charter after the old one is out ; and 
that they deny to a public man the right of op- 
posing that hereditary claim. 

3. That there was no necessity for this jthird 
curtailment ordered in January. Mr. B. said, 
to have a full conception of thetinith of this po- 
sition, it was proper to recollect that the bank 
made its first curtailment in August, when the 
appointment of an agent to arrange with the de- 
posit banks announced the fact that the Bank of 
the United States was soon to cease to be the 
depository of public moneys. The reduction 
under that first curtailment was $4,066,000. 
The second was in October, and under that or- 
der for curtailment the reduction was $5,825,000. 
The whole reduction, then, consequent upon the 
expected and actual removal of deposits, was 
$9,891,000. At the same time tlie whole amount 
of deposits on the first day of October, the d.iy 
for the removal, or rather for tlie cessation to de- 
posit in the United States Bank to take effect, was 
$9 868,435 ; and on the first day of February, 
1834, when the third eurt:iilriient was onlorcd, 
there were still $:),0G6,561 of these deposits ou 
hand, and have remained on hand to near that 



540 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



amount ever since ; so that the bank in the two 
first curtailments, accomplished between August 
and January, had actually curtailed to the whole 
amount, and to the exact amount, upon precise 
calculation, of the amount of deposits on hand 
on the first of October ; and still had, on the 
first of January, a fraction over three millions 
of the deposits in its possession. This simple 
statement of sums and dates shows that there 
was no necessity for ordering a further reduction 
of §3,320,000 in January, as the bank had al- 
ready' curtailed to the whole amount of the de- 
posits, and $22,500 over. Nor did the bank put 
the third curtailment upon that ground, but up- 
on the new measures in contemplation ; thus 
leaving her advocates every where still to attri- 
bute the pressure created by the third curtail- 
ment to the old cause of the removal of the de- 
posits. This simple statement of facts is suffi- 
cient to show that this third curtailment was 
unnecessary. What confirms that view, is that 
the bank remitted to Europe, as fast as it was 
collected, the whole amount of the curtailment, 
and $105,000 over; there to lie idle until she 
could raise the foreign exchange to eight per cent, 
above par; which she had sunk to five per cent, 
below par, and thus make two sets of profits out 
of one operation in distressing and pressing the 
country. 

4. No excuse for doubling the rates of ex- 
change, breaking up the exchange business in 
the West, forbidding the branch at New Orleans 
to purchase a single bill on the West, and con- 
centrating the collection of exchange on the four 
great commercial cities. For ' this, Mr. B. said, 
no apology, no excuse, no justification, was of- 
fered by the bank. The act stood unjustified 
and unjustifiable. The bank itself has shrunk 
from the attempt to justify it; our committee. 
in that report of which the bank proclaims 
itself to be so proud, gives no opinion in its 
brief notice of a few lines upon this transaction ; 
but leaves it to the Senate to pronounce upon 
its wisdom and necessity ! The committee, Mr. 
B. said, had failed in their duty to their country 
by the manner in which they had veiled this 
affair of the exchanges in a few lines ; and then 
blinked the question of its enormity, by refer- 
ring it to the judgment of the Senate. lie made 
the same remark upon the contemi)oraneous 
measure of the third curtailment ; and called on 
the author of the report [Mr. Tyler] to defend 



his report, and to defend the conduct of the bank 
now, if he could ; and requested him to receive 
all this part of his speech as a further instal- 
ment paid of what was due to that report on the 
bank. 

5. That the curtailment and exchange re- 
gulations of January were political and revo- 
lutionar}-, and connect themselves with the 
contemporaneous proceedings of the Senate for 
the condemnation of the President. That this 
curtailmeut, and these regulations were wanton 
and wicked, was a proposition, Mr. B. said, 
which resulted as a logical conclusion from what 
had been already shown, namely, that they were 
causeless and unnecessary, and done upon pre- 
texts which have been demonstrated to be false. 
That they were political and revolutionary, and 
connected with the proceedings in the Senate 
for the condemnation of the President, he would 
now prove. In the exhibition of this proof, the 
first thing to be looked to is the chronology of 
the events — the tirne at which the bank made 
this third curtailment, and sent forth these ex- 
change regulations — and the time at which the 
Senate carried on the proceeding against the 
President. Viewed under this aspect, the two 
movements are not only connected, but identical 
and inseparable. The time for the condemnation 
of the President covers the period from the 25th 
of December, 1833, to the 28th of :\Iarch, 1834 ; 
the bank movement is included in the same 
period ; the orders for the pressure were issued 
from the 21st of January to the 1st of February, 
and were to accomplish their efiect in the month 
of March, and by the first of April ; except in one 
place, where, for a reason which will be shown 
at a proper time, the accomplishment of the 
effect was protracted till the 10th day of April. 
These, Mr. B. said, were the dates of issumg the 
orders and accomplishing their effect ; the date 
of the adoption of the resolution in the bank for 
this movement is not given in the report, but 
must have been, in the natureof things, anterior 
to the issue of the orders ; it must have been 
some days before the issue of the orders ; and 
was, in all probability, a few days after the com- 
mencement of the movement in the Senate 
agninst the President. The next point of con- 
nection, Mr. B. said, was in the subject matter ; 
aud here it was necessary to recur to the original 
form, and to the second form, of the resolution 
for the condemnation of the President. In the 



ANNO 1835. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



541 



first, or primordial form, the resolution was ex- 
pressly connected with the cause of the bank. 
It was, for dismissing Mr. Duane because he 
would not remove the deposits, and appointing 
Mr. Taney because he would remove them. In 
the second form of the resolution — that form 
which naturalists would call its aurelia, or 
chrysalis state — the phraseology of the connec- 
tion was varied, but still the connection was 
retained and expi'essed. The names of Mr. 
Duane and Mr. Taney were dropped ; and the 
removal of the deposits upon his own responsi- 
bility, was the alleged offence of the President. 
In its third and ultimate transformation, all al- 
lusion to the bank was dropped, and the vague 
term " revenue " was substituted ; but it was a 
substitution of phrase only, without anji- altera- 
tion of sense or meaning. The resolution is the 
same under all its phases. It is still the bank, 
and Mr. Taney, and Mr. Duane, and the removal 
of the deposits, which are the things to be un- 
derstood, though no longer prudent to express. 
All these substantial objects are veiled, and 
substituted by the empty phrase " revenue ; " 
which might signify the force bill in South 
Carolina, and the bank question in Philadelphia! 
The vagueness of the expression left every gen- 
tleman to fight upon his own hook, and to hang 
his vote upon any mental res^'vation which 
could be found in his own mind ! and Mr. B. 
would go before the intelligence of any rational 
man with the declaration that the connection 
between the condemnation of the President and 
■^e cause of the bank was doubly proved ; first 
Dy the words of the resolution, and next by the 
omission of those words. The next point of 
connection, Mr. B. said, was detected in the 
times, varied to suit each State, at which the 
pressure under the curtailment was to reach its 
maximum ; and the manner in which the re- 
strictions upon the sale and purchase of bills 
of exchange was made to fall exclusively and 
heavily upon the principal commercial cities, at 
the moment when most deeply engaged in the 
purchase and shipment of produce. Thus, in 
New-York, where the great charter elections 
were to take place during the first week in 
April, the curtailment was to reach its maximum 
pressure on the first day of that month. In 
Virginia, where the elections are continued 
throughout the whole month of April, the pres- 
Bure was not to reach its climax until the tenth 



day of that month. In Connecticut, where the 
elections occurred about the first of April, the 
pressure was to have its last turn of the screw 
in the month of !March, And in these three in- 
stances, the only ones in which the elections 
were depending, the political bearing of the 
pressure was clear and undeniable. The sym- 
pathy in the Senate in the results of those poU- 
tical calculations, was displayed in the exultation 
which broke out on receiving the news of the 
elections in Virginia, New- York, and Connecticut 
— an exultation which broke out into the most 
extravagant rejoicings over the supposed down- 
fall of the administration. The careful calcula- 
tion to make the pressure and the exchange 
regulations fall upon the commercial cities at 
the moment to injure commerce most, was also 
visible in the times fixed for each. Thus, in all 
the western cities, Cincinnati, Louisville, Lex- 
ington, Nashville, Pittsburg, Saint Louis, the 
pi-essure was to reach its maximum by the first 
day of March ; the shipments of western pro- 
duce to New Orleans being mostly over by that 
time ; but in New Orleans the pressure was to 
be continued till the first of April, because the 
shipping season is protracted there till that 
month, and thus the produce which left the 
upper States under the depression of the pres- 
sure, was to meet the same pressure upon its 
arrival in New Orleans ; and thus enable the 
friends of the bank to read their ruined prices 
of western produce on the floor of this Senate. 
In Baltimore, the first of March was fixed, which 
would cover the active business season there. 
So much, said Mr. B., for the pressure by cur- 
tailment ; now for the pressure by bills of ex- 
change, and he would take the case of New 
Orleans first. All the branches in tlie "West, 
and every where else in the Union, were author- 
ized to purchase bills of exchange at short dates, 
not exceeding ninety days, on that emporium 
of the West ; so as to increase the demuml for 
money there ; at the same time the branch in 
New Orleans was forbid to purchase a single 
bill in any part of the valley of the Mississippi. 
This prohibition was for two purposes ; first, to 
break up exchange ; and next, to make money 
scarce in New Orleans; as, in delixult of bills of 
exchange, silver would be shipped, ami the sliip- 
ping of silver would make a pressure upon all 
the local banks. To help out this operation, 
Mr, B. said, it must be well and continually 



542 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



remembered that the Bank of the United States 
itself abducted about one million and a quarter 
of hard dollars from New Orleans during the 
period of the pressure there ; thus proving that 
all her affected necessity for curtailment was a 
false and wicked pretext for the cover of her own 
political and revolutionary views. 

The case of the western branches was next 
adverted to by ^Ir. B. Among these, he said, 
the business of exchange was broken up in toto. 
The five western branches were forbid to pur- 
chase exchange at all ; and this tyrannical order 
was not even veiled with the pretext of an ex- 
cuse. Upon the North Atlantic cities, !Mr. B. 
said, unUmited authority to all the branches was 
given to purchase bills, all at short dates, under 
ninety days ; and all intended to become due 
during the shipping season, and to increase the 
demand for money while the curtailment was 
going on, and the screw turning from day to day 
to lessen the capacity of getting money, and 
make it more scarce as the demand for it be- 
came urgent. Thus were the great commercial 
cities, New Orleans, New-York, Baltimore, and 
Philadelphia, subject to a double process of op- 
pression ; and that at the precise season of pur- 
chasing and shipping crops, so as to make their 
distress recoil upon the planters and farmers ; 
and all this upon the pretext of new measures 
understood to be in contemplation. Time again 
becomes material, said Mr. B. The bank pres- 
sure was arranged in January, to reach its climax 
in March and the first of April ; the debate in 
the Senate for the condemnation of President 
Jackson, which commenced in the last days of 
December, was protracted over the whole period 
of the bank pressure, and reached its consum- 
mation at the same time ; namely, the 28th day 
of March. The two movements covered the 
same period of time, reached their conclusions 
together, and co-operated in the effect to be 
produced ; and during the three months of this 
double movement, the Senate chamber resoimd- 
ed daily with the cry that the tyranny and 
vengeance of the President, and his violation of 
laws and constitution, had created the whole 
distress, and struck the nation from a state of 
Arcadian felicity — from a condition of unparal- 
leled prosperity— to the lowest depth of misery 
and ruin. And here Mr. B. obtested and be- 
sought the Senate to consider the indifference 
with which the bank treated its friends in the 



Senate, and the sorrowful contradiction in which 
they were left to be caught. In the Senate, and 
all over the country, the friends of the bank 



were allowed to go on with the old tune, and 
run upon the wrong scent, of removal of the 
deposits creating all the distress ; while, in the 
two-and-twenty circular letters dispatched to 
create this distress, it was not the old measure 
alone, but the new measures contemplated, which 
constituted the pretext for this very same dis- 
tress. Thus, the bank stood upon one pretext, 
and its friends stood upon another ; and for this 
mortifying contradiction, in wliich all its friends 
have become exposed to see their mournful 
speeches exploded by the bank itself, a just in- 
dignation ought now to be felt by all the friends 
of the bank, who were laying the distress to the 
removal of the deposits, and daily crying out 
that nothing could reUeve the country but the 
restoration of the deposits, or the recharter of 
the bank ; while the bank itself was writing to 
its branches that it was the new measures un- 
derstood to be in contemplation that was occa 
sioning all the mischief. Mr. B. would close 
this head with a remark which ought to excite 
reflections which should never die away ; which 
should be remembered as long as national banks 
existed, or asked for existence. It was this : 
That here was a proved case of a national bank 
availing itself of its organization, and of its 
power, to send secret orders, upon a false pre- 
text, to every part of the Union, to create dis- 
tress and panic for the purpose of acconiplishing 
an object of its own ; and then publicly and 
calumniously charging all this mischief on the 
act of the President for the removal of the de- 
posits. Tliis recollection should warn the coun- 
try against ever permitting another national 
bank to repeat a crime of such frightful immo- 
rality, and such enormous injury to the business 
and property of the people. Mr, B. expressed 
his profound regret that the report of the bank 
comYnittec was silent upon these dreadful enor- 
mities, while so elaborate upon trifles in favor 
of the bank. He was indignant at the mischief 
done to private property ; the M\ in tlie price 
of staples, of stocks, and of all real and personal 
estate ; at the ruin of many merchants, and the 
injury of many citizens, which took place during 
this hideous season of panic and pressure. He 
was indignant at the bank for creating it, and 
still more for its criminal audacity in charging 



ANNO 1835. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



543 



its own conduct upon the President; and he 
was mortified, profoundly mortified, that all 
this should have escaped the attention of the 
Finance Committee, and enabled them to make 
a report of which the bank, in its official organ, 
declares itself to be justly proud ; which it now 
has undergoing the usual process of diffusion 
through the publication of supplemental gazettes; 
which it openly avers would have insured the 
recharter if it had come out in time ; and to which 
it now looks for such recharter as soon as Pres- 
ident Jackson retires, and the country can be 
thrown into confusion by the distractions of a 
presidential election. 

Mr. B. now took up another head of evidence 
to prove the fact that the curtailment and ex- 
change regulations of January were political and 
revolutionary, and connected with the proceed- 
ings of the Senate for the condemnation of the 
President ; and here he would proceed upon 
evidence drawn from the bank itself. Mr. B. 
then read extracts from Mr. Biddle's letters of 
instructions (January 30, 1834) to Joseph John- 
son, Esquire, president of the branch bank at 
Charleston, South Carolina. They were as fol- 
lows : " "With a view to meet the coming crisis 
in the banking concerns of the country, and 
especially to provide against new measures of 
hostility understood to be in contemplation by 
the executive officers at Washington, a general 
reduction has been ordered at the several offices, 
and I have now to ask your particular attention 
to accomplish it." * * * * "It is as dis- 
agreeable to us as it can be to yourselves to 
impose any restrictions upon the business of the 
office. But you are perfectly aware of the effort 
which has been making for some time to prostrate 
the bank, to which this new measure to which 
I have alluded will soon be added, unless the 
projectors become alarmed at it. On the defeat 
of these attempts to destroy the bank depends, 
in our deliberate judgment, not merely the pe- 
cuniary interests, but the whole free institutions 
of our country ; and our determination is, by 
even a temporary sacrifice of profit, to place the 
bank entirely beyond the reach of those who 
meditate its destruction." 

Mr. B. would invoke the deepest attention to 
this letter. The passages which he had read 
were not in the circulars addressed at the same 
time to the other branches. It was confined to 
this letter, with something similar in one more 



which he would presently read. The coming 
crisis in the banking concerns of the countrj- is 
here shadowed forth, and secretly foretold, three 
months before it happened ; and with good rea- 
son, for the prophet of the evil was to assist in 
fulfilling his prophecy. With this secret pre- 
diction, made in January, is to be connected the 
public predictions contemporaneously made on 
this floor, and continued till April, when the 
explosion of some banks in this district was 
proclaimed as the commencement of the general 
ruin which was to involve all local banks, and 
especially the whole safety-fund list of banks, 
in one universal catastrophe. The Senate would 
remember all this, and spare him repetitions 
which must now be heard with pain, though 
uttered with satisfaction a few months ago. The 
whole free institutions of our country was the 
next phrase in the letter to which ]Mr. B. called 
attention. He said that in this phrase the poli- 
tical designs of the bank stood revealed; and he 
averred that this language was identical with that 
used upon this floor. Here, then, is the secret 
order of the bank, avowing that the whole free in- 
stitutions of the country are taken into its holy 
keeping ; and that it was determined to sub- 
mit to a temporary sacrifice of profit in sus- 
taining the bank, which itself sustains the 
whole free institutions of the countrj- ! What 
insolence ! What audacity ! But, said I\Ir. B., 
what is here meant by free institutions, was 
the elections ! and the true meaning of Mr. 
Biddle's letter is, that the bank meant to submit 
to temporary sacrifices of money to carry the 
elections, and put down the Jackson adminis- 
tration. No other meaning can be put upon 
the words ; and if there could, there is further 
proof in reserve to nail the infamous and wicked 
design upon the bank. Anotlirer passage in this 
letter, Mr. B. would point out, and then pro- 
ceed to a new piece of evidence. It was the 
passage which said this new measure will soon 
be added, unless the projectors become alarmed 
at it. Now, said Mr. B., take this as you please ; 
cither that the projectors did, or did not, be- 
come alarmed at their new measure ; the fact 
is clear that no new measure was put in force, 
and that the bank, in proceeding to act upon 
that assumption, was inventing and fabricating 
a pretext to justify the scourge which it wa? 
meditating against the country. Dates are heix' 
material, said Mr. B. The first letters, founded 



544 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



on these new measures, were dated the 21st of 
January ; and spoke of them as bcinj^ under- 
stood to be in contemplation. This letter to 
Mr. Johnson, which speaks hypothetically, is 
dated the 30th of January, being eight days 
later ; in which time the bank had doubtless 
heard that its imderstanding about what was 
in contemplation was all false ; and to cover its 
retreat from having sent a falsehood to two- 
and-twenty branches, it gives notice that the 
new measures which were the alleged pretext 
of panic and pressure upon the country were 
not to take place, because the projectors had 
got alarmed. The beautiful idea of the projec- 
tors — that is to say, General Jackson, for he 
is the person intended — becoming alarmed at 
interdicting the reception of illegal drafts at the 
treasury, is conjured up as a salvo for the honor 
of the bank, in making two-and-twenty instances 
of false assertion. But the panic and pressure 
orders are not countermanded. They are to go 
on, although the projectors do become alarmed, 
and although the new measure be dropped. 

jNIr. B. had an extract from a second letter to 
read upon this subject. It was to the president 
of the New Orleans branch, Mr. W. "W. Mont- 
gomery, and dated Bank of the United States 
the 24th of January. He read the extract : 
" The state of things here is very gloomy ; and, 
unless Congress takes some decided step to 
prevent the progress of the troubles, they may 
soon outgrow our control. Thus circumstanced, 
our first duty is, to the institution, to preserve 
it from all danger ; and we are therefore anx- 
ious, for a short time at least, to keep our busi- 
ness within manageable limits, and to make 
some sacrifice of property to entire security. 
It is a moment of great interest, and exposed 
to sudden changes in public afiairs, which may 
induce the bank to conform its policy to them ; 
of these dangers, should any occur, you will 
have early advice." AVhen he had read this 
extract, IMr. B. proceeded to comment upon it; 
almost every wor.' of it being pregnant with 
political ana revolutionary meaning of the plain- 
est import. The whole extract, he said, was 
the language of a politician, not of a banker, 
and looked to political events to which the bank 
intended to conform its policy. In this way, he 
commented successively upon the gloomy state 
of things at the bank (for the letter is dated in 
the bank), and the troubles which were to out- 



grow their control, unless Congress took some 
decided step. These troubles, Mr. B. said, could 
not be the dangers to the bank ; for the bank 
had taken entire care of itself in the two-and- 
twenty orders which it had sent out to curtail 
loans and break up exchanges. Every one of 
these orders announced the power of the bank, 
and the determination of the bank, to take care 
of itself. Troubles outgrow our control ! What 
insolence ! When the bank itself, and its con- 
federates, were the creators and fomenters of 
all these troubles, the progress of which it af- 
fected to deplore. The next words — moment 
of great interest, exposed to sudden changes in 
public affairs, induce the bank to conform its 
policy to them — Mr. B. said, were too flagrant 
and too barefaced for comment. They were 
equivalent to an open declaration that a revolu- 
tion was momently expected, in which Jack- 
son's administration would be overthrown, and 
the friends of tlie bank brought into power ; 
and, as soon as that happened, the bank would 
inform its branches of it ; and would then con- 
form its policy to this revolution, and relieve 
the country from the distress which it was then 
inflicting upon it. Sir, said Mr. B., addressing 
the Vice-President, thirty years ago, the pro- 
phetic vision of Mr. Jefferson foresaw this crisis; 
thirty years ago, he said that this bank was an 
enemy to our form of government ; that, by its 
ramification and power, and by seizing on a 
critical moment in pur affairs, it could upset 
the government ! And this is what it would 
have done last winter, had it not been for one 
man ! one man ! one single man ! with whom 
God had vouchsafed to favor our America in 
that hour of her greatest trial. That one man 
stood a sole obstacle to the dread career of the 
bank ; stood for six months as the rampart 
which defended the country, the citadel upon 
which the bank artillery incessantly thundered ! 
And what was the conduct of the Senate all this 
time ? It was trj'ing and condemning that man ; 
killing him off with a senatorial condemnation ; 
removing the obstacle which stood between the 
bank and its prey ; and, in so doing, establish- 
ing the indissoluble connection between the 
movement of the bank in distressing the coun- 
try, and the movement of the Senate in con- 
demning the President. 

Mr. B. said that certainly no more proof was 
necessary, on this head, to show that the designs 



ANNO 1835. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



545 



of the bank were political and revolutionary, 
intended to put down General Jackson's admin- 
istration, and to connect itself with the Senate ; 
but he had more proof, that of a publication 
under the editorial head of the National Gazette^ 
and which publication he assumed to say, was 
written by the president of the bank. It was a 
long article of four columns ; but he would only 
read a paragraph. He read : " The great con- 
test now waging in this country is between its 
free institutions and the violence of a vulgar 
despotism. The government is turned into a 
baneful faction, and the spirit of liberty con- 
tends against it throughout the country. On 
the one hand is this miserable cabal, with all 
the patronage of the Executive ; on the other 
hand, the yet unbroken mind and heart of the 
country, with the Senate and the bank; — [in 
reading these words, in which the bank associ- 
ated itself with the Senate, Mr. B. repeated the 
famous expression of Cardinal "Wolsey, in as- 
sociating himself with the king: ''Ego et rex 
mews;'] — the House of Representatives, hither- 
to the intuitive champion of freedom, shaken by 
the intrigues of the kitchen, hesitates for a time, 
but cannot fail before long to break its own fet- 
ters first, and then those of the country. In 
that quarrel, we predict, they who administer 
the bank will shrink from no proper share which 
the country may assign to them. Personally, 
they must be as indifierent as any of their fellow- 
citizens to the recharter of the bank. But they 
will not suffer themselves, nor the institution 
intrusted to them, to be the instruments of 
private wrong and public outrage ; nor will they 
omit any effort to rescue the institutions of the 
country from being trodden under foot by a fac- 
tion of interlopers. To these profligate adven- 
turers, whether their power is displayed in the 
executive or legislative department, the directors 
of the bank will, we are satisfied, never yield 
the thousandth part of an inch of their own 
personal rights, or their own official duties ; 
and will continue this I'esistance initil the coun- 
try, roused to a proper sense of its dangers and 
its wrongs, shall drive the usurpers out of the 
high places they dishonor." This letter, said 
Mr. B., discloses, in terms which admit of no 
explanation or denial, the design of the bank in 
creating the pressure which was got up and con- 
tinued during the panic session. It was to 
rouse the people, by dint of suffering, against 

Vol. I.— 35 



the President and the House of Representatives, 
and to overturn them both at the ensuing elec- 
tions. To do this, now stands revealed as its 
avowed object. The Senate and the bank were 
to stand together against the President and the 
House ; and each to act its part for the same 
common object : the bank to scourge the people 
for money, and charge its own scourging upon 
the President ; the Senate to condemn him for 
a violation of the laws and constitution, and 
to brand him as the Caesar, Cromwell, Bona- 
parte — the tyrant, despot, usurper, whose head 
would be cut off in any kingdom of Europe 
for such acts as he practised here. Mr. B. 
said, the contemplation of the conduct of the 
bank, during the panic session, was revolting 
and incredible. It combined every thing to 
revolt and shock the moral sense. Oppression, 
falsehood, calumny, revolution, the ruin of in- 
dividuals, the fabrication of false pretences, the 
machinations for overturning the government, 
the imputation of its own crimes upon the head 
of the President; the enriching its favorites with 
the spoils of the country, insolence to the House 
of Representatives, and its affected guardianship 
of the liberties of the people and the free insti- 
tutions of the country ; such were the promi- 
nent features of its conduct. The parallel of its 
enormity was not to be found on this side of 
Asia ; an example of such remorseless atrocity 
was only to be seen in the conduct of the Paul 
Benfields and the Debi Sings who ravaged India 
under the name of the Marquis of Hastings. 
Even what had been casually and imperfectly 
brought to light, disclosed a system of calcu- 
lated enormity which required the genius of 
Burke to paint. What was behind would re- 
quire labors of a committee, constituted upon 
parliamentary principles, not to plaster, but to 
probe the wounds and ulcers of the bank ; and 
such a committee he should hope to sec, not 
now, but hereafter, not iu tlie vacation but in 
the session of Congress. For he had no idea of 
these peripatetic and recess committees, of which 
the panic session had been so prolific. He want- 
ed a committee, unquestionable in the legality 
of its own appointment, duly qualified in a par- 
liamentary sense for discovcr-:ig the misconduct 
they are set to investigate; and sitting under 
the wing of the authority which can punish the 
insolent, compel the refractory, and enforce the 
obedience which is due to its mandates. 



546 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



6. The distress of the country, occasioned by 
the Bank of the United States and the Senate 
of the United States. — This, Mr. B. said, might 
be an unpleasant topic to discuss in the Senate ; 
but this Senate, for four months of the last ses- 
sion, and during the whole debate on the reso- 
lution to condemn the President, had resounded 
with the cry that the President had created all 
the distress ; and the huge and motley mass, 
throughout the Union, which marched under 
the oriflamme of the bank, had every where re- 
peated and reiterated the same cry. If there 
was any thing unpleasant, then, in the discus- 
sion of this topic in this place, the blame must 
be laid on tliosc who, by using that argument in 
support of their resolution agamst the Presi- 
dent, devolved upon the defenders of the Presi- 
dent the necessity of refuting it. Mr. B. would 
have recourse to facts to establish his position. 
The first fact he would recur to was the history 
of a reduction of deposits, made once before in 
this same bank, so nearl}"- identical in every par- 
ticular with the reduction which took place 
under the oi'der for the late removal of deposits, 
that it would require exact references to docu- 
mentary evidence to put its credibility beyond the 
incredulity of the senses. Not only the amount 
from which the reduction was made, its progress; 
and ultimate depression, corresponded so closely 
as each to seem to be the history of the same 
transaction, but they began in the same month, 
descended in the same ratio, except in the in- 
stances which operate to the disadvantage of the 
late reduction, and, at the end of fifteen months, 
had reached the same point. IMr. B. spoke of 
the reduction of deposits which took place in 
the years 1818 and 1819; and would exhibit a 
table to compare it with the reductions under 
the late order for the removal of the deposits. 

Here, said Mr. B., is a similar and parallel re- 
duction of deposits in this same bank, and that 
at a period of real pecuniary distress to itself; 
a period when great frauds were discovered in 
its management ; when a committee examined 
•t, and reported it guilty of violating its char- 
ter ; when its stock fell in a few weeks from 
one hundred and eighty to ninety ; when pro- 
positions to repeal its charter, without the for- 
mahty oisk scire facias, were discussed in Con- 
gress ; when nearly all presses, and nearly all 
voices, condemned it ; and when a real necessity 
compelled it to reduce its discounts and loans 



with more rapidity, and to a far greater compa* 
rative extent, than that which has attended the 
late reduction. Yet, what was the state of the 
country ? Distressed, to be sure, but no panic ; 
no convulsion in the community ; no cry of re- 
volution. And why this difference ? If mere 
reduction of deposits was to be attended with 
these effects at one time, why not at the other ? 
Sir, said Mr. B., addressing the Vice-President, 
the reason is plain and obvious. The bank was 
unconnected Avith politics, in 1819 ; it had no 
desire, at that time, to govern the elections, and 
to overturn an administration ; it had no politi- 
cal confederates ; it had no president of the bank 
then to make war upon the President of the 
United States, and to stimulate and aid a great 
political party in crushing the President, who 
would not sign a new charter, and in crushing 
the House of Representatives which stood by 
him. There was no resolution then to con- 
demn the President for a violation of the laws 
and the constitution. And it was this fatal 
resolution, which we now propose to expunge, 
which did the principal part of the mischief. 
That resolution was the root of the evil; 
the signal for panic meetings, panic memo- 
rials, panic deputations, panic speeches, and 
panic jubilees. That resolution, exhibited in 
the Senate chamber, was the scarlet mantle of 
the consul, hung out from his tent ; it was the 
signal for battle. That resolution, and the alarm 
speeches which attended it, was the tocsin which 
started a continent from its repose. And the 
condemnation which followed it, and which left 
this chamber just in time to reach the New- 
York, Virginia, and Connecticut elections, com- 
pleted the effect upon the public mind, and upon 
the politics and commerce of the countr}', which 
the measures of the bank had been co-oper- 
ating for three months to produce. And here 
he must express his especial and eternal wonder 
how all these movements of bank and Senate 
co-operating together, if not b^' arrangement, at 
least by a most miraculous system of accidents, 
to endanger the political rights, and to injure the 
pecuniary interests of the people of the United 
States, could so far escape the observation of 
the investigating committee of the Senate, as 
not to draw from them the expression of one 
soHtary opinion, the suggestion of one single 
idea, the application of one single remark, to 
the prejudice of the bank. Surely they ought 



ANKO 1835. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



547 



to have touched these scenes with something 
more than a few meagre, stinted, and starved 
hnes of faint allusion to the " new measures un- 
derstood to be in contemplation ; " those new 
measures which were so falsely, so wickedly 
fabricated to cover the preconcerted and pre- 
meditated plot to upset the government by stim- 
ulating the people to revolution, through the 
combined operations of the pecuniary pressure 
and political alarms. 

The table itself was entitled to the gravest 
recollection, not only for the comparison which 
it suggested, but the fact of showing the actual 
progress and history of the removal of the de- 
posits, and blasting the whole story of the Pre- 
sident's hostility to the bank. From this table 
it is seen that the deposits, in point of fact, have 
never been all taken from the bank ; that the 
removal, so far as it went, was gradual and gen- 
tle ; that an average of three millions has always 
been there ; that nearly four millions was there 
on the 1st day of January last ; and before these 
facts, the fabricated story of the President's 
hostility to the bank, his vindictiveness, and 
violent determination to prostrate, destroy, and 
ruin the institution, must fall back upon its au- 
thors, and recoil upon the heads of the inven- 
tors and propagators of such a groundless im- 
putation. 

Mr. B. couid give another fact to prove that 
it was the Senate and the bank, and the Senate 
more than the bank, which produced the dis- 
tress during the last winter. It was this : that 
although the curtailments of the bank were 
much larger both before and after the session 
of Congress, yet there was no distress in the 
country, except during the session, and while 
the alarm speeches were in a course of delivery 
on this floor. Thus, the curtailment from the 
1st of August to the 1st of October, was ^4,- 
066,000 ; from the 1st of October to the meet- 
ing of Congress in December, the curtailment 
was $5,041,000— making $9,707,000 in four 
months, and no distress in the country. During 
the session of Congress (seven months) there 
was a curtailment of $3,428,138 ; and during 
this time the distress raged. From the rise of 
Congress (last of June) to the 1st of November, 
a period of four months, the curtailment was 
$5,270,771, and the word distress was not heard 
in the country. Why ? Because there were no 
panic speeches. Congress had adjourned ; and 



the bank, being left to its own resources, could 
only injure individuals, but could not alarm 
and convulse the communit}'. 

Jlr. B. would finish this view of the conduct 
of the bank in creating a wanton pressure, by 
giving two instances ; one was the case of the 
depobit bank in this city ; the other was the 
case of a senator opposed to the bank. He said 
that the branch bank at this place had made a 
steady run upon the Metropolis Bank from the 
beginning to the ending of the panic session. 
The amount of specie which it had taken was 
$605,000 : evidently for the purpose of blowing 
up the pet bank in this district ; and during 
all that time the branch refused to receive- tlie 
notes, or branch drafts, of any other branch, 
or the notes of the mother bank; or checks 
upon any city north of Baltimore. On the pet 
bank in Baltimore it would take checks, be- 
cause the design was to blow up that also. Here, 
said IMr. B., was a clear and flagrant case of 
pressure for specie for the mere purpose of mis- 
chief^ and of adding the "Metropolis Bank to the 
list of those who stopped payment at that time. 
And here Mr. B. felt himself bound to paj- his 
respects to the Committee on Finance, that went 
to examine the bank last summer. That com- 
mittee, at pages 16 and 22, of their report, 
brought forward an unfounded charge against 
the administration for making nms upon the 
branches of the United States Bank, to break 
them ; while it had been silent with respect to 
a well-founded instance of the same nature from 
the Bank of the United States towards the do- 
posit bank in this district. Their language is : 
" The administrative department of the govern- 
ment had manifested a spirit of decided hostility 
to the bank. It had no reason to expect any 
indulgence or clemency at its hands ; and in 
this opinion, if entertained by the directors, 
about which there can be but little question, 
subsequent events very soon proved they were 
not mistaken. The President's address to his 
cabinet; the tone assumed by the Secretary 
(Mr. Taney) in his official communication to 
Congress, and the developments subsequently 
made by Mr. Duane in his address to the pub- 
lic, all confirm the correctness of this anticipa- 
tion. The measure which the bank had cause 
to fear was the accunuilation by government 
of large masses of notes, and the existence there- 
by of heavy demands against its ofBces (p. 16)» 



548 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



" In persevering in its policy of redeeming its 
notes whenever presented, and thereby con- 
tinuing them as a universal medium of exchange, 
in opposition to complaints on that head from 
some of the branches (see copies of correspond- 
ence), the security of the institution and the 
good of the country were alike promoted. The 
accumulation of the notes of any one branch for 
the purpose of a run upon it by any agent of 
the government, when specie might be obtained 
at the very places of collection, in exchange for 
the notes of the most distant branches, would 
have been odious in the eyes of the public, and 
ascribed to no other feeling than a feeling of 
vindictiveness " (p. 22). Upon these extracts, 
Mr. B. said, it was clear that the committee had 
been so unfortunate as to commit a series of 
mistakes, and every mistake to the advantage 
of the bank, and to the prejudice of the govern- 
ment and the country. First, the government 
is charged, for the charge is clear, though slightly 
veiled, that the President of the United States 
in his vindictiveness against the bank, would 
cause the notes of the branches to be accumu- 
lated, and pressed upon them to break them. 
Next, the committee omit to notice the very 
thing actually done, in our very presence here, 
by the Bank of the United States against a de- 
posit bank, which it charges without foun- 
dation upon the President. Then it credits the 
bank with the honor of paying its notes every 
where, and exchanging the notes of the most dis- 
tant branches for specie, when the case of the 
Metropolis Bank, here in our presence, for the 
whole period of the panic session, proves the 
contrary ; and when we have a printed docu- 
ment, positive testimony from many banks, and 
brokers, testifying that the branches in Balti- 
more and New- York, during the fall of 1833, 
positively refused to redeem the notes of other 
branches, or to accept them in exchange for the 
notes of the local banks, though taken in pay- 
ment of revenue ; and that, in consequence, the 
notes of distant branches fell below par, and 
were sold at a discount, or lent for short periods 
without interest, on condition of getting specie 
for them ; and that this continued till Mr. Taney 
coerced the bank, by means of tiansfer drafts^ 
to cause the notes of her branches to be re- 
ceived and honored at other branches as usual. 
In all this, Mr. B. said, the report of the com- 
mittee was most unfortunate ; and showed the 



necessity for a new committee to examine that 
institution; a committee constituted upon par- 
liamentary principles — a majority in favor of in- 
quiry — like that of the Post Office. The crea- 
tion of such a committee, Mr. B. said, was the 
more necessary, as one of the main guards in- 
tended by the charter to be placed over tho 
bank was not there during the period of th^ 
pressure and panic operations ; he alluded to tht 
government directors ; the history of whose re- 
jection, after such long delays in the Senate to 
act on their nomination, is known to the whole 
country. 

The next instance of wanton pressure which 
Mr. B. would mention, was the case of an in- 
dividual, then a member of the Senate from 
Pennsylvania, now minister to St. Petersburg 
(Mr. Wilkins). That gentleman had informed 
him (Mr. B.), towards the close of the last 
session, that the bank had caused a scire facias 
to be served in his house, to the alarm and dis- 
tress of his wife, to revive a judgment against 
him, whilst he was here opposing the bank. 

[Mr. Ewing, of Ohio, here rose, and wished to 
know of Mr. B. whether it was the Bank of the 
United States that had issued this scire facias 
against Mr. Wilkins.] 

Mr. B. was very certain that it was. He re- 
collected not only the information, but the time 
and the place when and where it was given; 
it was the last days of the last session, and at 
the window beyond that door (pointing to the 
door in the corner behind him) ; and he added, 
if there is any question to be raised, it can be 
settled without sending to Russia; the scire 
facias, if issued, will be on record in Pittsburg. 
Mr. B. then said, the cause of this conduct to 
Mr. Wilkins can be understood when it is re- 
collected that he had denied on this floor the 
existence of the great distress which had been 
depicted at Pittsburg ; and the necessity that 
the bank was under to push him at that time 
can be appreciated by seeing that two and fifty 
members of Congress, as reported by the Fi- 
nance Committee, had received "accommoda- 
tions" from the bank and its branches m the 
same year that a senator, and a citizen of Penn- 
sylvania, opposed to the bank, was thus pro- 
ceeded against.* 



* At pages 3T and 33 of the report, the Finance Committea 
fully acquits tbe bank, of all injurious discriminations between 
borrowers and applicauts, of different politics. 



ANNO 1835. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



549 



Mr. B. returned to the resolution which it 
was proposed to expunge. He said it ought to 
go. It was the root of the evil, the father of 
the mischief, the source of the injury, the box 
of Pandora, which had filled the land with ca- 
lamity and consternation for six long months. 
It was that resolution, far more than the con- 
duct of the bank, which raised the panic, sunk 
the price of property, crushed many merchants, 
impressed the country with the terror of an 
impending revolution, and frightened so many 
good people out of the rational exercise of their 
elective franchise at the spring elections. All 
these evils have now passed away. The panic 
has subsided ; the price of produce and property 
has recovered from its depression, and risen be- 
yond its former bounds. The country is tran- 
quil, prosperous, and happy. The States which 
had been frightened from their propriety at 
the spring elections, have regained their self- 
command. Now, with the total vanishing of its 
effects, let the cause vanish also. Let this re- 
solution for the condemnation of President Jack- 
son be expunged from the journals of the Sen- 
ate ! Let it be effaced, erased, blotted out, ob- 
literated from the face of that page on which it 
should never have been written ! Would to God 
it could be expunged from the page of all his- 
tory, and from the memory of all mankind. 
Would that, so far as it is concerned, the minds 
of the whole existing generation should be 
dipped in the fabulous and oblivious waters of 
the river Lethe. But these wishes are vain. 
The resolution must survive and live. History 
will record it ; memory will retain it ; tradition 
will hand it do\vn. In the very act of expurga- 
tion it lives ; for what is taken from one page 
is placed on another. All atonement for the un- 
fortunate calamitous act of the Senate is imper- 
fect and inadequate. Exp^mge, if we can, still 
the only effect will be to express our solemn 
convictions, by that obliteration, that such a re- 
solution ought never to have soiled the pages of 
our journal. This is all that we can do; and 
this much we are bound to do, by every obliga- 
tion of justice to the President, whose name has 
been attainted; by every consideration of duty 
to the country, whose voice demands this repara- 
tion ; bj nir regard to the constitution, which 
has been rampled under foot ; by respect to the 
House ot Representatives, whose function has 
been usurped ; by self-respect, which requires 



the Senate to vindicate its justice, to correct its 
errors, and re-establish its high name for equity, 
dignity, and moderation. To err is human ; not 
to err is divine ; to correct error is the work of 
supereminent and also superhuman moral ex- 
cellence, and this exalted work now remains for 
the Senate to perform. 



CHAPTER CXXIV. 

EXPUNGING RESOLUTION: REJECTED, AND 
RENEWED. 

The speech which had been delivered by Mr. 
Benton, was intended for effect upon the 
country — to influence the forthcoming elections 
— and not with any view to act upon the Senate, 
still consisting of the same members who had 
passed the condemnatory resolution, and not 
expected to condemn their own act. The ex- 
punging resolution was laid upon the table, 
without any intention to move it again during 
the present session ; but, on the last day of the 
session, when the Senate was crowded with 
business, and when there was hardly time to 
finish up the indispensable legislation, the motion 
was called up, and by one of its opponents — 
Mr. Clayton, of Delaware — the author of the 
motion being under the necessity to vote for the 
taking up, though expecting no good from it. 
The moment it was taken up, Mr. White, of 
Tennessee, moved to strike out the word '• ex- 
punge," and insert " rescind, reverse, and make 
null and void." This motion astonished Mr. 
Benton. Mr. White, besides opposing all the 
proceedings against President Jackson, had been 
his personal and political friend from early 
youth — for the more than forty years which 
each of them had resided in Tennessee. He 
expected his aid, and felt the danger of such a 
defection. INIr. Benton defended his word as 
being strictly parliamentary, and the only one 
which was proper to be used when an unautho- 
rized act is to be condemned— all other phrases 
admitting the legalitj' of the act which is to be 
invalidated. Mr. White justified his motion on 
the ground that an expurgation of the journal 
would be its obliteration, which he deemed in- 
consistent with the constitutional injunction to 
'<keep" a journal — the word '"keep" being 



550 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



taken in its primary sense of "liolding," "pre- 
serving," instead of " writing," a journal : but 
the mover of the resohition soon saw that Mr. 
White was not the only one of his friends who 
had yielded at that point — that others had given 
way — and, came about him importuning him to 
give up the obnoxious word. Seeing himself 
almost deserted, he yielded a mortifying and re- 
luctant assent ; and voted with others of his 
friends to emasculate his own motion — to re- 
duce it from its high tone of reprobation, to the 
legal formula which applied to the reversal of a 
mere error in a legal proceeding. The moment 
the vote was taken, Mr. Webster rose and ex- 
ulted in the victory over the hated phrase. He 
proclaimed the accompUshment of every thing 
that he desired in relation to the expunging re- 
solution ; the word was itself expunged ; and he 
went on to triumph in the victory which had 
been achieved, saying : 

" That which made this resolution, which we 
have now amended, particularly offensive, was 
this : it proposed to expunge our journal. It 
called on us to violate, to obliterate, to erase, 
our own records. It was calculated to fix a 
particular stigma, a peculiar mark of reproach 
or disgrace, on the resolution of March last. It 
was designed to distinguish it, and reprobate it, 
in some especial manner. Now, sir, all this most 
happily, is completely defeated l)y the almost 
unanimous vote of the Senate which has just 
now been taken. The Senate has declared, in 
the most emphatic manner, that its journal 
shall not be tampered with. I rejoice most 
heartily, sir, in this descisive result. It is now 
settled, by authority not likely to be shaken, 
that our records are sacred. Men may change, 
opinions may change, power may change, but, 
thanks to the firmness of the Senate, the re- 
cords of this body do not change. No instruc- 
tions from without, no dictates from principali- 
ties or powers, nothing — nothing can be allowed 
to induce the Senate to falsify its own records, 
to disgrace its own proceedings, or violate the 
rights of its members. For one, sir, I feel that 
we have fully and completely accomplished all 
that could be desired in relation to this matter. 
The attempt to induce the Senate to expunge 
its journal has failed, signally and cflectually 
failed. The record remains, neither blurred, 
blotted, nor disgraced." 

And then, to secure the victory which he had 
gained, Mr. Webster immediately moved to lay 
the amended resolution on the table, with the 
peremptory declaration that he would not with- 
draw his motion for friend or foe. The resolye 
was laid upon the table by a vote of 27 to 20. 



The exulting speech of Mr. Webster restored mo 
to my courage — made a man of me again ; and 
the moment the vote was over, I rose and sub- 
mitted the original resolution over again, with 
the detested word in it — to stand for the second 
week of the next session — with the peremptory 
declaration that I would ijever yield it again to 
the solicitations of friend or foe. 



CHAPTER CXXV. 

BRANCH MINTS AT NEW OELEANS, AND IN THE 
GOLD EEGIONS OF GEORGIA AND NORTH CAR- 
OLINA. 

The bill had been reported upon the proposi- 
tion of Mr. Waggaman, senator from Louisiana, 
and was earnestly and perseveringly opposed 
by Mr. Clay. He moved its indefinite post- 
ponement, and contended that the mint at Plul- 
adelphia was fully competent to do all the coin- 
age which the country required. He denied 
the correctness of the argument, that the mint 
at New Orleans was necessary to prevent the 
transportation of the bullion to Philadelphia. 
It would find its way to the great commercial 
marts of the country whether coined or not. 
He considered it unwise and injudicious to es- 
tablish these branches. He supposed it would 
gratify the pride of the States of North Caroli- 
na and Geoi'gia to have them there ; but when 
the objections to the measure were so strong, 
he could not consent to yield his opposition to 
it. He moved the indefinite postponement of 
the bill, and asked the yeas and nays on liis 
motion ; which were ordered. — Mr. Mangum 
regretted the opposition of the senator from 
Kentucky (^Ir. Clay), and thought it necessary 
to multiply the number of American coins, and 
bring the mints to the places of production. 
There was an actual loss of near four per cent, 
in transporting the gold bullion from the Geor- 
gia and North Carohna mines to Philadelphia 
for coinage. With respect to gratifying the 
pride of the Southern States, it was a miscon- 
ception ; for those States had no pri-ie to grati- 
fy. He saw no evil in the multi ication of 
these mints. It was well shown b the sena- 
tor from Missoiui, when the bill was up before, 
that, in the commentaries «n the constitution it 



ANNO 1835. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



551 



was understood that branches might be multi- 
plied. — Mr, Frelinghuysen thought that the ob- 
ject of having a mint was mistaken. The mint 
was established for the accommodation of the 
government, and he thought the present one 
sufBcient. Why put an additional burden 
upon the government because the people in the 
South have been so fortunate as to find gold ? 
— Mr. Bedford Brown of North Carolina, said 
the senator from New Jersey, asked why we 
apply to Congress to relieve us from the bur- 
den of transporting our bullion to be coined, 
when the manufacturers of the North did not 
ask to be paid for transportmg their material. 
He said it was true the manufacturers had not 
asked for this transportation assistance, but 
they asked for what was much more valuable, 
and got it — protection. The people of the 
South ask no protection ; they rely on their 
own exertions ; they ask but a simple act of 
justice — for their rights, under the power 
granted by the States to Congress to regulate 
the value of coin, and to make the coin itself. 
It has the exclusive privilege of Congress, and 
he wished to see it exercised in the spirit in which 
it was granted ; and which was to make the coin- 
age generel for the benefit of all the sections of 
the Union, and not local to one section. The re- 
mark of the gentlemen is founded in mistake. 
What are the facts 1 Can the gold bullion of 
North Carolina be circulated as currency ? 
We all know it cannot ; it is only used as bul- 
lion, and carried to Philadelphia at a great loss. 
Another reason for the passage of the bill, and 
one which Mr. Brown hoped would not be less 
regarded by senators on the other side of the 
House, was that the measure would be auxiliary 
to the restoration of the metallic currency, and 
bring the government back to that currency 
which was the only one contemplated by the 
constitution. 

Mr. Benton took the high ground of consti- 
tutional right to the establishment of these 
branches, and as many more as the interests of 
the Suites required. He referred to the Fede- 
ralist, No. 44, \vritten by Mr. Madison, that in 
surrendering the coining power to the federal 
government, the States did not surrender their 
right to have local mints. He read the passage 
from the number which he mentioned, and which 
was the exposition of the clause in the constitu- 
tion relative to the coining power. It was ex- 



press, and clear in the assertion, that the Stntcs 
were not to be put to the expense and troul>Ie 
of sending their bullion and foreign coins to a 
central mint to be recoined ; but that, as many 
local mints would be established under the au- 
thority of the general government as should be 
necessary. Upon this exposition of the meaning 
of the constitution, Mr. B. said, the States ac- 
cepted the constitution ; and it would be a fraud 
on them now to deny branches where they were 
needed. He referred to the gold mines in North 
Carolina, and the delay with which that State 
accepted the constitution, and inquired whether 
she would have accepted it at all, without an 
amendment to secure her rights, if she could 
have foreseen the great discoveries of gold within 
her limits, and the present opposition to grant- 
ing her a local mint. That State, through her 
legislature, had applied for a branch of the mint 
years ago, and all that was said in her favor was 
equally applicable to Georgia. Mr. B. said, the 
reasons in the Federalist for branch mints were 
infinitely stronger now than when Mr. Madison 



wrote in 171 



Then, the Southern gold region 



was unknown, and the acquisition of Louisiana 
not dreamed of. New Orleans, and the South, 
now require branch mints, and claim the execu- 
tion of the constitution as expounded by Mr. 
Madison, 

Mr, B, claimed the right to the establishment 
of these branches as an act of justice to the 
people of the South and the West. Philadelphia 
could coin, but not diffuse the coin among them. 
Money was attracted to Philadelphia from the 
South and West, but not returned back again 
to those regions. Local mints alone could sup- 
ply them, France had ten branch mints ; Mexico 
had eight ; the United States not one. The es- 
tablishment of branches was indispensable to 
the diS"usion of a hard-money currency, esjio- 
cially gold ; and every friend to that currency 
sliould promote the establishment of branches. 

Mr. B. said, there were six hundred machines 
at work coining paper money — he alluded to the 
six hundred banks in the United States ; and 
only one machine at work coining gold and silver 
He believed there ought to be five or six brancli 
mints in the United States; that is, two or three 
more tban jirovidcd for in this ])ill ; one at 
Charleston, South Carolina, one at Norfolk or 
Richmond, Virginia, and one at New- York or 
Boston. The United States Bank had twenty- 



552 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



four branches ; give the United States Mint five 
or six br:u3ches ; and the name of that bank 
would cease to be urged upon us. Nobody 
would want her paper when they could get gold. 

Mr. B. scouted the idea of expense on such an 
object a-s this. The expense was but inconsider- 
able in itself, and was nothing compared to its 
object. For the object was to supply the country 
with a safe currency, — with a constitutional 
currcncj'^ ; and currency was a thing which con- 
cerned every citizen. It was a point at which 
the action of government reached every human 
being, and bore directly upon his property, upon 
his labor, and upon his daily bread. The States 
had a good currency when this federal govern- 
ment was formed ; it was gold and silver for 
common use, and large bank notes for large 
operations. Now the whole land is infested 
with a vile currenc}^ of small paper : and everj^ 
citizen was more or less cheated. He himself 
had but two bank notes in the world, and they 
were both counterfeits, on the United States 
Bank, with St. Andrew's cross drawn through 
their faces. He used nothing but gold and 
silver since the gold bill passed. 

In reply to Mr. Frelinghuysen, who asked 
where was the gold currency ? He would an- 
swer, far the greatest part of it was in the vaults 
of the Bank of the United States, and its 
branches, to be sold or shipped to Europe ; or at 
all events, to be kept out of circulation, to enable 
the friends of the bank to ask, where is the gold 
currency ? and then call the gold bill a humbug. 
But he would tell the gentleman where a part 
of the gold was ; it was in the Metropolis Bank 
in this city, and subject to his check to the full 
amount of his pay and mileage. Yes, said Mr. 
B., now, for the first time, Congress is paid in 
gold, and it is every member's own fault if he 
does not draw it and use it. 

Mr. B. said this question concerned the South 
and West, and he would hope to see the repre- 
sentatives from these two sections united in sup- 
port of the bill. He saw with pleasure, that 
several gentlemen from the north of the Poto- 
mac, and from New England were disposed to 
support it. Their help was most acceptable on 
a subject so near and so dear to the South and 
"West. Every inliabitant of the South and West 
was personally interested in the success of the 
bill. From New Orleans, the new coin would as- 
cend the Mississippi River, scatter itself all along 



its banks, fill all its towns, cities, and villages 
branch off into the interior of the country, ascend 
all the tributary streams, and replenish and 
refresh the whole face of the land. From 
the Southern mints, the new gold would come 
into the West, and especially into Kentucky, 
Ohio, and Tennessee, by the stock drivers, 
being to them a safe and easy remittance, and to 
the country a noble accession to their currency ; 
enabling them quickly to dispense with their 
small notes. 

It was asked, Mr. B. said, what loss has the 
Western People now sustained for want of gold? 
He would answer that the whole West was full 
of counterfeit paper; that counterfeit paper 
formed a large part of the actual circulation, 
especially of the United States branch drafts ; 
that sooner or later all these counterfeits must 
stop in somebody's hands ; and they would be 
sure to stop in the hands of those who were least 
able to bear the loss. Every trader down the 
Mississippi, Mr. B. said, was more or less impos- 
ed upon with counterfeit paper ; some lost near- 
ly their whole cargoes. Now if there was a branch 
mint in New Orleans every one would get new 
gold. He could get it direct from the mint ; or 
have his gold examined there before ho received 
it. Mr. B. said that one great object of estab- 
lishing branch mints was to prevent and detect 
counterfeiting. Such establishments would de- 
tect every counterfeit piece, and enable every 
])od3^ to have recourse to a prompt and safe stand- 
ard for ascertaining what was genuine and what 
not. This was a great reason for the ten branch- 
es in France. 

Mr. B. was against the paper system. He was 
against all small notes. He was against all pa- 
per currency for common use ; and being against 
it he was in favor of the measures that would 
put down small paper and put up gold and silver. 
The branching of the mint was one of the indis- 
pensable measures for accomplishing that object, 
and therefore he was for it. He was in favor 
of practical measures. Speeches alone would 
not do. A gentleman might make a fine speech 
in favor of hard money 5 but unless he gave votes 
in favor of measures to accomplish it, the speech 
would be inoperative. Mr. B. held the French 
currency to be the best in the world, where there 
was no bank note under 500 francs (near 



ifiilOO) 



, and where, in 



consequence, there was a 



gold and Bilvcr circulation of upwards of five 



ANNO 1835. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



553 



hundred millions of dollars ; a currency which 
had lately stood two revolutions and one con- 
quest, without the least fluctuation in its quan- 
tity or value. 

New Orleans, he said, occupied the most feli- 
citous point in America for a mint. It was at 
the point of reception and diffusion. The specie 
of Mexico came there ; and when there, it as- 
cended the river into the whole "West. It was 
the market city — the emporium of the Great 
Valley ; and from that point every exporter of 
produce could receive his supply and bring it 
home. Mr. B. reiterated that this was a question 
of currency ; of hard money against paper ; of 
gold against United States Bank notes. It was 
a struggle with the paper system. He said the 
gold bill was one step ; the branching the mint 
would be the second step ; the suppression of all 
notes under twenty dollars would be the third 
step towards getting a gold and silver currency. 
The States could do much towards putting down 
small notes ; the federal government could put 
them down, by putting the banks which issued 
them under the ban ; or, what was better, and 
best of all, returning to the act of 1789, which 
enacted that the revenues of the federal govern- 
ment should be received in gold and silver coin 
only. 

The question was then put on Mr. Clay's 
motion for indefinite postponement — and failed 
— 16 yeas to 27 nays. Further strenuous exer- 
tion was made to defeat the bill. Mr. Clay 
moved to postpone it to the ensuing week — 
which, being near the end of the session, would 
be a delay which might be fatal to it ; but it 
came near passing — 20 yeas to 22 nays. A 
motion was made by Mr. Clay to recommit the 
bill to the Committee of Finance — a motion equi- 
valent to its abandonment for the session, which 
failed. Mr. Calhoun gave the bill an earnest 
support. lie said it was a question of magnitude, 
and of vital importance to the South, and de- 
served the most serious consideration. Yet, he 
was sorry to say. he had seen more persever- 
iuF opposition made to it than to any other 
measure for the last two years. It was a 
sectional question, but one intended to extend 
equdL benefits to all the States — Mr. Clay said, 
if there had been resistance on one side, there had 
also been a most unparalleled, and he must say, 
unbounded perseverance on the other. He would 



repeat that in whatever light he had received the 
proposed measure, he had been unable to come 
to any other conclusion than this, that it was, in 
his humble judgment, delusive, uncalled for, 
calculated to deceive the people — to hold out 
ideas which would never be realized ; — and as 
utterly unworthy of the consideration of the 
Senate. — Mr. Calhoun was astonished at the 
warmth of Mr. Clay on this question — a ques- 
as much sectional in one point of view, as a 
measure could be, but national in another. 
Let senators say what they would, this govern- 
ment was bound, in his opinion, to establish the 
minis which had been asked for. Finally, the 
question was taken, and carried — 24 to 19 — the 
yeas ;>eing: Messrs. Benton, Bibb, Brown, Cal- 
houn, Cuthbert, Hendricks, Kane, King of Ala- 
bama, King of Georgia, Leigh, Linn, Mangum, 



Morris, Porter, Preston, Robinson, 



Buggies, 



Shepley, Tallmadge, Tyler, Waggaman, Webster, 
White, Wright. The nays were : Messrs. Bell 
of New Hampshire, Black of Mississippi, Bu- 
chanan, Clay, Clayton, Ewing, Frelinghuysen, 
Goldsborough, Isaac Hill, Knight, McKean, 
Naudain, Bobbins, Silsbce, Smith, Southard. 
Swift, Tipton, Tomlinson. The bill was imme- 
diately carried to the House of Representatives ; 
and there being a large majority there in favor 
of the hard money policy of the administration, 
it was taken up and acted upon, although so 
near the end of the session ; and easily passed. 



CHAPTER CXXVI. 

REGULATION DEPOSIT BILL. 

The President had recommended to Congress 
the passage of an act to regulate the custody of 
the public moneys in the local banks, intrusted 
with their keeping. It was a renewal of the 
same recommendation made at the time of their 
removal, and in conformity to which the House 
of Representatives had passed tlie bill which 
had b^ defeated in the Senate. The same bill 
was s^ up to the Senate again, aiid passed by 
a large majority : twenty-eight to twelve. The 
yeas were: Messrs. Benton, Black of Missis- 
sippi, Calhoim, Clayton of Delaware, CutlUn-rt of 
Georgia, Ewing of Ohio, Frelinghuysen, Golds* 



554 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



borough, Kent, Knight, Leigh, Linn, McKean 
Mangum, Moore, Alexander Porter, Prentiss 
Preston, Robbins, Robinson, Smith, Southard 
Swift, TomHnson, Tjicr, Waggaman, Webster 
Wright. The naj's were : Messrs. Bibb, Brown 
Buchanan, Hendricks, Hill, Kane, King of Ala- 
bama, Morris of Ohio, Poindexter, Buggies, 
Shepic}-, Tallmadge. And thus, the complaint 
ceased which had so long prevailed against the 
President, on the alleged Ulegality of the State 
bank custody of the pubhc moneys. These 
banks were taken as a necessity, and as a half- 
way house between the Bank of the United 
States and au Independent treasury. After a 
brief sojourn in the intermediate abode, they 
passed on to the Independent treasury — there, 
it is hoped, to remain for ever. 



CHAPTER CXXVII. 

DEFEAT OF THE DEFENCE APPEOPEIATION, 
AND LOSS OF THE FORTIFICATION BILL. 

The President in his annual message at the 
commencement had communicated to Congress 
the stnte of our relations with France, and 
especiall)' the continued failure to pay the in- 
demnities stipulated by the treaty of 1831 ; and 
had recommended to Congress measures of re- 
prisal against the commerce of France. The re- 
commendation, in the House of Representatives, 
was referred to the committee of foreign relations, 
which through their chairman, Mr. Cambreling, 
made a report adverse to immediate resort to re- 
prisals, and recommending contingent prepara- 
tion to meet any emergency which should grow 
out of a continued refusal on the part of France 
to comply with her treaty, and make the stipu- 
lated payment. In conformity with this last 
recommendation, and at the suggestion of Mr. 
John Quincy Adams, it was resolved unanimous- 
ly upon yeas and naj'S, or rather upon yeas, 
their being no na3\s, and 212 members voting — 
"That in the opinion of this House, the treaty 
of the 4th of July 1831 with France lj|^nain- 
tained, and its execution insisted upon : " and, 
with the like unanimity it was resolved — "That 
preparations ought to be made to meet any 
emergency growing out of our relations with 
France." These two resolutions showed the 



temper of the House, and that it intended ta 
vindicate the rights of our citizens, if necessary, 
at the expense of war. Accordingly an appro- 
priation of three millions of dollars was inserted 
by the House in the general fortification bill to 
enable the President to make such military and 
naval preparations during the recess of Con- 
gress as the state of our relations with France 
might require. This appropriation was zealously 
voted by the House : in the Senate it met with 
no favor; and was rejected. The House insisted 
on its appropriation : the Senate " adhered " to 
its vote : and that brought the disagreement to 
a committee of conference, proposed by the 
House. In the mean time Congress was in the 
expiring moments of its session ; and eventually 
the whole appropriation for contingent prepara- 
tion, and the whole fortification bill, was lost by 
the termination of the Congress. It was a most 
serious loss; and it became a question which 
House was responsible for such a misfortune — 
regrettable at all times, but particularly so iu 
the face of our relations with France. The 
starting point in the road which led to this loss 
was the motion made by Mr. Webster to " ad- 
here " — a harsh motion, and more calculated to 
estrange than to unite the two Houses. Mr. 
King, of Alabama, immediately took up the mo- 
tion in that sense ; and said : 

" He very much regretted that the senator from 
Massachusetts should have made such a motion ; 
it had seldom or never been resorted to until other 
and more gentle means had failed to produce a 
unity of action between the two Houses. At 
this stage of the proceeding it would be consid- 
ered (and justly) harsh in its character; and, he 
had no doubt, if sanctioned by the Senate, would 
greatly exasperate the other House, and probably 
endanger the passage of the bill altogether. Are 
gentlemen, said Mr. Mr. K., prepared for this ? 
Will they, at this particuhir juncture, in the 
present condition of things, take upon them- 
selves such a fearful responsibility as the rejec- 
tion of this bill might involve ? For himself, if 
your forts are to be left unarmed, your ships 
unrepaired and out of commission, and your 
whole sea-coast exposed without defences of any 
kind, the responsibility should not rest upon his 
shoulders. It is as well, said Mr. K., to speak 
plainly on this subject. Our position with re- 
gard to France was known to all who heard him 
to be of such a character as would not, in his 
opinion, justifv prudent men, men who look to 
the preservation of the rights and the honor of 
tlie nation, in withholding the means, the most 
ample means, to maintain those rights and pre- 
serve unimpaired that honor. 



ANNO 1835. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



555 



" Mr. K. said, while he was free to confess that 
the proposed appropriation was not in its terms 
altogether as specific as he could have wished 
it, he could not view it in the light which had, 
or seemed to have, so much alarmed the senator 
from Massachusetts, and others who had spoken 
on the subject. We are told, said Mr. K., that 
the adoption of the amendment made by the 
House will prostrate the fortress of the consti- 
tution and bury under its ruins the liberties of 
the people. He had too long been accustomed 
to the course of debate here, particularly in times 
of high party excitement, to pay much attention 
to bold assertion or violent denunciation. In 
what, he asked, does it violate the constitution 1 
Does it give to the President the power of de- 
claring war ? You have been told, and told tru- 
ly, by my friend from Pennsylvania [Mr. Bu- 
chanan], that this power alone belongs to Con- 
gress ; nor does this bill in the shghtest degree 
impair it. Does it authorize the raising of 
armies 1 No, not one man can be enlisted be- 
yond the number required to fill up the ranks 
of your little army ; and whether you pass this 
amendment or not, that power is already pos- 
sessed under existing laws. Is it, said Mr. K., 
even unprecedented and unsual ? A little at- 
tention to the history of our government must 
satisfy all who heard him, that it is neither the 
one nor the other. 

" During the whole period of the administra- 
tions of General Washington and the elder 
Adams, all appropriations were general, apply- 
ing a gross sum for the expenditure of the ditfer- 
ent departments of the government, under the 
direction of the President ; and it was not till 
Mr. Jefierson came into oflBce, that, at his re- 
commendation, specific appropriations were 
adopted. Was the constitution violated, broken 
down, and destroyed, under the administration 
of the father of his country ? Or did the for- 
tress to which the senator from Massachusetts, 
on this occasion, clings so fondly, tu^nble into 
ruin, when millions were placed in the hands of 
Mr. Jefferson himself, to be disposed of for a 
designated object, but, in every thing else, subject 
to his unlimited discretion? No, said Mr. K., 
our liberties remained unimpaired; and, he trust- 
ed in God, would so remain for centuries yet to 
come. He would not urge his confidence in the 
distinguished individual at the head of the gov- 
ernment as a reason why this amendment should 
pass; he was in favor of limiting executive 
discretion as far as practicable ; but circumstan- 
ces may present themselves, causes may exist, 
which would place it out of the power of Con- 
gress promptly to meet the emergency. To 
vhom, then, should they look ? Surely to the 
head of the government — to the man selected by 
the people to guard their rights and protect their 
interests. He put it to senators to sa}- whether, 
in a possible contingency, which all would under- 
stand, our forts should not be armed, or ships 
put in commission '? None will venture to gain- 
say it. Yet the extent to which such armament 



should be carried must, from the very r.ccessity 
of the case, be left to the sound discretion of the 
President. From the position he occupies, no 
one can be so competent to form a correct judg- 
ment, and he could not, if he would, apply the 
money to other objects than the defences of the 
country. Mr. K. said ho would not, at this last 
moment of the session, when time was so verj' pre- 
cious, further detain the Senate than to express 
his deep apprehension, his alarm, lest this most 
important bill should be lost by this conflict be- 
tween the two Houses. He would beg of sena- 
tors to reflect on the disastrous consequences 
which might ensue. He would again entreat 
the senator from Massachusetts to withdraw his 
motion, and ask a conference, and thus leave 
some reasonable ground for hope of ultimate 
agreement on this most important subject." 

The motion was persisted in, and the " adher- 
ence " carried by a vote of twenty-nine to seven- 
teen. The yeas and nays were : 

Yeas. — Messrs. Bell, Bibb, Calhoun, Clay, 
Clayton, Ewing, Frelinghuysen, Goldsborough, 
Hendricks, Kent, Knight, Leigh, Mangum, Moore, 
Naudain, Poindexter, Porter, Prentiss, Preston, 
Bobbins, Silsbee, Smith, Southard, Swift, Tomlin- 
son, Tyler, Waggaman, Webster, White. — 29. 

Nays. — Messrs. Benton, Brown, Buchanan, 
Cuthbert, Grundy, Hill, Kane, King of Alabama, 
King of Georgia, Linn. McKean, Buggies, Rob- 
inson, Shepley, Tallmadge, Tipton, Wright. — 
17. 

Upon being notified of this vote, the House 
took the conciUatory step of "insisting;" and 
asked a "conference." The Senate agreed to 
the request — appointed a committee on its part, 
which was met by another on the part of the 
House, which could not agree about the three 
milhons ; and while engaged in these attempts 
at concord, the existence of the Congress termi- 
nated. It was after midnight ; the morning of 
the fourth of March had commenced; many 
members said their power was at an end — others 
that it would continue till twelve o'clock, noon ; 
for it was that hour, on the 3d of ^March, 1780, 
that the first Congress commenced its existence, 
and that day should only be counted lialf, and 
the half of the next day taken to make out two 
complete years for each Congress. To this it 
was answered that, in law, there arc no fractions 
of a day ; that the whole day counted in a legal 
transac tion : in the birth of a measmv or of a man. 
The first day that the first Congress sat w.is the 
day of its birth, without looking to the hour at 
which it formed a quorum ; the day a man was 
born was the day of his birth, and he counted 



556 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



from the beginning of the day, and the whole 
day, and not from the hour and minute at which 
lie entered the world — a rule which would rob all 
the afternoon-born children of more or less of the 
day on which thej' were born, and po.stjione their 
majority until the day after their birthday. 
While these disquisitions were going on, many 
members were going off; and the Senate hear- 
ing nothing from the House, dispatched a mes- 
sage to it, on the motion of Mr. Webster, " re- 
spectfully to remind it" of the disagreement on 
the fortification bill ; on receiving which mes- 
sage, Mr. Cambreleng, chairman of conference, 
on the part of the House, stood up and said : 

" That the committee of conference of the two 
Houses had met, and had concurred in an amend- 
ment which was very unsatisfoctory to him. It 
proposed an unconditional appropriation of three 
hundred thousand dollars for arming the fortifi- 
cations, and five hundred thousand dollars for 
repairs of and equipping our vessels of war — an 
amount totally inadequate, if it should be re- 
quired, and more than was necessary, if it should 
not be. "When he came into the House from 
the conference, they were calling the ayes and 
Qocs on the resolution to pay the compensation 
due the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Letcher). 
He voted on that resolution, but there was no 
quorum voting. On a subsequent proposition 
to adjourn, the ayes and noes were called, and 
again there was no quorum voting. Under such 
circumstances, and at two o'clock in the morn- 
ing, he did not feel authorized to present to the 
House an appropriation of eight hundred thou- 
sand dollars. He regretted the loss, not only 
of the appropriation for the defence of the coun- 
try, but of the whole fortification bill ; but let 
the responsibility fall where it ought — on the 
Senate of the United States. The House had 
discharged its duty to the country. It had sent 
the fortification bill to the Senate, with an addi- 
tional appropriation, entirely for the defence of 
the country. The Senate had rejected that ap- 
propriation, without even deigning to propose 
any amendment whatever, either in form or 
amount. The House sent it a second time ; and 
a second time no amendment was proposed, but 
the reverse ; the Senate adhered, without con- 
descending to a.sk even a conference. Had that 
body asked a confiTenee, in the first instance, 
some provision would have been made for de- 
fence, and the fortification bill would have been 
saved before the hour arrived which terminated 
the existence of the present House of liepresen- 
tatives. As it was, the committees did not con- 
cur till this House had ceased to exist— the a)'es 
and noes had been twice taken without a quo- 
rum — the bill was evidently lost, and the Senate 
must take tlic responsibility of leaving the coun- 
try defenceless. He could not feel authorized 
to report the bill to the House, situated as it 



was, and at this hour in the morning ; but if 
any other member of the committee of confer- 
ence proposed to do it, he should make no ob- 
jection, though he believed such a proposition 
utterly ineffectual at this hour ; for no member 
could, at this hour in the morning, be compelled 
to vote." 

]\Iany members said the time was out. and 
that there had been no quorum for two hours. 
A count was had, and a quorum not found. The 
members were requested to pass through tellers, 
and did so : only eight-two present. Mr. John 
Y. Mason informed the House that the Senate 
had adjourned ; then the House did the same — 
making the adjournment in due form, after a vote 
of thanks to the speaker, and hearing his part 
ing address in return. 



CHAPTER CXXVIII. 

DISTRIBUTION OF REVENUE. 

Propositions for distributing the public land 
revenue among the States, had become common, 
to be succeeded by others to distribute the lands 
themselves, and finally the Custom House reve- 
nue, as well as that of the lands. The progress 
of distribution was natural and inevitable in that 
direction, when once begun. Mr. Calhoun and 
his friends had opposed these proposed distribu- 
tions as unconstitutional, as well as demoraliz- 
ing ; but after his junction with Mr. Clay, he 
began to favor them ; but still with the salvo of 
an amendment to the constitution. With this 
view, in the latter part of the session of 1835, 
he moved a resolution of inquiry into the extent 
of executive patronage, the increase of public 
expenditure, and the increase of the number of 
persons employed or fed by the federal govern- 
ment ; and he asked for a select committee of 
six to report upon his resolution. Both motions 
were granted by the Senate ; and, according to 
parliamentary law, and the principles of fair 
legislation (which always accord a committee 
favorable to the object proposed), the members 
of the committee were appointed upon the selec- 
tioi> of the six which he wished. They were : 
Messrs. Webster, Southard, Bibb, King of Geor- 
gia, and Benton — which, with himself, would 
make six. Mr. Webster declined, and Mr. Poin- 
dexter was appointed in his place ; Mr. South- 



ANNO 1834. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



557 



ard did not act ; and the committee, consisting 
of five, stood, politically, three against the ad- 
ministration — two for it ; and was thus a frustra- 
tion of iNIr. Calhoun's plan of having an impartial 
committee, taken equally from the three politi- 
cal parties. He had proposed the committee 
upon the basis of three political parties in the 
Senate, desiring to have two members from each 
party ; giving as a reason for that desire, that 
he wished to go into the examination of the im- 
portant inquiry proposed, with a committee free 
from all prejudice, and calculated to give it an 
impartial consideration. This division into three 
parties was not to the taste of all the members ; 
and hence the refusal of some to serve upon 
it. It was the first time that the existence of 
three parties was proposed to be made the basis 
of senatorial action, and did not succeed. The 
actual committee classed democratically, but 
with the majority opposed to the administration. 
At the first meeting a sub-committee of three 
was formed — Mr. Calhoun of course at its head 
— to draw up a report for the consideration of 
the full committee : and of this sub-committee 
a majority was against the administration. Very 
soon the committee was assembled to hear the 
report read. I was surprised at it — both at the 
quickness of the preparation and the character 
of the paper. It was an elaborate, ingenious 
and plausible attack upon the administration, 
accusing it of having doubled the expenses of 
the government — of having doubled the number 
of persons employed or supported by it — of hold- 
ing the public moneys in illegal custody — of ex- 
ercising a patronage tending to corruption — 
the whole the result of an over full treasury, 
which there was no way to deplete but by a 
distribution of the surplus revenue among the 
States ; for which purpose an amendment of the 
constitution would be necessary ; and was pro- 
posed. Mr. Benton heard the reading in silence ; 
and when finished declared his dissent to it : 
said he should make no minority report — a kind 
of reports which he always disliked ; but when 
read in the Senate he should rise in his place and 
oppose it. ]Mr. King, of Georgia, sided with 
Mr. Benton ; and thus the report went in. Jlr. 
Calhoun read it himself at the secretary's table 
and moved its printing. Mr. Poindextcr moved 
an extra number of 30,000 copies ; and spoke at 
length in support of his motion, and in favor of 
the report. Mr. King, of Georgia, followed him 



against the report : and Mr. Benton followed 
Mr. King on the same side. On the subject of 
the increase of expenditures doubled within the 
time mentioned, he showed that it came from 
extraordinary objects, not belonging to the ex- 
penses of the government, but temporary in 
their nature and transient in their existence; 
namely, the expenses of removing the Indians, 
the Indian war upon the ^lississippi, and the 
pension act of 1832 ; which carried up the revo- 
lutionary pensions from ^355,000 per annum to 
^3,500,000— just tenfold— and by an act which 
the friends of the administration opposed. He 
showed also that the increase in the number of 
persons employed, or supported by the govern- 
ment, came in a great degree from the same 
measure which carried up the number of pen- 
sioners from 17,000 to 40,000. On the subject 
of the illegal custody of the public moneys, it 
was shown, in the first place, that the custody 
was not illegal ; and, in the second, that the de- 
posit regulation bill had been defeated in the 
Senate by the opponents of the administration. 
Having vindicated the administration from the 
charge of extravagance, and the illegal custody 
of the public moneys, ]Mr. Benton came to the 
main part of the report — the surplus in the trea- 
sury, its distribution for eight years among the 
States (just the period to cover two presidential 
elections) ; and the proposed amendment to the 
constitution to permit that distribution to be 
made : and here it is right that the report should 
be allowed to speak for itself. Having assumed 
the annual surplus to be nine millions for .eight 
years — until the compromise of 1833 worked 
out its problem ; — that this surplus was inevita- 
ble, and that there was no legitimate object of 
federal care on which it could be expended, tlie 
report brought out distribution as the only prac- 
tical depletion of the treasury, and the only 
remedy for the corruptions which an exuberant 
treasury engendered. It proceeded thus : 

'• But if nosubjcct of expenditure can be select- 
ed on which the surplus can be safely expended, 
and if neither the revenue nor expenditure can. 
under existing circumstances, be reduced, the 
next inquiry is, what is to be done with the 
surplus, which, as has been shown, will probably 
equal, on an avera'j;o, for the next eight years, 
the sum of $9,000,000 beyond the just wants of 
the government ? A surplus of wliich, imlcss 
some safe disposition can be made, all other 
means of reilucing the patronage of the Execu- 
tive must prove iueJlectual. 



558 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



'■ Your committee are deeply sensible of the 
great difficult}' of finding any satisfactory solu- 
tion of this question ; but believing that the very 
existence of our institutions, and with them the 
liberty of the country, may depend on the suc- 
cess of their investigation, they have carefully 
explored the whole ground, and the result of 
their inquiry is, that but one means has occurred 
to them holding out any reasonable prospect of 
success. A few preliminary remarks will be 
necessary to explain their views. 

" Amidst all the difficulties of our situation, 
there is one consolation : that the danger from 
Executive patronage, as far as it depends on ex- 
cess of revenue, must be temporary. Assuming 
that the act of 2tl of March, 1833, will be left 
undisturbed, by its provisions the income, after 
the year 1842, is to be reduced to the economi- 
cal wants of the government. The government, 
then, is in a state of passage from one where the 
revenue is excessive, to another in which, at a 
fixed and no distant period, it will be reduced 
to its proper limits. The difficulty in the in- 
termediate time is, that the revenue cannot be 
brought down to the expenditure, nor the ex- 
penditure, without great danger, raised to the 
revenue, for reasons already explained. How^ is 
this difficulty to be overcome ? It might seem 
that the simple and natural means would be, to 
vest the surplus in some safe and profitable stock, 
to accumulate for future use ; but the difficulty 
in sucli a course will, on examination, be found 
insuperable. 

" At the veiy commencement, in selecting the 
stock, there would be great, if not insurmounta- 
ble, difficulties. No one would think of invest- 
ing the surplus in bank stock, against which 
there are so many and such decisive reasons that 
it is not deemed necessary to state them ; nor 
would the objections be less decisive against 
vesting in the stock of the States, which would 
create the dangerous relation of debtor and credi- 
tor between the government and the members 
of the Union. But suppose this difficulty sur- 
mounted, and that some stock perfectly safe was 
selected, there would still remain another that 
could not be surmounted. There cannot be 
found a stock, with an interest in its favor suffi- 
ciently strong to compete with the interests 
which, with a large surplus revenue, will be ever 
found in favor of expenditures. It must be per- 
fectly obvious to all w^ho have the least experi- 
ence, or who will duly reflect on the subject, 
that were a fund selected in which to vest the 
surplus revenue for future use, there would be 
found in practice a constant conflict between the 
interest in favor of some local or favorite scheme 
of expenditure, and that in favor of the stock. 
Nor can it be less obvious that, in point of fact, 
the former would prove far stronger than the 
latter. The result is obvious. The surplus, be 
it ever so gi'eat, woidd be absorbed by appro- 
priations, instead of being vested in the stock ; 
and the sclicme, of course, would, in practice, 
prove an abortion ; which brings us back to the 



original inquiry, how is the surplus to be dis- 
posed of until the excess shall be reduced to the 
just and economical wants of the government ? 

" After bestowing on this question, on the suc- 
cessful solution of which so much depends, the 
most deliberate attention, your committee, as 
they have already stated, can advise but one 
means by which it can be eftected ; and that is, 
an amendment of the constitution, authorizing 
the temporary distribution of the surplus reve- 
nue among the States till the year 1843 ; when, 
as has been shown, the income and expenditure 
will be equalized. 

'• Your committee are fully aware of the many 
and fatal objections to the distribution of the 
surplus revenue among the States, considered 
as a part of the ordinary and regular sj'stem of 
this government. They admit them to be as 
great as can well be imagined. The proposition 
itself, that the government should collect money 
fol- the purpose of such distribution, or should 
distribute a surplus for the purpose of perpetua- 
ting taxes, is too absurd to require refutation ; 
and yet what would be when applied, as sup- 
posed, so absurd and pernicious, is, in the opin- 
ion of your committee, in the present extraor- 
dinary and deeply disordered state of our affiiirs, 
not only useful and salutary, but indispensable 
to the restoration of the body pohtic to a sound 
condition; just as some potent medicine, which 
it would be dangerous and absurd to prescribe 
to the healthy, may, to the diseased, be the only 
means of arresting the hand of death. Distri- 
bution, as proposed, is not for the preposterous 
and dangerous purpose of raising a revenue for 
distribution, or of distributing the surplus as a 
means of perpetuating a system of duties or 
taxes ; but a temporarj^ measure to dispose of 
an unavoidable surplus while the revenue is in 
the course of reduction, and which cannot be 
otherwise disposed of, without greatly aggravat- 
ing a disease that threatens the most dangerous 
consequences ; and which holds out hope, not 
oul}^ of arresting its further progress, but also 
of restoring the bodj' politic to a state of health 
and vigor. The truth of this assertion a few ob- 
servations will suffice to illustrate. 

" It must be obvious, on a little reflection, that 
the cO'ects of distiibution of the surplus would 
be to place the interests of the States, on all 
([uestions of expcnditiire, in opposition to ex- 
penditure, as every reduction of exi^ense would 
necessarily increa.se the sum to be distributed 
among the States. The effect of this would be 
to convert them, through their interests, into 
Hiitliful and vigilant sentinels on the side of 
economy and accountability in the expenditures 
of this government ; and would thus powerfully 
tend to restore the government, in its fiscal 
action, to the plain and honest simphcity of for- 
mer days. 

" It may, perhaps, be thought by some that 
the power which the distribution among the 
States would bring to bear against the expendi- 
ture and its consequent tendency to retrench 



ANNO 1835. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



559 



the disbursements of the government, would be 
so strong, as not only to curtail useless or im- 
proper expenditure, but also the useful and ne- 
cessary. Such, undoubtedly, would be the con- 
sequence, if the process were too long continued ; 
but in the present irregular and excessive action 
of the system, when its centripetal force threat- 
ens to concentrate all its powers in a single de- 
partment, the fear that the action of this govern- 
ment will be too much reduced by the measure 
imder consideration, in the short period to which 
it is proposed to limit its operation, is without 
just foundation. On the contrary, if the pro- 
posed measure should be applied in the present 
diseased state of the government, its effect would 
be like that of some powerful alterative medi- 
cine operating just long enough to change the 
present morbid action, but not sufficiently long 
to superinduce another of an opposite charac- 
ter. 

'• But it may be objected that, though the dis- 
tribution might reduce all useless expenditure, 
it would at the same time give additional power 
to the interest in favor of taxation. It is not 
denied that such would be its tendency ; and, 
if the danger from increased duties or taxes was 
at this time as great as that from a surplus re- 
venue, the objection would be fatal ; but it is 
confidently believed that such is not the case. 
On the contrary, in proposing the measure, it is 
assumed that the act of March 2, 1833, will re- 
main undisturbed. It is on the strength of this 
assumption that the measure is proposed, and, 
s it is believed, safely proposed. 

" It may, however, be said that the distribu- 
tion may create, on the part of the States, an 
appetite in its favor which may ultimately lead 
to its adoption as a permanent measure. It may 
indeed tend to excite such an appetite, short as is 
the period proposed for its operation ; but it is 
obvious that this danger is far more than coun- 
tervailed by the fact that the proposed amend- 
ment to the constitution to authorize the distri- 
bution would place the power beyond the reach 
of legislative construction ; and thus effectually 
prevent the possibility of its adoption a.s a per^ 
manent measure ; as it cannot be conceived that 
three-fourths of the States will ever assent to 
an amendment of the constitution to authorize 
a distribution, except as an extraordinary mea- 
sure, applicable to some extraordinary condition 
of the country like the present. 

'* Giving, however, to these and other objections 
which may be urged, all the force that can be 
claimed for them, it must be remembered the 
question is not whether the measure proposed 
is or is not liable to this or that objection, but 
whether any other less objectionable can be 
devised ; or rather, whether there is any other, 
which promises the least prospect of relief, that 
can be applied. Let not the delusion prevail 
that the disease, after running through its natu- 
ral course, will terminate of itself, without flUal 
consequences. Experience is opposed to such 
anticipations. Many and striking are the ex- 



amples of free States perishing under that excess 
of patronage which now aftticts ours. It may, 
in fact, be said with truth, that all or nearly 
all diseases which afliict free governments may 
be traced directly or indirectly to excess of re- 
venue and expenditure ; the effect of which is to 
rally around the government a powerful, cor- 
rupt, and subservient corps — a corps ever obe- 
dient to its will, and ready to sustain it in every 
measure, whether right or wrong ; and which, 
if the cause of the disease be not eradicated, 
must ultimately render the government stronger 
than the people. 

" What progress this dangerous disease has 
already made in our country it is not for your 
committee to say ; but when they reflect on the 
present symptoms ; on the almost unbounded 
extent of executive patronage, wielded by a sin- 
gle will ; the surplus revenue, which cannot be 
reduced within proper limits in less than seven 
years — a period which covers two presidential 
elections, on both of which all this mighty power 
and influence will be brought to bear ; and when 
they consider that, with the vast patronage and 
influence of tliis government, that of all the 
States acting in concert with it will be com- 
bined, there are just grounds to fear that the 
fate which has befallen so many other free gov- 
ernments must also befall ours, unless, indeed, 
some efiectual remedy be forthwith applied. 
It is under this impression that your committee 
have suggested the one proposal ; not as free 
from all objections, but as the only one of suffi- 
cient power to arrest the disease and to restore 
the body politic to a sound condition ; and they 
have accoi'dingly reported a resolution so to 
amend the constitution that the money remain- 
ing in the treasury at the end of each year till 
the 1st of January, 1843, deducting therefrom 
the sum of $2,000,000 to meet current and con- 
tingent expenses, shall annually be distributed 
among the States and Territoi'ies, including the 
District of Columbia; and, for that purpose, 
the sum to be distributed to be divided into as 
many shares as there are senators and repre- 
sentatives in Congress, adding two for each ter- 
ritory and two for the District of Columbia ; and 
that there shall be allotted to each State a num- 
ber of shares equal to its representation in both 
Houses, and to the territories, including the Dis- 
trict of Columbia, two shares each. Supposing 
the surplus- to be distributed .should average 
.'jji9,000,000 annually, as estimated, it would give 
to each share ,fi;30,405; which inultipliod by the 
number of senators and reiiresentatives from a 
State will show the amount to which any State 
will be entitled." 

The report being here introduced to speak for 
itself, the reply also is introduced as delivered 
upon the instant, and found in (he Congress 
register of debates, thus : 

" Mr. Benton nest came to the proposition in 



560 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



the report to amend the constitution for eight 
years, to enable Congress to make distribution 
among the States, Territories, and District of 
Cohunbia, of the annual surplus of public 
money. The surplus is carefully calculated at 
$9,000,000 per annum for eight years ; and the 
rule of distribution assumed goes to divide that 
sum into as many shares as there are senators 
and representatives in Congress; each State to 
take shares according to her representation ; 
which the report shows would give for each 
share precisely $30,405 ; and then leaves it to 
the State itself, by a little ciphering, in multi- 
plying the aforesaid sum of $30,405 by the 
whole number of senators and representatives 
which it may have in Congress, to calculate the 
annual amount of the stipend it would receive. 
This process the report extends through a pe- 
riod of eight years ; so that the whole sum to 
be divided to the States, Territories, and Dis- 
trict of Columbia, will amount to seventy-two 
millions of dollars. 

" Of all the propositions which he ever wit- 
nessed, brought forward to astonish the senses, 
to confound recollection, and to make him 
doubt the reality of a past or a present scene, 
this proposition, said Mr. B., eclipses and dis- 
tances the whole ! What ! the Senate of the 
United States — not only the same Senate, but 
the same members, sitting in the same chairs, 
lookmg in each others' feces, remembering what 
each had said only a few short months ago 
— now to be called upon to make an altera- 
tion in the constitution of the United States, 
for the pupose of dividing seventj^-two millions 
of surplus money in the treasury ; when that 
same treasury was proclaimed, affirmed, vatici- 
nated, and proved, upon calculations, for the 
whole period of the last session, to be sinking 
into bankruptcy ! that it would be destitute of 
revenue by the end of the year, and could never 
be replenished until the deposits were restored ! 
the bank rechartered ! and the usurjjcr and des- 
pot driven from the high place which he dis- 
honored and abused ! This was the cry then ; 
the cry which resounded through this chamber 
for six long months, and was wafted upon every 
breeze to every quarter of the Republic, to 
alarm, agitate, disquiet and enrage the people. 
The author of this report, and the whole party 
with whicli he marched under the onftamme 
of the Eank of the United States, tilled the 
Union with this cry of a bankrupt treasury, and 
predicted the certain and speedy downfall of the 
administration, from the want of money to carry 
on the operations of the government. 

" [Mr. Calhoun here rose and wished to know 
of Mr. Benton whether he meant to include him 
in the number of those who had predicted a 
deficiency in the revenue.] 

" Mr. B. said he would answer the gentleman 
by telling him an anecdote. It was the story 
of a drummer taken prisoner in the low coun- 
tries by the videttes of Marshal Saxc, under 
circumstances which deprived him of the pro- 



tection of the laws of war. About to be shot, 
the poor drummer plead in his defence that he 
was a non-combatant ; he did not fight and kill 
people ; he did nothing, he said, but beat his 
drum in the rear of the line. But he was an- 
swered, so much the worse ; that he made other 
people fight, and kill one another, by driving 
them on Avith that drum of his in the rear of 
the line ; and so he should suffer for it. Mr. 
B. hoped that the story would be understood, 
and that it would be received by the gentleman 
as an answer to his question ; as neither in law, 
politics, nor war, was there any difference be- 
tween what a man did b}^ himself, and did by 
another. Be that as it may, said Mr. B., the 
strangeness of the scene in which we are now 
engaged remains the same. Last 3'ear it was a 
bankrupt treasury, and a beggared government ; 
now it is a treasury gorged to bursting with 
surplus millions, and a government trampling 
down liberty, contaminating morals, bribing and 
wielding vast masses of people, from the unem- 
ploj^able funds of countless treasures. Such are 
the scenes which the two sessions present ; and 
it is in vain to deny it, for the fatal speeches of 
that fatal session have gone forth to all the bor- 
ders of the republic. They were printed here 
by the myriad, franked by members by the ton 
weight, freighted to all parts by a decried and 
overwhelmed Post Office, and paid for ! paid 
for ! by whom ? Thanks for one thing, at least ! 
The report of the Finance Committee on the 
bank (Mr. Tyler's report) effected the exhuma- 
tion of one mass — one mass of hidden and 
buried putridity ; it was the printing account 
of the Bank of the United States for that ses- 
sion of Congress which will long live in the 
history of our country under the odious appel- 
lation of the panic session. That printing ac- 
count has been dug up ; is the black vomit of 
the bank ! and he knew the medicine which 
could bring forty such vomits from the foul 
stomach of the old red harlot. It was the me- 
dicine of a committee of investigation, consti- 
tuted upon parliamentary principles ; a commit^ 
tee, composed, in its majority, of those who 
charged misconduct, and evinced a disposition 
to probe every charge to the bottom ; such a 
committee as the Senate had appointed, at the 
same session, not for the bank, but for the post 
office. 

''Yes, exclaimed Mr. B., not only the trea- 
sury was to be bankrupt, but the currency was 
to be ruined. There was to be no money. The 
tiash in the treasury, what little there was, 
was to be nothing but depreciated paper, the 
vile issues of insovlent pet banks. Silver, and 
United States bank notes, and even good bills 
of exchange, were all to go off, all to take leave, 
and make their mournful exit together; and 
gold ! that was a trick unworthy of counte- 
nance ; a gull to bamboozle the simple, and to 
insult the intelligent, until the fall elections 
were over. l{uin, ruin, ruin to the currency, 
was the lugubrious cry of the day, and the sor- 



ANNO 1835. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



56] 



rowfvil burden of the speech for six long months. 
Now, on the contrary, it seems to bo admitted 
that there is to be money, real good money, in 
the treasury, such as the fiercest haters of the 
pet banks would wish to have ; and that not a 
little, since seventy-two millions of surpluses 
are proposed to be drawn from that same 
empty treasury in the brief space of eight years. 
Not a word about ruined currency now. Not a 
word about the currency itself. The very word 
seems to be dropped from the vocabulary "of gen- 
tlemen. All lips closed tight, all tongues hushed 
still, all allusion avoided, to that once dear 
phrase. The silver currency doubled in a year ; 
four millions of gold coins in half a year ; ex- 
changes reduced to the lowest and most uniform 
rates ; the whole expenses of Congress paid in 
gold ; working people receiving gold and silver 
for their ordinary wages. Such are the results 
which have confounded the prophets of wo, 
silenced the tongues of lamentation, expelled 
the word currency from our debates; and 
brought the people to question, if it cannot 
bring themselves, to doubt, the future infalli- 
bility of those undaunted alarmists who still 
go forward with new and confident predictions, 
notwithstanding they have been so recently and 
so conspicuously deceived in their vaticinations 
of a ruined currency, a bankrupt treasury, and 
a beggard government. 

" But here we are, said Mr. B., actually en- 
gaged in a serious proposition to alter the con- 
stitution of the United States for the period of 
eight j-ears, in order to get rid of surplus reve- 
nue ; and a most dazzling, seductive, and fasci- 
nating scheme is presented ; no less than nine 
millions a year for eight consecutive years. It 
took like wildfire, Mr. B. said, and he had seen 
a member — no, that might seem too particular 
— he had seen a gentleman who looked upon it 
as establishing a new era in the affairs of our 
America, establishing a new test for the forma- 
tion of parties, bringing a new question into all 
our elections, State and federal ; and operating 
the political salvation and elevation of all who 
supported it and the immediate, utter, and irre- 
trievable political damnation of all who opposed 
it. But Mi-. B. dissented from the novelty of 
the scheme. It was an old acquaintance of his, 
only new vamped and new burnished, for the 
present occasion. It is the same proposition, 
only to be accomplished in a different way, 
which was brought forward, some years ago, by 
a senator from New Jersey (Mr. Dickerson) 
and which then received unmeasured condem- 
nation, not merely for unconstitutiouality, but 
for all its effects and consequences : the degra- 
dation of mendicant States, receiving their an- 
nual allowance from the bounty of the federal 
government ; the debauchment of the public 
morals, when every citizen was to look to the 
federal treasury for money, and every candidate 
for office was to outbid his competitor in oflTer- 
ing it ; the consolidation of the States, thus re- 
Bulting from a central supply of revenue ; the 
Vol. I.— 36' 



folly of collecting with one liand to pay back 
with the other ; and both hands to be greased at 
the expense of the citizen, who pays one man to 
collect the money from him, and another to 
bring it back to him, miintfi tlic interest and the 
cost of a double operation in fetching and carry- 
ing ; and the eventual and inevitable progrc^^s 
of the scheme to tlie plunder of the weaker half 
of the Union by the stronger; when tlie stronger 
half would undoul)tedl)' tln-ow tlic whole bur- 
den of raising the moncj' upon the weaker half, 
and then take the main . portion to themselves. 
Such were the main objections uttered against 
this plan, seven years ago, when a gallant son 
of South Carolina (General Ilayne) stood by 
his (Mr. B.'s) side — no, stood before liim — and 
led him in the fight against that fatal and delu- 
sive scheme, now brought forward under a more 
sedusivc, dangerous, alarming, inexcusable, un- 
justifiable, and demoralizing form. 

'• Yes, said Mr. B., it is not only the revival 
of the same plan for dividing surplus revenue, 
which received its condemnation on this lioor, 
seven or eight years ago ; but it is the modifica- 
tion, and that in a form infinitely worse for the 
new States, of the famous land bill which now 
lies upon our table. It takes up the object of 
that bill, and runs away with it, giving nine mil- 
lions where that gave three, and leaves the au- 
thor of that bill out of sight behind ; and can 
the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Cal- 
houn) be so short-sighted as not to see that 
somebody will play him the same prank, and 
come forward with propositions to raise and di- 
vide twenty, thirty, forty millions; and thus out- 
leap, outjump, and outrun him in the race of 
popularity, just as far as he himself has now 
outjumped, outleaped, and outran, the author of 
the laud distribution bill ? 

" Yes, said Mr. B., this scheme for dividing 
surplus revenue is an old acquaintance on this 
floor ; but never did it come upon this floor at a 
time so inauspicious, luider a form so question- 
able, and upon assumptions so unfounded in fact, 
so delusive in argumen(t. He would speak of 
the inauspiciousness of the time hereafter ; at 
present, he would take positions in direct con- 
tradiction to all the arguments of fact and rea- 
son upon which this monstrous scheme of dis- 
tribution is erected and defended. Condensed 
into their essence, these arguments are : 

" 1. That there will be a surplus of nine mil- 
lions annually, for eight j-ears. 

"2. That there is no way to reduce the reve- 
nue. 

" 3. That there is no object of general utility 
to which these surpluses can be applied. 

"4. That distribution is the only way to car- 
ry them off without poisoning and corrupting 
the whole body politic 

"Mr. B. disputed the whole of those proposi- 
tions, and would undertake to show each to bo 
unfounded and erroneous. 

" 1. The report says that the surplus will pm- 
bably equal, on the average, for tho next ei-ht 



562 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



years, the sum of lfi;9,000,000 beyond the just 
wants of the government ; and in a subsequent 
part it says, supposing the surphis to be distri- 
buted should average )$9,0()0,()00, annually, as 
estimated, it would give to each share ^'30,405, 
which, multiplied by the senators and represen- 
tatives of any State, would show the sum to 
which it would be entitled. The amendment 
which has been reported to carry this distribu- 
tion into eitect is to take effect for the year 1835 
— the present year — and to continue till the 1st 
day of Januar}', 1843 ; of course it is inclusive 
of 1842, and makes a period of eight years for 
the distribution to go on. The amendment con- 
tains a blank, which is to be filled up with the 
sum which is to be left in the trcasur}- every 
3'ear, to meet contingent and unexpected de- 
mands ; and the report shows that this blank is 
to be filled with the sum of ^2,000.000. Here, 
then, is the totalitj^ of these surpluses, eleven 
millions a year, for eight consecutive years ; but 
of which nine miUions are to be taken annually 
for distribution. Now, nine times eight are 
seventy-two, so that here is a report setting 
forth the enormous sum of .'$72,000,000 of mere 
surplus, after satisfying all the just wants of the 
government, and leaving two millions in the trea- 
sury, to be held up for distribution, and to ex- 
cite the i)eopk' to clamor for their shares of such 
a great and dazzling prize. At the same time, 
Mr. B. said, there woidd be no such surplus. It 
was a delusive bait held out to whet the appe- 
tite of the people for the spoils of their countrj^ ; 
and could never be realized, even if the amend- 
ment for authorizing the distiibution should now 
pa-s. The seventy-two millions could never be 
found ; they would exist nowhere but in this 
report, in the author's imagination, and in the 
deluded hones of an excited comnninity. The 
seventy-two millions could never be found ; they 
woulS. turn out to be the 'fellows in Kendal 
green and buckram suits,' which figured so 
largely in the imagination of Sir John Falstaflf 
— the two-and-fifty men in buckram which the 
valiant old knight received upon his point, thus! 
[extending a pencil in the attitude of defence]. 
The calculations of the author of the report 
were wild, delusive, astonishing, incredible. Tie 
(Mr. B.) could not limit himself to the epithet 
wild, for it was a clear ease of hallucination. 

" Mr. B. then took up the treasurj' report of 
Mr. Secretary Woodbury, communicated at the 
commencement of the present session of Con- 
gress, and containing the estimates required by 
law of the expected income and expenditure for 
the present year, and also for the year 183G. At 
pages 4 and 5 are the estimates for the present 
year ; the income estimated at .5:20,000,000, the 
expenditures at §19.083.540 ; being a dilference 
of onl}- some three hundred thousand dollars 
between the income and the outlay ; and such 
is the chance for nine millions taken, and two 
left in the first year of the distribution. At 
pages 10, 14, 15, the revenue for 1830 is com- 
puted ; and, after going over all the heads of 



expense, on which diminutions will ])robably bo 
made, he computes the income and outlay of the 
3'ear at about equal ; or probablj^ a little surplus 
to the amount of one million. 'These are the 
estiniates, said Mv. B., formed upon data, and 
coming from an ofiicer making rcjjorts upon his 
responsibility, and for tbe legislative guidance 
of Congress ; and to which we are bound to give 
credence until I hey are shown to be incorrect. 
Here, then, are the first two years of the eight 
disposed of, and nothing found in them to divide. 
The last two years of the term could be dis- 
patched even more quickly, said Mr. B. ; for 
every l)ody that imdcrstands the compromi.se 
act of March, 1833, must know that, in the last 
two years of the operation of that act. there 
would be an actual deficit in the treasury. Look 
at the terms of the act ! It proceeds by slow 
and insensible degrees, making slight deductions 
once in two j'ears, until the j-ears 1841 and 
1842, when it ceases crawling, and commences 
jumping; and leaps down, at two jumps, to 
twenty per centum on the value of the articles 
which pay duty, which articles are less than one 
half of our importations. Twenty per cent, 
upon the amount of goods which will then pay 
duty will produce but little, say twelve or thir- 
teen millions, upon the basis of sixt}' or seventy 
millions of dutiable articles imported then, which 
only amount to forty-seven millions now. Then 
there will be no surplus at all for one half the 
period of eight years : the first two and the last 
two. In the middle period of four years there 
will probably be a surplus of two or three mil- 
lions ; l)ut Mr. B. took issue upon all the allega- 
tions with respect to it ; as that there was no 
way to reduce the revenue without disturbing; 
the compromise act of March, 1833 ; that there 
was no object of general utility to which it could 
be applied ; and that distribution was the only 
way to get rid of it. 

''Equally delusive, and profoundly errone- 
ous, was the gentleman's idea of the surplus 
which could be taken out of the approjjria- 
tions. True, that operation could be perform- 
ed once, and but once. The run of our trea- 
sury payments show that about one quarter 
of the year's expenditure is not paid within 
the year, but the first quarter of the next 
year, and thus could be paid out of the reve- 
nue received in the first quarter of the next 
3'ear, even if the revenue of the la'st quarter of 
the preceding year Avas thrown awa3\ But this 
was a thing which could onh* be done once. 
You might rely upon the first quarter, but you 
could not upon the second, third, and fourth. 
There would not be a dollar in the treasury at 
the end of four .years, if 30U deducted a quarter's 
amount four times successivelv. It was a case, 
if a homely adage might be allowed, which would 
well apply — you could not eat the cake and liave 
it too. Mr. B. submitted it. then, to the Senate, 
that, on the first point of objection to tlie report, 
his issue was maintained. Tliere was no such 
. surplus of nine millions a 3ear lor eight years, 



ANNO 1835. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



563 



as had been assumed, nor any thing near it ; and 
this assumption being the corner-stone of the 
whole edifice of the scheme of distribution, it 
was sufficient to show the fallacy of that data 
to blow the whole scheme into the empty air. 

Mr. B. admonished the Senate to beware of 
ridicule. To pass a solemn vote for amending 
the constitution, for the purpose of enabling 
Congress to make distribution of surpluses of 
revenue, and then find no surplus to distribute, 
might lessen the dignity and diminish the vreight 
of so grave a body. It might expose it to ridi- 
cule ; and that was a hard thing for public bodies, 
and public men, to stand. The Senate had stood 
much in its time ; much in the latter part of Mr. 
Monroe's administration, when the Washington 
Republican habitually denounced it as a faction, 
and displayed many brilliant essays, written by 
no mean hand, to prove that the epithet was well 
applied, though applied to a majority. It had 
stood much, also, during the four years of the 
second ]Mr. Adams's administration ; as the sur- 
viving pages of the defunct National Journal 
could still attest : but in all that time it stood 
clear of ridicule ; it did nothing upon which 
saucy wit could lay its lash. Let it beware now ! 
for the passage of this amendment may expose 
it to untried peril ; the peril of song and carica- 
ture. And wo to the Senate, fiirewell to its dig- 
nity, if it once gets into tlie windows of the print- 
shop, and becomes the burden of the ballads 
which the milkmaids sing to their cows. 

" 2. jMr. B. took up liis second head of objec- 
tion. The report afiirmed that there was no 
way to reduce the revenue before the end of the 
year 1842, without violating the terms of the 
compromise act of ]March, 1833. Mr. B. said 
he had opposed that act ^^•hen it was on its pas- 
sage, and had then stated his objections to it. 
It was certainly an extraordinary act, a sort of 
new constitution for nine years, as he had heard 
it felicitously called. It was made in an unusual 
manner, not precisel}^ by three men on an island 
on the coast of Italy, but by two in some room 
of a boarding-house in this city ; and then pushed 
through Congress under a press of sail, and a 
duresse of feeling ; under the factitious cry of 
dissolution of the Union, raised b}^ those who 
had been declaring, on one hand, that the tariff 
could not be reduced without dissolving the 
Union ; and on the other that it could not 
be kept up without dissolving the same Union. 
The value of all such cries, ]Mr. B. said, would 
be appreciated in future, when it was seen with 
how mucli facility certain persons who had stood 
under the opposite poles of the earth, as it were, 
on the subject of the tariff, had come together 
to compromise their opinions, and to lay the 
tariff on the slielf for nine 3-cars ! a period which 
covered two presidential elections ! That act 
was no favorite of his, but he would let it alone; 
and thus leaving it to work out its design for 
nine years, he would say there were ways to re- 
duce the revenue, very sensibly, \vithout affect- 
ing the terms or the spirit of that act. And 



here he would speak upon data. lie had the 
authoT'ity of the Secretary of the Treasury (Mr. 
Woodbury) to declare that he believed he could 
reduce the revenue in this way and upon imjiorts 
to the amount of five hundred thousand dollars ; 
and he, Mr. B.. should submit a resolution call- 
ing upon the Secretary to furnish the details of 
this reduction to the Senate at the commence- 
ment of their next stated session, that Congress 
might act upon it. Furtlier, Mr. B. would say, 
that it appeared to him that the whole list of 
articles in the fifth section of the act, amoimting 
to thirty or forty in number, and which by that 
section are to be free of duty in l(S42,and which in 
his opinion might be made free this day. and that 
not only without injuiry to the manufacturers, 
but with such manifest advantage to tliem, that, 
as an equivalent for it, and for the sake of ob- 
taining it, they ought to come forward of them- 
selves, and make a voluntary concession of re- 
ductions on some other points, especially on 
some classes of woollen goods, 

" Having given Mr. Woodbury's authority' for 
a reduction of ,^500,000 on imports, Mr. B. 
would show another source from which a much 
larger reduction could be made, and that with- 
out aflecting this famous act of jNIarch, 1833, in 
another and a different quarter ; it was in the 
Western quarter, the new States, the public 
lands ! The act of 1833 did not embrace this 
source of revenue, and Congress was free to act 
upon it, and to give the people of the new States 
the same relief on the purchase of the article on 
which they chiefiy paid revenue as it had done 
to the old States in the reduction of the tariff. 
Mr. B. did not go into the worn-out and explod- 
ed objections to the reduction of the price of tlie 
lands which the report had gathered up from 
their old sleeping places, and presented again to 
the Senate. Speculators, monopolies, the fall in 
the price of real estate all over the L'nion ; these 
were exploded follacies which he was sorry tc 
see paraded here again, and which he should not 
detain the Senate to answer. Suffice it to say, 
that there is no application made now, made 
heretofore, or intended to be made, so far as lie 
knew, to reduce the price of new land! One 
dollar and a quarter was low enough for the first 
choice of new lands ; but it was-not low enough 
for the second, third, fourth, and fifth choices ! 
It was not low enough for the refuse lauds which 
had been five, ten, twenty, forty years in market ; 
and which could find no purchaser at SI 2;j, for 
the solid reason that they were worth but the 
half, the quarter, the teiith part, of that sum. 
It was for such lands tliat reduclion of iirices 
was sought, and had been sought for many years, 
and would continue to be sought until it was 
obtained ; for it was imjiossible to believe tliat 
Congress would persevere in the flauirant inju.-*- 
tice of for ever refusing to reduce the price of re- 
fuse and unsalable lands to their actual value. 
The policy of President Jackson, communicated 
in his messages, Mr. B. said, was the policy of 
wisdom and justice. He was for disposing of the 



564 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



lands more for the purpose of promoting; settle- 
ments, and creating freeholders, than for the 
purpose of exacting revenue from tlie mci-itori- 
ous class of citizens who cultivate tlie soil. lie 
would sell the lands at prices which would pay 
expenses — the expense of acquiring them from 
the Tndians, and survc3nng and selling them ; 
and this system of moderate prices with dona- 
tions, or nominal sales to actual settlers, would 
do justice to the new States, and effect a sensible 
reduction in the revenue ; enough to prevent the 
necessity of amending the constitution to get rid 
of nine million surpluses ! But whether the 
price of lands was reduced or not, ]Mr. B. said, 
the revenue from that source would soon be di- 
minished. The revenue had been exorbitant 
from the sale of lands for three or four years 
past. And why ? Precisely because immense 
bodies of new lands, and much of it in the States 
adapted to the production of the great staples 
which now bear so high a price, have within that 
period, come into market ; but these fresh lands 
must soon be exhausted ; the old and refuse only 
remain for sale ; and the revenue from that 
source will sink down to its former usual amount, 
instead of remaining at three millions a year for 
nine years, as the I'cport assumes. 

" 3. When he had thus shown that a diminu- 
tion of revenue could be effected, both on imports 
and on refuse and unsalable lands, Mr. B. took 
up the third issue wliich he had joined with the 
report; namely, the possibility of finding an 
object of general utility on which tlie surpluses 
could be expended. The report affirmed there 
was no such object; he, on the contrary, affirm- 
ed that there were such ; not onCi^but several, 
not only useful, but necessary, not merely ne- 
cessary, but exigent ; not exigent only, but in 
the highest possible degree indispensable and 
essential. He alluded to the whole class of 
measures connected with the general and per- 
manent defence of the Union ! In peace, prepare 
for war ! is the admonition of wisdom in all ages 
and in all nations ; and sorely and grievously 
has our America heretofore paid for the neglect 
of that admonition. She has paid for it in blood, 
in money, and in .shame. Are we prepared now? 
And is there any reason why we should not pre- 
pare now? Look at j'our maritime coast, from 
Passamaquoddy Bay to Florida point ; your gulf 
coast, from Florida point to the Sabine ; your 
lake frontier, in its whole extent. What is the 
picture ? Almost destitute of forts ; and. it might 
be said, quite destitute of armament. Look at 
vour armories and arsenals — too few and too 
empty ; and the West almost destitute ! Look 
at your militia, many of them mustering with 
corn stalks ; the States deficient in arms, especial- 
ly in field artillery, and in swords and ])islols 
for their cavalry ! Look at your navy ; slowly 
increasing under an annual appropriation of half 
a million a year, instead of a whole million, at 
which it was fixed soon after the late war, and 
from which it was reduced some years ago, when 
money ran low in the treasury ! Look at your 



dock-yards and navy-yards ; thinl}' dotted along 
the maritime coast, and hardly seen at all on the 
gulf coast, where the whole South, and the great 
West, so imperiously demand naval protection ! 
Such is the picture ; such the state of our coun- 
try ; such its state at tliis time, when even the 
most unobservant should see something to make 
us think of defence ! Such is the state of our 
defences now, with which, oh ! strange and won- 
derful contradiction ! the administration is now 
reproached, reviled, flouted, and taunted, by those 
who go for distribution, and turn their backs on 
defence ! and who complain of the President for 
leaving us in this condition, when five years ago, 
in the year 1829. he I'ccommended the annual 
sum of ^250,000 for arming the fortifications 
(which Congress refused to give), and who now 
are for taking the money out of the treasury, to 
be divided among the peoj)le; instead of turning 
it all to the great object of the general and per- 
manent defence of the Union, for which they 
were so solicitous, so clamorous, so feelingly 
alive, and patriotically sensitive, even one short 
month ago. 

" Does not the present state of the country 
(said Mr. B.) call for defence '? and is not this 
the propitious time for putting it in defen'^e ? 
and will not that object absorb every dollar of 
real surplus that can be found in the treasury 
for the.se eight years of plenty, during which we 
are to be afflicted with seventy-two millions of 
surplus ? Let us see. Let us take one single branch 
of the general system of defence, and sec how it 
stands, and what it would cost to put it in the 
condition which the safety and the honor of the 
country demanded. He spoke of the fortifications, 
and selected that branch, because he had data to 
go upon ; data to which the senator from South 
Carolina, the author of this report, could not 
object. 

" The design (.«aid Mr. B.) of fortifying the 
coasts of the United States is as old as the Union 
itself Our documents are fiill of executive re- 
commendations, departmental reports, and re- 
ports of committees upon this subj-'.ct, all urging 
this great object upon the attention of Congress. 
From 1789, through every succeeding adminis- 
tration, the subject was ])resented to Congress; 
but it was only after the late war, and when the 
evils of a defenceless coast were fresh before the 
eyes of the people, that the subject was present- 
ed in the most impressive, persevering, and sys- 
tematic form. An engineer of the first rank 
(General Bernard) was taken into our service 
from the school of the great Napoleon. A reso- 
lution of the House of Representatives called on 
the War Department for a plan of defence, and 
a designation of forts adequate to tlie projection 
of the country ; and upon this call examinations 
were made, estimates framed, and forts projected 
for the whole maritime coast from "Savannah to 
Boston. The result was the presentation, in 
1821, of a plan for ninety forts upon that part 
of the coast; namely, twenty-four of the first 
class ; twenty-three of '.he second ; and forty- 



ANNO 1830. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



565 



three of the third. Under the administration 
of Mr. Monroe, and the uroent recommendations 
of the then head of the War Department (Mr. 
Calhoun), the construction of these forts was 
commenced, and pushed with spirit and activity ; 
but, owing to circumstances not necessary now 
to be detailed, the object decUned in the public 
favor, lost a part of its popularity, perhaps just- 
ly, and has since proceeded so slowly that, at the 
end of twenty years from the late war, no more 
than thirteen of these forts have been construct- 
ed ; namely, eight of the first class, three of the 
second, and two of the third ; and of these thir- 
teen constructed, none are armed ; almost all of 
them are without guns or carriages, and more 
ready for the occupation of an enemy than for 
the defence of ourselves. This is the state of 
fortifications on the maritime coast, exclusive of 
the New England coast to the north of Boston, 
exclusive of Cape Cod, south of Boston, and ex- 
clusive of the Atlantic coast of Florida. The 
lake frontier is untouched. The gulf frontiei", 
almost two thousand miles in length, barely is 
dotted with a few forts in the neighborhood of 
Pensacola, New Orleans, and Mobile; all the 
rest of the coast may be set down as naked and 
defenceless. This was our condition. Now, Mv. 
B. did not venture to give an opinion that the 
whole plan of fortifications developed in the re- 
ports of 1821 should be carried into efiect ; but 
he would SAy, and that most confidently, that 
much of it ought to be ; and it would be the 
business of Congress to decide on each fort in 
making a specific appropriation for it. He would 
also say that many forts would be found to be 
necessary which were not embraced iu that plan ; 
for it did not touch the lake coast, and the gulf 
coast, nor the New England coast, north of Bos- 
ton, nor any point of the land frontier. With- 
out going into the question at all, of how many 
were necessary, or where they should be placed, 
it was sufficient to show that there were enough 
wanting, beyond dispute, to constitute an object 
of utility, worthy of the national expenditure; 
and sufficient to absorb, not nine millions of an- 
nual surplus, to be sure, but about as many mil- 
lions of suiplus as would ever be found, and the 
bank stock into the bargain. The thirteen forts 
constructed had cost twelve millions one hun- 
dred and thirteen thousand dollars ; near one 
million of dollars each. But this was for con- 
struction only ; the armament was still to fol- 
low ; and for this object two millions were es- 
timated in 1821 for the ninety forts then recom- 
mended ; and of that two millions it may be 
assumed that but little has been granted by 
Congress. So much for fortifications ; in itself 
a single branch of defence, and sufficient to 
absorb many millions. But there were many 
other branches of defence which, Mr. B. said, 
he would barely enumerate- There was the navy, 
including its gradual increase, its dock-yards, 
its navy-yards ; then the armories and arsenals, 
which were so much wanted in the South and 
West, and especially in the South, for a reason 



(besides those which apply to foreign enemies) 
which need not be named ; then the supply of 
arms to the States, especially field artillery, 
swords, and pistols, for which an annual but in- 
adequate appropriation had been made for so 
long a time that he believed the States had al- 
most forgot the subject. Here are objects enough, 
Mr. President, exclaimed Mr. B., to absorb every 
dollar of our surplus, and the bank stock besides. 
The surpluses, he was certain, would be wholly 
insufficient, and the bank stock, by a solemn 
resohition of the two Houses of Congress, should 
be devoted to the object. As a fund was set 
apart, and held sacred and inviolable, for the 
payment of the public debt so; should a fund be 
now created for national defence, and this bank 
stock should be the first and most sacred item 
put into it. It is the only way to save that stock 
from becoming the prey of incessant contriv- 
ances to draw monej^ from the treasury. Mr. 
B. said that he intended to submit resolutions, 
requesting the President to cause to be com- 
municated to the next Congress full information 
upon all the points that he had touched ; the 
probable revenue and expenditure for the next 
eight years ; the plan and expense of fortifj'ing 
the coast ; the navy, and every other point con- 
nected with the general and permanent defence 
of the Union, with a view to let Congress take it 
up, upon system, and with a design to complete 
it vv'ithout further delay. And he demanded, 
why hurrj' on this amendment before that infor- 
mation can come in ? 

" Now is the auspicious moment, said Mr. B., 
for the republic to rouse from the apath}^ into 
which it has lately sunk on the subject of na- 
tional defence. The public debt is paid ; a sum 
of six or seven millions will come from the bank ; 
some surpluses may occur ; let the national de- 
fence become the next great object after the 
payment of the debt, and all spare money go to 
that purpose. If further stimulus were wanted, 
it might be found in the present aspect of our 
foreign affairs, and iu the reproaches, the taunts, 
and in the offensive insinuations which certain 
gentlemen have been indulging in for two 
months with respect to the defenceless state of 
the coast ; and which they attribute to the neg- 
ligence of the administration. Certainly such 
gentlemen will not take that money for distri- 
bution, for the unmodiatc application of whidi 
their defenceless country is now crying aloud, 
and stretching forth her imploring liands. 

"Mr. B. would here avail himself of a voice 
more potential than his own to enforce attention 
to the great olyect of national defence, ilie re- 
vival of which he was now attempting. It wa.s 
a voice which the senator from SiMith Carojin.-i, 
the author of this pioixjsition to squander in dis- 
tributions the funds which sliould \k\ sacrod to 
defence, would instantly recognize. It was an 
extract from a message communicated to Con- 
gress, December 3, 1822, by President MonrtHj. 
Whether considered under the relation of simi- 
larity which i! I'fars to the language and senti- 



566 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



ments of cotemporaneous reports from the then 
head of the War Department ; the position 
which the writer of those reports then held in 
relation to President Monroe ; the right which 
he possesseci, as Secretary of War, to know, at 
least, what was put into the message in relation 
to measures connected with his department; 
considered imder any and all of these aspects, 
the extracts which he was about to read might 
be considered as expressing the sentiments, if 
not speaking the words, of the gentleman who 
now sees no object of utility in providing for 
the defence of his country ; and who then plead 
the cause of that defence with so much truth 
and energy, and with such commendable excess 
of patriotic zeal. 

'• Mr. B. then read as follows : 

" ' Should war break out in any of those coun- 
tries (the European), who can foretell the ex- 
tent to which it may be carried, or the desola- 
tion which may spread 1 Exempt as we are from 
these causes (of European civil wars), our in- 
ternal tranquillity is secure ; and distant as we 
are from the troubled scene, and faithful to just 
principles in regard to other powei's, we might 
reasonably presume that we should not be mo- 
lested by them. This, however, ought not to 
be calculated on as certain. Unprovoked inju- 
ries are often inflicted, and even the peculiar 
felicity of our situation might, with some, be a 
cause of excitement and aggression. The his- 
tory of the late wai's in Europe furnishes a com- 
plete demonstration that no system of conduct, 
however coiTect in principle, can protect neutral 
powers from injur}^ from any party ; tliat a de- 
fenceless position and distinguished love of peace 
are the surest invitations to war ; afid that there 
is no way to avoid it, other than by being al- 
ways prepared, and willing, for just cause, to 
meet it. If there be a peojile on earth, whose 
more especial duty it is to be at all times pre- 
pared to defend the rights with which they are 
blessed, and to surpass all othere in sustaining 
the necessary burdens, and in submitting to sac- 
rifices to make such preparations, it is undoubt- 
edly the people of these States.' 

'• Mr. B. having read thus far, stopped to make 
a remark, and but a remark, upon a single sen- 
timent in it. He would not weaken the force 
and energy of the whole passage by going over 
it in detail ; but he invoked attention upon the 
last sentiment — our ])cculiar duty, so strongly 
painted, to sustain burdens, and submit to sac- 
rifices, to accomplish the noble object of putting 
our country into an attitude of defence ! The 
ease with which we can prepare for the same de- 
fence now, by the facile operation of applying to 
that purpose surpluses of revenue and bank 
stock, for which we have no other use, was the 
point on which he would invoke and arrest the 
Senate's attention. 

" Mr. B. resumed his reading, and read the 
next paragraph, which enumerated all the causes 
which might lead to general war in Euiope, and 
our iuvolveuient in it, and concluded with the 



declaration ' That the reasons for pushing for' 
ward all our measures of defence, with the ut- 
most vigor, appear to me to acquire new force.' 
And then added, these causes for European war 
are now in as great force as then ; the danger 
of our involvement is more apparent now than 
then ; the reasons for sensibility to our national 
honor are nearer now than then ; and iqion all 
the principles of the passage from which he was 
reading, the reasons for pushing forward all our 
measures of defence with the utmost vigor, pos- 
sessed far more force in this present year 1835, 
than they did in the year 1822. 
" Mr. B. continued to read : 
" ' The United States owe to the world a 
great example, and by means thereof, to the 
cause of liberty and humanity a generous sup- 
port. They have so far succeeded to the satis- 
faction of the virtuous and enlightened of every 
country. Thei-e is no reason to doubt that their 
whole movement will be regulated by a sacred 
regard to principle, all our institutions being 
founded on that basis. The ability to support 
our own cause, under any trial to which it may 
be exposed, is the great point on which the 
public solicitude rests. It has often been charged 
against free governments, that they have nei- 
ther the foresight nor the virtue to provide at 
Ihe proper season for great emergencies ; thai 
their course is improvident and expensive ; that 
war will always find them unprepared; and, 
whatever may be its calamities, that its terrible 
warnings will be disregarded and forgotten as 
soon as peace returns. I have full confidence 
that this charge, so ftvr as it relates to the United 
States, will be shown to be utterl}^ destitute of 
truth.' 

" Mr. B., as he closed the book, said, he would 
make a few remarks upon some of the points in 
this passage, which he had last read — the re- 
proach so often charged upon free governments 
for want of foresight and virtue, their improvi- 
dence and expensiveness, their proneness to 
disregard and forget in peace the warning lessons 
of the most terrible calamities of war. And he 
would take the liberty to suggest that, of all 
the mortal beings now alive upon this earth, 
the author of the report under discussion ought 
to be the last to disregard and to forget the 
solemn and impressive admonition which the 
passage conveyed ! the last to so act as to sub- 
ject his government to the mortifymg charge 
which has been so often cast upon them ! the 
last to subject the virtue of the people to the 
humiliating trial of deciding between the de- 
fence and the plunder of their country '. 

" Mr. B. dwelt a moment on another point in 
the passage which he had read — the great ex- 
an\ple which this republic owed to the world, 
and to the cause of free governments, to prove 
itself capable of supporting its cause under 
every trial ; and that by providing in peace for 
the dangers of war. It was a striking point in 
the passage, and presented a grand and philoso- 
phic conception to the reflecting niiud. The 



ANNO 1835. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



567 



example to be shown to the world, and the 
duty of this republic to exhibit it, was an ele- 
vated and patriotic conception, and worthy of 
the genius which then presided over the War 
Department. But what is the example which 
we are now required to exhibit ? It is that of 
a people preferring the spoils of their country 
to its defence ! It is that of the electioneerer, 
going from city to city, from house to house, 
even to the uninformed tenant of the distant 
hamlet, who has no means of detecting the fal- 
lacies which are brought from afar to deceive 
his understanding: it is the example of this 
electioneerer, with slate and pencil in his hand 
(and here Mr. B. took up an old book cover, 
and a pencil, and stooped over it to make figures, 
as if working out a little sum in arithmetic), 
it is the example of this electioneerer, offering 
for distribution that money which should be 
-sacred to the defence of his country ; and point- 
ing out for overthrow, at the next election, 
every candidate for oflBce who should be found 
in opposition to this wi'etched and deceptive 
scheme of distribution. This is the example 
which it is proposed that we should now exhi- 
bit. And little did it enter into his (Mr. B.'s) 
imagination, about the time that m.essage was 
written, that it should fall to his lot to plead 
for the defence of his country against the au- 
thor of this report. He admired the grandeur 
of conception which the reports of the war 
office then displayed. He said he differed from 
the party with whom he then acted, in giving a 
general, though not a universal, support to the 
Secretary of War. He looked to him as one 
who, when mellowed by age and chastened by 
experience, might be among the most admired 
Presidents that ever filled the presidential chair. 
[Mr. B., by a lapsus lingitce, said throne, but 
corrected the .expression on its echo from the 
galleries.] 

" Mr. B. said there was an example which it 
was worthy to imitate : that of France ; her 
coast defended by forts and batteries, behind 
which the rich city reposed in safety — the tran- 
quil peasant cultivated his vine in security — 
while the proud navy of England sailed in- 
noxious before tliem, a spectacle of amusement, 
not an object of terror. And there was an ex- 
ample to be avoided: the case of our own 
America during the late war; when the approach 
of a British squadron, upon any point of our 
extended coast, was the signal for flight, for 
terror, for consternation ; when the hearts of 
the brave and the almost naked hands of heroes 
were the sole reliance for defence ; and where 
those licarts and those hands could not come, 
the sacred soil of our country was invaded ; 
the ruffian soldier and the rude sailor became 
the insolent masters of our citizens' houses; 
their footsteps marked by the desolation of 
fields the conflagration of cities, the flight of 



virgins, the violation of matrons ! the blood of 
fathers, husbands, sons ! This is the example 
uliidi we should avoid ! 

■' But the amendment is to be temporary : it 
is only to last until 1812. What an idea ! — a 
temporary alteration in a constitution made for 
endless ages ! But let no one think it will l)e 
temporary, if once adopted. No ! if the peojjlc 
once come to taste that blood; if they once 
bring themselves to the acceptance of money 
from the treasury the}^ are gone for ever. They 
will take that money in all time to come ; and 
he that promises most, receives most votes. 
The corruption of the Romans, the debaucliment 
of the voters, the venalit}' of elections, com- 
menced with the Tribunitial distribution of corn 
out of the public granaries ; it advanced to the 
distribution of the spoils of foreign nations, 
brought home to Rome by victorious generals 
and divided out among tlie people ; it ended in 
bringing the spoils of the country into the can- 
vass for the consulship, and in putthig up the 
diadem of empire itself to be knocked down to 
the hammer of the auctioneer. In our America 
there can be no spoils of conquered nations to 
distribute. Her own treasury' — her own lands 
— can alone furnish the fund. Begin at once, 
no matter how, or upon what — surphis revenue, 
the proceeds of the lands, or the lands them- 
selves — no matter ; the progress and the issue 
of the whole game is as inevitable as it is obvi- 
ous. Candidates bid, the voters listen ; and a 
plundered and pillagedcountry— the empty skin 
of an immolated victim — is the prize and the 
spoil of the last and the highest bidder." 

The proposition to amend the constitution to 
admit of this distribution was never brought to 
a vote. In fact it was never mentioned again 
after the day of the above discussion. It seemed 
to have support from no source but that of its 
origin ; and very soon events came to scatter the 
basis on which the wliok* stress and conclusion 
of the report lay. Instead of a surplus of nine 
millions to cover the jieriod of two presidential 
elections, there was a delicit in the treasury in 
the period of the firstone; and I lie government 
reduced to the humiliating resorts to obtain 
money to keep itself in motion — mendicant ex- 
peditions to Europe to borrow money, ivturning 
without it — and paper money struck xmdcr the 
name of treasury notes. But this attempt to 
amend the constitution to permit a distrilnition, 
becomes a material point in tlie history of tlio 
working of our government, seeing that a dis- 
tribution afterwards took place without tlir 
amendment to permit it. 



568 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



CHAPTER CXXIX. 

COMMENCEMENT OF TWENTY-FOTJKTII CONGRESS 
—PEESI DENT'S MESSAGE. 



The following was the list of the members : 

SENATOPwS: 

Maine — Ether Shepley, John Rugn:les. 

New Hampshire — Isaac Hill, Henry Hubbard. 

Massachusetts — Daniel Webster, John Davis. 

Rhode Island 
Robbins. 

Connecticut — Gideon 
Smith, 

Vermont — Samuel Prentiss. Benjamin Swift. 

New-York — Nathaniel P. Tallniadge, Silas 



-Nehemiah R. Knight, Asher 



Tomlinson, Nathan 



Samuel L. Southard, Garret 
— James Buchanan, Samuel 



Wright, jun. 

New Jersey— 
D. Wall. 

Pennsylvania 
McKeau. 

Delaware — John M. Clayton, Arnold Nau- 
dain. 

Maryland — Robert H. Goldsborough, Jos. 
Kent. 

Virginia — Benjamin Watkins Leigh, John 
Tyler. 

North Carolina — Bedford Brown, Willie 
P. Mangum. 

South Carolina — J. C. Calhoun, William 
C. Preston. 

Georgia — Alfred Cuthbert, John P. King. 

Kentucky — Henry Clay, John J.Crittenden. 

Tennessee — Felix Grundy, Hudi L. White. 

Ohio — Thomas Ewing, Thomas Mon-is. 

Louisiana — Alexander Porter, Robert C. Ni- 
cholas. 

Indiana — AVm. Hendricks, John Tipton. 

Mississippi — John Black, Robert J. Walker. 

Illinois — Elias K. Kane, John M. Robinson. 

Alabama — Wm. R. King, Gabriel P. jNIoore. 

Missouri — Lewis ¥. Linn, Thomas H. Benton. 

KEPKESENTATIVES: 

Maine — Jeremiah Bailey, George Evans, John 
Fairfield, Joseph Hall, Leonard Jarvis, Moses 
Mason, Gorham Parks, Francis O. J. Smith — 8. 

New IIa:\ipshire — Bcnning M. Bean, Robert 
Burns, Samuel Cushman, Franklin Pierce, Jos. 
Weeks— 5. 

Massachusetts — John Quincy Adams, Na- 
thaniel B. Borden, George N. Briggs, William 
B. Calhoun, Caleb Gushing, George Grennell, 
jr., Samuel Hoar, William Jackson, Abbot Law- 
rence, Levi Lincoln, Stephen C. Phillijis, .John 
Reed— 12. 

Rhode Island — Dutee J. Pearce, W. Sprague 
2. 

Connecticut — Elisha Haley, Samuel Ingham, 
Andivw T. Judson, Lancelot Phelps, Isaac Tou- 
cey, Zalinon Wildman — G. 



Vermont — Heman Allen, Horace Everett, 
Hiland Hall, Henry F. Janes, William Slade 
— 5, 

New-York — Samuel Barton, Saml. Beardsley, 
Abraham Bockee, Matthias J. Bovee, John W. 
Brown, C. C. Cambreleng, Graham II. Chapin, 
Timothy Childs, John Cramer, Ulysses F. Dou- 
bleday, Valentine Efner, Dudley Farlin, Philo 
C. Fuller, William K. Fuller, Ransom H. Gillet, 
Francis Granger, Gideon Hard, Abner Hazel- 
tine, Hiram P. Hunt, Abel Huntington, Gerrit 
Y. Lansing, George W. La}', Gideon Lee, Joshua 
Lee, Stephen B. Leonard, Thomas C. Love, Abi- 
jah Mann, jr., William Mason, John McKeon, 
Ely Moore, Sherman Page, Joseph Reynolds, 
David Russell, William Seymour, Nicholas Sick- 
les, William Taylor, Joel Turrill, Aaron Vander- 
jjoel, Aaron Ward, Daniel Wardwell — 40. 

New Jersey— -Philemon Dickerson, Samuel 
Fowler, Thomas Lee, James Parker, Ferdinand 
S, Schenck, William N. Shinn — G. 

Pennsylvania. — Joseph B. Anthonj^, Mi- 
chael W. Ash, John Banks, Andrew Beaumont, 
Andrew Buchanan, George Chambers, William 
P. Clark, Edward Darlington, Ilarmar Denny, 
Jacob Fry, jr., John Galbraith, James Harper, 
Samuel S. Harrison, Joseph Henderson, William 
Hiester, Edward B. Hubley, Joseph R. Ingersoll. 
•John Klingensmith, jr., .John Laporte, Henry 
Logan, Job Mann, Thomas M. T. McKennan, 
Jesse Miller, Matthias Morris, Henry A. Muh- 
lenberg, David Potts, jr., Joel B. Sutherland. 
David D. Wagener.— 28. 

Delaware. — John J. Milligan. — 1. 

Maryland. — Benjamin C. Howard, Daniel 
Jenifer, Isaac McKim, James A. Pearce, John N. 
Steele, Francis Thomas, James Turner, George 
C. Washington.— 8. 

Virginia. — James M. H. Beale. James W. 
Bouldin, Nathaniel H. Claiborne, Walter Coles. 
Robert Craig, George C. Dromgoole, James 
Garland, G. W. Hopkins, Joseph Johnson, John 
W. -Jones, George Loyall, Edward Lucas, .John 
Y. Mason, William l^IcComas, Charles F. Mer- 
cer, William S. Morgan, John M. Patton, John 
Roane, John Robertson, John Taliaferro, Henry 
A. Wise.— 21. 

North Carolina. — .Jesse A. Bynum, Henry 
W. Connor, Edmund Deberry, James (xiaham, 
Micajah T. Hawkins, James J. McKay, William 
Montgomery', Ebenezer Pettigrew, Abraham 
Rencher, William B. Shepard, Augustine H. 
Shepperd, Jesse Speight, Lewis Williams. — 13. 

South Carolina. — Robert B. Campbell 
William J. Grayson, John K. Griffin, James 
H. Hammond, Richard J. Manning, Francis W. 
Pickens, Henr}' L. Pinckney, James Rogers; 
Waddy Thompson, jr. — 9. 

Georgia. — Jesse F. Cleveland, John Coffee 
Thomas Glasscock, Seaton Gi-antland, Charles E. 
Ilaynes, Hopkins IIolsc3-,Jabez. Jackson, George 
W. Owens, George W. B. Towns. — 9. 

Alaba.ma. — Reuben Chapman, Joab Law- 
ler, Dixon II. Lewis, Francis S. Lyon, .Joshua 
L. Martin. — 5. 



ANNO 1835. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



569 



Mississippi. — David Dickson, J. F. H, Clai- 
borne. — 2. 

Louisiana. — Rice Garland, Henry Johnson, 
Eleazer W. Ripley.— 3. 

Tennessee. — John Bell, Samuel Bunch, Wil- 
liam B. Carter, William C. Duiilap, John B. 
Forester, Adam Huntsman, Cave Johnson, Luke 
Lea, Abram P. Maury, Balie Peyton, James K. 
Polk, E. J. Shields, .James Standefer. — 13. 

Kentucky. — Chilton Allan, Lynn Boyd, 
John Calhoun, John Chambers, Richard French, 
Wm. J. Graves, Benjamin Hardin, James Har- 
lan, Albert G. Hawes, Richard M. Johnson, 
Joseph R. Underwood, John White, Sherrod 
Williams.— 13. 

Missouri. — Wm. H. Ashley, Albert G. Ilar- 
rison. — 2. 

Illinois. — Zadok Casey, William L. May, 
John Reynolds. — 3. 

Indiana. — RatlifF Boon, John Carr, John 
W. Davis, Edward A. Ilanncgan, George L. Kin- 
nard, Amos Lane, Jonathan McCarty. — 7. 

Ohio. — William K. Bond, John Chaney, 
Thomas Corwin, Joseph H. Crane, Thomas L. 
Haraer, Elias Howell, Benjamin Jones, William 
Kennon, Daniel Kilgore, Sampson Mason, Jere- 
miah McLene, William Patterson, Jonathan 
Sloane, David Spangler, Bellamy Storer, John 
Thompson, Samuel F. Vinton, Taylor Webster 
Elisha Whittlesey.— 19. 

DELEGATES. 

Arkansas Territory. — Ambrose H. Sevier. 
Florida Territory. — Joseph jM. White. 
Michigan Territory. — George W. Jones. 

Mr. James K. Polk of Tennessee, was elected 
speaker of the House, and by a large majority 
over the late speaker, Mr. John Bell of the same 
State. The vote stood one hundred and thirty- 
two to eighty-four, and was considered a test 
of the administration strength, Mr. Polk being 
supported by that party, and Mr. Bell having 
become identified with those who, in siding with 
Mr. Hugh L. White as a candidate for the pre- 
sideucj^, were considered as having divided from 
the democratic party. Among the eminent 
names missed from the list of the House of Rep- 
resentatives, were : INIr. Wayne of Georgia, ap- 
pointed to the bench of the Supreme Court of 
..he United States ; and Mr. Edward Everett of 
Massachusetts, who declined a re-election. 

The state of our relations with France, in the 
continued non-payment of the stipulated indem- 
nity, was the prominent feature in the l^resi- 
dent's message ; and the subject itself becoming 
more serious m the apparent indisposition in 
Congress to sustain his views, manifested in the 
OSS of the fortification bill, through the dis- 



agreement of the two Houses. The obligation 
to pay was admitted, and the money even voted 
for tliat purpose ; but offence was taken at the 
President's message, and payment refused until 
an apology should be made. The President had 
already shown, on its first intimation, that no 
offence was intended, nor any disrespect justly 
deducible from the language that he had used ; 
and he was now peremptory in refusing to make 
the required apology; and had instructed the 
United States' charge (V affaires to demand the 
money ; and, if not paid, to leave France imme- 
diately. The ministers of both countries had 
previously withdrawn, and the last link in the 
chain of diplomatic communication was upon 
the point of being broken. The question having 
narrowed down to this small point, the Presi- 
dent deemed it proper to give a retrospective 
view of it, to justify his determination, neither 
to apologize nor to negotiate further. He said : 

" On entering upon the duties of my station, 
I found the United States an unsuccessful appli- 
cant to the justice of France, for the satisftiction 
of claims, the validity of which was never ques- 
tionable, and has now been most solemnly ad- 
mitted by France herself The antiquity of 
these claims, their high justice, and the aggra- 
vating circumstances out of which they arose, 
are too familiar to the American people to re- 
quire description. It is sufficient to sa}-. that. 
for a period of ten years and upwards, our com- 
merce was, with but httle interruption, the sub- 
ject of constant aggressions, on the part of 
France — aggressions, the ordinaiy features of 
which were condemnations of vessels and car- 
goes, imder arbitrary deciees, adopted in con- 
travention, as well of the laws of nations as of 
treaty stipulations, burnings on the higli seas, 
and seizures and confiscations, unck^r special itn- 
perial rescripts, in the ports of other nations 
occupied by the armies, or under the control of 
France. Such, it is now conceded, is the cha- 
racter of the wrongs wo sufl'ered ; wrongs, in 
many cases, so llagrant tliat even their authors 
never denied our right to reparation. Of the 
extent of these injuries, some concejition may 
be formed from the fact that, after the burning 
of a large amount at sea, and the necessary de- 
terioration in other cases, by long detention, the 
American property so seized and sacrificed at 
forced .sales, excluding what was adjudged to 
privateers, before or without cnndi-miiation, 
brought into tlie Fivncli treasury iiinvanls of 
twent_y-four millions of francs, besides large cus- 
tom-house duties. 

''The subject had already been an alliiir of 
twenty years' uninteri'upfed negotiation, except 
for a short time, when France was overwhelmed 
by the military power of united Europe. During 



5V0 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



this period, wliilst otlicr nations were extorting 
from her payment of their claims at the point 
of the baj^onet, the United States intermitted 
their demand for justice, out of respect to the 
oppressed condition of a gallant people, to whom 
they felt under obligations for fraternal assist- 
ance in their own days of suffering and of peril. 
The bad effects of these protracted and unavail- 
ing discussions, as well upon our relations with 
France as upon our national character, were ob- 
vious ; and the line of duty was, to my mind, 
equally so. This was, either to insist ujion the 
adjustment of our claims, witliin a reasonable 
jieriod, or to abandon them altogether. I could 
not doubt that, by this course, the interest and 
honor of both countries would be best con- 



sulted. Instructions were, 



therefore, given in 



this spirit to the minister, who was sent out 
once more to demand reparation. Upon the 
meeting of Congress, in December, 1829, I felt 
it my duty to speak of these claims, and the 
delays of France, in terms calculated to call the 
serious attention of both countries to the sub- 
ject. The then French jMinistry took exception 
to the message, on the ground of its containing 
a menace, under which it was not agreeable to 
the French government to negotiate. The Ame- 
rican minister, of his own accord, refuted the 
construction which was attempted to be put 
upon the message, and, at the same time, called 
to the recollection of the French ministry, that 
the President's message was a communication 
addressed, not to foreign governments, but to 
the Congress of the United States, in Avhich it 
was enjoined upon him, by the constitution, to 
lay before that body information of tlie slate of 
the Union, comprehending its foreign as well as 
its domestic relations ; and that if, in the dis- 
charge of this duty, he felt it incumbent upon 
him to summon the attention of Congress in due 
time to what might be the possible consequences 
of existing difficulties with any foreign govern- 
ment, he might fairly be supjjosed to do so, un- 
der a sense of what was due from him in a frank 
communication with another branch of his own 
government, and not from any intention of hold- 
ing a menace over a foreign power. The views 
taken by him received my appro1)ation, the 
French government was satisfied, and the nego- 
tiation was continued. It terminated in the 
treaty of July 4, 1831, recognizing the justice 
of our claims, in part, and promising payment 
to the amount of twenty-five millions of francs, 
in six annual instalments. 

"The ratitications of this treaty were ex- 
changed at AV'ashington, on the 2d of February, 
1832 ; and, in five days thereafter, it was laid 
before Congress, who immediately passed the 
acts necessary, on our part, to secure to France 
the commercial advantages conceded to her in 
the compact. TIic treaty had previously been 
solemnly ratified by the King of the French, in 
terms which are certainly not mere matters 
of form, and (jf which the translation is as fol- 
lows : ' We, approving the above convention, in 



all and each of the depositions which are con- 
tained in it, do declare by ourselves, as well as 
by our heirs and successors, that it is accepted, 
approved, ratified, and confirmed ; and by these 
presents, signed by our hand, we do accept, ap- 
prove, ratif}^, and confirm it ; ])romising, on the 
faith and word of a king, to observe it, and to 
cause it to be observed inviolably, without ever 
contravening it, or suflering it to be contravened, 
directly or indirectly, for any cause, or under any 
pretence whatsoever.' 

" Official information of the exchange of rati- 
fications in the United States reached Paris, 
whilst the Chambers were in session. The ex- 
traordinary, and, to us, injurious delays of the 
French government, in their action upon the 
subject of its fulfilment, have been heretofore 
stated to Congress, and I have no disposition to 
enlarge upon them here. It is sufficient to ob- 
serve that the then pending session Avas allowed 
to expii'e, without even an effort to obtain the 
necessary appropriations — that the two succeed- 
ing ones were also suffered to pass away with- 
out any thing like a serious attempt to obtain a 
decision upon the subject ; and that it was not 
until the fourth session — almost three years 
.after the conclusion of the treatj', and more 
than two j-ears after the exchange of ratifica- 
tions — that the bill for the execution of the 
treaty was pressed to a vote, and rejected. In 
the mean time, the government of the United 
States, having full confidence that a treaty en- 
tered into and so solemnly ratified by the 
French king, would be executed in good faith, 
and not doubting that provision would be made 
for the payment of the first instalment, which 
was,to become due on the second day of Febru- 
ar}^, 1833, negotiated a draft for the amount 
through the Bank of the United States. When 
this draft was presented by the holder, with the 
credentials required by the treaty to authorize 
him to receive the money, the government of 
France allowed it to be protested. In addition 
to the injury in the non-payment of the money 
by France, conformably to her engagement, the 
United States were exposed to a heavy claim on 
the part of the bank, under pretence of damages, 
in satisfaction of which, that institution seized 
upon, and still retains, an equal amount of the 
public moneys. Congress was in session when 
the decision of the Chambers reached "Washing- 
ton ; and an immediate connuunication of this 
apparently final decision of France not to fulfil 
the stipulations of the treaty, was the course 
naturally to be expected from the President. 
The deep tone of dissatisfaction which pervaded 
the public mind, and the correspondent excite- 
ment produced in Congress by only a general 
knowledge of the result, rendered it more than 
probable, that a resort to immediate measures of 
redress would be the consequence of calling the 
attention of that body to the subject. Sincerely 
desirous of preserving the pacific relations wliich 
had so long existed between the two countries, 
i I was anxious to avoid this course if 1 could b« 



ANNO 1835. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



571 



satisfied that, by doing so, neither the interests 
nor the honor of my country would be compro- 
mitted. Without the fullest assurances upon that 
point, I could not hope to acquit myself of the 
responsibility to be incun-ed in suffering Con- 
gress to adjourn without laying the subject be- 
fore them. Those received by me were believed 
to be of that character. 

" The expectations justly founded upon the 
promises thus solemnly made to this govern- 
ment by tliat of France, were not realized. The 
French Chambers met on the 31st of July, 1834, 
soon after the election, and although our minis- 
ter in Paris urged the French ministry to press 
the subject before them, they declined doing so. 
He next insisted that the Chambers, if pro- 
rogued without actmg on the subject, should be 
reassembled at a period so early that their ac- 
tion on the treaty might be known in Washing- 
ton prior to the meeting of Congress. This 
reasonable request was not only declined, but 
the Chambers were prorogued on the 29th of 
December; a day so late, that their decision, 
however urgently pressed, could not, in all pro- 
bability, be obtained in time to reach Washing- 
ton befoi'e the necessary adjournment of Con- 
gress by the constitution. The reasons given by 
the ministry for refusing to convoke the Cham- 
bers, at an earlier peiiod, were afterwards shown 
not to be insuperable, by their actual convoca- 
tion, on the first of December, under a special 
call for domestic purposes, which fact, however, 
did not become known to this government until 
after the commencement of the last session of 
Congress. 

" Thus disappointed in onr just expecfations, 
it became my imperative duty to consult with 
Congress in regard to the expediency of a resort 
to retaliatory measures, in case the stipulations 
of the treaty should not be speedily complied 
with ; and to recommend such as, in my judg- 
ment, the occasion called for. To this, end, an 
unreserved communication of the case, in all its 
aspects, became indispensable. To have shrunk, 
in making it, from saying all that was necessary 
to its correct understanding, and that the truth 
would justif}^, for fear of giving offence to others, 
would have been unworthy of us. To have 
gone, on the other hand, a single step further, 
for the purpose of wounding the pride of a gov- 
ernment and people with whom we had so many 
motives of cultivating relations of amity and 
reciprocal advantage, would have been unwise 
and improper. Admonished by the past of the 
difficult}" of making even the simplest statement 
of our wrongs, without disturbing the sensibili- 
ties of those who hud, by tlieir position, become 
responsible for their redress, and earnestly de- 
sirous of preventing further obstacles from that 
source, I went out of my way to preclude a con- 
struction of the message, by which the recom- 
mendation that was made to Congress might be 
regarded as a menace to France, in not only dis- 
avowing such a design, but in declaring that her j 
pride and her power were too well known to [ 



expect any thing from her fears. The message 
did not reach Paris until more than a month 
after the Chambers had been in session ; and 
such was the insensibility of the ministry to 
our rightful claims and just expectations, that 
our minister had been informed that the mat- 
ter, when introduced, would not be pressed as a 
cabinet measure. 

" Although the message was not officially 
communicated to the French government, anJ 
notwithstanding the declaration to the contrary 
which it contained, tlic French ministry decided 
to consider the conditional recommendation of 
reprisals a menace and an insult, which the 
honor of the nation made it incumbent on them 
to resent. The measures resorted to by them 
to evince their sense of the supposed indignity 
were, the immediate recall of their minister at 
Washington, the offer of passports to the Ameri- 
can minister at Paris, and a public notice to the 
legislative chambers that all diplomatic inter- 
course with the United States had been sus- 
pended. 

" Having, in this manner, vindicated the dig- 
nity of France, they next proceeded to illustrate 
her justice. To this end a bill was immediately 
introduced into the Chamber of Deputies, pro- 
posing to make the appropriations necessary to 
carry into effect the treaty. As this bill sub- 
sequently passed into a law, the provisions of 
which now constitute the main subject of diffi- 
culty between the two nations, it becomes my 
duty, in order to place the subject before j'ou in 
a clear light, to trace the history of its passage, 
and to refer, with some particularity, to the pro- 
ceedings and discussions in regaixl to it. The 
Minister of Finance, in his opening speech, al- 
luded to the measures which liad been adopted 
to resent the supposod indignity, and recom- 
mended the execution of the treaty as a measure 
required by the honor and justice of France. 
He, as the organ of the ministry, declared the 
message, so long as it had not received the sanc- 
tion oif Congress, a merc expression of the pei- 
sonal opinion of the President, for which neiflier 
the government nor people of the United States 
were responsible ; and that an engagement had 
been entered into, for the fuHilment of which tlio 
honor of Franco was pledged. Entertaining 
these views, the single condition which the 
French ministry proposed to annex to the i>ay- 
mont of the money was, that it should not bo 
made until it was ascertained that the govern- 
ment of the United States had done nothing to 
injure the interests of France; or, in other 
words, that no steps had been authorized by 
Consrress of a hostile cliaracter towards France. 

"What the disposition or action of Congress 
might be, was then unknown to the French 
Cabinet. But, on the 14th of .lannary. the Se- 
nate resolved that it was, at tliat time inoxpi-di- 
ent to adopt any legislative nu-asnivs in roiriird 
to the state of atfaii-s between the United Sfato.>< 
and France, and no action on the euhjeot had 
occurred in the House of Representatives. These 



572 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



Hicts were known in Paris prior to the 28th of 
March, 1835, when the committee, to whom the 
bill of indomnificaf ion had been referred, report- 
ed it to the Chamber of Deputies. Tliat com- 
mittee substantially re-echoed the sentiments 
of the ministrj', declared that Conp;ress had set 
aside the proposition of the President, and re- 
commended (he passage of the bill, without any 
other restriction than that originally ])roposed. 
Thus was it knowTi to the French ministry and 
chambers that if the position assumed by them, 
and which had been so frequentlj' and solemnh^ 
announced as the only one compatible with the 
honor of France, was maintained, and the bill 
passed as originally proposed, the money would 
be paid, and there would be an end of this un- 
fortunate controversy. 

" But this cheering prospect was soon destroy- 
ed by an amendment introduced into the bill 
at the moment of its passage, providing that the 
money should not be [)aid until the French go- 
vernment had received satisfactory explanations 
of the President's message of the 2d December. 
1834; and, what is still more extraordinary, the 
president of the council of ministers adopted 
this amendment, and consented to its incorpora- 
tion in the bill. In regard to a supposed insult 
which had been formally resented by the recall 
of their minister, and the offer of passports to 
ours, thej' now, for the first time, proposed to 
ask explanations. Sentiments and propositions, 
which the}- had declared could not justly be 
imputed to the government or people of the 
ITnited States, are set up as obstacles to the 
P'Mforinance of an act of conceded justice to 
that government and people. 'Ihey had de- 
clared that the honor of France required the 
fulfilment of the engagement into which the 
King had entered, unless Congress adopted the 
rec'iumiendations of the message. They ascer- 
tained that Congress did not adopt them, and 
yet that fulfilment is refused, unless they first 
obtain from the President explanations of an 
opinion characterized by themselves as personal 
and inoperative." 

Having thus traced the controversy down to 
the point on which it hung — no payment with- 
out an apolog}'' first made — the President took 
up this condition as a new feature in the case — 
presenting national degradation on one side, and 
twenty-five millions of francs on the other — and 
declared his determination to submit to no dis- 
honor, and repulsed the apology as a stain upon 
the national character ; and concluded this head 
of his message with saying : 

" In any event, however, the principle involved 
in the new aspect which has been given to the 
controversy is so vitally important to the inde- 
pendent administration of the government, that 
it can neither be surrendered nor compromitted 
without national degradation. I h ijie it i.s un 



necessary for me to say that such a sacrifice 
will not be made through any agency of mine. 
The honor of my country shall never be stained 
by an apology from me for the statement of 
truth and the performance of duty ; nor can I 
give any explanation of my official acts, except 
such as is due to integrity and justice, and con- 
sistent with t!ie principles on which our insti- 
tutions have been framed. This determination 
will, I am confident, be approved hj my con- 
stituents. I have indeed studied their character 
to but little purpose, if the sum of twenty-five 
millions of francs will have the weight of a 
feather in the estimation of what appertains to 
their national independence : and if, unhappily, 
a different impression should at any time ob- 
tain, in any quarter, they will, I am sure, rally 
round the government of their choice with alac- 
rity and unanimity, and silence for ever the de- 
grading imputation." 

The loss of the fortification bill at the previous 
session, had been a serious interruption to our 
system of defences, and an injury to the country 
in that point of view, independently of its effect 
upon our relations with France. A system of 
general and permanent fortification of the coasts 
and harbors had been adopted at the close of 
the war of 1812 ; and throughout our extended 
frontier were many works in different degrees 
of completion, the stoppage of which involved 
loss and destruction, as well as delay, in this 
indispensable work. Looking at the loss of the 
bill in this point of view, the President said : 

" Much loss and inconvenience have been ex- 
perienced, in consequence of the failure of the 
bill containing the ordinary appropriations for 
fortifications which passed one branch of the 
national legislature at the last session, but w.as 
lost in the other. This failure was the more 
rcijretted, not only because it necessarily inter- 
rupted and delayed the progress of a .system of 
national defence*, projected immediately after the 
last war, and since steadily pursued, but also 
because it contained a contingent appropriation, 
inserted in accordance with the views of the 
Executive, in aid of this important object, and 
other branches of the national defence, some 
portions of which might have been most usefully 
applied during the past season. I invite 3'our 
early attention to that part of the report of the 
Secretary of "War which relates to this subjei^t, 
and recommend an appropriation sufficiently 
liberal to accelerate the armament of the forti- 
fications agreeably to the ])rop(>sition submitted 
by him, and to place our whole Atlantic sea- 
board in a complete state of defence. A just 
regard to the peiinanent interests of the country 
evidentlv requires this measure. But there are 
also other reasons which at the present junc- 
ture give it peculiar force, and make it my 



ANNO 1835. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



5/3 



duty to call the subject to your special con- 
sideration." 

The plan for the removal of the Indians to the 
Avest of the jNIississippi being now in successful 
progress and having well nigh reached its con- 
summation, the President took the occasion, 
while communicating that gratifying fact, to 
make an authentic exposition of the humane 
policy which had governed the United States in 
adopting this policy. He showed that it was 
still more for the benefit of the Indians than 
that of the wliite population who were relieved 
of their presence — that besides being fully paid 
for all the lands they abandoned, and receiving 
annuities often amounting to thirty dollars 
a head, and being inducted into the arts of civil- 
ized life, they also received in every instance 
more land than they abandoned, of better quality, 
better situated for them from its frontier situa- 
tion, and in the same parallels of latitude. This 
portion of his message will be read with particu- 
lar gratification by all persons of humane dis- 
positions, and especially so by all candid per- 
sons who had been deluded into the belief of 
injustice and oppression practised upon these 
people. He said : 

" The plan of removing the aboriginal people 
who yet remain within the settled portions of 
the United States, to the country west of the 
Mississippi River, approaches its consummation. 
It was adopted on the most mature consideration 
of the condition of this race, and ought to be 
persisted in till the object is accomplished, and 
prosecuted with as much vigor as a just regard 
to their circumstances will permit, and as fast 
as their consent can be obtained. All preceding 
experiments for the improvement of the Indians 
have failed. It seems now to be an established 
fact, that they cannot live in contact with a civ- 
ilized community and prosper. Ages of fruitless 
endeavors have, at length, brought us to a know- 
ledge of this principle of intercommunication 
with them. The past we cannot recall, but the 
future we can provide for. Independently of the 
treaty stipulations into which we have entered 
with the various tribes, for the usufructuary 
rights they have ceded to us, no one can doubt 
the moral duty of the government of the United 
States to protect, and, if possible, to presen'c 
and perpetuate, the scattered remnants of this 
race, which are left within our borders. In the 
discharge of this duty, an extensive region in 
the West has been assigned for their permanent 
residence. It has been divided into districts, 
and allotted among them. Many have already 
removed, and others are preparing to go ; and 
with the exception of two small bands, li\ing in 
Ohio and Indiana, not exceeding 1,500 persons, 



and of the Cherokees, all the tribes on the cast 
side of the Mississippi, and extending from Lake 
Michigan to Florida, have entered into cngnge- 
ments which will lead to their transplantation. 
" The plan for their removal and re-cstablish- 
ment is fonndcd upon the knowledge we have 
gained of their character and habits, and has 
been dictated by a spirit of enlarged liberalit3^ 
A territory exceeding in extent that relinquished, 
has been granted to each tribe. Of its climate, 
fertility, and capacity to support an Indian popu- 
lation, the representations are highly favorable. 
To these districts the Indians are removed at 
the expense of the United States, and witli cer- 
tain supplies of clothing, arms, ammunition, and 
other indispensable articles, they arc al-o fur- 
nished gratuitously with provisions for the pe- 
riod of a year after their arrival at their new 
homes. In that time, from the nature of the 
country, and of the products raised by them, 
they can subsist themselves by agricultural la- 
bor, if they choose to resort to that mode of life. 
If they do not, they are upon the skirts of the 
great prairies, where countless herds of buffalo 
roam, and a short time suffices to adapt their 
own habits to the changes which a change of 
the animals destined for their food may require. 
Ample arrangements have also been made for 
the support of schools. In some instances, 
council-houses and churches are to be erected, 
dwellings constructed for the chiefs, and mills 
for common use. Funds have been set apart 
for the maintenance of the poor. The most 
necessary mechanical arts have been introduced, 
and blacksmiths, gunsmiths, wheelwrights, mill- 
wrights, &c. are supported among them. Steel 
and iron, and sometimes salt, are pvirchased for 
them, and ploughs and other ftirming utensils 
domestic animals, looms, spinning-wheels, cars, 
&c., are presented to them. And besides these 
beneficial arrangements, annuities are in all cases 
paid, amounting in some instances to more than 
thirty dollars for each individual of the tribe ; 
and in all cases sufficiently great, if justly di- 
vided, and prudently expended, to enable tln^in, 
in addition to their own exertions, to live com- 
fortabl3^ And as a stimulus for exertion, it is 
now provided by law, that, " in all cases of the 
appointment of interpreters, or otlior persons 
employed for the benefit of the Indian, a pre- 
ference shall be given to persons of Indian de- 
scent, if such can be found who are properly 
qualified for the discharge of the duties." 

The effect of the revival of the gold currency 
was a subject of great congratulation with the 
President, and its inllucnce was felt in every de- 
partment of industry. Near twenty millions of 
dollars had entered the country— a sum far 
above the average circulation of the Bank of the 
United States in its best days, and a currency 
of a kind to diffuse itself over the country, and 
remain where there was a demand for it, and for 



574 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



which, different from a bank paper currency, no 
interest was paid for its use, and no danger in- 
curred of its becoming useless. He thus referred 
to this gratifying circumstance : 

" Connected with the condition of the finan- 
ces, and the flourishing state of the country in 
all its brandies of industry, it is pleasing to wit- 
ness (lie advantages which have been already 
derived from the recent laws regulating the value 
of the gold coinage. These advantages will be 
more apparent in the course of the next year, 
when the branch mints authorized to be establish- 
ed in North Carolina, Georgia, and Louisiana, 
shall have gone into operation. Aided, as it is 
noped they will be, by further reforms in the 
Banking systems of the States, and by judicious 
regulations on the part of Congress in relation 
to the custody of the public moneys, it may be 
confidently anticipated that the use of gold and 
silver as a circulating medium will become gene- 
ral in the ordinary transactions connected with 
the labor of the country. The great desideratum, 
in modern times, is an efficient check upon the 
power of banks, preventing that excessive issue 
of paper whence arise those fluctuations in the 
standard of value which render uncertain the 
rewai-ds of labor. It was supposed by those 
who estabUshed the Bank of the United States, 
that, from the credit given to it by the custody 
of tlie public moneys, and other privileges, and 
th_' precautions taken to guard against the evils 
which the country had suffered in the bankrupt- 
cv of many of the State institutions of that 
period, we should derive from that institution 
all the security and benefits of a sound currency, 
and every good end that was attainable under 
that provision of the constitution which author- 
izes Congress alone to coin money and regulate 
the value thereof. But it is scarcely necessary 
now to say that these anticipations have not 
been realized. After the extensive embarrass- 
ment and distress recently produced by the Bank 
of the United States, from which the country is 
now recovering, aggra\ ated as they were by pre- 
tensions to power which defied the public au- 
thority, and which, if acquiesced in by the peo- 
ple, would have changed the whole character of 
our government, every candid and intelligent 
individual must admit that, for the attainment 
of the great advantages of a sound currency, we 
must look to a course of legislation radically 
diderent from that which created such an insti- 
tution." 

Railroads were at this time still in their in- 
fancy in the United States ; they were but few 
in number and comparatively feeble ; but the 
nature of a monopoly is the same under all cir- 
cumstances ; and the United States, in their post- 
office department, had begun to feel the effects 
of the extortion and overbearing of monopolizing 
companies, clothed with chartered privileges in- 



tended to be for the public as well as private 
advantage, but usually perverted to purposes of 
self enrichment, and of oppression. The evil had 
already become so serious as to require the at- 
tention of Congress ; and the President thus re- 
commended the subject to its consideration : 

" Particular attention is solicited to that por- 
tion of the report of the postmaster-general 
which relates to the carriage of the mails of the 
United States upon railroads constructed by 
private corjjorations under the authority of the 
several States. The reliance which tlic general 
government can place on those roads as a means 
of carrjang on its operations, and the principles 
on which the use of them is to be obtained, can- 
not too soon be considered and settled. Already 
docs the spirit of monopoly begin to exhibit its 
natural propensities in attempts to exact from 
the public, for services which it supposes cannot 
be obtained on other terms, the most extravagant 
compensation. If these claims be persisted in, 
the question may arise whether a combination 
of citizens, acting under charters of incorporation 
from the States, can, by a direct refusal or the 
demand of an exorbitant price, exclude the Uni- 
ted States from the use of the established chan- 
nels of communication between the different 
sections of the country ; and whether the United 
States cannot, without transcending their con- 
stitutional powers, secure to the post-oflBce de- 
partment the use of those roads, by an act of 
Congress which shall provide within itself some 
equitable mode of adjusting the amount of com- 
pensation. To obvi;'ite, if possible, the necessity 
of considering this question, it is suggested 
whether it be not expedient to fix, by law, the 
amounts which shall be offered to railroad com- 
panies for the conveyance of the mails, graduat- 
ed according to their average weight, to be as- 
certained and declared by the postmaster-gene- 
ral. It is probable that a liberal proposition of 
that sort would be accepted." 

The subject of slavery took a new turn of dis- 
turbance between the North and South about 
this time. The particular form of annoyance 
which it now wore was that of the transmission 
into the slave States, through the United States 
mail, of incendiary publications, tending to ex- 
cite servile insurrections. Societies, individuals 
and foreigners were engaged in this diabolical 
work — as injurious to the slaves by the further 
restrictions which it brought upon them, as to 
the owners whose lives and property were en- 
dangered. The President brought this practice 
to the notice of Congress, with a view to its 
remedy. lie said : 

" In connection with these provisions in re- 
lation to the post-office department, 1 must also 



ANNO 1835. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



575 



invite your attention to the painful excitement 
produced in the South by attempts to circulate 
through the mails inflammatory appeals addressed 
to the passions of the slaves, in prints, and in 
various sorts of publications, calculated to stimu- 
late them to insurrection, and to produce all the 
borrors of a servile war. There is doubtless no 
respectable portion of our countrymen who can 
be so far misled, as to feel any other sentiment 
than that of indignant regret at conduct so de- 
structive of the harmony and peace of the coun- 
try, and so repugnant to the principles of our 
national compact and to the dictates of humanity 
and religion. Our happiness and prosperity 
essentially depend upon peace within our bor- 
ders : and peace depends upon the maintenance, 
in good faith, of those compromises of the con- 
stitution upon which the Union is founded. It 
is fortunate for the country that the good sense, 
the generous feeling, and the deep-rooted attach- 
ment of the people of the non-slaveholding States, 
to the Union, and to their fellow-citizens of the 
same blood in the South, have given so strong 
and impressive a tone to the sentiments enter - 
tained against the proceedings of the misguided 
persons who have engaged in these unconstitu- 
tional and wicked attempts, and especially 
against the emissaries from foreign parts, who 
have dared to interfere in this matter, as to au- 
thorize the hope that those attempts will no 
longer be persisted in. But if these expi-essions 
of the public will, shall not be suflScient to effect 
so desirable a result, not a doubt can be enter- 
tained that the non-slaveholding States, so far 
from countenancing the sliglitest interference 
with the constitutional rights of the South, will 
be prompt to exercise their authority in sup- 
pressing, so far as in them lies, whatever is cal- 
culated to produce this evil. In leaving the 
care of other branches of this intei*esting sub- 
ject to the State authorities, to whom they pro- 
perly belong, it is nevertheless proper for Con- 
gress to take such measures as will prevent the 
post-office department, which was designed to 
foster an amicable intercourse and correspond- 
ence between all the members of the confedei- 
acy, from being used as an instrument of an op- 
posite character. The general government, to 
which the great trust is confided of preserving 
inviolate the relations created among the States, 
by the constitution, is especially bound to avoid 
in its own action any thing that may disturb 
them. 1 would, therefore, call the special atten- 
tion of Congress to the subject, and respectfully 
suggest tlie propriety of passing such a law as 
will prohibit, under severe penalties, the circu- 
lation in tlie Southern States, through the mail, 
of incendiary publications intended to instigate 
the slaves to insurrection." 

The President in this impressive paragraph 
makes a just distinction between the conduct 
of misguided men, and of wicked emissaries, en- 
gaged in disturbing the harmony of the Union, 



and the patriotic people of the non-slaveholding 
States who discountenance their work and re- 
press their labors. The former receive the 
brand of reprobation, and are pointed out for 
criminal legislation : the latter receive the ap- 
plause due to good citizens. 

The President concludes this message, as he 
had done many others, with a recurrence to the 
necessity of reform in the mode of electing the 
two first officers of the Republic. His con- 
victions must have been deep and strong thus 
to bring him back so manj^ times to the funda- 
mental point of direct elections by the people, 
and total suppression of all intermediate agen- 
cies. He says : 

" I felt it to be my duty in the first message 
which I communicated to Congress, to urge upon 
its attention the propriety of amending that part 
of the constitution which provides for the elec- 
tion of the President and the Vice-President of 
the United States. The leading object which I 
had in view was the adoption of some new pro- 
vision, which would secure to the people the 
performance of this high duty, without any in- 
termediate agency. In my annual communica- 
tions since, I have enforced the same views, 
from a sincere conviction that the best interests 
of the countr}' would be promoted by their 
adoption. If the subject were an ordinary one, 
I should have regarded the failure of Congress 
to act upon it, as an indication of their judg- 
ment, that the disadvantages which belong to the 
present system were not so great as those which 
would result from any attainable substitute that 
had been submitted to their consideration. Re- 
collecting, however, that propositions to intro- 
duce a new feature in our fundamental laws 
cannot be too patiently examined, and ouglit 
not to be received with favor, until the great 
body of the people are thoroughly impressed 
with their necessity and value, as a remed}- f^r 
real evils, I feel that in renewing the recom- 
mendation I have heretofore made on this sub- 
ject, I am not transcending the bounds of a just 
deference to the sense of Congress, or to the 
disposition of the people. Ilewever nmch wc 
may diifer in the choice of the measures which 
should guide the administration of the govorn- 
ment, there can be but little doubt in the minds 
of those who are really friendly to the repub- 
lican features of our system, tiiat one of its most 
important securities consists in tlie separation 
of the legislative and exooutive powers, at the 
same time that each is held resjionsibie to the 
great source of authoritv, which is acknowledged 
to be supreme, in the will of the people consti- 
tutionally expressed. My reflection ami experi- 
ence satisfy me, that the franiers of the consti- 
tution, although they were anxious to mark 
this feature as a settled and fixed j)rinciple in 
the structure of the government, did not adopt 



576 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



all the precautions that were necessary to se- 
cure its ]n-actical observance, anrl that wc cannot 
be said to have carried into complete effect their 
intentions until the evils which arise from this 
organic defect are remedied. All history tells 
us that a free people should be watchful of dele- 
gated power, and should never acquiesce in a 
practice which will diminish their control over 
it. This obligation, so universal in its applica- 
tion to all the principles of a Republic, is pecu- 
liarly so in ours, where the formation of parties, 
founded on sectional interests, is so much fos- 
tered by the extent of our territory. These 
interests, represented by candidates for tl\e 
Presidency, are constantly prone, in the zeal of 
party and selfish, objects, to generate influences, 
unmindful of the general good, and forgetful of 
the restraints which the great body of the peo- 
ple would enforce, if they were, in no contingen- 
cy, to lose the right of expressing their will. 
The experience of our country from the forma- 
tion of the government to the present day, de- 
monstrates that the people cannot too soon 
adopt some stronger safeguard for their right to 
elect the highest officers known to the constitu- 
tion, than is contained in that sacred instrument 
as it now stands." 



CHAPTER CXXX. 

ABOLITION OF SLAVERY IN THE DISTKICT OF 
COLUMBIA. 

Mr. Buchanan presented the memorial of the 
religious society of " Friends," in the State of 
Pennsylvania, adopted at their Cain quarterly 
meeting, requesting Congress to abolish slavery 
and the slave trade, in the District of Columbia. 
He said the memorial did not emanate from fana- 
tics, endeavoring to disturb the peace and secu- 
rity of society in the Southern States, by the dis- 
tribution of incendiary publications, but from a 
society of Christians, whose object had alwaj'S 
been to promote good-will and peace among 
men. It was entitled to respect from the cha- 
racter of the memorialists; but he dissented 
from the opinion which they expressed and the 
request which they made. The constitution 
recognized slavery ; it existed here ; was found 
here when the District was ceded to the United 
States ; the slaves here were the property of the 
inhabitants ; and he was opposed to the disturb- 
ance of their rights. Congress had no right to 
interfere with slavery in the States. That was 
determined in the first Congress that ever sat — 



in the Congress which commenced in 1789 and 
ended in 1791 — and in the first session of that 
Congress. The Religious Society of Friends 
then petitioned Congress against slaver}^, and it 
was resolved, in answer to that petition, that 
Congress had no authority to interfere in the 
emancipation of slaves, or witli their treatment, 
in any of the States : and that was the answer 
still to be given. He then adverted to the cir- 
cumstances under which the memorial was pre- 
sented. A number of fanatics, led on by foreign 
incendiaries, have been scattering firebrands 
through the Southern States — publications and 
pictures exciting the slaves to revolt, and to the 
destruction of their owners. Instead of bene- 
fiting the slaves by this conduct, they do them 
the greatest injury, causing the bonds to be 
drawn tighter upon them; and postponing eman- 
cipation even in those States which might even- 
tually contemplate it. These were his opinions 
on slavery, and on the pra3'er of this memorial. 
He was opposed to granting the prayer, but was 
in favor of receiving the petition as the similar 
one had been received, in 1790, and giving it the 
same answer; and, he had no doubt, with the 
same happy effect of putting an end to such 
applications, and giving peace and quiet to the 
country. He could not vote for the motion of 
the senator from South Carolina, Mr. Calhoun, 
to reject it. He thought rejection would in- 
flame the question : reception and condemnation 
would quiet it. IMr. Calhoun had moved to re- 
ject all petitions of the kind — not reject upon 
their merits, after consideration, but before- 
hand, when presented for reception. This was 
the starting point of a long and acrimonious 
contest in the two Houses of Congress, in which 
the right of petition was maintained on one side, 
and the good policy of quieting the question by 
reception and rejection : on the other side, it was 
held that the rights, the peace, and the dignity 
of the States required all anti-slavery petitions 
to be repulsed, at the first presentation, without 
reception or consideration. The author of this 
View aspired to no lead in conducting this ques- 
tion ; he thought it was one to be settled by 
policy ; that is to say, in the way that would 
soonest quiet it. He thought tliere was a clear 
line of distinction between mistaken philan 
thropists, and mischievous incendiaries — also be- 
tween the free States themselves and the incen- 
diary societies and individuals within them ; and 



ANNO 1835. ANDREW JACKSON, ['RESIDENT. 



577 



took an early moment to express these opinions 
in order to set up the line between what was 
mistake and what was crime — and between the 
acts of individuals, on one hand, and of States, 
on the other ; and in that sense delivered the 
following speech : 

" Mr. Benton rose to express his concurrence 
in the suggestion of the senator from Pennsyl- 
vania (Mr. Buchanan), that the consideration 
of this subject be postponed until Monday. It 
had come up suddenly and unexpectedly to-day, 
and the postponement would give an opportunity 
for senators to reflect, and to confer together, 
and to conclude what was best to be done, where 
all were united in wishing the same end, namely^ 
to allay, and not to produce, excitement. He 
had risen for this purpose ; but, being on his 
feet he would say a few words on the general 
subject, which the presentation of these peti- 
tions had so suddenly and unexpectedly brought 
up. With respect to the petitioners, and those 
with Avhom they acted, he had no doubt but 
that many of them were good people, aiming at 
benevolent objects, and endeavoring to amelior- 
ate the condition of one part of the human race, 
without inflicting calamities on another part; 
but they were mistaken in their mode of pro- 
ceeding ; and so far from accomplishing any part 
of their object, the whole effect of their inter- 
position was to aggravate the condition of those 
in whose behalf they were interfering. But 
there was another part, and he meant to speak 
of the abolitionists, generally, as the body con- 
taining the part of which he spoke ; there was 
another part whom he could not qualify as good 
people, seeking benevolent ends by mistaken 
means, but as incendiaries and agitators, with 
diabolical objects in view, to be accomplished by 
wicked and deplorable means. He did not go 
into the proofs now to establish the correctness of 
his opinion of this latter class, but he presumed 
it would be admitted that every attempt to work 
upon the passions of the slaves, and to excite 
them to murder their owners, was a wicked and 
diabolical attempt, and the work of a midniglit 
incendiary. Pictures of slave degradation and 
misery, and of the white man's luxury and cru- 
elty, were attempts of this kind ; for they were 
appeals to the vengeance of slaves, and not to 
the intelligence or reason of those who legis- 
lated for them. He (JNIr. B.) had had many 
pictures of this kind, as well as many diabolical 

Vol. I.— 37 



publications, sent to him on this subject, during 
the last summer ; the whole of which he had 
cast into the fire, and should not have thought 
of referring to the circumstance at this time, as 
displ.iying the character of the incendiary part 
of the abolitionists, had he not, within these fow 
days past, and while abolition petitions were 
pouring into the other end of the Capitol, re- 
ceived one of these pictures, the design of which 
could be nothing but miscliief of the blackc.-t 
dye. It was a print from an engraving (and Mr. 
B.. exhibited it, and handed it to senators near 
him), representing a large and spreading tree of 
liberty, beneath whose ample shade a ?-]a.\e own- 
er was at one time luxuriously reposing, with 
slaves fanning him ; at another, carried forth in 
a palanquin, to view the half-naked laborers in 
the cotton field, whom drivers, with whips, wore 
scourging to the task. The print was evidently 
from the abolition mint, and came to him by 
some other conveyance than that of the mail, 
for there was no post-mark of any kind to iden- 
tify its origin, and to indicate its line of march. 
For what purpose could such a picture be in- 
tended, unless to inflame the passions of slaves ? 
And why engrave it, except to multiplj' copies 
for extensive distribution ? But it was not pic- 
tures alone that operated upon the passions of 
the slaves, but speeches, publications, petitions 
presented in Congress, and the whole machinery 
of aboUtion societies. Xone of these things went 
to the understandings of the slaves, but to their 
passions, all imperfectly understood, and inspir- 
ing vague hopes, and stimulating abortive and 
fatal insurrections. Societies, especially, were 
the foundation of the greatest mischiefs. What- 
ever might be their objects, the slaves never did, 
and never can, understand them but in one way : 
as allies organized for action, and ready to march 
to their aid on the first signal of insurrection ! 
It was thus that the massacre of San Domingo 
was made. The society in Paris, Les Amis ties 
Noirs, Friends of the Blacks, with its afliliated 
societies throughout France and in London, made 
that massacre. And who composed that socie- 
ty ? In the beginning, it comprised the ex- 
tremes of virtue and of vice ; it contained the 
best and the basest of human kind ! Lafayette 
and the Abbe Grcgoire. tiioso purest of philan- 
thropists ; and Marat and Anacharsis Clootz, 
those imps of hell in human sliajH-. In the end 
(for all such societies run the same career of de- 



578 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW 



generation), the good men, disgusted with their 
associates, retired from the scene ; and the 
wicked ruled at pleasure. Declamations against 
slavery, publications in gazettes, pictures, peti- 
tions to the constituent assembly, were the mode 
ol' proceeding ; and the fish-women of Paris — 
he said it with humiliation, because American 
females had signed the petitions now before us 
— the fish-women of Paris, the very poissardes 
from the quays of the Seine, became the obstre- 
perous champions of West India emancipation. 
The effect upon the French islands is known to 
the world ; but what is not known to the world, 
or not suflBciently known to it, is that the same 
societies which wrapt in flames and drenched in 
blood the beautiful island, which was then a 
garden and is now a wilderness, were the means 
of exciting an insurrection upon our own conti- 
nent : in Louisiana, where a French slave popu- 
lation existed, and where the language of Les 
Amis (les Nobs could be understood, and where 
their emissaries could glide. The knowledge 
of this event (Mr. B. said) ought to be better 
known, both to show the danger of these socie- 
ties, however distant, and though oceans may 
roll between them and their victims, and the 
fate of the slaves who may be excited to insur- 
rection by them on any part of the American 
continent. He would read the notice of the 
event from the work of Mr. Charles Gayarre, 
latel}^ elected by his native State to a seat on 
this floor, and whose resignation of that honor 
he sincerely regretted, and particularlj^ for the 
cause which occasioned it, and which abstracted 
talent from a station that it would have adorned. 
Mr. B. read from the M'ork, ' Essai Historique 
sur la Louis iane :^ 'The white population of 
Louisiana was not the only part of the popula- 
tion which was agitated by the French revolu- 
tion. The blacks, encouraged without doubt by 
the success which their race had obtained in San 
Domingo, dreamed of liberty, and sought to 
shake off the yoke. The insurrection was plan- 
ned at Pointe Coupee, which was then an iso- 
lated parish, and in which the number of slaves 
was considerable. The conspiracy took birth on 
the plantation of Mr. Julien Poydras, a rich 
planter, who was then travelling in the United 
States, and spread itself rapidly throughout the 
parish. The death of all the whites was re- 
solved. Happil}' the conspirators could not 
agree upon the day for the massacre ; and from 



this disagreement resulted a quarrel, which led 
to the discovery of the plot. The militia of the 
parish immediately took arms, and the Baron 
de Carondelct caused them to be supported by 
the troops of the line. It was resolved to ar- 
rest, and to punish the principal conspirators. 
The slaves oi)posed it ; but they were quickly 
dispersed, with the loss of twentj^ of their num- 
ber Idlled on the spot. Fifty of the insurgents 
were condemned to death. Sixteen were exe- 
cuted in different parts of the parish ; the rest 
were put on board a galley and hung at inter- 
vals, all along the river, as far as New Orleans 
(a distance of one hundred and fifty miles). 
The severity of the chastisement intimidated the 
blacks, and all returned to perfect order.' 

"Resuming his remarks, Mr. B. said he had 
read this passage to show that our Avhite popu- 
lation had a right to dread, nay, were bound to 
dread, the mischievous influence of these soci- 
eties, even when an ocean intervened, and much 
more when they stood upon the same hemis- 
phere, and within the bosom of the same country. 
He had also read it to show the miserable fate of 
their victims, and to warn all that were good 
and virtuous — all that were honest, but mistaken 
— in the three hundred and fifty affiliated so- 
cieties, vaunted by the individuals who style 
themselves their executive committee, and who 
date, from the commercial emporium of this 
Union, their high manifesto against the Presi- 
dent ; to warn them at once to secede from as- 
sociations which, whatever may be their designs, 
can have no other effect than to revive in the 
Southern States the tragedy, not of San Domin- 
go, but of the parish of Pointe Coupe6. 

" ^Mr. B. went on to say that these societies had 
already perpetrated more mischief than the joint 
remainder of all their lives spent in prayers of 
contrition, and in works of retribution, could 
ever atone for. They had thrown the state of 
the emancipation question fifty j'ears back. 
They had subjected every traveller, and eveiy 
emigrant, from the non-slaveholding States, to 
be received with coldness, and viewed with sus- 
picion and jealousy, in the slaveholding States. 
They had occasioned many slaves to lose their 
lives. The}'' had caused the deportation of many 
ten thousands from the grain-growing to the 
planting States. They had caused the privileges 
of all slaves to be curtailed, and their bonds to 
be more tightly drawn. Nor wai the mischief 



ANNO 1835. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



679 



of their conduct confined to slaves ; it reached 
the free colored people, and opened a sudden gulf 
of misery to that population. In all the slave 
States, this population has paid the forfeit of 
their intermediate position; and suffered pi'oscrip- 
tion as the instruments, real or suspected, of the 
abolition societies. In all these States, their 
exodus had either been enforced or was impend- 
ing;. In Missouri there was a clause in the con- 
titution which prohibited their emigration to the 
" State ; but that clause had remained a dead let- 
ter in the book until the agitation produced 
among the slaves by the distant rumbling of the 
abolition thunder, led to the knowledge in some 
instances, and to the belief in others, that these 
people were the antenna3 of the abolitionists; and 
their medium for communicating with the slaves, 
and for exciting them to desertion first, and to 
insurrection eventually. Then ensued a painful 
scene. The people met, resolved, and prescribed 
thirty days for the exodus of the obnoxious 
caste. Under that decree a general emigration 
had to take place at the commencement of win- 
ter. Many worthy and industrious people had 
to quit their business and their homes, and to 
go forth under circumstances which rendered 
them objects of suspicion wherever they went, 
and sealed the door against the acquisition of 
new friends while depriving them of the protec- 
tion of old ones. He (IMr. B.) had witnessed 
many instances of this kind, and had given cer- 
tificates to several, to show that they were ban- 
ished, not for their offences, but for their mis- 
fortunes ; for the misfortune of being allied to 
the race which the abolition societies had made 
the object of their gratuitous philanthropy. 

" Having said thus much of the abolition so- 
cieties in the non-slavcholding States, Mr. B. 
turned, with pride and exultation, to a different 
theme — the conduct of the great body of the 
people in all these States. Before he saw that 
conduct, and while the black question, like a 
portentous cloud was gathering and darkening 
on the Northeastern horizon, he trembled, not 
for the South, but for the Union. He feared 
that he saw the fatal work of dissolution about 
to begin, and the bonds of this glorious confed- 
eracy about to snap ; but the conduct of the 
great bofly of the people in all the non-slavehold- 
ing States quickly dispelled that fear, and in its 
place planted deep the strongest assurance of the 
harmony and indivisibility of the Union which 



he had felt for many years. Their conduct was 
above all praise, above all thanks, above all grati- 
tude. The}' had chased off the foreign emissaries, 
silenced the gabbling tongues of female dupes, 
and dispersed the assemblages, whether fanatical, 
visionary, or incendiary, of all that congregated 
to preach against evils which afllicted others, 
not them ; and to propose remedies to aggravate 
the disease which they pretended to cure. They 
had acted with a noble spirit. They had exert- 
ed a vigor beyond all law. They had obeyed 
the enactments, not of the statute book, but of 
the heart ; and while that spirit was in the heart, 
he cared nothing for laws written in a book. 
He would rely upon that spirit to complete the 
good woi-k it has begun ; to dry up these societies ; 
to separate the mistaken philanthropist from the 
reckless flvnatic and the wicked incendiary, and 
put an end to publications and petitions which, 
whatever may be their design, can have no other 
effect than to impede the object which they in- 
voke, and to aggravate the evil which they de- 
plore. 

" Turning to the immediate question before 
the Senate, that of the rejection of the petitions, 
Mr. B. said his wish was to give that vote which 
would have the greatest effect in putting down 
these societies. He thought the vote to be given 
to be rather one of expediency than of constitu- 
tional obligation. The clause in the constitution 
so often quoted in favor of the right of petition- 
ing for a redress of grievances would seem to him 
to apply rather to the grievances felt by our- 
selves than to those felt by others, and which 
others might think an advantage, what we 
thought a grievance. The petitioners from Ohio 
think it a grievance that the people of the Dis- 
trict of Columbia should suffer the institution 
of slavery, and pray for the redress of that griev- 
ance ; the people of the District think tlic insti- 
tution an advantage, and want no redress ; now, 
which has the right of petitioning ? Looking to 
tlie past action of the Senate, Mr. 1>. saw that, 
about thirty years ago, a petition against slavery, 
and that in the States, was presented to this 
body by the society of Quakers in reiuisylvania 
and New Jersey ; and that the same question 
upon its reception was made, and decided by 
yeas and nays, 19 to 9, in favor of receiving it. 
He read the names, to show that the senators 
from the slave and non-slaveholding States voted 
some for and some against the reception, accord- 



580 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



ing to each one's opinion, and not according to 
the position or the character of the State from 
which he came. Mr. B. repeated tliat he tlioiight 
this question to be one of expediency, and that 
it was expedient to give the vote which would 
go furthest towards quieting the pubhc mind. 
The quieting the South depended upon quieting 
the North ; for when the abolitionists were put 
down in the former place, the latter would be 
at ease. It seemed to him, then, that the gen- 
tlemen of the non-slaveholding States were the 
proper persons to speak first. They knew the 
temper of their own constituents best, and what 
might have a good or an ill effect upon them, 
either to increase the abolition fever, or to allay 
it. He knew that the feeling of the Senate 
was general ; that all wished for the same end ; 
and the senators of the North as cordially as 
those of the South." 



CHAPTER CXXXI. 

MAIL CIRCULATION OF INCENDIARY PUBLICA- 
TIONS. 

Mr. Calhoun moved that so much of the Pre- 
sident's message as related to the mail trans- 
mission of incendiar}' publications be referred to 
a select committee. Mr. King, of Alabama, op- 
posed the motion, urging that the only way that 
Congress could interfere would be by a post- 
oflBce regulation ; and that all such regulation 
properly referred itself to the committee on 
post-ofBces and post-roads. He did not look 
to the particular construction of the committee, 
but had no doubt the members of that commit- 
tee could see the evil of these incendiary trans- 
missions through tlie mails, and would provide 
a remedy which they should deem constitution- 
al, proper and adequate ; and he expressed a 
fear that, by giving the subject too much im- 
portance, an excitement might be got up. Mr. 
Calhoun replied that the Senator from Alabama 
had mistaken his object — that it was not to pro- 
duce any unnecessary excitement, but to adopt 
such a course as would secure a committee which 
would calmly and disj)assionately go into an ex- 
amination of the whole subject ; which would 
investigate the character of those publications, 
to ascertain whether they were incendiary or 



not ; and, if so, on that ground to put a check 
on their transmission through the mails. He 
could not but express his astonishment at the 
objection which had been taken to his motion, 
for he knew that the Senator from Alabama 
felt that deep interest in the subject which per- 
vaded the feelings of every man in the South. 
He believed that the post-oflfice committee would 
be fully occupied with the regular business which 
would be brought before them ; and it was this 
consideration, and no party feeling, which had 
induced him to make his motion. Mr. Grundy, 
chairman of the committee on post-oflBces and 
post-roads, said that his position was such as to 
have imposed silence upon him, if that silence 
might not have been misunderstood. In reply 
to the objection that a majority of the commit- 
tee were not from the slave States, that circum- 
stance might be an advantage ; it might give the 
greater weight to their action, which it was 
known would be favorable to the object of the 
motion. He would sa}^ that the federal govern- 
ment could do but little on this subject except 
through a post-office regulation, and thereb}- 
aiding the efficiency of the State laws. He did 
not desire to see any power exercised which 
would have the least tendency to interfere with 
the sovereignty of the States. Mr. Calhoun 
adhering to his desire for a select committee, 
and expressing his belief that a great constitu- 
tional question was to be settled, and that the 
crisis required calmness and firmness, and the 
action of a committee that came mainly from 
the endangered part of the Union — his request 
was granted ; and a committee of five appointed, 
composed as he desired ; namel}^, Mr. Calhoun 
chairman, Mr. King of Georgia, Mr. Mangum 
of North Carolina, Mr. Davis of Massachusetts, 
and Mr. Lewis F. Linn of jMissouri. A bill and 
a report were soon brought in by the committee 
— a bill subjecting to penalties any post-master 
who should knowingly receive and put into the 
mail any publication, or picture touching the 
subject of slavery, to go into any State or ter- 
ritory in which the circulation of such publica- 
tion, or picture, should be forbid by the State 
laws. When the report was read Mr. Mangum 
moved the printing of 5000 extra copies of it. 
This motion brought a majority of the commit- 
tee to their feet, to disclaim tlieir assent to parts 
of the report ; and to absolve themselves from 
responsibility for its contents. A conversational 



ANNO 18S5. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESmENT. 



581 



debate ensued on this point, on which Mr. Davis, 
Messi's. King of Alabama and Georgia, Mr. Linn 
and Mr. Calhoun thus expressed themselves : 

"Mr. Davis said that, as a motion had been 
made to print the paper purporting to be a re- 
port from the select committee of which he was 
a member, he would remark that the views con- 
tained in it did not entirely meet his approba- 
tion, though it contained many things which he 
approved of. He had risen for no other purpose 
than to make this statement, lest the impreesion 
should go abroad with the report that he as- 
sented to those portions of it which did not 
meet his approbation." 

" JNIi-. King, of Georgia, said that, lest the same 
misundersta,ndiug should go forth with respect 
to his views, he must state that the report was 
not entirely assented to by himself. However, 
the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Cal- 
houn), in making this report, had already stated 
that the majority of the committee did not agree 
to the whole of it, though many parts of it were 
concurred in by all." 

" Mr. Davis said he would add further, that 
he might have taken the usual course, and made 
an additional report, containing all his views on 
the subject, but thought it hardly worth while, 
and he had contented himself with making the 
statement that he had just made." 

" Mr. King, of Alabama, said this was a de- 
parture from the usual course — by it a minority 
might dissent ; and yet, when the report was 
published, it would seem to be a report of the 
committee of the Senate, and not a report of 
two members of it. It was proper that the 
whole matter should go together with the bill, 
that the report submitted by the minority might 
be read with the bill, to show that the reading 
of the report was not in conflict with the prin- 
ciples of the bill reportccL He thought the sen- 
ator from North Carolina (Mr. Mangum) had 
better modif}^ his motion, so as to have the re- 
port and bill published together." 

" Mr. Linn remarked that, being a member of 
the committee, it was but proper for him to say 
that he had assented to several parts of the re- 
port, though he did not concur with it in all its 
parts. Should it become necessary, he would, 
when the subject again came before the Senate, 
explain in what particulars he had coincided with 
the views given in the report, and how far he 
had dissented from them. The bill, he said, had 
met with his approbation." 

" Mr. Calhoun said he hoped his friend from 
North Carolina would modify his motion, so as 
to include the printing of the bill with the re- 
port. It would be seen, by comparing both to- 
gether, that there was no noii scquiliir in the 
bill, coming as it did after this report." 

" Mr. King, of Alabama, had only stated his 
impressions from hearing the report and bill 
read. It appeared to him unusual that a report 
should be made by a minority, and merely ac- . 



quiesced in by the committee, and that the bill 
shoidd be adverse to it." 

" Mr. Davis said the report was, as he under- 
stood it to be read from the chair, the report of 
the comniittcc. He had spoken for himself f)nly, 
and for nobody else, lest the impression might 
go abroad that he concurred in all parts of the 
report, when he dissented from some of them." 

''Mr. Calhoun said thatamajority of the com- 
mittee did not concur in the report, though there 
were two members of it, himself and the gen- 
tleman from North Carolina, who concurred 
throughout; three other gentlemen concurred 
with the greater part of the report, though they 
dissented from some parts of it ; and two gentle- 
men concurred also with some parts of it. As 
to the bill, two of the committee would have 
preferred a different one, though they had rather 
have that tliau none at all ; another gentleman 
was opposed to it altogether. The bill, however, 
was a natural consequence of the report, and 
the two did not disagree with each other." 

The parts of the report which were chiefly 
exceptionable were two : 1. The part which 
related to the nature of the federal government, 
as being founded in "compact;" which was the 
corner-stone of the doctrine of nidlification, and 
its corollary that the laws of nations were in full 
force between the several States, as sovereign 
and independent communities except as modi- 
fied by the compact ; 2. The part that argued, 
as upon a subsisting danger, the evils by an abo- 
lition of slavery in the slave States by interfer- 
ence from other States. On the first of these 
points the report said : 

" That the States which form our Ferleral 
Union are sovereign and independent connnuni- 
ties, bound together by a constitutional com- 
pact, and are possessed of all the powers belong- 
ing to distinct and separate States, excepting 
such as are delegated to be exercised by the 
general government, is assumed as unques- 
tionable. The compact itself expressly provides 
that all powers not delegated are reserved to 
the States and the people. To ascertain, tlicn, 
whether the power in question is (leleg;itod or 
i-eserved, it is only necessary to ascertain whe- 
ther it is to be found among the enumerated 
powers or not. If it be not among tliem, it 
belongs, of course, to the reserved powers. On 
turning to the constitution, it will be seen that, 
while the power of defending tlie country 
against external danger is found among tlie enu- 
merated, the instrument is wholly sili^ut as to 
the power of defending the internal peace and 
securitj^ of the States ; and of course, rc.»;crvcs 
to the States this im))ortaut power, as it stood 
before the adoption of tlie constitution, with no 
other limitation, as has been stated, except such 
as are expressly prescribed by the instrument 



582 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



it-elf. From what has been stated, it may be 
inferred that tlie ri.ucht of a State to defend itself 
against internal danjjcrs is a part of the {iireat, 
primary, and inherent right of self-defence, 
which, by the laws of nature, belongs to all 
communities ; and so jealous were the States of 
this essential right, without which their inde- 
pendence could not be preserved, that it is ex- 
pressly provided by the constitution, that the 
general government shall not assist a State, even 
in case of domestic violence, except on the ap- 
plication of the authorities of the State itself; 
thus excluding, by a necessary consequence, its 
interfei'ence in all other cases. 

" Having now shown that it belongs to the 
slaveholding States, whose institutions are in 
danger, and not to Congress, as is supposed by 
the message, to determine what papers are in- 
cendiary and intended to excite insurrection 
among the slaves, it remains to inquire, in the 
next place, what are the corresponding duties 
of the general govei-nment, and the other States, 
from within whose limits and jurisdiction their 
institutions are attacked ; a subject intimately 
connected with that with which the committee 
are immediately charged, and which, at the pre- 
sent juncture, ought to be fully understood by 
all the parties. The committee will bogin with 
the first. It remains next to inquire into the 
duty of the States from within whose limits 
and jurisdiction the internal peace and security 
of the slaveholding States are endangered. In 
order to comprehend more fully the nature and 
extent of their duty, it will be necessary to 
make a few remarks on the relations which exist 
between the States of our Federal Union, with 
the rights and obligations recipxx)call3' resulting 
from such relations. It has already been stated 
that the States which compose our Federal 
Union are sovereign and independent communi- 
ties, imited by a constitutional compact. Among 
its members the laws of nations are in full force 
and ol)ligation, except as altered or modified by 
the compact ; and, of couree, the States possess, 
with that exception, all the rights, and are sub- 
ject to all the duties, which separate and dis- 
tinct communities possess, or to which they are 
subject. Among these are comprehended the 
obligation which all States are under to prevent 
their citizens from disturbing the peace or en- 
dangering the security of other States ; and in 
case of being disturbed or endangei-ed, the right 
of the latter to demand of the former to adopt 
such measures as will prevent their recurrence, 
and if refused or neglected, to resort to such 
measures as its protection may require. This 
right remains, of course, in force among the 
States of this Union, with such limitations as 
are imposed expressly by the con.stitution. 
Within their limits, the rights of the slavehold- 
ing States are as full to demand of the States 
within whose limits and jurisdiction their peace 
is assailed, to adopt the measures necessary to 
prevent the same, and if refused or neglected, 
to resort to means to protect themselves, as 



if they were separate and independent commu- 
nities." 

This part of the report was that which, in 
founding the federal government in compact, as 
under the old articles of the confederation, and 
in bringing the law of nations to apply between 
the States as independent and sovereign commu- 
nities, except where limited by the compact, 
was supposed to contain the doctrine of nullifi- 
cation and secession ; and the concluding part 
of the report is an argument in fovor of the 
course recommended in the Crisis in the event 
that New- York, Massachusetts, and Pennsyl- 
vania did not suppress the abolition societies. 
The report continues : 

" Their professed object is the emancipation 
of slaves in the Southern States, which they pro- 
pose to accomplish through the agencies of 
organized societies, spi^ead throughout the non- 
slaveholding States, and a powerful press, di- 
rected mainly to excite, in the other States, 
hatred and abhorrence against the institutions 
and citizens of the slaveholding States, by ad- 
dresses, lectures, and pictorial representations, 
abounding in false and exaggerated statements. 
If the magnitude of the mischief allbrds, in any 
degree, the measure by which to judge of the 
criminality of a project, few have ever been de- 
vised to be compared with the present, whether 
the end be regarded, or the means by which it 
is proposed to be accomplished. The blindness 
of fanaticism is proverbial. "With more zeal than 
understanding, it constantly misconceives the 
nature of the object at which it aims, and 
towards which it rushes with headlong violence, 
regardless of the means by which it is to be 
effected. Never was its character more fully 
exemplified than in the present instance. Set- 
ting out with the abstract principle that slavery 
is an evil, the fanatical zealots come at once to 
the conclusion that it is their duty to abolish it, 
regardless of all the disastei'S which must fol- 
low. Never was conclusion more false or dan- 
gerous. Admitting their assumption, there are 
innumerable things which, regarded in the 
abstract, are evils, but which it would be mad- 
ness to attempt to abolish. Thus regarded, 
government itself is an evil, with most of its 
institutions intended to protect life and property, 
compre^hending the civil as well as the criminal 
and military code, which are tolerated only be- 
cause to abolish them would be to increase 
instead of diminishing the evil. The reason is 
equally apphcable to the case under considera- 
I tion, to illustnite which, a few remarks on 
slavery, as it actually- exists in the Southern 
States, will be necessary. 

" lie who rcgarels slavery in those States simply 
under the relation of master and slave, as im- 
portant as that relation is, viewed merely as a 



ANNO 1835. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



583 



question of property to the slaveholding section ; 
of the Union, has a very imperfect conception of 
the institution, and the impossibility of abolish- 
ing it without disasters unexampled in the his- ^ 
tory of the world. To understand its nature : 
and importance fully, it must be borne in mind 
that slavery, as it exists in the Southern States 
(including under the Southern all the slavehold- 
ing States), involves not only the relation of 
master and slave, but, also, the social and politi- 
cal relations of two races, of nearly equal nvun- 
bers, from different quarters of the globe, 
and the most opposite of all others in every 
particular that distinguishes one race of men 
from another. Emancipation would destroy 
these relations — would divest the masters of 
their property, and subvert the relation, social 
and political, that has existed between the races 
from almost the first settlement of the Southern 
States. It is not the intention of the committee 
to dwell on the pecuniary aspect of this vital 
subject, the vast amount of property involved, 
equal at least to $950,000,000; the ruin of 
families and individuals ; the impoverishment and 
prostration of an entire section of the Union, and 
the fatal blow that would be given to the pro- 
ductions of the great agricultural staples, on 
which the commerce, the navigation, the manu- 
factures, and the revenue of the country, almost 
entirely depend. As great as these disasters 
would be, they are nothing, compared to what 
must follow the subversion of the existing rela- 
tion between the two races, to which the com- 
mittee will confine their remarks. Under this 
relation, the two races have long lived in peace 
and prosperity, and if not disturbed, would long 
continue so to live. While the European race 
has rapidly increased in wealth and numbers, and 
at the same time has maintained an equality, 
at least, morally and intellectually, with their 
brethren of the non-slaveholding States; the 
African race has multiplied with not less rapidity, 
accompanied by great improvement, physically 
and intellectually, and the enjoyment of a de- 
gree of comfort with which the laboring class 
in few countries can compare, and confessedly 
greatly superior to what the free people of the 
same race possess in the non-slaveholding States. 
It may, indeed, be safely asserted, that there is 
no example in history in which a savage jieople, 
such as their ancestors were when brouglit into 
the country, have ever advanced in the same 
period so rapidly in numbers and improvement. 
To destroy the existing relations would be to 
destroy this prosperity, and to place the two 
races in a state of conliict, which must end in 
the expulsion or extii'pation of one or the other. 
No ortier can be substituted, compatible with 
their peace or security. The difficulty is in the 
diversity of the I'aces. So strongly drawn is the 
line between the two, in con.'^equencc oi' it, and 
so Btrengthened by the force of habit, and edu- 
cation, that it is impossible for them to exist 
together in the same community, where their 
numbers are so nearly equal as in the slavehold- 



ing States, under any other relation than which 
now exists. Social and political equality be- 
tween them is impossible. No power on earth 
can overcome the difficulty. The causes resist- 
ing lie loo deep in the principles of our nature 
to be surmounted. But, without such cqnality, 
to change the present condition of the African 
race, were it possible, would be but to change 
the form of .slavery. It would make them the 
slaves of the community, instead of the' slaves 
of individuals, with less responsibilit}' and in- 
terest in their welfare on the part of the com- 
munity than is felt by their present mastei s ; 
while it would destroy the security and iiulc- 
pendence of the European race, if the African 
should be permitted to continue in their changed 
condition within the limits of those States. 
They would look to the other States for svq)port 
and protection, and would become, virtuall}-, their 
allies and dependents ; and would thus place in 
the hands of those States the most effectual in- 
strument to destroy the influence and control the 
destiny of the rest of the Union. It is against 
this relation between the two races that the 
blind and criminal zeal of the abohtionists is 
directed — a relation that now preserves in quiet 
and security more than G.5(iO,000 of human 
beings, and which cannot be destro^-ed witliont 
destroying the peace and prosperit}' of nearly 
half the States of the Union, and involving their 
entire population in a deadly conflict, that nmst 
terminate either in the expulsion or extirpation 
of those who are the object of the misguided and 
false humanity of those Avho claim to be their 
friends. He must be blind, indeed, who docs 
not perceive that the svibversion of a relation 
which must be followed with such disastrous 
consequences can only be effected by convulsions 
that would devastate the country, burst asunder 
the bonds of Union, and ingulf in a sea of blood 
the institutions of the country. It is madness 
to suppose that the slaveholding States would 
quietly submit to be sacrificed. Every con- 
sideration — interest, duty, and humanity, the 
love of countr}^, the sense of wrong, liatred <^f 
oppressors, and treacherous and faithless con- 
federates, and finally despair — would impel them 
to the most daring and desperate resistance in 
defence of pioperty, niniily, country, liberty, 
and existence. But wicked" and cruel as is the 
end aimed at, it is fully equalled by the crimi- 
nality of the means by which it is jirojiosed to 
be accomplished. These, as has been stated, 
consist in organized societies and a jinwerful 
press, directed mainly with a view to excite tlio 
bitterest animosity and hatred of the people of 
the non-slaveholding States against the eitizeus 
and institutions of tlie slaveholding States. 
It is easy to see to what disastrous results such 
means must tend. Passing over the more <>!> 
vious elfects. their tendency to excite fr<,i insur- 
rection and .HTvile war. with :dl its horrors, and 
the necessity which such tendency nmst impose 
on the slaveholding States to resort to tlie most 
rigid discipline and severe police, to the great 



584 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



injury of the present condition of the slaves, 
there remains another, threatening: incalcuhible 
miscliief to the country. The inevitable ten- 
dency of the means to which the abohtionists 
have resorted to effect their object must, if per- 
sisted in, end in completel}' alienating the two 
great sections of the Union. The incessant ac- 
tion of hundreds of societies, and a vast printing 
establishment, tlirowing out daily thousands of 
artful and inllammatory publications, must make. 
in time, a deep impression on the section of the 
Union where they freely circulate, and are 
mainly designed to have effect. Tlie well-in- 
formed and thoughtful ma}^ hold them in con- 
tempt, but the 3'oung, the inexperienced, the 
ignorant, and thoughtless, will receive the 
poison. In process of time, when the number 
of proselytes is suflBciently multiplied, the artful 
and profligate, who are ever on the watch to 
seize on any means, however wicked and dan- 
gerous, will unite with the fanatics, and make 
their movements the basis of a powerful politi- 
cal party, that will seek advancement by diffus- 



nicr, as widely as possible. 



hatred against the 



slaveholding States. But, as hatred begets 
hatred, and animosity animosity, these feehngs 
would become reciprocal, till every vestige of 
attachment would cease to exist between the 
two sections, when the Union and the constitu- 
tion, the offspring of mutual affection and confi- 
dence, would forever jierish. Such is the danger 
to which the movements of the abolitionists ex- 
pose the countr3'. If the force of the obligation 
is in proportion to the magnitude of the danger, 
stronger cannot be imposed, than is at present, 
on the States within whose limits the danger 
originates, to arrest its further progress — a duty 
the}' owe, not only to the States whose institu- 
tions are assailed, but to the Union and consti- 
tution, as has been shown, and, it may be added, 
to themselves. 

The insidiousness of this report was in the 
as.sumption of an actual impendingdanger of the 
abolition of .slavery in all the slave States — the 
destruction of nine hundred and fifty millions of 
property — the ocean of blood to be shed — the 
war of extermination between two races — and 
the necessity forcxtraordinary means to prevent 
these dire calamities ; when the fact was, that 
there was not one particle of anj- such danger. 
The assumption was contrary to fact : the re- 
port was inflammatory and disorganizing: and 
if there was any thing enigmatical in its con- 
clusions, it was sufficiently interp^ted in the 
contemporaneous publications in the Southern 
slave States, which were open in their declara- 
tions that a cause for separation had occurred, 
limited only by the conduct of the free States in 
suppressing within a given time the incendiary 



societies within their borders. This limitation 
would throw the responsibility of disunion up- 
on the non-slavcholding States failing to sup- 
press these societies : for disunion, in that case, 
was foreshadowed in another part of this report, 
and fully avowed in contemjiorar}' Southern pub- 
lications. Thus the report said : 

" Those States, on the other hand, are not 
only under all the obligations which independent 
communities Avould be, to adopt such measures, 
but also under the obligation which the consti- 
tution superadds, rendered more sacred, if pos- 
sible, by the fact that, while the Union imposes 
restrictions on the right of the slaveholding 
States to defend themselves, it affords the me- 
dium through which their peace and security are 
assailed. It is not the intention of the commit- 
tee to inquire what those restrictions are, and 
what are th« means which, under the constitu- 
tion, are left to the slaveholding States to pro- 
tect themselves. The period has not 5'et come, 
and they trust never will, when it may be ne- 
cessary to decide those questions ; but come it 
must, unless the States whose duty it is to sup- 
press the danger shall see in time its magnitude 
and the obligations which they are under to 
adopt speedy and effectual measures to an-est its 
further progress. That the full force of this obli- 
gation may be understood by all parties, the 
committee propose, in conclusion, to touch brief- 
ly on the movements of the abolitionists, with 
the view of showing the dangerous consequences 
to which they must lead if not arrested." 

These were ominous intimations, to receive 
their full interpretation elsewhere, and indissolu- 
bly connecting themselves with the late disunion 
attitude of South Cai'olina — the basis of discon- 
tent only changed. Mr. King of Georgia said 
that positions had been assumed and principles 
insisted upon by ^Ir. Calhoun, not only incon- 
sistent with the bill reported, but he thought 
inconsistent with the "existence of the Union 
itself, and w'hich if established and carried into 
practice, must hastily end in its dissolution." Mr. 
Calhoun in his reply pretty well justified these 
conclusions of the Georgia senator. He made it a 
point that the non-slaveholding States had done 
nothing yet to suppress the incendiary societies 
within their limits; and joining that non-action 
of these States with a i-efusal of Congress to pass 
this bill, he looked upon it as in vain to expect 
security or protection for the slaveholding States 
except from themselves — from State interpo- 
sition, as authorized in the Virginia resolutions 
of 1798 ; and as recently carried out by South 
Carolina in her nullification procccdin;_,s ; and 



ANNO 1835. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



585 



declared that nothing was wanted but " concert " 
among themselves to place their domestic insti- 
tutions, their peace and security under their own 
protection and beyond the reach of danger. All 
this was thus intelligibly, and ominously stated 
in his reply to Mr. King : 

" Thus far (I say it with regret) our just hopes 
have not been realized. The legislatures of the 
South, backed by the voice their constituents 
expressed through innumerable meetings, have 
called upon the non-slaveholding States to re- 
press the movements made within the jurisdic- 
tion of those States against their peace and se- 
curity. Not a step has been taken ; not a law 
has been passed, or even proposed ; and I ven- 
ture to assert that none will be ; not but what 
there is a favorable disposition towards us in the 
North, but I clearly see the state of political 
parties there presents insuperable impediments 
to any legislation on the subject. I rest my 
opinion on the fact that the non-slaveholding 
States, from the elements of their population, 
are, and will continue to be, divided and distract- 
ed by parties of nearly equal strength ; and that 
each will alwaj-s be ready to seize on every 
movement of the other which may give them the 
superiority, without much regard to consequen- 
ces, as affecting their own States, and much less, 
remote and distant sections. Nor have we been 
less disappointed as to the proceedings of Con- 
gress. Believing that the general government 
has no right or authority over the subject of 
slavery, wo had just grounds to hope Congress 
would refuse all jurisdiction in reference to it, 
in whatever form it might be presented. The 
very opposite course has been pursued. Aboli- 
tion petitions have not only been received in 
both Houses, but received on the most obnoxious 
and dangerous of all grounds — that we are bound 
to receive them ; that is, to take jurisdiction of 
the question of slavery whenever the abolition- 
ists may think proper to petition for its abolition, 
either here or in the States. Thus far, then, we 
of the slaveholding States have been grievously 
disappointed. One question still remains to be 
decided that is presented by this bill. To refuse 
to pass this bill would be virtually to co-operate 
with the abolitionists — would be to make the 
ofBccrs and agents of the post-office department 
in effect their agents and abettors in the cir- 
culation of their incendiary publications, in vio- 
lation of the laws of the States. It is your un- 
questionable duty, as T have demonstrably 
proved, to abstain from their violation ; and, by 
refusing or neglecting to discharge that duty, 
you would clearly enlist, in the existing contro- 
versy, on the side of the abolitionists against the 
Southern States. Should sucli be jour decision, 
by refusing to pass this bill, I sliall say to the 
people of the South, look to yourselves — j^ou 
have nothing to hope from others. lint I must 
tell the Senate, be your decision what it may, 
the South will never abandon the principles of 



this bill. If you refuse co-operation with ou]( 
laws, and conflict should ensue between your 
and our law, the Southern States will never 
yield to the superiority of yours. We have a 
remedy in our hands, whicli, in such events, we 
shall not fail to apply. AVe h:ive liigh authority 
for asserting that, in such cases, ' State interpo- 
sition is the rightful remedy ' — a doctrine lirst 
announced by Jefferson — adopted by the patri- 
otic and republican State of Kentucky b}^ a so- 
lemn resolution, in 1798, and finally carried out 
into successful practice on a recent occasion, ever 
to be remembered, by the gallant State which I, 
in part, have the honor to represent. In this 
well-tested and efficient rcmed}-. sustained by 
the princijiles developed in the report and a.'^sert- 
ed in this bill, the slaveholding States have an 
ample protection. Let it be fixed, let it be riv- 
eted in every Southern mind, that the laws of 
the slaveholding States for the protection of their 
domestic institutions are paramount to the laws 
of the general government in regulation of com- 
merce and the mail, and that the latter must 
yield to the former in the event of conflict ; and 
that, if the government should refuse to yield, 
the States have a right to interpose, and we arc 
safe. With these princijjlcs, nothing but concert 
would be wanting to bid defiance to the move- 
ments of the abolitionists, whether at home or 
abroad, and to place our domestic institutions, 
and, with them, our security and peace, under 
our own protection, and beyond the reach of 
danger." 

These were very significant intimations. Con- 
gress itself was to become the ally of the aboli- 
tionists, and enlist in their cause, if it did not 
pass his bill, which was opposed by Southern 
senators and founded upon a minority report 
of a Southern committee selected by Mr. Cal- 
houn himself. It was well known it was not to 
pass ; and in view of that fact it was urged upon 
the South to imWify and secede. 

Thus, within two short years after the "com- 
promise " of 1833 had taken Mr. Calhoun out of 
the hands of the law, he publicly ami avowedly 
relapsed into the same condition; recurring again 
to secession for a new grievance ; and to be re- 
sorted to upon contingencies which he knew to 
be certain; and encouraged in this course by 
the success of the first trial of strength with the 
federal government. It has been told at (he 
proper place— in the chapter wliicii gave the 
.secret history of the compromise of l^'-^-^ — that 
Mr. Webster refused to go into that measure, 
saying that the time had come to try the strength 
of the constitution and of the governuK'nt : ami 
it now becomes proinr to tell that Mr. C'lay. af- 
ter seeing the relapse of Mr. Calhoun, became 



586 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



doubtful of the correctness of his own policy in 
that affair ; and often said to his friends that, 
" in looking back upon the whole case, he had 
seriously doubted the policy of his interference." 
Certainly it was a most deplorable interference, 
arresting the process of the law when it was on 
the point of settling every thing without hurting 
a hair of any man's head, and putting an end to 
nulliflcation for ever ; and giving it a victory, 
real or fancied, to encourage a new edition of 
the same proceedings in a far more dangei-ous 
and pervading form. But to return to the bill 
before the Senate. 

" Mr. "Webster addressed the Senate at length 
in opposition to the bill, commencing his argu- 
ment against what he contended was its vague- 
ness and obscurity, in not sufiiciently defining 
what were the publications the circulation of 
which it intended to prohibit. The bill pro- 
vided that it should not be lawful for any depu- 
ty postmaster, in any State, territory, or dis- 
trict of the United States, knowingly to deliver 
to any person whatever, any pamphlet, news- 
paper, handbill, or other printed paper or pic- 
torial representation, touching the subject of 
slavery, where, by the laws of the said State, dis- 
trict, or territory, their circulation was prohib- 
ited. Under this provision, Mr. W. contended 
that it was impossible to say what publications 
might not be prohibited from circulation. No 
matter what was the jiublication, whether for or 
against slavery, if it touched the subject iu any 
shape or form, it would fall under the prohibi- 
tion. Even the constitution of the United States 
might bo prohibited ; and the person who was 
clothed with the power to judge in this delicate 
matter was one of the deputy postmasters, who, 
notwithstanding the difficulties with which he 
was encompassed in coming to a correct deci- 
sion, must decide correctl}^, imder pain of being 
removed from office. It would be necessary, 
also, he said, for the deputy postmasters refer- 
red to in this bill, to make themselves acquainted 
with all the various laws passed by the States, 
touching the subject, of slavery, and to decide 
on them, no matter how variant they might be 
with each other. Mr. TV. also contended that 
the bill convicted with that provision in the 
constitution which prohibited Congress from 
passing anj^ law to abridge the freedom of speech 
or of tlie press. What was the liberty of the 
press ? he asked. It was the liberty of print- 
ing as well as the liberty of publishing, in all 
the ordinary modes of publication ; and was 
not the circulation of papers through the mails 
an ordinaiy mode of publication? lie was 
afraid that they were in some danger of taking 
a step in this matter that they might hereafter 
have cause to regret, by its being contended 
that whatever in this bill applies to publications 
touching slavery, applies to other publications 



that the States might think proper to prohibit ; 
and Congress might, under this example, be 
called upon to pass laws to suppress the circula- 
tion of political, religious, or any other descrip- 
tion of publications which produced excitement 
in the States. Was this bill in accordance with 
the general force and temper of the constitution 
and its amendments? It was not in accordance 
with that provision of the instrument under 
which the freedom of speech and of the press 
was secured. Whatever laws the State legisla- 
tures might pass on the subject. Congress Avas 
restrained from legislating in any manner what- 
ever, with regard to the press. It would be ad- 
mitted, that if a newspaper came directed to 
him, he had a property in it ; and how could 
any man, then, take that property and burn it 
without due form of law? and he did not know 
how this newspaper coidd be pronounced an 
unla'n'ful publication, and having no property in 
it, without a legal trial. Mr. W. argued against 
the right to examine into the nature of publica- 
tions sent to the post-office, and said that the 
right of an individual in his papers was secured 
to him in every free country in the world. In 
England, it was expressly provided that the 
papers of the subject shall be free from all un 
reasonable searches and seizures — language, he 
said, to be found in our constitution. This 
principle established in England, so essential to 
liberty, had been followed out in France, where 
the right of printing and publishing was secured 
in the fullest extent ; the individual publishing 
being amenable to the laws for what he publish- 
ed ; and every man printed and published what 
he pleased, at his peril. INIr. Webster went on, 
at some length, to show that the bill was con- 
trary to that provision of the constitution which 
prohibits Congress to pass any law abridging 
the freedom of speech or of the press." 

Mr. Clay spoke against the bill, saying : 

" The evil complained of was the circulation 
of papers having a certain tendency. The pa- 
pers, unless circulated, did no harm, and while 
in the post-ofBce or in the mail, they were not 
circulated — it was the circulation solely which 
constituted the evil. It was the taking them 
out of the mail, and the use that was to be made 
of them, that constituted the mischief. Then it 
was perfectly competent to the State authorities 
to apply the remedy. The instant that a pro- 
hibited'paper was handed out, whether to a citi- 
zen or sojourner, he was subject to the laws 
which might compel him either to surrender 
them or burn them. He considered the bill not 
only unnecessary, but as a law of a dangerous, 
if not a doubtful, authority. It was objected 
that it was vague and indefinite in its character; 
and how is that objection got over? The bill 
provided that it shall not be lawful for any depu- 
ty postmaster, in any Stotc, territory, or dis- 
trict of the United States, knowingly to deliver 
to any person whatever, any pamphlet, news{)a- 



ANNO 1836. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



587 



per, handbill, or other printed paper or pictorial 
representation, touching the subject of slavery, 
where, by the laws of the said State, territory, 
or district, their circulation is prohibited. Now, 
what could be more vague and indefinite than 
this description ? Now, could it be decided, by 
this description, what publications should be 
withheld from distribution? The gentleman 
from Pennsylvania said that the laws of the 
States would supply the omission. He thought 
the senator was premature in saying that there 
would be precision in State laws, before he 
showed it by producing the law. He had seen 
no such law, and he did not know whether the 
description in the bill was applicable or not. 
There was another objection to this part of the 
bill ; it applied not only to the present laws of 
the States, but to any future laws that might 
pass. Mr. C. denied that the bill applied to the 
slaveholding States only ; and went on to argue 
that it could be applied to all the States, and to 
any publication touching the subject of slavery 
whatever, whether for or against it, if such pub- 
lication was only prohibited by the laws of such 
State. Thus, for instance, a non-slaveholding 
State might prohibit pubUcations in defence of 
the institution of slavery, and this bill would 
apply to it as well as to the laws of the slave- 
holding States ; but the law would be inopera- 
tive : it declared that the deputy postmaster 
should not be amenable, unless he knowingly 
shall deliver, &c. Why, the postmaster might 
plead ignorance, and of course the law would be 
inoperative. 

" But he wanted to know whence Congress 
derived the power to pass this law. It was said 
that it was to carry into effect the laws of the 
States. Where did they get such authority ? 
He thought that their only authority to pass 
laws was in pursuance of the constitution ; but 
to pass laws to carry into eSect the laws of the 
States, was a most prolific authority, and there 
was no knowing where it was to stop ; it would 
make the legislation of Congress dependent upon 
the legislation of twenty-four diticrent sove- 
reignties. He thought the bill was of a most 
dangerous tendency. The senator from Penn- 
sylvania asked if the post-oflBce power did not 
give them the right to regulate what should be 
carried in the mails. Why, there was no such 
power as that claimed in the bill ; and if they 
passed such a law, it would be exercising a most 
dangerous power. Why, if such doctrine pre- 
vailed, the government might designate the per- 
sons, or parties, or classes, who should have the 
benefit of the mails, excluding all others." 

At last the voting came on ; and, what looks 
sufficiently curious on the outside view, there 
were three tie votes successively — two on amend- 
ments, and one on the engrossment of the bill. 
The two ties on amendments stood fifteen to 
fifteen — the absentees being eighteen : one third 



of the Senate : the tie on engrossment was eigh- 
teen to eighteen — the absentees being twelve: 
one fourth of the Senate. It was Mr. Calhoun 
who called for the yeas and nays on each of 
these questions. It was evident that there was 
a design to throw the bill into the hands of Uio 
Vice-President — a New-Yorker, and the pro- 
minent candidate for the presidency. In com- 
mittee of the whole he did not vote in the case 
of a tie ; but it was necessary to establish an 
equilibrium of votes there to be ready for the 
immediate vote in Senate on the engrossment ; 
and when the committee tie was deranged by 
the accession of three votes on one side, the 
equilibrium was immediately re-established bj' 
three on the other. Mr. Van Buren. at the mo- 
ment of this vote (on the engrossment) was out 
of the chair, and walking behind the colonnade 
back of the presiding officer's chair. My eyes 
were wide open to what was to take place. Mr. 
Calhoun, not seeing him, eagerly and loudly 
asked where was the Vice-President ? and told 
the Sergeant-at-arms to look for him. But he 
needed no looking for. He was within hearing 
of all that passed, and ready for the contingency- : 
and immediately stepping up to his chair, and 
standing up, promptly gave the casting vote in 
favor of the engrossment. I deemed it a polit- 
ical vote, that is to say, given from policj' ; and 
I deemed it justifiable under the circumstances. 
Mr. Calhoun had made the rejection of the bill 
a test of alliance with Northern abolitionists, 
and a cause for the secession of the Southern 
States : and if the bill had been ivjected by Van 
Buren's vote, the whole responsibilitj' of its loss 
would have been thrown upon him and the 
North ; and the South inflamed against thuso 
States and himself — the more so as Mr. AVIiito, 
of Tennessee, the opposing democratic candidate 
for the presidency, gave his votes for the bill. 
Mr. Wright also, as T believe, voted p<ilitically. 
and on all the votes both in the cominitlce and 
the Senate. He was the political and the per- 
sonal friend of the Vice-President, most couii- 
dential with him, and Itelieved to lie the best 
index to his opinions. He was perfectly sensi- 
ble of his position, and in every vote on the 
subject voted with Mr. Calhoun. Several other 
senators voted jiolitically, and without com- 
punction, although it was a bad bill, as it was 
known it would not pass. The author of thi.s 
View would not so vote. He was tued of the 



588 



raiRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



eternal cry. of dissolviiif^ the Union — did not 
believe in it — and would not give a repugnant 
vote to avoid the trial. The tie vote having 
been effected, and failed of its expected result, 
the Senate afterwards voted quite fully on the 
final passage of the bill, and rejected it — twenty- 
five to nineteen : onlj^ four absent. The yeas 
were : Messrs. Black, Bedford, Brown, Bucha- 
nan, Calhoun, Cuthbcrt of Georgia, Grundy, 
King of Alabama, King of Georgia, Mangum, 
Moore, Nicholas of Louisiana, Alexander Porter, 
Preston of South Carolina, Rives, Robinson, 
Tallmadge, Walker of Mississippi, White of Ten- 
nessee, Silas Wright. The nays were : Messrs. 
Benton, Clay, Crittenden, Davis of Massachu- 
setts, Ewing of Illinois, Ewing of Ohio, Golds- 
borough of jMaryland, Hendricks, Hubbard, 
Kent, Knight, Leigh, IMcKean of Pennsylvania, 
Thomas ^Morris of Ohio, Naudain of Delaware, 
Niles of Connecticut, Prentiss, Ruggles, Shepley, 
Southard, Swift, Tipton, Tomlinson, Wall of 
New Jersey, Webster : majority six against tfie 
bill ; and seven of them, if the solecism may be 
allowed, from the slave States. And thus was 
accomplished one of the contingencies in which 
" State interposition " was again to be applied 
— the " rightful remedy of nullification " again 
resorted to — and the " domestic institutions " 
of the Southern States, by "concert" among 
themselves, " to be placed beyond the reach of 
danger." 



CHAPTER CXXXII. 

FRENCH AFFAIRS— APPROACH OF A FRENCH 
SQUADRON— APOLOGY REQUIRED. 

In his annual message at the commencement of 
the session the President gave a general state- 
ment of our affairs with France, and promised a 
special communication on the subject at an early 
day. That communication was soon made, and 
showed a continued refusal on the part of France 
to pay the indemnity, unless an apology was 
first made ; and also showed that a French fleet 
was preparing for the American seas, under cir- 
cumstances which implied a design either to 
overawe the American government, or to be 
ready for expected hostilities. On the subject 
of the apology, the message said : 



"Whilst, however, the government of the 
United States was awaiting the movements of 
the French government, in perfect confidence 
that the difficulty was at an end. the Secretary 
of State received a call from the French charge 
d'affaires in Washington, who desired to read to 
him a letter he had received from tlie French 
minister of foreign affairs. He was asked whe- 
ther he was instructed or directed to make any 
official communication, and replied that he was 
only authorized to read the letter, and furnish a 
copy if requested. It was an attempt to make 
known to the government of the United States, 
privately, in what manner it could make expla- 
nations, apparently voluntary, but really dictated 
by France, acceptable to her, and thus obtain 
payment of the twenty-five millions of francs. 
No exception was taken to this mode of com- 
munication, which is often used to prepare the 
way for ofiicial intercourse ; but the suggestions 
made in it were, in their substance, wholl}' in- 
admissible. Not being m the shape of an official 
communication to this government, it did not 
admit of rejilj'' or official notice ; nor could it 
safely be made the basis of an}- action by the 
Executive or the legislature ; and the Secretary 
of State did not think proper to ask a copy, be- 
cause he could have no use for it." 

One cannot but be struck with the extreme 
moderation with which the President gives the 
history of this private attempt to obtain a dic- 
tated apology from him. He recounts it soberly 
and quietly, without a single expression of irri 
tated feeling ; and seems to have met and put 
aside the attempt in the same quiet manner. It 
was a proof of his extreme indisposition to have 
any collision with France, and of his perfect 
detennination to keep himself on the right side 
in the controversy, whatever aspect it might 
assume. But that was not the only trial to 
which his temper was put. The attempt to ob- 
tain the apology being civilly repulsed, and the 
proffered copy of the dictated terms refused to 
be taken, an attempt was made to get that copy 
placed upon the archives of the government, 
with the view to its getting to Congress, and 
through Congress to the people ; to become a 
point of attack upon the President for not giving 
the apology, and thereby getting the money 
from France, and returning to friendly relations 
with her. Of this attempt to get a refused pa- 
per upon our archives, and to make it operate 
as an appeal to the people against their own 
government, the President (still preserving all 
his moderation), gives this account : 

" Copies of papers, marked Nos. 9, 10, and 11, 



ANNO 1836. ANDREW JACKSON, TRESTDENT. 



589 



show an attempt on the part of the French 
charge d'affiiires, many weeks afterwards, to 
place a copy of this paper among the archives 
of this government, which for obvious reasons, 
was not allowed to be done ; but the assurance 
before given was repeated, that any official com- 
munication which he might be authorized to 
make in the accustomed form would receive a 
prompt and just consideration. The indiscretion 
of this attempt was made more manifest by the 
sul).-equent avowal of the French charge d'af- 
faires, that the object was to bring the letter 
before Congress and the American people. If 
foreign agents, on a subject of disagreement be- 
tween their government and this, wish to prefer 
an appeal to the American people, they will 
hereafter, it is hoped, better appreciate their 
own rights, and the respect due to others, than 
to attempt to use the Executive as the passive 
organ of their communications. It is due to the 
character of our institutions that the diplomatic 
intercourse of this government should be con- 
ducted with the utmost directness and simplicity, 
and that, in all cases of importance, the com- 
munications received or made by the Executive 
should assume the accustomed official form. It 
is only by insisting on this form that foreign 
powers can be held to full responsibility ; that 
their communications can be officially replied 
to ; or that the advice or interference of the 
legislature can, with propriety, be invited by the 
President. Tlais course is also best calculated, 
on the one hand, to shield that officer from un- 
just suspicions ; and, on the other, to subject 
this portion of his acts to public scrutiny, and, 
if occasion shall require it, to constitutional 
animadversion. It was the more necessary to 
adhere to these principles in the instance in ques- 
tion, inasmuch as, in addition to other important 
interests, it very intimately concerned the na- 
tional honor; a matter, in my judgment, much 
too sacred to be made the subject of private and 
unofficial negotiation." 

Having shown the state of the question, the 
President next gave his opinion of what ought 
to be done by Congress ; which was, the inter- 
diction of our ports to the entry of French ves- 
sels and French products : — a milder remedy 
than that of reprisals which he had recom- 
mended at the previous session. He said : 

"It is time that this unequal position of af- 
fairs should cease, and that legislative action 
should be brought to sustain Executive exertion 
in such measures as the case requires. While 
France persists in her refusal to comply with 
the terms of a treaty, the object of which was, 
by removing all causes of mutual coni])laint, to 
renew ancient feelings of friendsliip, and to unite 
the two nations in the bonds of amity, and of a 
mutually beneficial commerce, she cannot justly 
complain if we adopt such peaceful remedies as 
the law of nations and the circumstances of the 



case may authorize and demand. Of the nature 
of these remedies I have heretofore hail occasion 
to speak ; and, in reference to a particular con- 
tingency, to express my conviction that reprisals 
would Ije best adapted to the emergency then 
contemplated. Since that period, France, by all 
the departments of her government, has acknow- 
ledged the validity of our claims and the obliga- 
tions of the treaty, and has appropriated the 
moneys which are necessary to its execution ; 
and though payment is withheld on grounds 
vitally important to our existence as an inde- 
pendent nation, it is not to be believed that she 
can have determined permanently to retain a 
position so utterly indefensible. In the altered 
state of the questions in controvers}', and under 
all existing circumstances, it appears to me that, 
until such a determination shall have become 
evident, it will be proper and sufficient to re- 
taliate her present refusal to conqtly with lier 
engagements by prohibiting the introduction of 
French products and the entry of French vessels 
into our ports. Between this and the interdic- 
tion of all commercial intercourse, or other re- 
medies, you, as the representatives of the people, 
must determine. I recommend the former, in 
the present posture of our affairs, as being the 
least injurious to our commerce, and as attended 
Avith the least difficulty of returning to the usual 
state of friendly intercourse, if the government 
of France shall render us the justice that is due ; 
and also as a proper preliminary step to stronger 
measures, should their adoption be rendered ne- 
cessary by subsequent events." 

This interdiction of the commerce of France, 
though a milder measure than that of reprisals, 
would still have been a severe one — severe at 
any time, and particularly so since the formation 
of this treaty, the execution of which was so 
much delayed by France ; for that was a treaty 
of two parts — something to be done on each side. 
On the part of France to pay us indemnities : on 
our side to reduce the duties on French wmes: 
and this reduction had been inunediately made 
by Congress, to take effect from tlie date of the 
ratification of the treaty ; and the benefit of that 
reduction had now been enjoyed by French 
commerce for near four years. But that was 
not the only benefit which this treaty brought 
to France from the good feeling it produced in 
America: it procured a discrimination in favor 
of silks imported from this side of tiie Cape of 
Good Hope — a di.-;crimination inuring, and in- 
tended to inure, to the benefit of France. The 
author of this View was much instnunental in 
procuring that discrimination, and did it upon 
conversations with the then resident French 
minister at Washington, and founding his argu- 



590 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



ment upon data derived from him. The data 
were to show that the discrimination would be 
beneficial to the trade of both countries ; but the 
inducing cause was good-will to France, and a 
desire to burj^ all recollection of past differences 
in our emulation of good works. This view of 
the treat}', and a statement of the advantages 
which France had obtained from it, was well 
shown by Mr. Buchanan in his speech in sup- 
port of the message on French affairs ; in which 
he said : 

" The government of the United States pro- 
ceeded immediately to execute their part of the 
treaty. By the act of the 13th July, 1832, the 
duties on French wines were reduced according 
to its terms, to take effect from the day of the 
rxchange of ratifications. At the same session, 
the Congress of the United States, impelled, no 
doubt, by their kindh' feelings towards France, 
which had been roused into action by wliat they 
believed to be a final and equitable settlement 
of all our disputes, voluntarily reduced the duty 
upon silks coming from this side of the Cape of 
Good Hope, to five per cent., whilst those from 
beyond were fixed at ten per cent. And at the 
next session, on the 2d of March, 1833, this duty 
of five per cent, was taken off altogether ; and 
ever since, French silks have been admitted into 
our country free of duty. There is now, in fact, a 
discriminating duty of ten per cent, in their favor, 
over silks from beyond the Cape of Good Hope. 

" What has France gained by these measures 
in duties on her wines and her silks, which she 
would otherwise have been bound to pay ? I 
have called upon the Secretary of the Treasury, 
for the purpose of ascertaining the amount. I 
now hold in my hand a tabular statement, pre- 
pared at my request, which shows, that had the 
duties remained what they were, at the date of 
the ratification of the treaty, these articles, sinco 
that time, would have paid into the Treasury, 
on the 30th September, 1834, the sum of 
^3.061,525. Judging from the large importa- 
tions which have since been made, I feel no hesi- 
tation in declaring it as my opinion, that, at the 
present moment, tliese duties would amount to 
more than the whole indemnity which France 
has engaged to pay to our fellow-citizens. Be- 
fore the conclusion of the ten j'ears mentioned 
in the treaty, she will have been freed from the 
pa3'ment of duties to an amount considerably 
above twelve millions of dollars." 

It is almost incomprehensible that there 
should have been such delay in complying with a 
treaty on the part of France bringing her such 
advantages ; and it is due to the King, Louis 
Philippe to say, that he constantly referred the 
tk'lay to the difficulty of getting the appropria- 
tion through the French legislative chambers. 



He often applied for the appropriation, but could 
not venture to make it an administration ques- 
tion ; and the olfensive demand for the apology 
came from that quarter, in the shape of an un- 
precedentd proviso to the law (when it did 
pass), that the money was not to be paid until 
there had been an apology. The only objection 
to the King's conduct was that he did not make 
the appropriation a cabinet measure, and try is- 
sues with the chambers ; but that objection has 
become less since ; and in fact totally disappeared, 
from seeing a few years afterwards, the ease 
with which the King was expelled from his 
throne, and how unable he was to trj^ issues 
with the chambers. The elder branch of the 
Bourbons, and all their adherents, were unfriend- 
ly to the United States, considering the American 
revolution as the cause of the French revolution ; 
and consequently the source of all their twenty- 
five years of exile, suffering and death. The re- 
publicans were also inimical to him, and sided 
with the legitimists. 

The President concluded his message with 
stating that a large French naval armament 
was under orders for our seas ; and said : 

" Of the cause and intent of these armaments 
I have no authentic information, nor any other 
means of judging, except such as are common to 
yourselves and to the public; but whatever may 
be their object, we are not at liberty to regard 
them as unconnected with the measures which 
hostile movements on the part of France may 
compel us to pursue. They at least deserve to 
be met bj^ adequate preparations on our part, 
and I therefore strongly urge large and speedy 
appropriations for the increase of the navy, and 
the completion of our coast defences. 

" If this array of militaiy force be really de- 
signed to affect the action of the government and 
people of the United States on the questions now 
pending between the two nations, then indeed 
would it be dishonorable to pause a moment on 
the alternative which such a state of things 
would present to us. Come what may, the ex- 
planation which France demands can never be 
accorded ; and no armament, however powerful 
and imposing, at a distance, or on our coast, will, 
I trust, deter us from discharging the high du- 
ties which we owe to our constituents, to our 
national character, and to the world." 

^Ir. Buchanan sustained the message in a 
careful and well-considered review of this whole 
French question, showing that the demand of 
an apology was an insult in aggravation of the 
injury, and could not be given without national 
degradation ; joining the President in his caU 



ANNO 1836. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



591 



for measures for preserving the rights and honor 
of the countrj ; declaring that if hostilities came 
they were preferable to disgrace, and that the 
whole world would put the blame on France. 
Mr. Calhoun took a different view of it, declar- 
ing that the state of our affairs with France was 
the effect of the President's mismanagement, and 
that if war came it would be entirely his fault ; 
and affirmed his deliberate belief that it was the 
President's design to have war with France. 
He said : 

" I fear that the condition in which the coun- 
try is now placed has been the result of a delib- 
erate and systematic policy. I am bound to 
speak my sentiments freely. It is due to my 
constitu tents and the country, to act with per- 
fect candor and truth on a question in which 
their interests is so deeply involved. I will not 
assert that the Executive has deliberately aimed 
at war from the commencement ; but I will say 
that, from the beginning of the controversy to 
the present moment, the course which the Pre- 
sident has pursued is precisely the one calcula- 
ted to terminate in a conflict between the two 
nations. It has been in his power, at every pe- 
riod, to give the controversy a direction by which 
the peace of the country might be preserved, 
without the least sacrifice of reputation or hon- 
or ; but he has preferred the opposite. I feel 
(said Mr. C.) how painful it is to make these 
declarations ; how unpleasant it is to occupy a 
position which might, by any possibility, be con- 
strued in opposition to our country's cause ; 
but, in my conception, the honor and the inter- 
ests of the country can only be maintained by 
pursuing the course that truth and justice may 
dictate. Acting under this impression, I do not 
hesitate to assert, after a careful examination of 
the documents connected with this unhappy 
controversy, that, if war must come, we are the 
authors — we are the responsible party. Stand- 
ing, as I fear we do. on the eve of a conflict, it 
would to me have been a source of pride and 
pleasure to make an opposite declaration ; but 
that sacred regard to truth and justice, which, I 
trust, will ever be my guide under the most dif- 
ficult circumstances, would not permit." 

Mr, Benton maintained that it was the con- 
duct of the Senate at the last session which had 
given to the French question its present and 
hostile aspect : that the belief of divided counsels, 
and of a majority against the President, and that 
we looked to money and not to honor, had en- 
couraged the French chambers to insult us by 
demanding an apology, and to attempt to in- 
timidate us by sending a fleet upon our coasts. 
He said : 

" It was in March last that the three millions 



and the fortification bill were lost ; since Uion the 
whole aspect of the French question is changed. 
The money is withheld, and explanation is de- 
manded, an ajjology is prescribed, and a French 
fleet approaches. Our govermnent, charged 
with insulting France, when no insult was 
intended by us, and none can be detected in our 
words by her, is itself openly and vehemently in- 
sulted. The apology is to degrade us ; the fleet 
to intimidate us ; and the two together consti- 
tute an insult of the gravest cluuacler. There 
in no parallel to it, except in the history of 
France herself; but not France of the 19th cen- 
turj^, nor even of the 18th. V)nt in the remote 
and ill-regulated times of the ITtli century, and 
in the days of the proudest of the French Kings, 
and towards one of the smallest Italian repub- 
lics. I allude, sir, to what happened between 
Louis XIV. and the Doge of Genoa, and will read 
the account of it from the pen of Voltaire, in his 
Age of Louis XIV. 

" ' The Genoese had built four galleys for the 
service of Spain ; the King (of France) forbade 
them, by his envoy, St. Olon, one of his gentle- 
men in ordinary, to launch those galleys. The 
Genoese, incensed at this violation of their liber- 
ties, and depending too much on the support of 
Spain, refused to obey the order. Immediately 
fourteen men of war, twenty galleys, ten bomb- 
ketches, with several frigates, set sail from the 
port of Toulon. They arrived before Genoa, 
and the ten bomb-ketches discharged 14,000 
shells into the town, which reduced to ashes a 
principal part of those marble edifices which had 
entitled this city to the name of Genoa the 
Proud. Four thousand men were then landed, 
who marched up to the gates, and burnt the 
suburb of St. Peter, of Arena. It was now 
thought prudent to submit, in order to prevent 
the total destruction of the city. The King ex- 
acted that the Doge of Genoa, with four of the 
principal senators, should come and implore his 
clemency in the palace of Versailles ; and. lest 
the Genoese should elude the making this satis- 
faction, and lessen in any maimer the ]iomp of 
it, he insisted further that the Doge, who was 
to perform this embassy, should be continual in 
his magistracy, notwithstanding the jierpetual 
law of Genoa, which deprives tlie Doge of his 
dignity who is absent but a Tuoment from the 
city. Imperialo Lercaro. Doge of Cionoa, attended 
by the senators Lomelliiu), tiaribaUii. Duraz/o. 
and Salvago, repaired to Versailles. V> submit to 
what was required of him. The Doge apjieaird 
in his robes of state, his head covered with .i 
bonnet of red velvet, Avliich he often took off 
during his s[)oecli ; made his apology, tlio very 
words and demeanor of which were dictated and 
prescribed to him by Seignelai,' (the Fn-nch 
Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs). 

" Thu.s said Mr. B., was the city of (Senoa. 
and its Doge, treated by Louis XIV. I{ut it 
was not the Doge who was degraded by this 
indignity, Imt the republic of which he was 
chief magistrate, and all the republics of Italy, 



592 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



besides, which Mt themselves all humbled by 
the outrapce which a kinji; had inflicted upon one 
of their number. So of the apology demanded, 
and of the lleet sent upon us, and in presence of 
whicli President Jackson, according to the Con- 
stitntionnel, is to make his decision, and to re- 
mit it to the Tuileries. It is not President 
Jackson that is outraged, but the republic of 
which he is President ; and all existing repub- 
lics, wheresoever situated. Our whole country 
is insulted, and that is the feeling of the whole 
country; and this feeling pours in upon us every 
day, in every manner in vt'hich public sentiment 
can be manifested, and especially in the noble 
resolves of the States whose legislatures are in 
session, and who hast<?u to declare their adhe- 
rence to the polic}- of the special message. True, 
President Jackson is not required to repair to 
the Tuileries, with four of his most obnoxious 
senators, and there recite, in person, to the King 
of the French, the apology which he had fii'st 
rehearsed to the Duke de Broglie ; true, the 
bomb-ketches of Admiral Mackau have not yet 
fired 14,000 shells on one of our cities ; but the 
mere demand for an apology, the mere dictation 
of its terms, and the mere advance of a fleet, in 
the present state of the woi'ld, and in the dif- 
ference of parties, is a greater outrage to us than 
the actual perpetration of the enormities were 
to the Genoese. This is not the seventeenth 
centur}-. President Jackson is not the Doge 
of a trading city. We are not Italians, to be 
trampled upon by European kings ; but Ameri- 
cans, the descendants of that Anglo-Saxon race, 
which, for a thousand years, has known how to 
connnand respect, and to preserve its place at 
the head of nations. We are young, but old 
enough to prove that the theory of the French- 
man, the Abbe Raynal. is as false in its applica- 
tion to the people of this hemisphere as it is to 
the other productions of nature ; and that the 
belittling tendencies of the New "World ai*e no 
more exemplified in the human race than they 
are in the exhibition of her rivers and her moun- 
tains, and in the indigenous races of the mam- 
moth and the mastodon. The Duke de Brog- 
lie has made a mistake, the less excusable, be- 
cause he might find in his own country, and 
perhaps in his own family, examples of the ex- 
treme criticalness of attempting to overawe a 
community of freemen. There was a jNIarshal 
Broglie, who was ^Minister at War, at the com- 
mencement of the French Revolution, and who 
advised the formation of a camp of 20,000 men 
to overawe Paris. The camp was formed. Paris 
revolted ; captured the Bastile ; marched to Ver- 
sailles ; stormed the Tuileries ; overset the 
monarchy ; and established the Ilevolution. So 
much for attempting to intimidate a city. And 
yet, here is a nation of freemen to be intimi- 
dated : a republic of fourteen millions of peo- 
ple, and descendants of that Anglo-Saxon race 
which, from the days of Agincourt and Crcssy, 
of Blenheim and Ramillies, down to the days of 
Salamanca and Waterloo, have always known 



perfectly well how to deal with the impetuous 
and fiery courage of the French." 

IMr. Benton also showed that there was a 
party in the French Chambers, working to se- 
parate the President of the United States from 
the people of the United States, and to make 
him responsible for the hostile attitude of the 
two countries. In this sense acted the deputy, 
Mons. Henry de Chabaulon, who spoke thus : 

" The insult of President Jackson comes from 
himself only. This is more evident, from the 
refusal of the American Congress to concur 
with him in it. The French Chamber, by in- 
terfering, would render the affair more serious, 
and malce its arrangement more difficult, and 
even dangerous. Let us put the case to our- 
selves. Suppose the United States had taken 
part with General Jackson, we should have had 
to demand satisfaction, not from him, but from 
the United States ; and, instead of now talking 
about negotiation, we should have had to make 
appropriations for a war, and to inti-ust to our 
heroes of Navarino and Algiers the task of 
teaching the Americans that France knows the 
way to Washington as well as England." 

This language was received with applause in 
the Chamber, by the extremes. It was the lan- 
guage held six weeks after the rise of Congress, 
and when the loss of the three millions asked 
by the President for contingent preparation, and 
after the loss of the fortification bill, were fully 
known in Paris. Another speaker in the Cham- 
ber, Mons. Ranee, was so elated by these losses 
as to allow himself to discourse thus : 

" Gentlemen, we should put on one side of the 
tribune the twenty-five millions, on the other 
the sword of France. When the Americans 
sec this good long sword, this very long sword, 
gentlemen (for it struck down every thing from 
Lisbon to Moscow), they will perhaps recollect 
what it did for the independence of their coun- 
try ; they will, perliaps, too, reflect upon what 
it could do to support and avenge the honor and 
dignity of France, when outraged by an ungrate- 
ful jieople, [Cries of ' well said ! '] Believe me, 
gentlemen, they would sooner touch your mo- 
ney than dare to touch your sword ; and for 
your twenty-five millions they will bring you 
back the satisfactory receipt, which it is your 
duty to exact." 

And this also was received with great appro- 
bation, in the Chamber, by the two extremes ; 
and was promptly fcjllowed by two royal ordi- 
dances, published in the Moiiiteur, under which 
the Admiral Mackau was to take command of 
a "squadron of observation," and proceed to 



ANNO 1836. ANDREW JACKSOX, PRESIDENT. 



593 



the West Indies. The Constitutionnd, the demi- 
official paper of the government, stated that this 
measure was warranted by the actual state of 
the relations between France and the United 
States — that the United States had no force to 
oppose to it — and applauded the government for 
its foresight and energy. Mr. Benton thus 
commented upon the approach of this French 
squadron : 

"A French fleet of sixty vessels of war, to be 
followed by sixty more, now in commission, ap- 
proaches our coast ; and approaches it for the 
avowed purpose of observing our conduct, in re- 
lation to France. It is styled, in the French 
papers, a squadron of observation ; and we are 
sufficiently acquainted with the military voca- 
bulary of France to know what that phrase 
means. In the days of the great Emperor, we 
were accustomed to see the armies which de- 
molished empires at a blow, wear that pacific 
title up to the moment that the blow was ready 
to be struck. These grand armies assembled 
on the frontiers of empires, gave emphasis to 
negotiation, and crushed what resisted. A squa- 
dron of observation, then, is a squadron of in- 
timidation first, and of attack eventually ; and 
nothing could be more palpable than that such 
was the character of the squadron in question. 
It leaves the French coast contemporaneously 
with the departure of our diplomatic agent, and 
the assembling of our Congress ; it arrives upon 
our coast at the very moment that we shall have 
to vote upon French affairs ; and it takes a posi- 
tion upon our Southern border — that border, 
above all others, on which we are, at this time, 
peculiarly sensitive to hostile approach. 

"What have we done, continued Mr. B., to 
draw this squadron upon us % We have done 
no wrong to France ; we are making no prepa- 
rations against her; and not even ordinary pre- 
parations for general and permanent security. 
We have treaties, and are executing them, even 
the treaty that she does not execute. We have 
been executing that treaty for four years, and 
may say that we have paid France as much 
under it as we have in vain demanded from her, 
as the first instalment of the indemnity ; not, 
in fact, by taking money out of our treasury 
and delivering to her, but, what is better for her, 
namely, leaving her own money in her own 
hands, in the shape of diminished duties upon 
her wines, as provided for in this same treaty, 
which we execute, and which she does not. In 
this way, France has gained one or two millions 
of dollars from us, besides the encouragement 
to her wine trade. On the article of silks, she 
is also gaining money from us in the same way, 
not by treaty, but by law. Our discriminating 
duties in favor of silks, from this side the Cape 
of Good Hope, operate almost entirely in her 
favor. Our great supplies of silks are from 
France. England, and China. In four years, and 

Vol. I.— 38 



under the operation of this discriminating duty, 
our imports of French silks have risen from two 
millions of dollars per annum to six millions 
and a half; from England, they have risen from 
a quarter of a million to three quarters ; from 
China, they have sunk from three millions and 
a quarter to one million and a quarter. This 
discriminating duty has left between one and 
two millions of dollars in the pockets of French- 
men, besides the encouragement to the silk manu- 
facture and trade. Why, then, has she sent this 
squadron, to observe us first, and to strike us 
eventually? She knows our pacific disposition 
towards her, not only from our own words and 
actions, but from the oflicial report of her own 
officers : from the very oificer sent out last 
spring, in a brig, to carry back the recalled min- 
ister." 

Mr. Benton then went on to charge the pre- 
sent state of our affiiirs with France distinctly 
and emphatically upon the conduct of the Sen- 
ate, in their refusal to attend to the national 
defences — in their opposition to the President — 
and in the disposition manifested rather to pull 
down the President, in a party contest, than to 
sustain him against France — rather to plunder 
their own country than to defend it, by taking 
the public money for distribution instead of de- 
fence. To this effect, he said : 

"He had never spoken unkindly of the 
French nation, neither in his place here, as 
a senator, nor in his private capacity else- 
where. Born since the American Revolution, 
bred up in habitual affection for the French 
name, coming upon the stage of life when the 
glories of the republic and of tlie empire were 
filling the world and dazzhng the imagination, 
politically connected with the party which, a 
few years ago, was called French, liis bosom had 
glowed with admiration for that people ; and 
youthful affection had ripened into manly frienil- 
ship. He would not now permit himself to 
speak luikindlv, nmch less to use epithets ; but 
he could not avoid fixing his attention upon the 
reason assigned in the Coiis-li/itlioniwl for the 
present advance of the French squadron upon 
us. That reason is this : 'America will have no 
force capable of being opposed to it.' This is 
the reason. Our nakedness, our destitution, 
has drawn upon us the honor of this visit ; and 
we are now to speak, and vote, and so to demean 
ourselves, as men standing in the presence of a 
force which they caiuiot resist, and whicli had 
taught the lesson of .submission to the Turk and 
the Arab! Andhorelehangc the theme: Iturn 
from French intimidation to Anurican legisla- 
tion ; and I ask how it comes tliat we have no 
force to oppose to this squadron which comes 
here to take a position upon our borders, and to 
show us that it knows tlie way to Washington 
as well as the English ? This is my future 



594 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



theme; and I have to present the American 
Senate as the responsible party for leaving our 
country in this wretched condition. First, there 
is the three million appropriation which was 
lost by the opposition of the Senate, and which 
carried down with it the whole fortification bill, 
to whicli it was attached. That bill, besides the 
three millions, contained thirteen specific appro- 
priations for works of defence, part originating 
in the House of Representatives, and part in 
the Senate, and appropriating $1900,000 to the 
completion and armament of forts. 

"AH these specific appropriations, continued 
Mr. B., were lost in the bill which was sunk by 
the opposition of the Senate to the three mil- 
lions, which were attached to it by the House 
of Representatives. He (IMr. B.) was not a 
member of the conference committee which 
had the disagreement of the two Houses com- 
mitted to its charge, and could go into no detail 
as to what happened in that conference ; he 
took his stand upon the palpable ground that the 
opposition which the Senate made to the three 
million appropriation, the speeches which de- 
nounced it, and the prolonged invectives against 
the President, which inflamed the passions and 
consumed the precious time at the last moment 
of the session, were the true causes of the loss 
of that bill ; and so leaves the responsibility for 
the loss on the shoulders of the Senate. 

" Mr. B. recalled attention to the reason demi- 
officially assigned in the Conslittitionnel, for the 
approach of the French fleet of observation, and 
to show that it came because ' America had no 
force capable of being opposed to it.' It was a 
subsidiary argument, and a fair illustration of 
the dangers and humiliations of a defenceless 
position. It should stimulate us to instant and 
vigorous action ; to the concentration of all our 
money, and all our hands, to the sacred task of 
national defence. For himself, he did not be- 
lieve there would be war, because he knew that 
there ought not to be war; but that belief would 
have no effect upon his conduct. He went for 
national defence, because that policy was right 
in itself, without regard to times and circum- 
stances. He went for it now, because it was the 
response, and the only response, which Ameri- 
can honor could give to the visit of Admiral 
Mackau. Above all. he went for it because it 
was the way, and the onh' manly way, of let- 
ting France know that she had committed a 
mistake in sending this fleet upon us. In con- 
clusion, he would call for the yeas and nays, 
and remark that our votes would have to be 
given under the guns of France, and under the 
eyes of Europe." 

The reproach cast by Mr. Benton on the con- 
duct of the Senate, in causing the loss of the 
defence bills, and the consequent uisult from 
France, brought several members to their feet 
in defence of themselves and the body to which 
they belonged. 



" Mr. Webster said his duty was to take care 
that neither in nor out of the Senate there should 
be anj- mistake, the eliect of which should be 
to produce an impression unfavorable or re- 
proachful to the character and patriotism of the 
American people. He remembered the progress 
of that bill (the bill alluded to by Mr. Benton), 
the incidents of its history, and the real cause 
of its loss. And he would satisfy any man that 
the loss of it was not attributable to any mem- 
ber or officer of the Senate. He would not, 
however, do so until the Senate should again 
have been in session on executive business. As 
soon as that took place, he should undertake to 
show that it was not to any dereliction of duty 
on the part of the Senate that the loss of that 
bill was to be attributed. 

"Mr. Preston of South Oai'olina said every 
senator had concurred in general appropriations 
to put the navy and army in a state of defence. 
This imdefined appropriation was not the only 
exception. The gentleman from Missouri (Mr. 
Benton) had said this appropriation was intend- 
ed to operate as a permanent defence. The sen- 
ator from Missouri (Mr. Benton) had preferred 
a general indictment against the Senate before 
the people of the United States. It was strange 
the gentleman should ask the departments for 
calculations to enable us to know how much 
was necessary to appropriate, when the infor- 
mation was not given to us when we rejected 
the undefined appropriations. I rejoice, said 
]Mr. P., that the gentleman has said even to 
my fears there will be no French war. France 
was not going to squabble with America on a 
little point of honor, that might do for duellists 
to quarrel about, but not for nations. There 
was no reason why blood should be poured out 
like water in righting this point of honor. If 
this matter was placed on its proper basis, his 
hopes would be lit up into a blaze of confidence. 
The President had recommended making repri- 
sals, if France refused payment. France had 
refused, but the remedy was not pursued. It 
may be, said he, that this fleet is merely coming 
to protect the commerce of France. If the Pre- 
sident of the United States, at the last session 
of Congress, had suggested the necessity of 
making this appropriation, we would have pour- 
ed out the treasury ; we Avould have tilled his 
hands for all necessary purposes. There was 
one hundred thousand dollars appropriated that 
had not been called for. He did not know 
whether he was permitted to go an}' further 
and say to what extent any of the departments 
were disposed to go in this matter. 

" Mr. Clayton of Delaware was surprised at 
the suggestion of an idea that the American 
Senate was not disposed to make the necessary 
appropriations for the defence of the country ; 
that they had endeavored to prevent the pas- 
sage of a bill, the object of which was to make 
provision for large appropriations for our defence 
The senator from Missouri had gone into a liberal 
attack of the Senate. He (Mr. C.)was not disposed 



ANNO 1836. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



595 



to say any thing further of the events of the last 
night of the session. He took occasion to say 
there were other matters in connection with this 
appropriation. Before any department or any 
friend of the administration had named an ap- 
propriation for defence, he made the motion to 
appropriate five hundred thousand dollars. It 
was on his motion that the Committee on Mili- 
tary Affairs made the appropriation to increase 
the fortifications. Actuated by the very same 
motives which induced him to move that appro- 
priation, he had moved an additional appropria- 
tion to Fort Delaware. The motion was to in- 
crease the seventy-five thousand to one hundred 
and fifty thousand, and elicited a protracted de- 
bate. The next question was, whether, in the 
general bill, five hundred thousand dollars should 
be appropriated. He recollected the honorable 
chairman of the Committee on Finance told 
them there was an amendment before that com- 
mittee of similar tenor. As chairman of the 
Committee on Military Affairs, he felt disinclined 
to give it up. The amendment fell on the single 
ground, by one vote, that the Committee on 
Finance had before it the identical proposition 
made by the Committee on Military Affairs. He 
appealed to the countrj^ whether, under those 
circumstances, thej^ were to be arraigned before 
the people of the country on a charge of a want 
of patriotism. He had always felt deeply affect- 
ed when those general remarks were made im- 
pugning the motives of patriotism of the sena- 
tors. He was willing to go as far as he who 
goes farthest in making appropriations for the 
national protection. Nay, he would be in ad- 
vance of the administration." 

Mr. Benton returned to his charge that the 
defence bills of the last session were lost through 
the conduct of the Senate. It was the Senate 
which disagreed to the House amendment of 
three millions to the fortification bill (which it- 
self contained appropriations to the amount of 
^900,000) ; and it was the Senate which moved 
to " adhere " to its disagreement, thereby adopt- 
ing the harsh measure which so much endan 
gers legislation. And, in support of his views, 
he said: 

" The bill died under lapse of time. It died 
because not acted upon before midnight of the 
last day of the session. Right or wrong, the 
session was over before the report of the con- 
ferees could be acted on. The House of Repre- 
sentatives was without a quorum, and the Sen- 
ate was about in the same condition. Two at- 
tempts in the Senate to get a vote on some 
printing moved by his colleague (Mr. Linn), 
were both lost for want of a quonnn. The ses- 
sion then was at an end, i'or want of quorums, 
whether the legal right to sit had ceased or not. 
The bill was not rejected either in the House of 
Representatives or in the Senate, but it died for 



want of action upon it ; and that action was pre- 
vented b}' want of time. Now, whose fault was 
it that there was no time left for acting on the 
report of the conferees? That was the true 
question, and the answer to it would show whore 
the fault la}'. This answer is as clear as mid- 
day, though the transaction took place in the 
darkness of midnight. It was the Senate ! The 
bill came to the Senate in full time to have been 
acted upon, if it had been treated as all bills 
must be treated that are intended to be passed 
in the last hours of the session. It is no time 
for speaking. All speaking is then fatal to bills, 
and equally fetal, whether for or against them. 
Yet, what was the conduct of the Senate with 
respect to this bill ? Members commenced 
speaking upon it with vehemence and persever- 
ance, and continued at it, one after another. 
These speeches were fatal to the bill. They 
were numerous, and consumed much time to 
deliver them. They were criminative, and pro- 
voked replies. They denounced the President 
without measure ; and, b}^ implication, the House 
of Representatives, which sustained him. They 
were intemperate, and destroyed the temper of 
others. In this way the precious time was con- 
sumed in which the bill might have been acted 
upon ; and, for want of which time, it is lost. 
Every one that made a speech helped to destroy 
it; and nearly the whole bod}' of the opposition 
spoke, and most of them at much length, and 
with unusual warmth and animation. So cer- 
tain was he of the ruinous effect of this speak- 
ing, that he himself never opened his mouth nor 
uttered one word upon it. Then came the fatal 
motion to adhere, the effect of which was to 
make bad worse, and to destro}- the last chance, 
unless the House of Representatives had hum-* 
bled itself to ask a conference from the Senate. 
The fatal effect of this motion to adhere, ^Ir. B. 
would show from Jefferson's Manual ; and read 
as follows : ' The regular progression in this 
case is, that the Commons disagree to the amend- 
ment; the Lords insist on it; the Comnums 
insist on their disagreement.; the Lords adhere 
to their amendment; the Commons adhere to 
their disagreement ; the term of insisting may 
be repeated as often as they choose to keep the 
question open ; but the tirst adherence by either 
renders it necessary for the other to recede or 
to adhere also ; when the matter is usually suf- 
fered to fall. (10 C rev. 148.) Latterly, iiow- 
ever, there are instance's of their having gone to 
a second adherence. There nmst be an absolute 
conclusion of the subject somewhere, or other- 
wise transactions between the Houses would be- 
come endless. (3 Ilatsell, 2i;8^27().) The term 
of insisting, we are told by Sir John Trevor, 
was then (ir.7S) newly introduced into parlia- 
mentary usage by the Lords. (7 (Jivy, ".'4.) It 
was certiiiuly a hapjjy innovation, as it multi- 
plies the opportunities of trying modifications, 
which may bring the Houses to a concunvnw. 
Either House, however, is free to jiass over the 
term of insisting, and to adhere in the tij-st iu- 



596 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



stance. (10 Grey, 146.) But it is not respect- 
ful to the other. In the ordinary parliamentary 
course, there are two free conferences at least 
before an adherence. (10 Grey, 147.) ' 

" This is the regular progression in the case of 
amendments, and there are five steps in it. 1. 
To agree. 2. To disagree. 3. To recede. 4. 
To insist. 5. To adhere. Of these five steps 
adherence is the last, and yet it was the first 
adopted by the Senate. The effect of its adop- 
tion was, in parliamentary usage, to put an end 
to the matter. It was, by the law of Parlia- 
ment, a disrespect to the House. No conference 
was even asked by the Senate after the adher- 
ence, although, by the parliamentary law, there 
ought to liave been two free conferences at least 
before the adherence was voted. All this was 
fully stated to the Senate that night, and be- 
fore the question to adhere was put. It was 
fully stated by you, sir (said Mr. B., addressing 
himself to Mr. King, of Alabama, who was then 
in the Vice-President's chair). This vote to 
adhere, coupled with the violent speeches, de- 
nouncing the President, and, by implication, 
censuring the House of llepresentatives, and 
coupled with the total omission of the Senate to 
ask for a conference, seemed to indicate a fatal 
purpose to destroy the bill ; and lost it would 
have been upon the spot, if the House of Repre- 
sentatives, forgetting the disrespect with which 



it had been treated, and 



^, cvt.v* passmg over tne cen- 
sure impliedly cast upon it, had not humbled 
itself to come and ask for a conference. The 
House humbled itself; but it was a patriotic and 
noble humiliation ; it was to serve their coun- ] 
try. The conference was granted, and an amend- 
ment ^vas agreed upon by the conferees, bj' 
nvhich the amount was reduced, and the sum 
divided, and ^300,000 allowed to the military, 
and $§500,000 to the naval service. This was 
done at last, and after all the irritating speeches 
and irritating conduct of the Senate ; but the 
precious time was gone. The hour of midnight 
was not only come, but members were dispersed ; 
quorums were unattainable ; and the bill died 
for want of action. And now (said Mr. B.) I 
return to my question. I resume, and maintain 
my position upon it. I ask how it came to pass, 
if want of specification was really the objection 
— how it came to pass that the Senate did not 
do at first what it did at last ? Why did it not 
amend, by the easy, natural, obvious, and par- 
liamentary process of disagreeing, insisting, and 
asking for a committee of conference ? 

" Mr. B. would say but a word on the new 
calendar, which would make the day begin in 
the middle. It was sufficient to state such a 
conception to expose it to ridicule. A farmoi- 
would be sadly put out if his laborers should re- 
fuse to come until mid-day. The thing was 
rather too fanciful for grave deliberation. Suflice 
it to say there are no fractions of days in any 
calendar. There is no three and one fourth, 
three and one half, and three and three fourths 
of March, or any other month. When one day 



ends, another begins, and midnight is the turn- 
ing point both in law and in practice. All our 
laws of the last day are dated the od of March ; 
and, in point of fact. Congress, for every bene- 
ficial purpose, is dissolved at midnight. Many 
members will not act, and go away ; and such 
was the practice of the venerable Mr. Macon, 
of North Carolina, who always acted precisely 
as President Jackson did. He put on his hat 
and went away at midnight ; he went away 
when his own watch told him it wa.s midnight ; 
after which he believed he had no authority to 
act as a legislotor, nor the Senate to make him 
act as such. This was President Jackson's 
course. He stayed in the Capitol until a quaa-- 
ter after one, to sign all the bills which Con- 
gress should pass before midnight. He stayed 
until a majority of Congress was gone, and quo- 
rums unattainable. He stayed in the Capitol, 
in a room convenient to the Senate, to act upon 
every thing that was sent to him, and did not 
have to be waked wp, as Washington was, to 
sign after midnight ; a most unfortunate refer- 
ence to Washington, who, by going to bed at 
midnight, showed that he considered the busi- 
ness oif the day ended ; and l)y getting up and 
putting on his night gown, and signing a bill at 
two o'clock in the morning of the 4th, showed 
that he would sign at that hour what had passed 
before midnight ; and does not that act bear 
date the 3d of March ? 

IMr. Webster earnestly defended the Senate's 
conduct and his own ; and said : 

'• This proposition, sir, was thus unexpectedly 
and suddenly put to us, at eight o'clock in the 
evening of the last day of the session. Unusual, 
unprecedented, extraordinary, as it obviously is, 
on the face of it, the manner of presenting it was 
still more extraordinary. The President had 
asked for no such grant of money ; no depart- 
ment had recommended it ; no estimate had 
suggested it ; no reason whatever was given for 
it. No emergency had happened, and nothing 
new had occurred ; every tiling known to the 
administration at that hour, respecting our fo- 
reign relations, had certain!}- been known to it 
for days and for weeks before. 

'• With what propriety, then, could the Senate 
be called on to sanction a proceeding so entirely 
irregular and anomalous 1 Sir, I recollect the 
occurrences of the moment very well, and I re- 
member the impression which this vote of the 
House seemed to make all around the Senate. 
We had just cone out of executive session ; the 
doors were but just opened ; and I hardly re- 
member whether there was a single spectator 
in the hall or the galleries. I had been at the 
clerk's table, and had not reached my seat when 
the message was read. All the senators were 
in the chamber. I heard the message certainly 
with great surprise and astonishment ; and I 
immediately moved the Senate to disagree to 
this vote of the House. My relation to the sub- 



ANNO 1836. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESmENT. 



597 



ject, in consequence of my connection with the 
Committee on Finance, made it my duty to pro- 
pose some course, and I had not a moment's 
doubt or hesitation what that course ought to 
be. I took upon m}*self, then, sir, the responsi- 
biUty of moving that the Senate should disagree 
to this vote, and T now acknowledge that res- 
ponsibility. It might be presumptuous to say 
that I took a leading part, but I certainly took 
an early part, a decided part, and an earnest 
part, in rejecting this broad grant of three mil- 
lions of dollars, without limitation of purpose 
or specification of object ; called for by no re- 
commendation, founded on no estimate, made 
necessary by no state of things which was made 
known to us. Certainly, sir, I took a part in 
its rejection ; and I stand here, in my place in 
the Senate, to-day, ready to defend the part so 
taken by me ; or rather, sir, I disclaim all de- 
fence, and all occasion of defence, and I assert 
it as meritorious to have been among those who 
arrested, at the earliest moment, this extraordi- 
nary departure from all settled usage, and, as I 
think, from plain constitutional injunction — this 
indefinite voting of avast sum ofmoney to mere 
executive discretion, without limit assigned, 
without object specified, without reason given, 
and without the least control under heaven. 

" Sir, I am told that, in opposing this grant, I 
spoke with warmth, and I suppose I may have 
done so. If I did, it was a warmth springing 
from as honest a conviction of duty as ever in- 
fhienced a public man. It was spontaneous, 
nnaffected, sincere. There had been among us, 
sir, no consultation, no concert. There could 
have been none. Between the reading of the 
message and my motion to disagree there was 
not time enough for any two members of the 
Senate to exchange five words on the subject. 
The proposition was sudden and perfectly un- 
expected. I resisted it, as irregular, as danger- 
ous in itself, and dajigerous in its precedent, as 
wholly unnecessary, and as violating the plain 
intention, if not the express words, of the con- 
stitution. Before the Senate I then avowed, and 
before the country I now avow, my part in this 
opposition. Whatsoever is to fall on those who 
sanctioned it, of that let me have mj' full share. 

" The Senate, sir, rejected this grant by a vote 
of twenty-nine against nineteen. Those twenty- 
nine names are on the journal ; and whensoever 
the expunging process may commence, or how 
far soever it may be carried, I pray it, in mercy, 
not to erase mine from that record. I beseech 
it, in its sparing goodness, to leave me that 
proof of attachment to duty and to principle. 
It may draw around it, over it, or through it, 
black lines, or red lines, or any lines ; it may 
mark it in any way which either the most pros- 
trate and fantastical spirit of man-worship, or 
the most ingenious and jtlaborate study of self- 
degradation majr devise, if only it will leave it 
so that those who inherit my blood, or who may 
hereafter care for my reputation, shall be able 
to behold it where it now stands i 



" The House, sir, insisted on this amendment. 
The Senate adhered to its disagreement. The 
House asked a conference, to which request the 
Senate immediately acceded. The committees of 
conference met, and, in a short time, came to an 
agreement. They agreed to recommend to their 
respective Houses, as a substitute for the vote 
proposed by the House, the following: 

" ' As an additional appropriation for arming 
the fortifications of the United States, three 
hundred thousand dollars.' 

" As an additional appropriation for the re- 
pair and equipment of ships of war of the United 
States, five hundred thousand dollars.' 

"I immediately reported this agreement of the 
committees of conference to the Senate; but, 
inasmuch as the bill was in the House of Re- 
presentatives, the Senate could not act further 
on the matter until the House should first have 
considered the report of the committees, de- 
cided thereon, and sent us the bill. I did not 
myself take any note of the particular hour of 
this part of the transaction. The honorable 
member from Virginia (Mr. Leigh) says he con- 
sulted his watch at the time, and he knows that 
I had come from the conference, and was in my 
seat, at a quarter past eleven. I have no reason 
to think that he is under any mistake in this 
particular. He says it so happened that he had 
occasion to take notice of the hour, and well 
remembers it. It could not well have been 
later than this, as any one will be satisfied who 
will look at our journals, public and executive, 
and see what a mass of business was dispatched 
after I came from the committees, and before the 
adjournment of the Senate. Having made the 
report, sir, I had no doubt that both Houses 
would concur in the result of the conference, 
and looked every moment for the officer of the 
House bringing the bill. He did not come, 
however, and I pretty soon learned that there 
was doubt whether the committee on the part 
of the House would report to the House the 
agreement of the conferees. At first I did not 
at all credit this ; but it was confirmed by one 
communication after another, until I was obliged 
to think it true. Seeing that the bill was thus 
in danger of being lost, and intemling. at any 
rate, that no blame shouhl justly attach tn the 
Senate, I immediately moved tlic following reso- 
lution : 

" ' Re!<nJ\-ed, That a mcs.sage be .'lent to tho 
honorable the House of Ri-prosentativos. respect- 
fully to remind the House of the report of tho 
committee of conference appointed on the dis- 
agreeing votes of the two Houses on the amend- 
ment of tho House to the aniendnient of the 
Senate to the bill respecting the fortifications 
of the United States.' 

" You recollect this resolution, sir. havmg. .15 
I well remember, taken .eomc part on the occa- 
sion. 

"This resolution was promptly passed ; the 
Secretary carried it to the House, and delivered 
it. "What was done in the House on the receipt 



598 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



of this message now appears from the printed 
journal. I have no wish to comment on the 
proceedings there recorded — all may read them, 
and each be able to form his own opinion. Suf- 
ticii it to say, that the House of Representatives, 
having then possession of the bill, chose to re- 
tain that possession, and never acted on the 
report of the committee. The bill, therefore, 
was lost. It was lost in the House of Repre- 
sentatives. It died there, and there its remains 
are to be found. No opportunity was given to 
the members of the House to decide whether 
they would agree to the report of the two com- 
mittees or not. From a quarter past eleven, 
when the report was agreed to by the commit- 
tees, until two or tliree o'clock in the morning, 
the House remained in session. If at any time 
there was not a quorum of members present, 
the attendance of a quorum, we are to presume, 
might have been commanded, as there was un- 
doubtedly a great majority of the members still 
in the city. 

" But now, sir, there is one other transaction 
of the evening which I feel bound to state, be- 
cause I think it quite important, on several ac- 
counts, that it should be known. 

" A nomination was pending before the Se- 
nate, for a judge of the Supreme Court. In 
the course of the sitting, that nomination was 
called up, and, on motion, was indefinitely 
postponed. In other words, it was rejected; 
for an indefinite postponement is a rejection. 
The office, of course, remained vacant, and the 
nomination of another person to fill it became 
necessary. The President of the United States 
was then in the capitol, as is usual on the even- 
ing of the last day of the session, in the cham- 
ber assigned to him, and with the heads of 
departments around him. When nominations 
are rejected under these circumstances, it has 
been usual for the President immediately to 
transmit a new nomination to the Senate ; 
otherwise the office must remain vacant till the 
next session, as the vacancy in such case has 
not happened in the recess of Congress. The 
vote of the Senate, indefinitely postponing 
this nomination, was carried to the President's 
room by the Secretary of the Senate. The Pre- 
sident told the Secretary that it was more than 
an hour past twelve o'clock, and that he could 
receive no further communications from the Se- 
nate, and immediately after, as I have under- 
stood, left the capitol. The Secretary brought 
back the paper containing the certified copy of 
the vote of the Senate, and indorsed thereon 
the substance of the President's answer, and 
also added that, according to his own watch, it 
was a quarter past one o'clock." 

This was the argument of Mr, "Webster in 
defence of the Senate and himself; but it could 
jot alter the facts of the case — that the Senate 
disagreed to the House appropriation — that it 
adhered harshly — that it consumed the time in 



elaborate speeches against the President — and 
that the bill was lost upon lapse of time, the 
existence of the Congress itself expiring while 
this contention, began by the Senate, was 
going on. 

Mr. Webster dissented from the new doctrine 
of counting years by fractions of a day, as a 
thing having no place in the constitution, in 
law, or in practice ; — and which was besides 
impracticable, and said : 

" There is no clause of the constitution, nor 
is there any law, which declares that the term 
of office of members of the House of Repre- 
sentatives shall expire at twelve o'clock at night 
on the 3d of March. They are to hold for two 
years, but the precise hour for the commence- 
ment of that term of two years is nowhere 
fixed by constitutional or legal provision. It 
has been established by usage and by inference, 
and very properly established, that, since the 
first Congress commenced its existence on the 
first Wednesday in March, 1789, which happened 
to be the 4th day of that month, therefore, the 
4th of March is the day of the commencement 
of each successive term, but no hour is fixed 
by law or practice. The true rule is, as I think, 
most undoubtedly, that the session holden on 
the last day, constitutes the last day, for all legis- 
lative and legal purposes. While the session 
commenced on that day continues, the day 
itself continues, according to the established 
practice both of legislative and judicial bodies. 
This could not well be otherwise. If the pre- 
cise moment of actual time were to settle such 
a matter, it would be material to ask, who shall 
settle the time? Shall it be done by public 
authority ; or shall every man observe the tick 
of his own watch ? If absolute time is to fur- 
nish a precise nile, the excess of a minute, it is 
obvious, would be as fatal as the excess of an 
hour. Sir, no bodies, judicial or legislative, 
have ever been so hypercritical, so astute to no 
purpose, so much more nice than wise, as to 
govern themselves by any such ideas. The ses- 
sion for the day, at whatever hour it commences, 
or at whatever hour it breaks up, is the legisla- 
tive day. Every thing has reference to the 
commencement of that diurnal session. For 
instance, this is the I4th day of January ; wo 
assembled here to day at twelve o'clock ; our 
journal is dated January I4th, and if we should 
remain until five o'clock to-morrow nioniing 
(and the Senate has sometimes sat so late) our 
proceedings would still all bear date of the 14th 
of January ; they would be so stated upon the 
journal, and the jounal is a record, and is a 
conclusive record, so far as respects the pro- 
ceedings of the body." 

But he adduced practice to the contrary, and 
showed that the expiring Congress had often 
sat after midnight, on the day of the 3d o? 



ANNO 1836. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



599 



March, in the years when that day was the end 
of the Congress ; and in speaking of what had 
often occurred, he was right. I have often seen 
it myself ; but in such cases there was usually 
an acknowledgment of the wrong by stopping 
the Senate clock, or setting it back ; and I have 
also seen the hour called and marked on the 
journal after twelve, and the bills sent to the 
President, noted as passed at such an hour of 
the morning of the fourth ; when they remained 
untouched by the President ; and all bills and 
acts sent to him on the morning of the fourth 
are dated of the third ; and that date legalizes 
them, although erroneous in point of fact. 
But, many of the elder members, such as ]\Ir. 
Macon, would have nothing to do with these 
contrivances, and left the chamber at midnight, 
saying that the Congress was constitutionally 
extinct, and that they had no longer any power 
to sit and act as a Senate. Upon this point Mr. 
Grundj'-, of Tennessee, a distinguished jurist as 
well as statesman, delivered his opinion, and in 
consonance with the best authorities. He said : 

" A serious question seems now to be made, 
as to what time Congress constitutionally ter- 
minates. Until lately, I have not heard it seri- 
ously urged that twelve o'clock, on the 3d of 
March, at night, is not the true period. It is now 
insisted, however, that at twelve o'clock on the 
4th of March is the true time ; and the argu- 
ment in support of this is, that the first Con- 
gress met at twelve o'clock, on the 4th of March. 
This is not placing the question on the true 
ground ; it is not when the Congress did meet, 
or when the President was qualified by taking 
the oath of office, but when did they have the 
constitutional right to meet? Tliis certainly 
was, and is, in all future cases, on the 4th of 
March ; and if the day commence, according to 
the universal acceptation and understanchng of 
the country, at the first moment after twelve 
o'clock at night on the 3d of jNIarch, the consti- 
tutional right or power of the new Congress com- 
mences at that time ; and if called by the Chief 
Magistrate to meet at that time, they might 
then qualify and open their session. There 
would be no use in arguing awaj^ the common 
understanding of the country, and it would seem 
as reasonable to maintain that the 4th of March 
ended when the first Congress adjourned, as it 
is to say that it began when they met. From 
twelve o'clock at night until twelve o'clock at 
night is .Jhe mode of computing a day by the 
people of tlie United States, and I do not feel 
authorized to establish a dilferent mode of com- 
putation for Congress. At what t^-^ur does 
Christmas commence ? When does the first day 
of the year, or the first of January, commence ? 
Is it at midnight or at noon ? If the first day 



of a )^ear or month begins and ends at midnight, 
docs not every other day ? Congress has al- 
ways acted upon the impression that the od of 
March ended at midnight; hence that setting 
back of clocks which we have witnessed on tlic 
3d of Marcli, at the termination of the short .ses- 
sion. 

" In using this argument, I do not wish to be 
understood as censuring those who have trans- 
acted the public business here after twelve 
o'clock on the 3d of March. From this error, 
if it be one, I claim no exemption. With a sin- 
gle exception, I believe, I have alwaj's remained 
vmtil the final adjournment of both Houses. As 
to the President of the United States, he re- 
mained until after one o'clock on the 4th of 
]\Iarch. This was making a full and fair allow- 
ance for the difference that might exist in dif- 
ferent instruments for keeping time ; and he 
then retired from his chamber in the Capitol. 
The fortification bill never passed Congi-ess ; it 
never was oflered to him for his signature ; ho, 
therefore, can be in no fault. It was argued 
that manjr acts of Congress passed on the 4tli of 
March, at the short session, are upon our statute 
books, and that these acts are valid and binding. 
It should be remembered that they all bear date 
on the 3d of March ; and so high is the autlion- 
ticity of our records, that, according to the nales 
of evidence, no testimony can be received to con- 
tradict any thing which appears upon the face 
of our acts." 

To show the practice of the Senate, when its 
attention was called to the true hour, and to 
the fact that the fourth day of March was upon 
them, the author of this View, in tlie course o/ 
this debate, showed the history of the actual ter- 
mination of the last session — the one at which 
the fortification bill was lost. Mr. Hill, of New 
Hampshire, was speaking of certain enormous 
printing jobs which were pressed upon the Sen- 
ate in its expiring moments, and defeated after 
midnight ; jMr. Benton asked leave to tell the 
secret history of this defeat ; which being 
granted, he stood up, and said : 

" He defeated these printing jobs a'fter mid- 
night, and by speaking against time. He liad 
avowed his determination to sjioak out tlie ses- 
sion ; and after speaking a long time against 
time, he found that time stood .still; that the 
hands of our clock obstinately refused to p.^ss 
the hour of twelve; and tliereupon ad.h-essed 
the presiding officer (Mr. Tyler, tlie President 
pjo tern.'), to call to his attention the refnietory 
disposition of tlie clock ; which, in fact, had been 
set back by the dllieers of the House, aeeording 
to common usage on the last night, to hide from 
ourselves the fact that our time was at an eiul. 
The presidin;^ officer (Mr. B. said) diivcted an 
officer of the llou.-e to put forward the clock to 



600 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



the rijrht time ; which was done ; and not an- 
other vote was taken that night, except the vote 
to adjourn." 

This was a case, as the lawyers say, in point. 
It was tlie refusal of the Senate tlie very night 
in question, to do any thing except to give the 
adjourning vote after the attention of the Senate 
was called to the hour. 

In reply to ]Mr. Calhoun's argument against 
American arming, and that such arming. would 
be war on our side, Mr. Grundy replied: 

"But it is said by the gentleman from South 
Carolina (Mr. Calhoun), that, if we arm, we in- 
stiintly make war : it is war. If this be so, we 
are placed in a most humiliating situation. Since 
this controversy commenced, the French nation 
has armed; they have increased their vessels of 
war; they have equipped them; they have en- 
listed or pressed additional seamen into the pub- 
lic service ; thej^ have appointed to the com- 
mand of this large naval force one of their most 
experienced and renowned naval officers ; and 
this squadron, thus prepared, and for what par- 
ticular purpose we know not, is now actually in 
the neighborhood of the American coast. I ad- 
mit this proceeding on the part of the French 
government is neither wai', nor just cause of war 
on our part ; but, seeing this, shall we be told, 
if we do similar acts, designed to defend our own 
countr}^, we are malving war ? As I understand 
the public law, every nation has the right to 
judge for itself of the extent of its own military 
and naval armaments, and no other nation has a 
right to complain or call it in question. It ap- 
pears to me that, although the preparations and 
armaments of the French government are mat- 
ters not to be excepted to, still they should 
admonish us to place our country in a condition 
in which it could be defended in the event the 
present difficulties between the *vvo nations 
should lead to hostilities." 

In the course of the debate the greater part 
of the opposition senators declared their inten- 
tion to sustain measures of defence ; on which 
Mr. Bcntqn congratulated the country, and said : 

" A good consequence had resulted from an 
impleasant debate. All parties had disclaimed 
the merit of sinking the fortification ))ill of the 
last session, and a majority had evinced a deter- 
mination to repair the evil by voting adequate 
ajjpropriations now. This was good. It be- 
ripokc brtter results in time to come, and would 
dispel that illusion of divided cotmsels on which 
the French goveniment had so largely calcula- 
ted. The rejection of the three millions, and 
tlie loss of the fortification bill, had deceived 
France ; it had led her into the mistake of sup- 
posing that we viewed every question in a mer- 
cajitile point of view ; that the question of profit 



and loss was the only rule we had to go by; 
that national honor was no object ; and that, to 
obtain these miserable twenty-five millions of 
francs, we should be ready to submit to any 
quantity of indignity, and to wade through an^ 
depth of national liumiliation. The debate 
which has taken jtlacc will dispel that illusion ; 
and the first dispatch which the young Ad- 
miral Mackau will have to send to his govern- 
ment will be to inform it that there has been a 
mistake in tliis business — that these Americans 
wrangle among themselves, but unite against 
foreigners ; and that many opposition senators 
are ready to vote double the amount of the 
twenty-five millions to put the country in a 
condition to sustain that noble sentiment of 
President Jackson, that the honor of his coun- 
try shall never be stained by his making an 
apology for speaking truth in the performance 
of duty." 



CHAPTER CXXXIII. 

FRENCH INDEMNITIES: BRITISH MEDIATION: IN- 
DEMNITIES PAID. 

The message of the President in relation to 
French affairs had been referred to the Senate's 
committee on foreign relations, and before any 
report had been received from that committee a 
further message was received from the President 
informing the Senate that Great Britain had 
offered her friendly mediation between the Uni- 
ted States and France — that it had been ac- 
cepted by the governments both of France and 
the United States ; and recommending a sus- 
pension of all retaliatory measures against 
France ; but a vigorous prosecution of the na- 
tional works of general and permanent defence. 
The message also stated that the mediation had 
been accepted on the part of the United States 
with a careful reservation of the points in the 
controversy which involved the honor of the 
countiy, and which admitted of no compromise 
— a reservation which, in the vocabulary of Gen- 
eral Jackson, was equivalent to saying that the 
indemnities must be paid, and no apologies 
made. And such in fact was the caso. Within 
a month from the date of that message the four 
instalments of the indemnities then due, were 
fully paid • and without waiting for any action 
on the part of the mediator. In communicating 
the offer of the British mediation the President 
expressed his high appreciation of the '"elevated 



ANNO 1836. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESmENT. 



601 



and disinterested motives of that offer." The 
motives were, in fact, both elevated and disin- 
terested ; and presents one of those noble spec- 
tacles in the conduct of nations on which his- 
tory loves to dwell. France and the United 
States had fought together against Great Britain ; 
now Great Britain steps between France and 
the United States to prevent them from fight- 
ing each other. George the Third received the 
combined attacks of French and Americans ; his 
son, William the Fourth, interposes to prevent 
their arms from being turned against each other. 
It was a noble intervention, and a just return 
for the good work of the Emperor Alexander in 
offering his mediation between the United States 
and Great Britain — good works these peace me- 
diations, and as nearly divine as humanity can 
reach ; — worthy of all praise, of long remem- 
brance, and continual imitation ; — the more so 
in this case of the British mediation when the 
event to be prevented would have been so favor- 
able to British interests — would have tin-own 
the commerce of the United States and of France 
into her hands, and enriched her at the expense 
of both. Happily the progress of the age Avhich, 
in cultivating good will among nations, elevates 
great powers above all selfishness, and permits no 
unfriendly recollection — no selfish calculation — 
to balk the impulsions of a noble philanthropy. 
I have made a copious chapter upon the sub- 
ject of this episodical controversy with France 
— more full, it might seem, than the subject re- 
quired, seeing its speedy and happy termina- 
tion: but not without object. Instructive 
lessons result from this history ; both from the 
French and American side of it. The wrong to 
the United States came from the French cham- 
ber of deputies — from the opposition part of it, 
composed of the- two extremes of republicans 
and legitimists, deadly hostile to each other, but 
combined in any attempt to embarrass a king 
whom both wished to destroy : and this French 
opposition inflamed the question there. In the 
United States there was also an opposition, com- 
posed of two, lately hostile parties (the modern 
Trhigs and the southern dissatisfied democracy) ; 
and this opposition, dominant in the Senate, and 
frustrating the President's measures, gave en- 
couragement to the French opposition : and the 
two together, brought their respective countries 
to the brink of war. The two oppositions are 
responsible for the hostile attitude to which the 



two countries were brought. That this is not a 
harsh opinion, nor without foundation, may be 
seen by the history which is given of the case 
in the chapter dedicated to it ; and if more is 
wanting, it may be found in the recorded debates 
of the day ; in which things were said which 
were afterwards regretted ; and which, being 
regretted, the author of this View has no desire 
to repeat: — the instructive lesson of history 
which he wishes to inculcate, being complete 
without the exhumation of what ought to re- 
main buried. Nor can the steadiness and firm- 
ness of President Jackson be overlooked in this 
reflective view. In all the aspects of the French 
question he I'eniained inflexible in his demand 
for justice, and in his dotrmination. so far as it 
depended upon him to have it. In his final 
message, communicating to congress the con- 
clusion of the affiiir, he gracefully associated 
congress with himself in their joy at the resto- 
ration of the ancient cordial relations between two 
countries, of ancient friendship, which miscon- 
ceptions had temporarily alienated from each 
other. 



CHAPTER CXXXIV. 

PEESIDENT JACKSON'S FOliEIGN DIl'LOMACT. 

A VIEW of President Jackson's foreign diplo- 
macy has been reserved for the last year of his 
administration, and to the conclusion of his 
lonG;est, latest, and most difficult negotiation; 
and is now presented in a single chapter, giving 
the history of his intercourse witli foreign na- 
tions. From no part of his adniinistnition was 
more harm apprehended, by those who dreaded 
the election of General Jackson, than from tliis 
source. From his military chai-actor they feared 
embroilments ; from his want of cxperionce a.s 
a diplomatist, they feared mistakes and blunders 
in our foreign intercourse. These apprehensions 
were very sincerely entertained by a l.in'.e pro- 
portion of our citizens ; but. as (he event proved, 
entirely without foundation. Xo part of his 
administration, successful, beneficial, and honorii- 
ble as it was at home, was more successful, bene- 
ficial and honiiiable than that of his foR>ipn 
diplomacy. He obtained indenmities for all 
outrages committed on our commerce beforo 



602 



TmRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



his time, and none were committed during his 
time, lie made good commercial treaties with 
some nations from which they could not be ob- 
tained before — settled some long-standing and 
vexatious questions ; and left the whole world 
at peace with his country, and engaged in the 
good offices of trade and hospitality. A brief 
detail of actual occurrences will justify this 
general and agreeable statement. 

1. The Direct Trade with the British 
West Indies. — I have already shown, in a sepa- 
rate chapter, the recovery, in the first year of 
his administration, of this valuable branch of 
our commerce, so desirable to us from the near- 
ness of those islands to our shore, the domestic 
productions which they took from us, the em- 
ployment it gave to our navigation, the actual 
large amount of the trade, the acceptable articles 
it gave in return, and its satisfactory establish- 
ment on a durable basis after fifty years of in- 
terrupted, and precarious, and restricted enjoy- 
ment : and I add nothing more on that head. 
I proceed to new cases of indemnities obtained, 
or of new treaties formed. 

2. At the head of these stands the French In- 
demnity Treaty, — The commerce of the United 
States had sufl'ered greatly under the decrees of 
the Emperor Napoleon, and redress had been 
sought by every administration, and in vain, 
from tliat of Mr. ^ladison to that of Mr. John 
Quincy Adams, inclusively. President Jackson 
determined from the first moment of his admin- 
istration to prosecute the claims on France with 
vigor ; and that not onl}^ as a matter of right, 
but of policy. There were other secondary 
powers, such as Naples and Spain, subject to the 
same kind of reclamation, and which had shel- 
tered their refusal behind that of France ; and 
with some show of reason, as France, besides 
having committed the largest depredation, was 
the origin of the system under which they acted, 
and the inducing cause of their conduct. France 
was the strong power in this class of wrong- 
doers, and as such was the one first to be dealt 
with, fn his first annual message to the two 
Houses of Congress, President Jackson brought 
this subject before that body, and disclosed his 
own policy in relation to it. lie took up the 
question as one of undeniable wrong which had 
already griven rise to much unpleasant discus- 
sion, and which might lead to possible collision 
between the two srovernments ; and expressed a 



confident hope that the injurious delaj^s of the 
past would find a redress in the equity of the 
future. This was pretty clear language, and 
stood for something in the message of a Presi- 
dent whose maxim of foreign policy was, to " ask 
nothing but what was right, and to submit to 
nothing that was wrong." At the same time, 
jMr. William C. Rives, of Virginia, was sent to 
Paris as minister plenipotentiary and envoy ex- 
traordinary, and especially charged with this re- 
clamation. His mission was successful ; and at 
the commencement of the session 1831-'32, the 
President had the gratification to communicate 
to both Houses of Congress and to submit to the 
Senate for its approbation, the treaty which 
closed up this long-standing head of complaint 
against an ancient ally. The French govern- 
ment agreed to pay twenty-five millions of francs 
to American citizens "for (such was the language 
of the treaty) unlawful seizures, captures, se- 
questrations, confiscations or destruction of their 
vessels, cargoes or other property ; " subject to a 
deduction of one million and a half of francs for 
claims of French citizens, or the royal treasury, 
for " ancient supplies or accounts," or for re- 
clamations on account of commercial injury. 
Thus all American claims for spoliation in the 
time of the Emperor Napoleon were acknow- 
ledged and agreed to be satisfied, and the ac- 
knowledgment and agreement for satisfaction 
made in terms which admitted the illegality and 
injustice of the acts in which they originated. 
At the same time all the French claims upon 
the United States, from the time of our revolu- 
tion, of which two (those of the heirs of Beaii- 
marchais and of the Count Rochambeau) had 
been a subject of reclamation for forty years, 
were satisfied. The treaty was signed July 4th, 
1831, one year after the accesspn of Louis Phil- 
lippe to the French throne— and to the natural 
desire of the new king (under the circumstances 
of his elevation) to be on good terms with the 
United States; and to the good offices of General 
Lafayette, then once more influential in the 
councils of France, as well as to the zealous ex- 
ertions of our minister, the auspicious conclusion 
of this business is to be much attributed. The 
indemnity payable in six annual equal instal- 
ments, was satisfactory to government and to 
the claimants ; and m communicating informa 
tion of the treaty to Congress, President Jack- 
sou, after a just congratulation on putting an 



ANNO 1836. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



603 



end to a subject of irritation which for many 
years had, in some degree, alienated two nations 
from each other, which, from interest as well as 
from early recollections, ought to cherish the 
most friendl}^ relations — and (as if feeling all the 
further consequential advantages of this success) 
went on to state, as some of the good effects to 
result from it, that it gave encouragement to 
persevere in demands for justice from other na- 
tions ; that it would be an admonition that just 
claims would be prosecuted to satisfactory con- 
clusions, and give assurance to our own citizens 
that their own government will exert all its con- 
stitutional power to obtain redress for all their 
foreign wrongs. This latter declaration was 
afterwards put to the proof, in relation to the 
execution of the treaty itself, and was kept to the 
whole extent of its letter and spirit, and with 
good results both to France and the United 
States. It so happened that the French legisla- 
tive chambers refused to vote appropriations 
necessary to carry the treaty into effect. An 
acrimonious correspondence between the two 
governments took place, becoming complicated 
with resentment on the part of France for some 
expressions, which she found to be disrespectful, 
in a message of President Jackson. The French 
minister was recalled from the United States ; 
the American minister received his passport; 
and reprisals were recommended to Congress 
by the President. But there was no necessity 
for them. The intent to give offence, or to be 
disrespectful, was disclaimed ; the instalments 
in arrear were paid ; the two nations returned 
to. their accustomed good feeling; and no visible 
trace remains of the brief and transient cloud 
which for a while overshadowed them. So 
finished, in the time of Jackson, with entire 
satisfaction to ourselves, and with honor to 
both parties, the question of reclamations from 
France for injuries done our citizens in the 
time of the Great Emperor ; and which the ad- 
ministrations of Jefferson, Madison, Monroe and 
John Quincy Adams had been unable to en- 
force. 

3. Danish Treaty. — This was a convention 
for indemnity for spoliations on American com- 
merce, committed twenty years before the time of 
General Jackson's administration. They had been 
committed during the years 1808, 1809, 1810, and 
1*811, that is to say, during the last year of Mr. 
Jefferson's administration and the three first yearg 



of Mr. Madison's. They consisted of illegal seiz- 
ures and illegal condemnations or confiscations of 
American vessels and their cargoes in Danish 
ports, during the time when the British orders 
in council and the French imperial decrees were 
devastating the commerce of neutral nations, and 
subjecting the weaker powers of Europe to tho 
course of policy which the two gi'cat belligerent 
powers had adopted. The termination of tho 
great European contest, and the return of nations 
to the accustomed paths of commercial inter- 
course and just and friendly relations, furnished 
a suitable opportunity for the United States, 
whose citizens had suffered so much, to demand 
indemnity for these injuries. The demand had 
been made, and had been followed up with zeal 
during each succeeding administration, but with- 
out effect, until the administration of ^Ir. John 
Quincy Adams. During that administration, 
and in the hands of the American Charge d'Af- 
faires (Mr. Henry Wheaton), the negotiation 
made encouraging progress. General Jackson 
did not change the negotiator — did not incur 
double expense, a year's delay, and substitute a 
raw for a ripe minister — and the negotiation 
went on to a speedy and prosperous conclusion. 
The treaty was concluded in March, 1830, and 
extended to a complete settlement of all ques- 
tions of reclamation on both sides. The Danish 
government renounced all pretension to the 
claims which it had preferred, and agreed to pay 
the sum of six hundred and fifty thousand dol- 
lars to the government of the United States, to 
be by it distributed among the American claim- 
ants. This convention, which received the im- 
mediate ratification of the President and Senate, 
terminated all differences with a. friendly power, 
with whom the United States never had any 
but kind relations (these spoliations excepted), 
and whose trade to her West India islands, ly- 
ing at our door, and taking much of our domes- 
tic productions, was so desirable to us. 

4. Neapolitan Indemnity Treaty.— When 
Murat was King of Naples, and acting upon tho 
system of his brother-in-law, the Emperor Na- 
poleon, he seized and coniiscate<l many vessels and 
their cargoes, belonging to citizens of the United 
States. The years 180!), 1 810, 1 81 1 and 1812 were 
the periods of these wrongs. Ellortsliad been made 
under each administration, from Mr. Madison to 
Mr. John Quincy Adams, to obtain redress, but 
in vain. Among others, the special mission of 



604 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



Mr. "William Pinkney, the eminent crator and 
jurist, was instituted in the last year of Mr, 
Madison's administration, exclusively charged, 
at that court, with soliciting indemnity for the 
Mvu'at spoliations. A Bourbon was then upon 
the throne, and this 'legitimate,' considering 
Slurat as an usurper who had taken the king- 
dom from its proper owners, and done more 
harm to them than to any body else, was natu- 
rally averse to making compensation to other 
nations for his injurious acts. This repugnance 
had found an excuse in the foct that France, the 
great original wrongdoer in all these spoliations, 
and under whose lead and protection they were 
all committed, had not yet been brought to ac- 
knowledge the wrong and to make satisfaction. 
The indemnity treaty with France, in July 1831, 
put an end to this excuse ; and the fact of the 
depredations being clear, and the law of nations 
indisputably in our favor, a further and more 
earnest appeal was made to the Neapolitan gov- 
ernment. Mr. John Nelson, of Maryland, was 
appointed United States Charge to Naples, and 
concluded a convention for the payment of the 
claims. The sum of two millions one hundred 
and iifteen thousand Neapolitan ducats was 
stipulated to be paid to the United States gov- 
ernment, to be by it distributed among the claim- 
ants ; and, being entirely satisfactory"-, the con- 
vention immediately received the American 
ratification. Thus, another head of injury to 
our citizens, and of twenty years' standing, was 
settled by General Jackson, and in a case in 
which the strongest prejudice and the most re- 
volting repugnance had to be overcome. ^Nlurat 
had been shot by order of the Neapolitan king, 
for attempting to recover the kingdom ; he was 
deemed a usurper while he had it ; the exiled 
roj'al family thought themselves sufficiently 
wronged by him in their own jKjrsons, Avithout 
being made responsible for his wrongs to others ; 
and although bound by the law of nations to 
answer for his conduct while king in point of 
fact, yet for almost twent}^ years — from their res- 
toration in 1814 to 1832 — they had resisted and 
repulsed the incessant and just demands of the 
United States. Considermg the sacrifice of 
pride, as well as the large compensation, which 
this branch of the Bourbons had to make in 
paying a bill of damages against an intrusive king 
of the Bonaparte dynasty, and this indemnity 
obtained from Naples in the third year of General 



Jackson's first presidential term, which had been 
refused to his three predecessors — Messrs. Madi- 
son, Monroe and John Quincy Adams — may be 
looked upon as one of the most remarkable of 
his diplomatic successes. 

Spanish Indemnity Treaty. — The treaty 
of 1819 with Spain, by which we gained Florida 
and lost Texas, and paid five millions of dollars 
to our own citizens for Spanish spoliations, 
settled up all demands upon that power up to 
that time ; but fresh causes of complaint soon 
grew up. All the Spanish-American states had 
become independent — had established their own 
forms of government — and commenced political 
and commercial communications with all the 
world. Spanish policy revolted at this escape 
of colonies from its hands ; and although unable 
to subdue the new governments, was able to re- 
fuse to acknowledge their independence — able 
to issue paper blockades, and to seize and con- 
fiscate the American merchant vessels trading 
to the new states. In this way much damage 
had been done to American commerce, even in 
the brief interval between the date of the treaty 
of 1819 and General Jackson's election to the 
presidency, ten j-ears thereafter. A new list of 
claims for spoliations had grown up; and one 
of the early acts of the new President was to 
intstitute a mission to demand indemnity. ]\rr. 
Cornelius Van Ness, of New-York, was the 
minister appointed ; and having been refused in 
his first application, and given an account of the 
refusal to his government, President Jackson 
dispatched a special messenger to the American 
minister at Madrid, with instructions, " once 
more " to bring the subject to the consideration 
of the Spanish government; informing Congress 
at the same time, that he had made his last de- 
mand ; and that, if justice was not done, he 
would bring the case before that body, '• as the 
constitutional judge of what was proper to be 
done when negotiation fails to obtain redress for 
wrongs." But it was not found necessary to 
bring the case before Congress. On a closer 
examination of the claims presented and for the 
enforcement of which the power of the govern- 
ment had been invoked, it was found that there 
had occurred in this case what often takes ])lace 
in reclamation upon foreign powers; that claims 
were preferred which were not founded injustice, 
and which were not entitled to the national 
interference. Faithful to his principle to ask 



ANNO 1836. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



GOr) 



nothing but what was right, General Jackson 
ordered these unfounded claims to be dropped, and 
the just claims only to be insisted upon; and in 
communicating this fact to Congress, he declared 
his policy cliaracteristically with regard to for- 
eign nations, and in terms which deserve to be 
remembered. He said : " Faithful to the princi- 
ple of asking nothing but what was clearly right, 
additional instructions have been sent to modify 
our demands, so as to embrace those only on 
which, according to the laws of nations, we had 
a strict right to insist upon." Under these mo- 
dified instructions a treaty of indemnity was 
concluded (February, 1834), and the sum of 
twelve millions of reals vellon stipulated to be 
paid to the government of the United States, for 
distribution among the claimants. Thus, another 
instance of spoliation upon our foreign com- 
merce, and the last that remained unredressed, 
was closed up and satisfied under the adminis- 
tration of General Jackson ; and this last of the 
revolutionary men had the gratification to re- 
store unmixed cordial intercourse with a power 
which had been our ally in tke war of the Eevo- 
lution ; which had ceded to us the Floridas, to 
round off with a natural boundary our Southern 
territory ; which was our neighbor, contermin- 
ous in dominions, from the Atlantic to the Paci- 
fic ; and which, notwithstanding the jars and 
collisions to which bordering nations are always 
subject, had never committed an act of hostility 
upon the United States. The conclusion of this 
affair was grateful to all the rememberers of our 
revolutionary history, and equally honorable to 
both parties: to General Jackson, who renounced 
unfounded claims, and to the Spanish govern- 
ment, which paid the good as soon as separated 
from the bad. 

6. Russian Commercial Treaty. — Our re- 
lations with Russia had been peculiar — politi- 
cally, always friendly; commercially, always 
liberal — yet, no treaty of amity, commerce, and 
navigation, to assure these advantages and guar- 
antee their continuance. The United States had 
often sought such a treaty. Many special mis- 
sions, and of the most eminent citizens, and at 
various times, and under dilferent administra- 
tions, and under the Congress of the confedera- 
tion before there was any administration, had 
been instituted for that purpose — that of Mr. 
Francis Dana of Massachusetts (under whom 
the young John Quincy Adams, at the age of 



sixteen, served his diplomatic apprenticc.'iJ^ip as 
private secretary), in 1784, under the old Con- 
gress ; that of Mr. Rufus King, under the first Mr. 
Adams ; that of Mr. John Quincy Adams, Mr. 
Albert Gallatin, Mr. James A. Bayard, and Mr. 
William Pinkney, under Mr. Monroe ; that of 
Mr. George Washington Campbell, and Mr. 
Henry Middleton, under Mr. ^Monroe (the latter 
continued under Mr. John Quincy Adams) ; and 
all in vain. For some cause, never publicly ex- 
plained, the guaranty of a treaty had been con- 
stantly declined, while the actual advantages of 
the most favorable one had been constantly 
extended to us. A convention with us for the 
definition of boundaries on the northwest coast 
of America, and to stipulate for mutual freedom 
of fishing and navigation in the North Pacific 
Ocean, had been readily agreed upon by tlie Em- 
peror Alexander, and wisely, as by separating 
his claims, he avoided such controversies as af- 
terwards grew up between the United States and 
Great Britain, on account of their joint occupa- 
tion ; but no commercial treaty. Every thing 
else was all that our interest could ask, or her 
friendship extend. Reciprocity of diplomatic 
intercourse was fully established; ministers regu- 
larly appointed to reside with us — and those of 
my time (I speak only of those who came within 
my Thirty Years' View), the Chevalier de Poli- 
tica, the Baron Thuyl, the Baron Krudener, and 
especially the one that has remained longest 
among us, and has married an American lady, M. 
Alexandre de Bodisco — all of a personal character 
and deportment to be most agreeable to our go- 
vernment and citizens, well fitted to represent 
the feelings of the most friendly sovereigns, and 
to promote and maintain the most courteous and 
amicable intercourse between the two countries. 
The Emperor Alexander had signally displayed 
his good will in offering his mediation to termi- 
nate the war with Great Britain; and still fur- 
ther, in consenting to become arbitrator be- 
tween the United States and Great Britain in 
settling their difforence in the construotiou of 
the Ghent treaty, in tbe article relating to fugi- 
tive and deported slaves. Wo enjoyed in Rus- 
sian ports all the commercial privileges of the 
most favored nation ; but it was by an unfixed 
tenure— at the will of the reigning sovereign; 
and the mterests of commerce required a more 
stable guaranty. Still, up to the commencement 
of General Jackson's administration, there was 



606 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



no American treaty of amity, commerce, and 
navigation with that great power. The atten- 
tion of President Jackson was early directed to 
this anomalous point ; and Mr. John Randolph 
of Roanoke, then retired from Congress, was 
induced, by the earnest persuasions of the Pre- 
sident, and his Secretary of State, Mr. Van Buren, 
to accept the place of envoy extraordinary and 
minister plenipotentiary to the Court of St. 
Petersburg — to renew the applications for the 
treaty which had so long been made in vain. 
Repairing to that post, Mr. Randolph found that 
the rigors of a Russian climate were too severe 
for the texture of his fragile constitution ; and 
was soon recalled at his own request. Mr. 
James Buchanan, of Pennsylvania, was then ap- 
pointed in his place ; and by him the long-de- 
sired treaty was concluded, December, 1832 — 
the Count Nesselrode the Russian negotiator, 
and the Emperor Nicholas the reigning sover- 
eign. It was a treaty of great moment to the 
United States ; for, although it added nothing 
to the commercial privileges actually enjoyed, 
yet it gave stability to their enjoyment; and so 
imparted confidence to the enterprise of mer- 
chants. It was limited to seven years' duration, 
but with a clause of indefinite continuance, sub- 
ject to termination upon one year's notice from 
either party. Near twenty years have elapsed : 
no notice for its termination has ever been given ; 
and the commerce between the two countries 
feels all the advantages resulting from stability 
and national guaranties. And thus was obtain- 
ed, in the first term of General Jackson's ad- 
ministration, an important treaty with a great 
power, which all previous administrations and 
the Congress of the Confederation had been un- 
able to obtain. 

7. Portuguese Indemnity. — During the 
years 1829 and '30, during the blockade of 
Terceira, several illegal seizures were made of 
American vessels, by Portuguese men-of-war, 
for alleged violations of the blockade. The 
United States charge (V affairs at Lisbon, 
Mr. Thomas L. Brent, was charged with the 
necessary reclamations, and had no difficulty in 
coming to an amicable adjustment. Indemnity 
in the four cases of seizure was agreed upon in 
March, 1832, and pajinent in instalments stipu- 
lated to be made. There was default in all the 
instalments after the first — not from bad faith, 
but from total inability — although the instal- 



ments were, in a national point of view, of small 
amount. It deserves to be recorded, as an in- 
stance of the want to which a kingdom, whose 
very name had been once the synonym of gold 
regions and diamond mines, may be reduced by 
wretched government, that in one of the inter- 
views of the American charge (then Mr. Ed- 
ward Kavanagh), with the Portuguese Minister 
of Finance, the minister told him " that no per- 
sons in the employment of the government, ex- 
cept the military, had been paid any part of 
their salaries for a long time ; and that, on that 
day, there was not one hundred dollars in the 
treasury." In this total inability to pay, and 
with the fact c' having settled fairly, further 
time was given until the first day of July, 
1837 ; when full and final payment was made, to 
the satisfaction of the claimants. 

Indemnity was made to the claimants by al- 
lowing interest on the delayed payments, and 
an advantage was granted to an article of Ame- 
rican commerce by admitting rice of the United 
States in Portuguese ports at a reduced duty. 
The whole amouiA paid was about $140,000, 
which included damages to some other vessels, 
and compensation to the seamen of the cap- 
tured vessels for imprisonment and loss of 
clothes — the sum of about $1,600 for these lat- 
ter items — so carefully and minutely were the 
rights of American citizens guarded in Jackson's 
time. Some other claims on Portugal, con- 
sidered as doubtful, among them the case of the 
brave Captain Reid, of the privateer General 
Armstrong, were left open for future prosecu- 
tion, without prejudice from being omitted in 
the settlement of the Terceira claims, which 
were a separate class. 

8. Treaty with the Ottoman Empire. — 
At the commencement of the annual session of 
Congress of 1830-'31, President Jackson had 
the gratification to lay before the Senate a treaty 
of friendship and commerce between the United 
States and the Turkish emperor — the Sultan 
Mahmoud. noted fur his liberal foreign views, his 
domestic reforms, his protection of Christians, 
and his energetic suppression of the janissaries 
— those formidable barbarian cohorts, worse 
than pra)torian, which had so long dominated 
the Turkish throne. It was the first American 
treaty made with that power, and so declared 
in the preamble (and in terms which implied a 
personal compliment from the Porte in doing 



ANNO 1835. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



607 



now what it had always refused to do before), 
and was eminently desirable to us for commer- 
cial, political and social reasons. The Turkish 
dominions include what was once nearly the 
one half of the Roman world, and countries 
which had celebrity before Rome was founded. 
Sacred and profane history had given these do- 
minions a venerable interest in our eyes. They 
covered the seat which was the birth-place of 
the human race, the cradle of the Christian re- 
ligion ; the early theatre of the arts and sciences ; 
and contained the city which was founded by the 
first Roman Christian emperor. Under good gov- 
ernment it had always been the seat of rich com- 
merce and of great wealth. Under every aspect 
it was desirable to the United States to have its 
social, political and commercial intercourse with 
these dominions placed on a safe and stable foot- 
ing under the guaranty of treaty stipulations ; and 
this object was now accomplished. These were 
the general considerations ; particular and recent 
circumstances gave them additional weight. 

Exclusion of our commerce from the Black 
Sea, and the advantages which some nations 
had lately gained by the treaty of Adriano- 
ple, called for renewed exertions on our part ; 
and they were made by General Jackson. 
A commissioner was appointed (Mr. Charles 
Rhind) to open negotiations with the Sublime 
Porte ; and with him were associated the United 
States naval commander in the Mediterranean 
(Commodore Biddle), and the United States 
consul at Smyrna (Mr. David Offley). Mr. 
Rhind completed the negotiation, though the 
other gentlemen joined in the signature of the 
treaty. B}^ the provisions of this treaty, our 
trade with the Turldsh dominions was placed 
on the footing of the most favored nation ; and 
being without limitation as to time, may be 
considered as perpetual, subject only to be ab- 
rogated by war, in itself improbable, or by other 
events not to be expected. The right of passing 
the Dardanelles and of navigating the Black Sea 
was secured to our merchant ships, in ballast or 
with cargo, and to carr}'- the products of the 
United States and of the Ottoman empire, ex- 
cept the prohibited articles. The flag of the 
United States was to be respected. Factors, or 
commercial brokers, of any religion were allowed 
to be employed by our merchants. Consuls 
were placed on a footing of security, and tra- 
velling with passports was protected. Fairness 



and justice in suits and litigations were provided 
for. In questions between a citizen of the 
United States and a subject of the Sublime 
Porte, the parties were not to be heard, nor 
judgment pronounced, unless the American in- 
terpreter (dragoman) was present. In questions 
between American citizens the trial was to be 
before the United States minister or consul, 
" Even when they (the American citizens, so runs 
the fourth article), shall have committed some 
offence, they shall not be arrested and put in 
prison by the local authorities, but shall be 
tried by the minister or consul, and punished 
according to the offence." By this treaty all 
that was granted to other nations by the treaty 
of Adrianople is also granted to the United 
States, with the additional stipulation, to be al- 
ways placed on the footing of the most favored 
nation — a stipulation wholly independent of the 
treaty exacted by Russia at Adrianople as the 
fruit of victories, and of itself equivalent to a 
full and liberal treaty ; and the whole guaran- 
teed by a particular treaty with ourselves, which 
makes us independent of the general treaty of 
Adrianople. A spirit of justice, liberality and 
kindness runs through it. Assistance and pro- 
tection is to be given throughout the Turkish 
dominions . to American wrecked vessels and 
their crews ; and all property recovered from a 
wreck is to be delivered up to the American 
consul of the nearest port, for the benefit of the 
owners. Ships of war of the two countries arc 
to exhibit towards each other friendly and 
courteous conduct, and Turkish ships of war are 
to treat American merchant vessels witlx kind- 
ness and respect. This treaty has now bceai in 
force near twenty years, observed with perfect 
good faith by each, and attended b}^ all the good 
consequences expected from it The valuable 
commerce of the Black Sea, and of all the Turk- 
ish ports of Asia Minor, Europe and Africa 
(once the finest part of the Roman world), 
travelling, residence, and the pursuit of business 
throughout the Turkish dominions, aiv miideas 
safe to our citizens as in any of tiie European 
countries ; and thus the United States, though 
amongst the youngest in the family of nations, 
besides securing particular advantages to hor 
own citizens, has done her part in bringing 
those ancient countries into the system of mod- 
ern European commercial policy, and in luir- 
monizing people long estranged from each other. 



608 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



9. Renewal of the treaty with Moroc- 
co. — A treaty had been made with this power 
in the time of the old Congress under the Con- 
federation ; and it is honorable to Morocco to 
see in that treaty, at the time when all other 
powers on the Barbary coast deemed the pro- 
perty of a Christian, lawful prey, and his person 
a jjropcr subject for captivit}-, entering into such 
stipulations as these following, with a nation so 
young as the United States : " Neither party to 
take commissions from an enemy ; persons and 
property captured in an enemy's vessel to be 
released; American citizens and effects to be 
restored ; stranded vessels to be protected ; ves- 
sels engaged in gunshot of forts to be protected ; 
enemies' vessels not allowed to follow out of 
port for twenty-four hours ; American commerce 
to be on the most favored footing ; exchange of 
prisoners in time of war; no compulsion in buy- 
ing or selling goods ; no examination of goods 
on board, except contraband was proved; no 
detention of vessels ; disputes between Ameri- 
cans to be settled by their consuls, and the con- 
sul assisted when necessary ; killing punished 
by the law of the country ; the effects of per- 
sons dying intestate to be taken care of, and de- 
livered to the consul, and, if no consul, to be 
deposited with some person of trust ; no appeal 
to arms unless refusal of friendly arrangements ; 
in case of war, nine months to be allowed to 
citizens of each power residing in the dominions 
of the other to settle their affairs and remove." 
This treaty, made in 1787, was the work of 
Benjamin Franklin (though absent at the sig- 
nature), John Adams, at London, and Thomas 
Jefferson, at Paris, acting through the agent, 
Thomas Barclay, at Fez ; and was written with 
a plainness, simplicity and beauty, which I have 
not seen equalled in any treaty, between any 
nations, before or since. It was extended to 
fifty years, and renewed by General Jackson, in 
the last year of his administration, for fifty 
years more ; and afterwards until twelve months' 
notice of a desire to abridge it should be given 
by one of the parties. The resident American 
consul at Tangier, Mr. James R. Leib, negotia- 
ted the renewal ; and all the parties concerned 
had the good taste to preserve the style and 
language of the original throughout. It will 
stand, both for the matter and the style, a monu- 
ment to the honor of our early statesmen. 



10. Treaty of amity and commerce with 
SiAM. — This was concluded in March, 1833, Mr. 
Edmund Roberts the negotiator on the part of 
the United States, and contained the provisions 
in behalf of American citizens and commerce 
which had been agreed upon in the treaty with 
the Sublime Porte, which was itself principally 
framed upon that with Morocco in 1787 ; and 
which may well become the model of all that 
may be made, in all time to come, with all the 
Oriental nations. 

11. The SAME with the Sultan of Mus- 
cat. 

Such were the fruits of the foreign diploma- 
cy of President Jackson. There were other 
treaties negotiated under his administration — 
with Austria, Mexico, Chili, Peru, Bolivia, Ven- 
ezuela — but being in the ordinary course of 
foreign intercourse, do not come within the 
scope of this View, which confines itself to a 
notice of such treaties as were new or difficult 
— which were unattainable by previous adminis- 
trations ; and those which brought indemnity 
to our citizens for spoliations committed upon 
them in the time of General Jackson's prede- 
cessors. In this point of view, the list of trea- 
ties presented, is grand and impressive ; the 
bare recital of which, in the most subdued lan- 
gu<age of historical narrative, places the foreign 
diplomacy of General Jackson on a level with 
the most splendid which the history of any na- 
tion has presented. First, the direct trade with 
the Bi'itish West Indies, which had baffled the 
skill and power of all administrations, from 
"Washington to John Quincy Adams inclusive, 
recovered, established, and placed on a perma- 
nent and satisfactory footing. Then indemnities 
from France, Spain, Denmark, Naples, Portugal, 
for injuries committed on our commerce in the 
time of the great Napoleon. Then original trea- 
ties of commerce and friendship with great powers 
from which they never could be obtained before 
— Russia, Austria, the Sublime Porte. Then 
leaving his country at peace with all the world, 
after going through an administration of eight 
years which brought him, as a legacy from his 
predecessors, the accumulated questions of half 
an age to settle with the great powers. This is 
the eulogy of facts, worth enough, in the plain- 
est language, to dispense with eulogium of 

WORDS. 



ANNO 1836. ANDREW JACKSON, PRRSIDENT. 



G09 



CHAPTER CXXXV. 

SLAVERY AGITATION. 

It is painful to see the unceasing efforts to 
alarm the South by imputations against the 
North of unconstitutional designs on the subject 
of slavery. You are right, I have no doubt, in 
believing that no such intermeddling disposition 
exists in the body of our Northern brethren. 
Their good faith is sufficiently guaranteed by 
the interest they have as merchants, as ship 
jwners, and as manufacturers, in preserving a 
Union with the slaveholding States. On the 
jther hand what madness in the South to look 
for greater safety in disunion. It would be 
worse than jumping into the fire for fear of the 
frying pan. The danger from the alarms is, that 
the pride and resentment exerted by them may 
be an overmatch for the dictates of prudence ; 
and favor the project of a Southern convention, 
insidiously revived, as promising by its councils, 
the best securities against grievances of every sort 
from the North." — So wrote Mr. IMadison to JNIr. 
Clay, in June 1833. It is a writing every word 
of which is matter for grave reflection, and the 
date at the head of all. It is dated just three 
months after the tariff " compromise " of 1833, 
which, in arranging the tariff question for nine 
years, was supposed to have quieted the South 
— put an end to agitation, and to the idea of a 
Southern convention — and given peace and har- 
mony to the whole Union. Not so the fact — at 
least not so the fact in South Carolina. Agita- 
tion did not cease there on one point, before it 
began on another : the idea of a Southern con- 
vention for one cause, was hardly abandoned 
before it was " insidiously revived " upon another. 
I use the language of Mr. Madison in qualifying 
this revival with a term of odious import : for 
no man was a better master of our language than 
he was — no one more scrupulously just in all 
his judgments upon men and things — and no 
one occupj'ing a position cither personally, po- 
litically, or locally, to speak more advisedly on 
the subject of which he spoke. He was pained 
to see the efforts to alarm the Soutli on the sub- 
ject of slavery, and the revival of the project for 
a Southern convention ; and he feared the effect 
which these alarms should have on the pride and 

Vol. I.— 39 



resentment of Southern people. His letter was 
not to a neighbor, or to a citizen in private life, 
but to a public man on the theatre of national 
action, and one who had acted a part in compos- 
ing national difficulties. It was evidently 
written for a purpose. It was in answer to Mr. 
Clay's expressed belief, that no design hostile 
to Southern slavery existed in the body of the 
Northern people — to concur witli him in that 
belief— and to give him warning that the danger 
was in another quarter — in the South itself: and 
that it looked to a dissolution of the Union. It 
was to warn an eminent public man of a new 
source of national danger, more alarming than 
the one he had just been composing. 

About the same time, and to an old and con- 
fidential friend (Edward Coles, Esq.. who had 
been his private secretary when President), Mr. 
Madison also wrote : " On the other hand what 
more dangerous than nullification, or more evi- 
dent than the progress it continues to make, 
either in its original shape or in the disguises it 
assumes ? Nullification has the effect of put- 
ting powder under the constitution and the 
Union, and a match in the hand of every party 
to blow them up at pleasure. And for its pro- 
gress, hearken to the tone in which it is now 
preached : cast your eyes on its increasing minor- 
ities in the most of the Southern States, without 
a decrease in any of them. Look at Virginia 
herself, and read in the gazettes, and in the pro- 
ceedings of popular meetings, the figure wliich the 
anarchical principle now makes, in contrast with 
the scouting reception given to it but a short 
time ago. It is not probable that this offspring 
of the discontents of South Carolina will ever 
approach success in a majority of the State;*: 
but a susceptibility of the contagion in the 
Southern States is visible : and the danger not 
to be concealed, that the sympathy arising from 
known causes, and the inculcated inipivssion of 
a permanent incompatibility of iutoicst^ bit wocn 
the South and the North, may put it in the power 
of popular leaders, aspiring to the highest sta- 
tions, to unite the Soutli <>n some critical occ.v 
sion, in a course that will en<l in creating a new 
theatre of great though inferior interest. In 
pursuing this course, the first and most obvious 
step is nullification, the next secession, and the 
last a farewell separation." 

In this view of the dangers of nullification in its 
new '• disguise" — the susceptibility of the South to 



CIO 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



its contagious influence — its fatal action upon an 
" inculcated incompatibility of interests " between 
the North and the South — its increase in the 
slave States — its progress, first to secession, 
and then to " farewell separation : " in this view 
of the old danger under its new disguise, Mr, 
Madison, then eighty-four years old, writes 
with the wisdom of age, the foresight of experi- 
ence, the spirit of patriotism, and the '• pain " 
of heart which a contemplation of the division 
of those States excited which it had been the 
pride, the glory, and the labor of his life to 
unite. The slavery turn which was given to 
the Southern agitation was the aspect of the 
danger which filled his mind with sorrow and 
misgiving : — and not without reason. A paper 
published in "Washington City, and in the in- 
terest of i\Ir. Calhoun, was incessant in propa- 
gating the slavery alarm — in denouncing the 
North — in exhorting the Southern States to 
unity of feeling and concert of action as the 
only means of saving their domestic institutions. 
The language had become current in some parts 
of the South, that it was impossible to unite the 
Southern States upon the tariff question : that 
the sugar interest in Louisiana would prevent 
her from joining : that it was a mistake to have 
made that issue : that the slavery question was 
the right one. And coincident with this current 
language were many publications, urging a 
Southern convention, and concert of action. 
Passing by all these, which might be deemed 
mere newspaper articles, there was one which 
bore the impress of thought and authenticity — 
which assumed the convention to be a certainty, 
the time only remaining to be fixed, and the 
cause for it to be in full operation in the Nor- 
thern States. It was published in the Charles- 
ton jStercury in 1835, — was entitled the " Crisis " 
— and had the formality of a manifesto ; and 
after dilating upon the aggressions and eucroach- 
xiients of the North, proceeded thus : 

'•The proper time for a convention of the 
slaveholding States will be when the legislatures 
of Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and New-York 
shall have adjourned without passing laws for 
the suppression of the abolition societies. Should 
either of these States pass such laws, it would 
be well to wait till their efficacy should be test- 
ed. The adjournment of the legislatures of the 
Northern States without adopting any measures 
eflcctually to put down Garrison, Ta])pan and 
their associates, will present an issue which must 
be met by the South, or it will be vain for iis ever 



after to attempt any thing further than for the 
State to provide for her own safety by defensive 
measures of her own. If the issue presented is 
to be met, it can only be done by a convention 
of the aggrieved States ; the proceedings of 
which, to be of any value, must embody and 
make known the sentiments of the whole South, 
and contain the distinct annunciation of our 
fixed and unaltered determination to obtain the 
redress of our grievances, be the consequences 
what they may. We must have it clearly \m- 
derstood that, in framing a constitutional union 
with our Northern brethren, the slaveholding 
States consider themselves as no more liable to 
.any more interference with their domestic con- 
cerns than if they had remained entirely inde- 
pendent of the other States, and that, as such 
interference would, among independent nations, 
be a just cause of war, so among members of 
such a confederacy as ours, it must place the 
several States in the relation towards each other 
of open enemies. To sum up in a few words 
the whole argument on this subject, we would 
say that the abolitionists can only be put down 
b}^ legislation in the States in which they exist, 
and this can only be brought about by the em- 
bodied opinion of the whole South, acting upon 
public opinion at the North, which can only be 
effected through the instrumentality of a con- 
vention of the slaveholding States," 

It is impossible to read this paragraph from 
the " Crisis," without seeing that it is identical 
with Mr, Calhoun's report and speech upon in- 
cendiar}' publications transmitted through the 
mail. The same complaint against the North ; 
the same exaction of the suppression of aboli- 
tion societies ; the same penalty for omitting to 
suppress them ; that penalty always the same — 
a Southern convention, and secession — and the 
same idea of the contingent foreign relation to 
each other of the respective States, always 
treated as a confederacj-. under a compact. 
Upon his arrival at Washington at the conmieuce- 
ment of the session 1835 — '36, all his conduct 
was conformable to the programme laid down 
in the " Crisis," and the whole of it calculated 
to produce the event therein hj-pothetically an- 
nounced ; and, unfortunately, a double set of 
movements was then in the process of being 
carried on by the abolitionists, which favored 
liis purposes. One of these was the mail trans- 
mission into the slave States of incendiary'- pub- 
lications ; and it has been seen in what manner 
he availed himself of that wickedness to predi- 
cate upon it a right of Southern secession ; the 
other was the annoyance of Congress with a 
profusion of petitions for the abolition of slavery 



AXXO 1836. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



611 



in the District, of Columbia ; and his conduct 
with respect to these petitions, remains to be 
shown. Mr. Morris, of Ohio, presented two 
from that State, himself opposed to touching 
the subject of slavery in the States, but deeming 
it his duty to present tliosc which applied to 
the District of Columbia. ]\Ir. Calhoun do 
manded that they be read ; which being done, — 

"He demanded the question on receiving 
them, which, he said, was a preliminary ques- 
tion, which any member had a right to make. 
He demanded it on behalf of the State which 
he represented ; he demanded it, because the pe- 
titions were in themselves a foul slander on 
nearly one half of the States of the Union ; he 
demanded it, because the question involved was 
one over which neither this nor the House had 
any power whatever ; and and a stop might be 
put to that agitation which prevailed in so large 
a section of the country, and which, unless 
checked, would endanger the existence of the 
Union. That the petitions just read contained 
a gross, false, and malicious slander, on eleven 
States represented on this floor, there was no 
man who in his heart could deny. This was, in 
itself, not only good, but the highest cause why 
these petitions should not be received. Had it 
not been the practice of the Senate to reject peti- 
tions which reflected on any individual member 
of their body ; and should they who were the 
representatives of sovereign States permit peti- 
tions to be brought there, wilfully, maliciously, 
almost wickedly, slandering so many sovereign 
States of this Union ? Were the States to be 
less protected than individual members on that 
floor ? He demanded the question on receiving 
the petitions, because they asked for what was 
a violation of the constitution. The question 
of emancipation exclusively belonged to the sev- 
eral States. Congress had no jurisdiction on 
the subject, no more in this District than the 
State of South Carolina : it was a question for 
the individual State to determine, and not to be 
touched by Congress. He himself well under- 
stood, and the people of his State should under- 
stand, that this was an emancipation movement. 
Those who have moved in it regard this District 
as the weak point through which the first move- 
ment should be made upon the States. We 
(said Mr. C), of the South, are bound to resist 
it. We will meet this question as firmly as if 
it were the direct question of emancipation in 
the States. It is a movement which ought to, 
which must be, arrested, in liiuine, or the guards 
of the constitution will give way and be de- 
stroyed. He demanded the question on receiv- 
ing the petitions, because of the agitation which 
would result from discussing the subject. The 
danger to be apprehended was from the agita- 
tion of the question on that floor. He did not 
fear those incendiary publications which were 
circulated abroad, and which could easily be 



counteracted. But he dreaded the agitation 
which would rise out of the discussion in Con- 
gress on the subject. Every man knew that 
there existed a body of men in the Northern 
States who were readj- to second any insurrec- 
tionary movement of the blacks ; and that these 
men would be on the alert to turn these discus- 
sions to their advantage. lie dreaded the 
discussion in another sense. It would have a 
tendency to break asunder this Union. What 
effect could be brought about by the interference 
of these petitioners ? Could they expect to 
produce a change of mind in the Southern peo- 
ple 1 No ; the effect would be directly the 
opposite. The more they were assailcl on this 
point, the more closelj' would they cling to 
their institutions. And what would be the 
effect on the -ising generation, but to inspire it 
with odium against those whose mistaken views 
and misdirected zeal menaced the peace and se- 
curity of the Southern States. The eifect must 
be to bring our institutions into odium. As a 
lover of the Union, he dreaded this discussion ; 
and asked for some decided measure to arrest 
the course of the evil. There must, there shall 
be some decided step, or the Southern people 
never will submit. And how are we to treat 
the subject ? By receiving these petitions one 
after another, and thus tampering, trifling, 
sporting with the feelings of the South ? No, 
no, no ! The abolitionists well understand the 
effect of such a course of proceeding. It will 
give importance to their movements, and ac- 
celerate the ends they propose. Nothing 
can, nothing will stop these petitions but a 
prompt and stern rejection of them. We must 
turn them away from our doors, regardless of 
what may be done or said. If the issue must 
be, let it come, and let us meet it, as, I hope, 
we shall be prepared to do." 

This was new and extreme ground taken by 
Mr. Calhoun. To put the District of Columbia 
and the States on the same footing with respect 
to slavery legislation, was entirely contrary- to 
the constitution itself, and to the whole doc- 
trine of Congress upon it. The constitution 
gave to Congress exclusive jurisdiction over the 
District of Columbia, without limitation of 
subjects; but it had always refused, though 
often petitioned, to interfere with tiie sulyect of 
slavery in the District of Columbia so long ns it 
existed in the two States (Marylaiul and Virgi- 
nia) which ceded that District to the fideral 
government. Tiie doctrine of .Mr. Calhoun wa-s, 
therefore, new ; his inference that slavery was 
to be attacked in the States through the opening 
in the District, was gratuitous; his "demauii '' 
(for that was the word he constantly u.-^ed), tliat 
these petitions should be refused a reception, 



612 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



was a harsh motion, made in a harsh manner ; 
his assumption that the existence of the Union 
was at stake, was without evidence and contrary 
to evidence ; his remcd}-, in State resistance, 
was disunion ; his eagerness to catch at an 
" issue," showed that he was on the watch for 
" issues," and ready to seize anj" one that would 
get up a contest ; his language was all inflamma- 
tory, and calculated to rouse an alarm in the 
slaveholding States : — for the whole of which 
he constantly assumed to speak. j\Ir. Morris 
thus replied to him : 

'• In presenting these petitions he would say, 
on the part of the State of Ohio, that she went 
to the entire extent of the opinions of the sen- 
ator from South Carolina on one point. We 
deny, said he, the power of Congress to legislate 
concerning local institutions, or to meddle in 
any way with slavery in any of the States ; but 
we have always entertained the opinion that 
Congress has primary and exclusive legislation 
over this District ; under this impression, these 
petitioners have come to the Senate to pres^-ut 
their petitions. The doctrine that Congress 
liave no power over the subject of slavery in 
tins District is to me a new one ; and it is one 
tluit will not meet with credence in the State 
in which I reside. I believe these petitioners 
have the right to present themselves here, plac- 
ing their feet on the constitution of their coun- 
try, when they come to ask of Congress to 
exercise those powers which they can legiti- 
mately exercise. I believe they have a right to 
be heard in their petitions, and that Congress 
may afterwards dispose of these petitions as in 
their wisdom they may think proper. Under 
these impressions, these petitioners come to be 
heard, and they have a right to be heard. Is 
not the right of petition a fundamental I'ight "? 
L believe it is a sacred and fundamental right, 
belonging to the people, to petition Congress 
for the redress of their grievances. While this 
right is secured by the constitution, it is incom- 
petent to any legislative body to prescribe how 
the right is to he exercised, or when, or on 
what subject ; or else this right becomes a mere 
mockery. If you are to teli the jieople that 
they are only to petition on this or that subject, 
or in this or that manner, the right of petition 
is but a mocker3\ It is true we have a right to 
say that no petition which is couched in disre- 
spectful language shall be received ; but I pre- 
sume there is a sulEcicnt check provided against 
this in the responsibility under which every sen- 
ator presents a petition. Any petition conveyed 
in such language would always meet with his 
decided disapprobation. But if we deny the 
right of the people to petition in this instance, 
1 would ask how fur they have the right. AVhile 
tliey believe they possess the right, no denial of 
it by Congress will prevent them from exercis- 
ing it." 



Mr. Bedford Brown, of North Carolina, en- 
tirely dissented from the views presented by 
Mr. Calhoun, and considered the course he pro- 
posed, and the language which he used, exactly 
calculated to produce the agitation which he 
professed to deprecate. He said : 

■ He felt himself constrained, by a sense of 
duty to the State from which he came, deeply 
and vitally interested as she was in every thing 
connected with the agitating question which 
had imexpectedly been brought into discussion 
that morning, to present, in a few words, his 
views as to the proper direction which should 
be given to that and all other petitions relating 
to slavery in the District of Columbia. He felt 
himself more especially called on to do so from 
the aspect which the question had assumed, in 
consequence of the motion of the gentleman 
from South Carolina [Mr. Caliiouji], to refuse 
to receive the petition. He had believed from 
the first time he had reflected on this subject, 
and subsequent events had but strengthened 
that conviction, that the most proper disposition 
of all such petitions was to lay them on tlie 
table, without printing. This course, vihile it 
indicated to the fanatics that Congress will 
yield no countenance to their designs, at the 
same time marks them with decided reprobation 
by a refusal to print. But, in his estimation, 
another reason gave to the motion to lay them 
on the table a decided preference over any other 
proceedings by which they should be met. The 
peculiar merit of this motion, as applicable to 
this question, is, that it precludes all debate, 
and would thus prevent the agitation of a sul> 
ject in Congress whicli all should deprecate as 
fraught with mischief to every portion of this 
happy and flourishing confederacy. ^Nlr. B. said 
that honorable gentlemen who advocated this 
motion had disclaimed all intention to produce 
agitation on this question. He did not pretend 
to question the sincerity of their declarations, 
and, while willing to do every justice to their 
motives, he must be allowed to sa}' that no 
method could be devised better calculated, in 
his judgment, to produce such a resrdt. He 
(Mr. B.) most sincerely believed that the best 
interests of the Southern States would be most 
consulted by pursumg such a course here as 
would harmonize the feelings of every section, 
and avoid opening for discussion so dangerous 
and delicate a question. He believed all the 
senators who were present a few days since, 
when a petition of similar character had been 
presented by an honorable senator, had, by their 
votes to lay it on the table, sanctioned the 
course which he now suggested. [Mr. Calhoun, 
in explanation, said that himself and his col- 
league were absent from the Senate on the oc- 
casion alluded to.] Mr. B. resumed his re- 
marks, and said that he had made no reference 
to the votes of anv particular members of that 
body, but what he had said was, that a similar 



ANNO 1836. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



613 



petition had been laid on the table without ob- 
jection from any one, and consequently by a 
unanimous vote of the senators present. Here, 
then, was a most emphatic declaration, by gen- 
tlemen representing the Northern States as 
well as those from other parts of the Union, by 
this vote, that they will entertain no attempt at 
legislation on the question of slavery in the 
District of Columbia. Why, then, asked Mr. 
B,, should we now adopt a mode of proceeding 
calculated to disturb the harmonious action of 
the Senate, which had been produced b}^ the 
former vote ? Why (he would respectfully ask 
of honorable gentlemen who press the motion 
to refuse to receive the petition) and for what 
beneficial purpose do they press it ? By per- 
sisting in such a course it would, beyond all 
doubt, open a wide range of discussion , it would 
not fail to call forth a great diversity of opinion 
in relation to the estent of the right to petition 
under the constitution. Nor would it be con- 
fined to that question alone, judging from an 
expression wliich had fallen from an honorable 
gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Tyler], in the 
course of this debate. That gentleman had de- 
clared his preference for a direct negative vote 
by the Senate, as to the constitutional power 
of Congz'ess to emancipate slaves in the District 
of Columbia. He, for one, protested, politically 
speaking, against opening this Pandora's bos in 
the halls of Congress. For all beneficial and 
practical purposes, an overwhelming majority 
of the members representing the Northern 
States were, with the South, in opposition to 
anj- interference with slavery in the District of 
Columbia. If there was half a dozen in both 
branches of Congress who did not stand in en- 
tire opposition to any interference with slavery, 
in this District or elsewhere, he had yet to 
Jearn it. Was it wise, was it prudent, was it 
magnanimous, in gentlemen representing the 
Southern States, to urge this matter still further, 
and say to our Northern friends in Congress, 
' Gentlemen, we all agree in the general con- 
clusion, that Congress should not interfere in 
this question, but we wish to know your reasons 
for arriving at this conclusion ; we wish you to 
declare, by your votes, whether you arrive at 
this result because j^ou think it unconstitutional 
or not?' Mr. B. said that he would yield to 
none in zeal in sustaining and supporting, to the 
extent of his ability, what he believed to be the 
true interest of the South ; but he should take 
leave to say that, when the almost united will 
of both branches of Congress, for all practical 
purposes, was with us, against all interference 
on this subject, he should not hazard the jieace 
and quiet of the country by going on a Quixotic 
expedition in pursuit of abstract constitutional 
questions." 

Mr. King, of Georgia, was still more pointed 
than Mr. Brown in deprecating the course Mr. 
Calhoun pursued, and cbiirging upon it the effect 



of increasing the slavery agitation, and giving 
the abolitionists ground to stand upon in pi\"ing 
them the right of petition to defend. He said : 

" This being among the Southern members ». 
mere difference of form in the manner of dispos- 
ing of the subject, I regret exceedingly that the 
senator from Carolina has thought it his duty 
(as he doubtless has) to press the subject upon 
the consideration of the Senate in such form as 
not only to permit, but in some measure to 
create, a necessity for the continued agitation of 
the subject. For he believed, with others, that 
nothing was better calculated to increase agit<a- 
tion and excitement than such motions as that 
of the senator from South Carolina. AVhat was 
the object of the motion ? Senators said, and 
no doubt sincereh", that their object was to quiet 
the agitation of the subject. Well, (said Mr. K..) 
mj-- object is precisely the same. We differ, 
then, only in the means of securing a common 
end ; and he could tell the Senators that the 
value of the motion as a means would likely be 
estimated by its tendency to secure the end de- 
sired. Would even an affirmative vote on the 
motion quiet the agitation of the subject ? He 
thought, on the contrary, it wovild much increase 
it. IIow would it stop the agitation ? AV'hat 
would be decided? Nothing, except it be that 
the Senate would not receive the particular me- 
morial before it. Would that prevent the pre- 
sentation of others? Not at all ; it would only 
increase the number, bj-- making a new issue for 
debate, which was all the abolitionists wanted j 
or, at any rate, the most they now expected. 
These petitions had been coming here without 
intermission ever since the foundation of the 
government, and he could tell the senator that 
if they were each to be honored by a lengthy 
discussion on presentment, an honor not here- 
tofore granted to them, they would not only con- 
tinue to come here, but they would thicken ujwn 
us so long as the government remained in exist- 
ence. We may seek occasions (said Mr. K.) to 
rave about our rights; we may appeal t<> the 
guarantiesof the constitution, which are denied; 
we may speak of the strength of the South, and 
pour out unmeasured denunciations against the 
Xortli; we may threaten vengeance against tin? 
abolitionists, and menace a dissolution <>f the 
Union, and all that ; and thus exhausting our- 
selves mentally and physically, and setting down 
to applaud the spirit of our own efforts, Artiiur 
Tappan and his ]iions fraternity wnidd very 
coolly remark: ' Weil, that is precisely what I 
wanted; I wanted agitation in the South; I 
wished to provoke the " aristocratic slaveholder'' 
to make extravjigant demands on tlie North, 
which the North could not consistently surnn- 
der them. 1 wished them, imdcr the pretext 
of securing their own rights, to encroach \\\xm 
the rights of all the American people. In short. 
I wish to cli;nige the issue; upon the present 
issue we are dead. Every movement, every de- 



614 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



monstration of feeling anions our own people, 
shows that upon the present issue the great 
body of the people is against us. The issue 
must be changed, or the prospects of abolition 
are at an end.' This language (Mr. K. said) 
was not conjectured, but there was much evi- 
dence of its truth. Sir (said Mr. K.). if South- 
ern senators were actually in the pay of the 
abolition directory on Nassau-street they could 
not more effectually co-operate in the views and 
administer to the wishes of these enemies to the 
peace and quiet of our country." 

Mr. Calhoun was dissatisfied at the speeches of 
Mr. Brown and Mr. King, and considei-cd them 
as dividing and distracting the South in their 
opposition to his motion, while his own course 
was to keep them united in a case vrhere union 
was so important, and in which they stood but a 
handful in the midst of an overwhelming major- 
ity. He said: 

" I have heard with deep mortification and 
regret the speech of the senator from Geor- 
gia ; not that I suppose that his arguments 
can have much impression in the South, but 
because of their tendency to divide and dis- 
tract the Southern delegation on this, to us, all- 
momentous question. We are here but a hand- 
ful in the midst of an overwhelming majority. 
It is the duty of every member from the South, 
on this great and vital question, where union is 
so important to those whom we represent, to 
avoid every thing calculated to divide or dis- 
tract our ranks. I (said Mr. C.),the Senate will 
l)ear witness, have, in all that I have said on 
this subject, been careful to respect the feelings 
of Southern members who have diflered from 
me in the policy to be pursued. Having thus 
acted, on my part, I must express my surprise 
at the harsh expressions, to say the least, in 
which the senator from Georgia has indulged." 

The declaration of this overwhelming majority 
against the South brought a great number of 
the non-slaveholding senators to their feet, to 
declare the concurrence of their States with the 
South upon the subject of slaverj^, and to depre- 
ciate the abolitionists as few in number in any 
of the Northern States ; and discountenanced, 
reprobated and repulsed wherever they were 
found. Among these, Mr. Isaac Hill of New 
Hampshire, thus spoke : 

" I do not (said he) object to many of the 
positions taken by senators on the abstract ques- 
tion of Northern interference with slavery in 
the South. But I do protest against the excite- 
ment that is attempted on the lloor of Congress, 
to be kept up against the North. I do protest 
against the array that is made here of the acts 
of a few misguided fanatics as the acts of the 



whole or of a large portion of the people of the 
North. I do protest against the countenance 
that is here given to the idea tliat the people of 
the North generally are interfering with the 
rights and property of the people of the South. 
"There is no course that will better suit the 
few Northern fanatics than the agitation of the 
question of slavery in the halls of Congress — 
nothing will please them better than the discus- 
sions which are taking place, and a solemn vote 
of either branch denying them the right to pre- 
fer petitions here, praying that slavery maj- be 
abolished in the District of Columbia. A de- 
nial of that right at once enables them, and not 
without color of truth, to cry out that the con- 
test going on is ' a struggle between power and 
liberty.' 

'■ Believing the intentions of those who have 
moved simultaneously to get up these petitions 
at this time, to be mischief, I was glad to see 
the first petition that came in here laid on the 
table without discussion, and without reference 
to any committee. The motion to lay on the 
table precludes all debate ; and, if decided afBr- 
matively, prevents agitation. It was with the 
view of preventing agitation of this subject that 
I moved to lay the second set of petitions on 
the table. A senator from the South (Mr. Cal- 
houn) has chosen a different course; he has in- 
terposed a motion which opens a debate that 
may be continued for months. He has chosen 
to agitate this question ; and he has presented 
that question, the decision of which, let senators 
vote as they may, will best please the agitators 
who are urging the fanatics forward. 

•' I have said the people of the North were 
more united in their opposition to the plans of 
the advocates of antislavery, than on any other 
subject. This opposition is confined to no politi- 
cal party ; it pervades every class of the commu- 
nity. They deprecate all interference with the 
subject of siavery, because they believe such in- 
terference may involve the existence and wel- 
fare of the Union itself, and because they under- 
stand the obligations which the non-slaveholding 
States owe to the slaveholding States by the 
compact of confederation. It is the strong de- 
sire to perpetuate the Union ; it is the determi- 
nation which every patriotic and virtuous citizen 
has made, in no event to abandon the ' ark of 
our safety,' that now impels the united North 
to take its stand against the agitators of the 
antislavery project. So effectually has the 
strong public sentiment put down that agita- 
tion in New England, that it is now kept ahve 
only by the power of monej', which tlie agita- 
tors have collected, and apply in the hiring of 
agents, and in issues from presses that are kept 
in their employ. 

'• The antislavery movement, which brings in 
petitions from various parts of the country ask- 
ing Congress to abolish slavery in the District 
of Columbia, originates with a few persons, who 
have been in the habit of making charitable re- 
ligious institutions subservient to pohtical pur« 



ANNO 1836. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



615 



poses, and who have even controlled some of 
those charitable associations. The petitions 
are set on foot by men who have had, and who 
continue to have, influence with ministers and 
religious teachers of different denominations. 
They have issued and sent out their circulars 
calling for a united effort to press on Congress 
the abolition of slavery in this District. Mam^ 
of the clergymen who have been instruments 
of the agitators, have done so from no bad mo- 
tive. Some of them, discovering the purpose of 
the agitators — discovering that their labors were 
calculated to make the condition of the slave 
worse, and to create animosity between the peo- 
ple of the North and the South, have paused in 
their course, and desisted from the further ap- 
plication of a mistaken philanthropy. Others, 
having enlisted deeply their feelings, still pur- 
sue the unprofitable labor. They present here 
the names of inconsiderate men and women, 
many of whom do not know, when they sub- 
scribe their papers, what they are asking ; and 
others of whom, placing implicit faith in their 
religious teacher, are taught to believe they are 
thereby doing a work of disinterested benevo- 
lence, which will be requited by rewards in a 
future life. 

" Now, sir, as much as I abhor the doings of 
weak or ^\acked men who are moving this aboli- 
tion question at the North, I yet have not as 
bad an opinion of them as I have of some others 
who are attempting to make of these puerile 
proceedings an object of alarm to the whole 
South. 

" Of all the vehicles, tracts, pamphlets, and 
newspapers, printed and circulated by the abo- 
litionists, there is no ten or twenty of them 
that have contributed so much to the excite- 
ment as a single newspaper printed in this city. 
I neetl not name this paper when I inform you 
that, for the last five years, it has been laboring 
to produce a Northern and Southern party — to 
fan the flame of sectional prejudice — to open 
wider the breach, to drive harder the wedge, 
which shall divide the North from the South. 
It is the newspaper which, in 1831-'2, strove to 
create that state of things, in relation to the 
tarifi" which would produce inevitable collision 
between the two sections of the country, and 
which urged to that crisis in South Carolina, 

terminating in her deep disgrace — 

■ " [Mr. Calhoun here interrupted Mr. Hill and 
called him to order. Mr. II. took his scat, and 
Mr. Hubbard (being in the chair) decided that 
the remarks of Mr. II. did not impugn the mo- 
tives of any man — they were onl}- descriptive 
of the effects of certain proceedings upon the 
State of South Carolina, and that he was not 
out of order.] 

" Mr. II. resumed: It is the newspaper which 
condemns or ridicules the well-meant efforts of 
an officer of the government to stop thfe circu- 
lation of incendiary publications in the slave- 
holding States, and which designedly magnifies 
the number and the cUbrts of the Northern abo- 



litionists. It is the newspaper which libels the 
whole North by representing the almost united 
people of that region to be insincL-re in thtir 
efforts to prevent the mischief of a fjw fanati- 
cal and misguided persons who are engaged in 
the abolition cause. 

" I have before me a copy of this newspaper 
(the United States Telegraph), filled to the 
brim with the exciting subject. It contains, 
among other things, a speech of an honorable 
senator (Mr. Leigh of Virginia), which I shall 
not be surprised soon to learn has been issued 
by thousands and tens of thousands from the 
abolition mint at New-York, for circulation in 
the South. Surely the honorable senator's 
speech, containing that part of the Channing 
pamplilet, is most likely to move the Southern 
slaves to a servile war, at the same time the 
Channing extracts and the speech itself are most 
admirably calculated to awaken the fears or 
arouse the indignation of their masters. The 
circulation of such a speech will effect the ob- 
ject of the abolitionists without trenching upon 
their funds. Let the agitation be kept up in 
Congress, and let this newspaper be extensively 
circulated in the South, filled with such speeches 
and such extracts as this exhibits, and little 
will be left for the Northern abolitionists to do. 
They need do no more than send in their peti- 
tions: the late printer of the Senate and his 
friends in Congi-ess, will create enough of ex- 
citement to effect everj^ object of those who di- 
rect the movements of the abolitionists." 

At the same moment that these petitions 
were presented in the Senate, their counterparts 
were presented in the House, with the same de- 
clarations from Northern representatives in favor 
of the rights of the South, and in depreciation 
of the number and importance of the abolition- 
ists in the North. Among these, Mr. Franklin 
Pierce, of New Hampshire, was one of the most 
emphatic on both points. He said : 

" This was not the last memorial of tlie some 
character which would be sent here. It was 
perfectly apparent that the question nnist be 
met now, or at some future time, fully and ex- 
plicitly, and such an expression of tliis House 
given as could leave no possible room to doul)t 
as to the opinions and §L'ntiinents entertained by 
its members. He (Mr. P.). indeed, considered 
the overwhelming vote of the House, the other 
day, laying a memorial of similar tenor, and, he 
believed, tlie same in terms, ujion the table, as 
fixing upon it tlie stamp of reprobation. He 
.supposed that all sections of the country would 
be satisfied with that expression ; but gentlemen 
seemed now t(> consider the vote as etjuivoial 
and evasive. He was unwilling that any imj>u- 
tation .'should rest ujion the Xortli, in con.-c- 
quence of the misguided and fanatical zeal of a 
fe^r — comparatively very few— who, however 



616 



TITTETY TEAKS' VIEW. 



honest miglit have been theii' purposes, he be- 
lieved had done incalculable mischief, and whose 
movements, lie knew, received no more sanction 
amonjj; tlie great mass of the people of the 
North, than they did at the South. For one, 
he (Mr. P.), while he would be the last to in- 
fringe upon any of the sacred reserved rights 
of the penple, was prepared to stamp with dis- 
approbation, in the most express and unequivo- 
cal terms, the whole movement upon this sub- 
ject. ^Ir. P. said he would not resume his seat 
without tendering to the gent.eman from Virgi- 
nia (Mr. Mason), just and generous as he always 
was, his acknowledgments for the admission 
frankly made in tlie opening of his remarks. 
He had said tluit, during the period that he had 
occupied a seat in this House (as Mr. P. under- 
stood him), he had never known six men scri- 
oush' disposed to interfere with the rights of 
the slaveholders at the South. Sir, said Mr. P., 
gentlemen may be assured there was no such 
disposition as a general sentiment prevailing 
among the people; at least he felt conhdencc in 
asserting that, among the people of the State 
which he had the honor in part to represent, 
there was not one in a hundred who did not 
entertain the most sacred regard for the rights 
of their Southern brethren — nay, not one in five 
hundred who would not have those rights pro- 
tected at any and every hazard. There was not 
the slightest disposition to interfere with any 
rights secured by the constitution, which binds 
together, and which he humbly hoped ever 
would bind together, this great and glorious 
confederacy as one f\imily. Mr. P. had only to 
say that, to some sweeping charges of improper 
interference, the action of the people of the 
North at home, during the last year, and the 
vote of their representatives here the other day, 
was a sufficient and conclusive answer." 

The newspaper named by Mr. Hill was en- 
tirely in the interest of Mr. Calhoun, and the 
course which it followed, and upon system, and 
incessantly to get up a slavery quarrel between 
the North and the South, was undeniable — every 
daily number of the paper containing the proof 
of its incendiary work. Mr. Calhoun would 
not reply to Mr. Hill, but would send a paper 
to the Secretary's table to be read in contradic- 
tion of his statements. INrr. Calhoiui then hand- 
ed to the Secretary a newspaper containing an 
article impugning the statement made by Mr. 
Pierce, in the House of Representatives, as to 
the small numlier of the abolitionists in the State 
of New Hampshire ; which was read, and which 
contained scun-ilous reflections on Mr. Pierce, 
and severe strictures on the state of slavery in 
the South. ]\rr. Hill asked for the title of the 
newspaper ; and it was given, " The Herald of 



Freedom." Mr. Hill said it was an abolition 
paper, printed, but not circulated, at Concord, 
New Hampshire. He said the same paper had 
been sent to him, and he saw in it one of Mr. 
Calhoun's speeches ; which was republished as 
good food for the abolitionists ; and said he 
thought the Senate was well employed in listen- 
ing to the reading of disgusting extracts from 
an hireling abolition paper, for the purpose of 
impugning the statements of a member of the 
House of Representatives, defending the South 
there, and who could not be here to defend him- 
self. It was also a breach of parliamentary law 
for a member in one House to attack what was 
said by a member in another. IMr. Pierce's 
statement had been heard with great satisfaction 
by all except Mr. Calhoun ; but to him it was 
so repugnant, as invalidating his assertion of a 
great aboUtion party in the North, that he could 
not refrain from this mode of contradicting it. 
It was felt by all as disorderly and improper, 
and the presiding officer then in the chair (Mr. 
Hubbard, from New Hampshire) felt himself 
called upon to excuse his own conduct in not 
having checked the reading of the article. He 
said : 

" He felt as if an apology was due from him 
to the Senate, for not having checked the read- 
ing of the paragraphs from the newspaper which 
had just been read bj^ the Secretary-. He was 
wholly ignorant of the contents of the paper, 
and could not have anticipated the purport of 
the article which the senator from South Caro- 
lina had requested the Secretary to read. He 
understood the senator to say that he wished 
the paper to be read, to show that the statement 
made by the senator from New Hampshire, as 
to the feelings and sentiments of the people of 
that State upon the subject of the abolition of 
slavery, was not correct. It certainly would 
have been out of order, for any senator to have 
a!), hided to the remarks made by a member of 
the House of Representatives, in debate ; and, 
in his judgment, it was equally out of order to 
permit i)aragraphs fro7n a newspaper to be read 
in the Senate, which went to impugn the course 
of any member of the other House; and he 
should not have permitted the paper to have 
been read, without the direction of the Senate, 
if he had been aware of the character of the 
article." 

Mr. Calhoun said he -was entitled to the floor 
and did not like to be interrupted by the chair 
he meant no disrespect to Mr. Pierce, " but 
wished the real state of things to be known"— 
as if an abolition new5pai)er was better author- 



ANNO 1836. ANDREW JACKSON, TRESIDENT. 



617 



ity than a statement from a member in his place 
in the House. It happened that Mr. Pierce was 
coming into the Senate Chamber as this reading 
scene was going on ; and, being greatly sur- 
prised, and feeling much aggrieved, and having 
no right to speak for himself, he spoke to the 
author of this View to maintain the truth of 
his statement against the scurrilous contradic- 
tion of it which had been read. Mr. Benton, 
therefore, stood up — 

" To say a word on the subject of Mr. Pierce, 
the member of the House of Representatives, 
from New Hampshire, whose statements in the 
House of Representatives had been contradicted 
in the newspaper article read at the Secretary's 
table. He had the pleasure of an intimate ac- 
quaintance with that gentleman, and the highest 
respect for him, both on his own account and that 
of his venerable and patriotic father, who was 
lately Governor of New Hampshire. It had so 
happened (said Mr. B.) that, in the very moment 
of the reading of this article, the member of the 
House of Representatives, wliose statement it 
contradicted, was coming into the Senate Cham- 
ber, and his whitening countenance showed the 
deep emotion excited in his bosom. The state- 
ment which that gentleman had made in the 
House was in the highest degree consolatory 
and agreeable to the people of the slaveholding 
States. He had said that not one in five hun- 
dred in his State was in favor of the abolition- 
ists : an expression understood by every bod}', 
not as an arithmetical proposition worked out 
by figures, but as a strong mode of declaring 
that these abolitionists were few in number. 
In that sense it was understood, and was a most 
welcome and agreeable piece of information to 
the people of the slaveholding States. The 
newspaper article contradicts him, and vaunts 
the number of the abolitionists, and the numer- 
ous signers to their petition. Now (said ^Ir. 
B.), the member of the House of Representa- 
tives (jMr. Pierce) has this moment informed 
me that he knows nothing of these petitions, 
and knows nothing to change his opinion .as to 
the small number of abolitionists in his State. 
Mr. B. thought, therefore, that his statement 
ought not to be considered as discredited by the 
newspaper pubHcation ; and he, for one, should 
still give faith to his opinion." 

In his eagerness to invalidate the statement 
of Mr. Pierce, Mr. Calhoun had overlooked a 
solecism of action in which it involved him. 
His bill to suppress the mail transmission of in- 
cendiary publications was still before the Senate, 
not yet decided ; and here was matter read in 
the Senate, and to go forth as part of it^; jiro- 
ceedings, the most incendiary and diabolical that 
had yet been seen. This oversight was perceived 



by the author of this View, who, after vindi- 
cating the statement of Mr. Pierce, went on to 
expose this solecism, and — 

•'Took up the bill reported by the select 
committee on incendiary puijlications, and read 
the section wliich forbade their transmission by 
mail, and subjected tlie postmasters to fine and 
loss of office, who would put them up for trans- 
mission ; and wished to know wliether this in- 
cendiary publication, which had Ijcen read at 
the Secretary's table, would be incluiled in the 
proliibition, after being so read, and tlius be- 
coming a part of our debates ? As a publica- 
tion in New Hampshire, it was clearly forbid ; 
as part of our congressional proceedings woiUil 
it still be forbid? There was a difficulty in 
this, he said, take it either away. If it could 
still be inculcated from this floor, then the jiro- 
hibition in the bill was mere child's j)lay ; if 
it could not, and all the city papers which con- 
tained it were to be stopped, then the other 
congressional proceedings in the same paper 
would be stopped also ; and thus the people 
would be prevented from knowing what their 
representatives were doing. It seemed to him 
to be but lame work to stop incendiary publi- 
cations in the villages where they were printed, 
and then to circulate them from this chamber 
among the proceedings of Congress ; and that, 
issuing from this centre, and spreading to all 
the points of the circumference of this extended 
Union, one reading here would give it ten 
thousand times more notoriety and dilliipion 
than the printing of it in the village could dti. 
He concluded with expressing his wi.-h that tiie 
reporters would not cop}' into their account of 
debate the paper that was read. It was too 
offensive to the member of the House [Mr. 
Pierce], and would be too disagreeable to the 
people of the slaveholding States, to be entitled 
to a place in our debates, and to become a part 
of our congressional history, to be ditlused over 
the country in gazettes, and trnnsmitted to pos- 
terity in the volumes of debates. He hojM'd 
they would all omit it." 

The reporters complied with this request, 
and the Congress debates were spared the pol- 
lution of this infusion of scurrility, and tho 
permanent record of t^iis abusive assault upon 
a member of the House because he was a friend 
to the South. But it made a deep impression 
upon senators; and Mr. King, of Gooi-gia. ad- 
verted to it a few days afterwards to show the 
strangeness of the scene — Southern senators 
attacking their Northern friends because they 
defended the South. He said : 

"It was known tliat tliere was a talented, 
patriotic, and higldy inthiential niemlH?r of tlio 
other House, from New Hampshire [Mr. 



618 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



Pierce], to whose diligence and determined 
eflbrts he had heard attributed, in a great de- 
gree, tlie present prostrate condition of the 
abolitionists in that State. He had been the 
open and active friend of the South from the be- 
ginning, and had encountered the hostility of 
the abolitionists in every form. He had made 
a statement of the strength and prospects of 
the al)olitionists in his State, near the com- 
mencement of the session, that was very grati- 
flying to the peoi^le of the South. This state- 
ment was corroborated b}- one of the senators 
from that State a few days after, and the sena- 
tor from Carolina rose, and, without due re- 
flection, he was very sure, drew from his pocket 
a dirty sheet, an abolition paper, containing a 
scurrilous article against the member from New 
Hampshire, which pronounced him an impostor 
and a liar. The same thing in effect had just been 
repeated by the senator from INIississippi against 
one of the best friends of the South, Governor 
Marcy, of New-York. [Here Mr. Calhoun 
rose to explain, and said he had intended, by 
the introduction of the paper, no disrespect to 
the member from New Hampshire ; and Mr. 
Black also rose to say he only wished to show 
the course the abolitionists were pursuing, and 
their future views.] Mr. King said he had been 
inter"upted by the senators, but corrected by 
neither of them. He was not attacking their 
motives, but only exposing their mistakes. The 
article read by his friend from Carolina was 
abusive of the member from New Hampshire, 
and contradicted his statements. The article 
read by his friend from Mississippi against Gov- 
ernor Marcy was of a similar character. It 
abused, menaced, and contradicted him. These 
abusive productions would seem to be credited 
and adopted by those who used them as evi- 
dence, and incorporated them in their speeches. 
Here, then, was a contest in the North be- 
tween the most open and avowed friends of the 
South and the abolitionists; and we had the 
strange exhibition of Southern gentlemen ap- 
parently espousing the cause of the latter, who 
were continually furnishing them evidence with 
which to aid them in the contest. Did gentle- 
men call this backing their friends ? What en- 
couragement did such treatment afford to our 
friends at the North to step forth in our be- 
half?" 

Mr. King did not limit himself to the defence 
of ]\Ir. Pierce, but went on to deny the increase 
of abolitionism at the North, and to show that 
it was dying out there until revived by agitation 
here. He said : 

" A great deal had been stated in one form or 
other, and in one quarter or other, as to the 
numbers and increase of these disturbers of the 
peace ; and he did not undertake to say what 
was the fact. He learned, and thought it pro- 
bable, that the}' had increased since the com- 



mencement of the session, and had heard also the 
increase attributed to the manner in which tlx) 
subject had been treated here. However this 
might be, what he insisted on was, that those 
base productions were no evidence of the fact, 
or of any fact ; and especially should not be used 
by Southern men, in opposition to the state- 
ments of high-minded, honorable men at the 
North, who were the active and efficient friends 
of the South." 

As an evidence of the manner in which the 
English emissary, George Thompson, had been 
treated in the North, upon whose labors so 
much stress had been laid in the South, ^Ir. 
King read from an English newspaper (the 
Leeds IMercury), Thompson's own account of 
his mission as written to his English employers ; 
thus: 

"Letters of a most distressing nature have 
been received from Mr. George Thompson, the 
zealous and devoted missionary of slave eman- 
cipation, who has gone from this country to the 
United States, and who writes from Boston. 
He says that ' the North (that is. New Eng- 
land, where slavery does not exist), has 
universally sympathized with the South,' in 
opposition to the abolitionists ; that ' the North 
has let fall the mask ; ' that ' merchants and 
mechanics, priests and politicians, have alike 
stood forth the defenders of Southern despots, 
and the furious denouncers of Northern philan- 
thropy ; ' that all parties of politics, especially 
the supporters of the two rivals for the presi- 
dential office (Van Buren and Webster), vie 
with each other in denouncing the abolitionists ; 
and that even religious men shun them, except 
when the abolitionists can fiiirly gain a hearing 
from them. With regard to himself, he speaks 
as follows : ' Rewards are offered for my abduc- 
tion and assassination ; and in every direction I 
meet with those who believe they would be 
doing God and their country service by depriv- 
ing me of life. I have appeared in public, and 
some of my escapes from the hands of my foes 
have been truly providential. On Friday last, 
I narrowly escaped losing my life in Concord, 
New Hampshire.' 'Boston, September 11. — 
This morning a short gallows was found standr- 
ing opposite the door of my house, 23 Bay-street, 
in this city, now occupied by Garri.son. Two 
halters hung from the beam, with the words 
above them, By order of Judge Lynch ! ' " 

Mr. Hill corroborated the account which this 
emissary gave of his disastrous mission, and 
added that he had escaped from Concord in the 
night, and in woman's clothes : and then said : 

" The present agitation in the North is kept 
up by the application of money ; it is a state of 
things altogether forced. Agents are hired, dis- 



ANNO 1836. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



619 



guised in the character of mniisters of the Gos- 
pel, to preach abolition of slavery where slavery 
does not exist; and presses are kept in constant 
employment to scatter abolition publications 
through the country. Deny the right of petition 
to the misguided men and women who are in- 
duced from no bad motive to petition for tlie 
abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, 
and you do more to increase their numbers than 
will thousands of dollars paid to the emissaries 
who traverse the country to distribute abolition 
tracts and to spread abolition doctrines. Con- 
tinue to debate abolition in either branch of 
Congress, and you more eficctually subserve 
the incendiary views of the movers of abolition 
than any thing they can do for themselves. It 
may suit those who have been disappointed in 
all their political projects, to try what this sub- 
ject of abolition will now avail them. Such men 
will be likely .to find, in the end, that the peo- 
ple have too strong attachment for that happy 
Union, to which we owe all our prosperity and 
happiness, to be thrown from their propriety at 
every agitating blast which may be blown across 
the land." 

Mr. Webster gave his opinion in favor of re- 
ceiving the petitions, not to grant their prayer, 
but to yield to a constitutional right on the part 
of the petitioners ; and said : 

" He thought they ought to be received, re- 
ferred, and considered. That was what was 
usually done with petitions on other subjects, 
and what had been uniformly done, heretofore, 
with petitions on this subject also. Those who 
believed they had an undoubted right to petition, 
and that Congress had undoubted constitutional 
authority over the subjects to which their peti- 
tions related, would not be satisfied with a re- 
fusal to receive the petitions, nor with a formal 
reception of them, followed by an immediate 
vote rejecting their prayer. In parliamentary 
.„rms there was some difierence between these 
two modes of proceeding, but it would be con- 
sidered as little else than a difference in mere 
form. He thought the question must at some 
time be met, considered, and discussed. In this 
matter, as in others. Congress must stand on its 
reasons. It was in vain to attempt to shut the 
door against petitions, and expect in that way 
to avoid discussion. On the presentment of the 
first of these petitions, he had been of opinion 
that it ought to be referred to the proper com- 
mittee. He was of that oj)inion still. The sub- 
ject could not be slified. It must be discussed, 
and he wished it should be discussed calm!}', 
dispassionately, and fully, in all its branches, and 
all its bearings. To reject the prayer of a pe- 
tition at once, without reference or considera- 
tion, was not respectful ; and in this case noth- 
ing could be possibly gained by going out of the 
usual course of respectful consideration." 

The trial votes were had upon the petition 



of the Society of Friends, the Cain petition ; 
and on Mr. Calhoun's motion to refuse to receive 
it. His motion was largely rejected — 35 to 10. 
The vote to receive was : Messrs. Benton, Brown, 
Buchanan, Clay, Clayton, Crittenden, Davis, 
Ewingof Illinois, Ewing of Ohio, Goldsborough, 
Grundy, Hendricks, Hill, Hubbard, Kent, King 
of Alabama^ King of Georgia, Knight, Linn, Mc- 
Kean, Morris, Naudain, Niles. Prentiss, Bobbins, 
Kobinson, Buggies, Shcpley, Southard, Swift, 
Tallmadge, Tipton, Tomlinsou, "Wall, "Webster, 
Wright. The nays were : Messrs. Black, Cal- 
houn, Cuthbert, Leigh, Moore, Nicholas, Porter, 
Preston, Walker, White. 

The motion to reject the petition being tlius 
lost (only a meagre minority of the Southern 
members voting for it), the motion to reject its 
prayer next came on; and on that motion Mr. 
Caliioun refused to vote, saying : 

" The Senate has by voting to receive this 
petition, on the ground on which the reception 
was placed, assumed the principle tliat we are 
bound to receive petitions to abolish slavery, 
whether in this District or the States; that is, 
to take jurisdiction of the question of abolishing 
slavery whenever and in whatever manner the 
abolitionists may think proper to present the 
question. He considered this decision pregnant 
with consequences of the most disasti'ous char- 
acter. When and how they were to occur it 
was not for him to predict ; but ho could not 
be mistaken in the ftict that there must follow 
a long train of evils. What, he would ask, must 
hereafter be the condition on this floor of the 
senators from the slaveholding States ? No one 
can expect that what has been done will arrest 
the progress of the abolitionists. Its eflects must 
be the opposite, and instead of diminishing must 
greatly increase the number of the petitions. 
Under the decision of the Senate, we of the 
South are doomed to sit here and receive in si- 
lence, however outrageous or abusive in their 
language towards us and those whom we re- 
present, the petitions of the iuceniliarios who 
are making war on our institutions. Nay. more, 
we are bound, without the power of resistnncu 
to see the Senate, at the request of these incen- 
diaries, whenever they think proper to iH-tilion, 
extend its jurisdiction on the subject of slavery 
over the States as well as this District. Thus 
deprived of all power of etroctual resistance.cau 
any thing bo cousidori-d more liopeloss an<l de- 
grading than our situation ; to sit lioro. year 
after year, session after session, hearing our- 
selves and our constituents vililiod by tiiousamls 
of incendiary publications in tho form of peti- 
tions, of winch tho Senate, by its decision, is 
bound to take jurisdiction, and against which 
we must rise like culprits to <lofeud ourselves, 
or permit them to go uncoutmdictod and ua- 



620 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



resisted? We must ultimately be not only de- 
graded in our own estimation and that of the 
world, but be exhausted and v/orn out in such a 
contest." 

Tlfts was a most unjustifiable assumption on 
the part of Mr. Calhoun, to say that in voting 
to receive this petition, confined to slavery in 
the District of Columbia, the Senate took juris- 
diction of the question in the States — jurisdiction 
of the question of abolishing slavery whenever, 
aud in whatever manner, the abolitionists might 
ask. It was unjustifiable towards the Senate, 
and giving a false alarm to the South. The 
thirty-five senators voting to receive the peti- 
tion wholly repudiated the idea of interfering 
with slavery in the States. Twelve of them 
were from the slaveholding States, so that Mr. 
Calhoun was outvoted in his own half of the 
Union. The petition itself was confined to the 
object of emancif)atiou and the suppression of 
the slave trade in the District of Columbia, 
where it alleged, and truly that Congress pos- 
sessed jurisdiction ; and there was nothing 
either in the prayer, or in the language of the 
petition to justify the inferences drawn from 
its reception, or to justify the assumption that 
it was an insult aud outrage to the senators 
from the slaveholding States. It was a brief 
and temperate memorial in these words : 

" The memorial of Cain Quarterly Meeting of 
the Religious Society of Friends, commonly 
called Quakers, respectfully represents; That, 
having long felt deep sympathy with that portion 
of tlie inhabitants of these United States which 
is held in bondage, and having no doubt that 
the happiness and interests, moral and pecu- 
niary, of both master and slave, and our whole 
coniinunity, would be greatly promoted if the 
inestimable right to liberty was extended equal- 
ly to all, we contemplate with extreme regret 
that the District of Columbia, over which you 
possess entire control, is acknowledged to be 
one of the greatest marts for the tralfic in the 
persons of human beings in the known world, 
notwithstanding the principles of the constitu- 
tion declare that all men have an unalienable 
right to the blessing of liberty. We therefore 
earnestly desire that you will enact such laws 
as will secure the right of freedom to ever}'^ hu- 
man being residing within the constitutional 
jurisdiction of Congress, and prohibit every 
species of traffic in the persons of men, which 
is as inconsistent in principle and inhuman in 
practice as the foreign slave trade." 

This was the petition. It was in favor of 
emancipation in the District, and prayed the 
suppression of the slave trade in the District ; 



and neither of these objects had any relation 
to emancipation or the slave trade, in the States. 
Mr. Preston, the colleague of Mr. Calhoun, gave 
his reasons for voting to reject the prajer of the 
petition, having failed in his first object to re- 
ject the petition itself: and Mr. Davis, of Massa- 
chusetts, repulsed the inferences and assump- 
tions of Mr. Calhoun in consequence of the vote 
to receive the petition. He denied the justice 
of any suggestion that it portended mischief to 
the South, to the constitution, or to the Union ; 
or that it was to make the District the head- 
quarters of abolitionists, and the stepping-stone 
and entering wedge to the attack of slavery in 
the States : and said : 

" Neither the petition on which the debate 
had arisen, nor any other that he had seen, pro- 
posed directly or indirectly to disturb the Union, 
unless the abolition of slavery in this District, 
or the suppression or regulation of the slave 
trade within it, would have that effect. For 
himself. Mr. D. believed no purpose could be 
further than this from the minds of the peti- 
tioners. He could not determine what thoughts 
or motives might be in the minds of men, but 
he judged by what was revealed ; and he could 
not persuade himself that these petitioners 
were not attached to the Union and that they 
had (as had been suggested) any ulterior pur- 
pose of making this District the head-quarters 
of future operation — the stronghold of anti- 
slavery — the stepping-stone to an attack upon 
the constitutional rights of the South. He was 
obliged to repudiate these inferences as unjust, 
for lie had seen no proof to sustain them in any 
of the petitions that had come here. The peti- 
tioners entertained opinions coincident with 
their fellow-citizens as to the power of Con- 
gress to legislate in regard to slavery in this 
District ; and being desirous that slavery shou.^ 
cease here, if it could be abolished upon just 
principles ; and, if not, that the traffic carried 
on here from other quarters should be sup- 
pressed or regulated, they came here to ask 
Congress to investigate the matter. This was 
all ; and he could see no evidence in it of a clan- 
destine purpose to disregard the constitution or 
to disturb the Union." 

The vote was almost unanimous on Mr. 
Buchanan's motion — 34 to ; and those six 
against it, not because they were in favor of 
granting the prayer of the memorialists, but 
because they believed that the petition ought 
to be referred to a committee, reported upon, 
aud then rejected — which was the ancient uiode 
of treating such petitions ; and also the mode 
in which they Avere now treated in the House 
of Representatives. The vote was : 



AN^^O 1836. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



C21 



"Yeas — IMessrs. Benton, Black, Brown, Bu- 
chanan, Clay, Crittenden, Cuthbert, Ewing of 
Illinois, Ewing of Ohio, Goldsborongh, Grundy, 
Hill, Hubbard, King of Alabama, King of Geor- 
gia, Leigh, Linn, McKean, Moore, Nicholas, 
Niles, Porter, Preston, Bobbins, Robinson, Bug- 
gies, Shepley, Tallmadge, Tipton Tomhnson, 
Walker, Wall, White, Wright— 34. 

"Nays — Messrs. Davis, Hendricks, Knight, 
Prentiss, Swift, Webster — 6." 

After this decision, Mr. Webstor gave notice 
that he had in hand several similar petitions, 
which he had forborne to present till this one 
from Pennsylvania should be disposed of; and 
that now he should, on an early occasion, present 
them, and move to dispose of them in the wav 
in which it had been his opinion from the first 
that all such petitions should have been treated ; 
that is, referred to a committee for considera- 
tion and inquiry. 

The action of the House of Representatives 
will now be seen on the subject of these 
petitions ; for duplicates of the same gene- 
rally went to that body ; and there, under the 
lead of a South Carolina member, and with 
large majorities of the House, they were dis- 
posed of very differently from the way that Mr. 
Calhoun demanded in the Senate, and in the 
way that he deemed so fatal to the slaveholdinc 
States. Mr. Henrj^ L. Pinckney, of the Charles- 
ton district, moved that it be — 

" Resolved^ That all the memorials which 
have been offered, or may hereafter be presented 
to this House, praying for the abolition of 
slavery in the District of Columbia ; and also 
the resolutions offered by an honorable member 
from Maine (iMr. Jarvis), with the amendment 
thereto proposed by an honorable memljer from 
Virginia (Mr. Wise), together with every 
other paper or proposition that may be submit- 
ted in relation to the subject, be referred to a 
select committee, with instructions to report : 
that Congress possesses no constitutional autlior- 
ity to interfere in any way with tlio institution 
of slavery in any of the States of this confede- 
racy: and that in the opinion of this House, 
Congress ought not to interfere, in any waj", 
with slavery in the District of Columbia, be- 
cause it would be a violation of the public faith, 
unwise, impolitic, and dangerous to the Union. 
Assigning such reasons for these conclusions, 
as, in the judgment of the committee, ma}' be 
best calculated to enlighten the public mind, to 
allay excitement, to repress agitation, to secure 
and maintain the just rights of the slave-holding 
States, and of the people of this District, and 
to restore harmony and tranquillity amongst 
the various sections of this Union." 



On putting the question the motion was di- 
vided, so as to have a separate vote on the 
different propositions of the resolve ; and each 
was carried by large, and some by nearly unan- 
imous majorities. On the first division, To 
refer all the memorials to a select committee, 
the vote was 174 to 48. On the second division, 
That Congress possesses no constitutional au- 
thority to interfere, in any way, with the insti- 
tution of slavery in any of the States, the vote 
was 201 to 7 — the seven negatives being Mr. 
John Quincy Adams, Mr. Harmcr Denny of 
Pennsylvania, Mr. William Jackson, ^Ir. Horace 
Everett of Vermont, Mr. Rice Garland of 
Louisiana, Mr. Thomas Glascock of Georgia, 
Mr. William Jackson, Mr. John Robertson of 
Virginia ; and they, because opposed to voting 
on such a proposition, deemed gratuitous ^nd 
intermeddling. On the third division, of the 
resolve. That Congress ought not to interfere 
in any way with slavery in the District of 
Columbia, the vote stood 163 to 47. And on 
the fourth division, giving as reasons for such 
non-interference. Because it would be a viola- 
tion of the public faith, unwise, impolitic, and 
dangerous to the Union, the vote was, 127 to 75. 
On the last division. To assign reasons for this 
report, the vote stood 107 to 6. So the com- 
mittee was ordered, and consisted of Mr. 
Pinckney, I\Ir. Hamer of Ohio, Mr, Pierce of 
New Hampshire, Mr. Hardin of Kentuckyj 
Mr. Jarvis of Maine, Mr. Owens of Georgia, 
Mr. Muhlenberg of Pennsjdvania, Mr. Drom- 
goole of Virginia, and Mr. Turrill of New-York. 
The committee reported, and digested their re- 
port into two resolutions, first, That Congress 
possesses no constitutional autliority to interfere, 
in any way, with the institution of slavery in 
any State of this confederacy. Scconcllij, That 
Congress ought not to interfere in any way 
with slavery in the District of Columbia. And, 
''for the purpose of arresting agitation, and 
restoring tranquillity to tlic public mind," ihcy 
recommended the adoption of tiiis resolve : 
" That all petitions, memorials, resolutions, pi-o- 
positions, or papers relating in any way to 
the subject of slavery, or the abolition of slavery, 
shall, without either being printed or rofen\«d, 
be laid upon the table; and that no further 
action whatever be had upun them." All these 
resolutions were adojjted ; ami the latter one by 
a vote of 117 to 68; so that the House came 



622 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW 



to the same course which the Senate had taken 
in relation to these memorials. Mr. Adams, 
•whose votes, taken by themselves, might pre- 
sent him as acting with the abolitionists, was 
entirely opposed to their objects, and was 
governed by a sense of what appeared to him 
to be the right of petition, and also the most 
effectual way of putting an end to an agitation 
which he sincerely deprecated. And on this 
point it is right that he should be heard for 
himself, as speaking for himself when Mr. 
Pinckney's motion was before the House. He 
then said : 

" But, sir, not being in favor of the ol ject of 
the petitions, I then gave notice to the House and 
to the country, that upon the supposition that 
tliesc petitions had been transmitted to me un- 
der the expectation that I should present them, 
I felt it my duty to say, I should not support 
them. And, sir, the reason which I gave at that 
time for declining to support them was precisely 
the same reason which the gentleman from Vir- 
ginia now gives for reconsidering this motion — 
namely, to keep the discussion of the subject 
out of the House. I said, sir, that I believed 
this discussion would bo altogether unprofitable 
to the House and to the country ; but, in de- 
ference to the sacred right of petition, I moved 
tliat these fifteen petitions, all of which were 
numerously signed, should be referred to the 
Committee on the District of Columbia, at the 
head of which was, at that time, a distinguished 
citizen of Virginia, now, I regret to say — and the 
wliole country has occasion to regret — no more. 
These petitions were thus referred, and, after a 
short period of time, the chairman of the Com- 
mittee on the District of Columbia made a re- 
port to this House, which report was read, and 
unanimously accepted ; and nothing more has 
been heard of these petitions from that day to 
this. In taking the course I then took, I was 
not sustained by the unanimous voice of my own 
constituents ; there were many among them, 
persons as respectable and as entitled to consid- 
eration as any others, who disapproved of the 
course I pursued on that occasion. 

" Attempts were made within the district I 
then represented to get up meetings of the peo- 
ple to instruct me to pursue a different course, 
or to multiply petitions of the same character. 
These efforts were continued' during the whole 
of that long session of Congress ; but, I am grati- 
fied to add, without any other result than that, 
from one single town of the district wliich I had 
the honor to represent, a solitary petition was 
forwarded before the close of the session, with a 
request that I would i)rcsent it to the House. 
Sir. I did present it, and it was referred to the 
same Committee on the District of Columljia, 
and I believe nothing more has been heard of it 
since. From the experience of this session, I 



was perfectly satisfied that the true and only 
method of keeping this subject out of discussion 
was, to take that course ; to refer all petitions 
of this kind to the Committee on the District of 
Columbia, or some other committee of the 
House, to receive their report, and to accept it 
imanimously. This does equal justice to all 
pai-ties in the country ; it avoids the discussion 
of this agitating cjuestion on the one hand, 
and, on the other, it pa3'S a due respect to 
the right of the constituent to petition. Two 
years afterwards, similar petitions were present- 
ed, and at that time an effort made, without suc- 
cess, to do that which has now been done suc- 
cessfully in one instance. An effort was made 
to lay these petitions on the table ; the House 
did not accede to the prqposition : they referred 
the petitions as they had been before referred, 
and with the same result. For, from the mo- 
ment that these petitions are referred to the 
Committee on the District of Columbia, they go 
to the family vault ' of all the Capulets,' and 
j^ou will never hear of them afterwards. 

" At the first session of the last Congress, a 
gentleman from the State of New-York, a dis- 
tinguished member of this House, now no longer 
here, which I regret to say, although I do not 
doubt that his place is well supplied, presented 
one or more petitions to this effect, and delivered 
a long and eloquent speech of two hours in sup- 
port of them. And what was the result 1 He 
was not answered : not a word was said, but the 
vote of the House was taken ; the petitions were 
referred to the Committe on the District, and 
we have heard nothing moi-e of them since. At 
the same session, or probably at the very last 
session, a distinguished member of this House, 
from tlie State of Connecticut, presented one or 
more petitions to the same effect, and declared 
in his place that he himself concurred in all the 
opinions expressed. Did this declaration light 
up tlie flame of discord in this House ? Sir, he 
was heard with patience and complacency. He 
moved the reference of the petitions to the 
Committee on the District of Columbia, and 
there they went to sleep the sleep of death. Mr. 
Adams, speaking from recollection, was [the re- 
porter is requested by him to state] mistaken 
with respect to the reference of tlie petitions 
presented at the last session of Congress to the 
committee. They were then for tlie first time 
laid on the table, as was the motion to print 
one of them. At the preceding session of the 
last Congress, as at all tbrmer times, all such peti- 
tions had been refen-ed to committees and print- 
ed when so desired. Why not ado[)t the same 
course now? Here is a petition which has been 
already referred to the Committee on the Dis- 
trict of Columbia. Leave it there, and, my word 
for it, sir, you will have just such a result as has 
taken place time after time bef )rc. Y'our Com- 
mittee on the District certainly is not an abolition 
cominittce. You will have a fit, proper, and able 
report from them ; the House, sub silentio, will 
, adopt it, and you will hear no more about it. 



ANNO 1836. ANDREW JACKSON, TRESIDENT. 



623 



But if you are to reconsider the vote, and to lay 

these petitions on the table ; if you come to the 
resolution that this House will not receive any 
more petitions, what will be the consequence ? 
In a large portion of this country every individual 
member who votes with you will be left at home 
at the next election, and some one will be sent 
who is not prepared to lay these petitions on the 
table." 

There was certainly reason in what Mr. Ad- 
ams proposed, and encouragement to adopt his 
course, from the good effect which had already 
attended it in other cases ; and from the further 
good effect Avhich he affirmed, that, in taking 
that course, the committee and the House would 
have come to the same conclusion by a unani- 
mous, instead of a divided vote, as at present. 
His course was also conformable to that of the 
earliest action of Congress upon the subject. It 
was in the session of Congress of 1789-'90 — be- 
ing the first under the constitution — that the two 
questions of abolishing the foreign slave trade, 
and of providing for domestic emancipation, came 
before it ; and tlien, as in the case of the Cain 
Memorial, from the Religious Society of Friends, 
there was discussion as to the mode of acting 
upon it — which ended in referring the memorial 
to a special committee, without instructions. That 
committee, a majority boing from the non-slave- 
holding States, reported against the memorial on 
both points ; and on the question of emancipation 
in the States, the resolve which the committee 
recommended (after having been slightly altered 
in phraseology), read thus : " That Congress 
have no authority to interfere in the emanci- 
pation of slaves, or in the treatment of them 
within any of the States ; it remaining with 
the several States to provide any regulations 
therein which humanity and true policy may 
require.'''' And under this resolve, and this treat- 
ment of the subject, the slavery question was then 
quieted; and remained so until revived in our own 
time. In the discussion which then took place Mr. 
Madison was entirely in favor of sending the pe- 
tition to a committee ; and thought the only way 
to get up an agitation in the country, would be 
by opposing that course. He said : 

" The question of sending the petition to a 
committee was no otherwise important than as 



gentlemen made it so by their serious opposi- 
tion. Had they permitted the commitment of 
the memorial, as a matter of course, no notice 
would have been taken of it out of doors : it 
could never have been blown up into a decision 
of the question respecting the discouragement 
of the African slave trade, nor alarm the owners 
with an apprehension that the general govern- 
ment were about to abolish slavery in all the 
States. Such things are not contemplated by 
any gentleman, but they excite alarm by their 
extended objections to committing the me- 
morials. The debate has taken a .«erious turn ; 
and it will be owing to this alone if an alarm is 
created : for, had the memorial been treated in 
the usual way, it would have been considered, 
as a matter of course ; and a report might have 
been made so as to give general satisfaction. 
If there was the slightest tendency by the com- 
mitment to break in upon the constitution, he 
would object to it: but he did not see upon 
what ground such an event could be appre- 
hended. The petition did not contemplate even 
a breach of the constitution : it prayed, in gene- 
ral terms, for the interference of Congress so far 
as they were constitutionally authorized." 

This chapter opens and concludes with the words 
of INIr. Madison. It is beautiful to behold the 
wise, just, and consistent course of that virtuous 
and patriotic man — the same from the beginning 
to the ending of his life ; and always in harmony 
with the sanctity of the laws, the honor and in- 
terests of his country, and the peace of his fellow- 
citizens. I\Iay his example not be lost upon 
us. This chapter has been copious on the sub- 
ject of slavery. It relates to a period when a 
new point of departure was taken on the slave 
question ; when the question was carried into 
Congress with avowed alternatives of dissolving 
the Union ; and conducted in a way to show 
that dissolution was an object to be attained, 
not prevented ; and this being the starting poini 
of the slavery agitation which has since menaced 
the Union, it is right that every citizen should 
have a clear view of its origin, progress, and 
design. From the beginning of the Jlissouri 
controvers}'- up to the year 1835, the author of 
this View looked to the North as the point of 
danger from the slavery agitation: since tliat 
time he has looked to the South for that danger, 
as Mr. ]\Iadison did.two years earlier. Equally 
opposed to it in either quarter, he has opposed it 
in both. 



624 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



CHAPTER CXXXVI. 

KEMOVAL OP THK CHEROKEES FROM GEORGIA. 

The removal of the Creek Indians from this 
State was accomplished hy the treaty of 1820, 
and that satisfied the obligations of the United 
States to Georgia, under the compact of 1802, 
so far as the Creek tribe was concerned. But 
the same obligation remained with respect to the 
Cherokees, contracted at the same time, and 
founded on the same valuable consideration, 
namely : the cession by Georgia to the United 
States of her western territory, now constituting 
the two States of Alabama and IMississippi. 
And twenty-five years' delay, and under inces- 
sant application, the compact had been carried 
into effect with respect to the Creeks ; it was 
now thirty-five 3-ears since it was formed, and 
it still remained unexecuted with respect to the 
Cherokees. Georgia was impatient and impor- 
tunate, and justly so, for the removal of this 
tribe, the last remaining obstacle to the full en- 
joyment of all her territory. General Jackson 
was equr-llv anxious to effect the removal, both 
as an act of justice to Georgia, and also to Ala- 
bama (part of whose territory was likewise 
covered bj' the Cherokees), and also to com- 
plete the business of the total removal of all 
the Indians from the east to the west side of 
the Mississippi. It was the only tribe remain- 
ing in any of the States, and he was in the last 
year of his presidency, and the time becoming 
short, as well as the occasion urgent, and the 
question becoming more complex and difficult. 
Part of the tribe had removed long before. 
Faction split the remainder that staid behind. 
Intrusive counsellors, chiefly from the Northern 
States, came in to inflame dissension, aggravate 
difficulties, and impede removal. For climax 
to this state of things, party spirit laid hold of 
it, and the politicians in opposition to General 
Jackson endeavored to turn it to the prejudice 
of his administration. Notliing daunted by this 
combination of obstacles, General Jackson pur- 
sued his plan with firmness and vigor, well 
seconded by his Sccretarj' at War, Mr. Cass — 
the War Department being then charged with 
the administration of the Indian affairs. In the 
autumn of 1835, a commission had been ap- 



pointed to treat with the half tribe in Georgia 
and Alabama. It was very judiciously composed 
to accomplish its purpose, being partly military 
and partly ecclesiastic. General William Car- 
roll, of Tennessee, well known to all the Southern 
Indians as a brave and humane warrior, and the 
Reverend John F. Schermerhom, of New-York, 
well known as a missionary laborer, composed 
the commissiom; and it had all the success 
which the President expected. 

In the winter of 1835-'36, a treaty was nego- 
tiated, by which the Cherokees, making clean 
disposal of all their possessions east of the 
Mississippi, ceded the whole, and agreed to go 
West, to join the half tribe beyond that river. 
The consideration paid them was ample, and 
besides the moneyed consideration, they had 
large inducements, founded in views of their 
own welfare, to make the removal. These in- 
ducements were set out by themselves in the 
preamble to the treaty, and were declared to 
be : "A desire to get rid of the difficulties ex- 
perienced by a residence within the settled parts 
of the United States ; and to reunite their peo- 
ple, by joining those who had crossed the Mis- 
sissippi ; and to live in a' comitry beyond the 
limits of State sovereignties, and where they 
could establish and enjoy a government of their 
choice, and perpetuate a state of society, which 
might be most consonant with their views, habits, 
and condition, and which might tend to their in- 
dividual comfort, and their advancement in civili- 
zation." These were sensible reasons for desiring 
a removal, and, added to the moneyed considera- 
tion, made it immensely desirable to the Indians. 
The direct consideration was five millions of 
dollars, which, added to stipulations to pay for 
the improvements on the ceded lands — to defray 
the expenses of removal to their new homes be- 
yond the Mississippi — to subsist them for one 
year after their arrival — to commute school 
funds and annuities — to allow pre-emptions and 
pay for reserves — with some liberal grants of 
money from Congress, for the sake of quieting 
complaints — and some large departmental al- 
lowances, amovmted, in the whole, to more than 
twelve millions of dollars ! Being almost as 
much for their single extinction of Indian title 
in the corner of two States, as the whole prov- 
ince of Louisiana cost ! And this in addition to 
seven millions of acres granted for their new 
home, and making a larger and a better home 



ANNO 1836. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



G25 



than the one they had left. Considered as a 
moneyed transaction, the advantage was alto- 
gether, and out of all proportion, on the side of 
the Indians ; but relief to the States, and quiet 
to the Indians, and the completion of a wise and 
humane policy, were overruling considerations, 
which sanctioned the enormity of the amount 
paid. 

Advantageous as this treaty was to the In- 
dians, and desirable as it was to both parties, it 
was earnestly opposed in the Senate ; and only 
saved by one vote. The discontented party of 
the Cherokees, and the intrusive counsellors, 
and party spirit, pursued it to Washington city, 
and organized an opposition to it, headed by the 
great chiefs then opposed to the administration 
of General Jackson — iMr. Clay, Mr. Webster, 
and Mr. Calhoun. Immediately after the treaty 
was communicated to the Senate, Mr. Clay pre- 
sented a memorial and protest against it from 
the " Cherokee nation," as they were entitled by 
the faction that protested ; and also memorials 
from several individual Cherokees ; all which 
were printed and referred to the Senate's Com- 
mittee on Indian AflFairs, and duly considered 
when the merits of the treaty came to be ex- 
amined. The examination was long and close, 
extending at intervals for nearly three months 
— from March 7th to the end of May — and as- 
suming very nearly a complete party aspect. 
On the 18th of May Mr. Clay made a motion 
which, as disclosing the grounds of the opposi- 
tion to the treaty, deserves to be set out in its 
own words. It was a motion to reject the reso- 
lution of ratification, and to adopt this resolve 
in its place : " That the instrument of writing, 
purporting to be a treaty concluded at New 
Echota on the 29th of December, 1835, between 
the United States and the chiefs, head men and 
people of the Cherokee tribe of Indians, and the 
supplementary articles thereto annexed, were 
not made and concluded by authority, on the 
part of the Cherokee tribe, competent to bind 
it ; and, therefore, without reference to the terms 
and conditions of the said agreement and sup- 
plementary articles, the Senate cannot consent 
to and advise the ratification thereof, as a valid 
treaty, binding upon the Cherokee tribe or na- 
tion ; " concluding with a recommendation to 
the President to treat again with the Cherokees 
east of the Mississippi for the whole, or any of 
their possessions on this side of that river. 

Vol. I.— 40 



The vote on this resolve and recommendation 
was, 29 yeas to 15 nays ; and it requiring two- 
thirds to adopt it, it was, of course, lost. But it 
showed that the treaty itself was in imminent 
danger of being lost, and would actually be lo>t, 
in a vote, as the Senate then stood. The whole 
number of the Senate was forty-eight; only 
forty-four had voted. There were four members 
absent, and unless two of these could be got in 
and vote with the fiiends of the treat}-, and n« 
one got in on the other side, the treaty wa.s re- 
jected. It was a close pinch, and made me re- 
collect what I have often heard Mr. Randolph 
say, that there were always members to get out 
of the way at a pinching vote, or to lend a hand 
at a pinching vote. Fortunately the four ab- 
sent senators were classified as friends of the 
administration, and two of them came in to our 
side, the other two refusing to go to the other 
side : thus saving the treaty by one vote. The 
vote stood, thirty-one for the treaty, fifteen 
against it ; and it was only saved by a strong 
Northern vote. The yeas were : Messrs. Benton 
of Missouri ; Black of Mississippi ; Bro^\-n of 
North Carolina ; Buchanan of Pennsylvania ; 
Cuthbert of Georgia ; Ewing of Illinois ; Golds- 
borough of Maryland; Grundy of Tennessee; 
Hendricks of Indiana; Hubbard of New Hamp- 
shire ; Kent of Maryland ; King of Alabama ; 
King of Georgia ; Linn of Missouri ; McKcan 
of Pennsj'lvania ; Mangum of North Carolina ; 
Moore of Alabama ; Morris of Ohio ; Niles of 
Connecticut; Preston of South Carolina ; Kives 
of Virginia ; Ilobinson of Illinois ; Buggies and 
Shepley of Maine ; N. P. Tallmadge of New- 
York ; Tipton of Illinois ; Walker, of Mississip- 
pi ; Wall of New Jersey ; White of Tennessee ; 
and Wright of New- York — 31. The nays were : 
Messrs. Calhoun of South Carolina; Clay of 
Kentucky; Clayton of Delaware; Crittenden 
of Kentucky ; Davis of Massachusetts ; Ewing of 
Ohio ; Leigh of Virginia ; Naudain of Delaware , 
Porter of Louisiana; Prentiss of Vermont; 
Bobbins of Ilhode Island; Soutlianl of New 
Jersey ; Swift of Vermont ; Tomlinson of Con- 
necticut; and Webster of Massachusetts— 15. 
Thus the treaty was barely saved. One vote 
less in its favor, or one more against it, and it 
would have been lost. Two members were ab- 
sent. If either had come in and voted with the . 
opposition, it would have been lost. It was 
saved by the free State vote — by the fourteen 



626 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW, 



free State affirmative votes, which precisely ba- 
lanced and neutralized the seven slave State 
negatives. If any one of these fourteen had 
voted with the negatives, or even been absent at 
the vote, the treaty would have been lost ; and 
thus the South is indebted to the North for this 
most important treaty, which completed the 
relief of the Southern States — the Chickasaws, 
Creeks and Choctaws having previously agreed 
to remove, and tlie treaties with them (except 
with the Creeks) having been ratified without 
serious opposition. 

The ratification of this treaty for the removal 
of the Cherokees was one of the most difficult 
and delicate questions which we ever had to 
manage, and in which success seemed to be im- 
possible up to the last moment. It was a 
Southern question, involving an extension of 
slaverj^, and was opposed b}^ all three of the 
great opposition leaders ; who only required a 
minority of one third to make good their point. 
At best, it required a good Northern vote, in 
addition to the undivided South, to carry the 
treaty ; but, with the South divided, it seemed 
hardly possible to obtain the requisite number 
to make up for that defection ; yet it was done.' 
and done at the very time that the systematic 
plan had commenced, to charge the Northern 
States with a design to abolish slavery in the 
South. And I, who write history, not for ap- 
plause, but for the sake of the instruction which 
it affords, gather up these dry details from the 
neglected documents in which they lie hidden, 
and bring them forth to the knowledge and con- 
sideration of all candid and impartial men, that 
they may see the just and fraternal spirit in 
which the free States then acted towards their 
brethren of the South. Nor can it fail to be ob- 
served, as a curious contrast, that, in the very 
moment that Mr. Calhoun was seeing cause for 
Southern alai-m lest the North should abolish 
slavery in the South, the Northern senators 
were exteuding the area of slavery in Georgia 
by converting Indian soil into slave soil : and 
that against strenuous exertions made by him- 
self. 



CHAPTER CXXXVII. 



EXTENSION OF THE MISSOUEI BOUNDAKT. 



This was a measure of great moment to Missouri, 
and full of difficulties in itself, and requiring a 
double process to accomplish it — an act of Con- 
gress to extend the boundary, and an Indian 
treaty to remove the Indians to a new home. 
It was to extend the existing boundary of the 
State so as to include a triangle between the ex- 
isting line and the Missouri River, large enough 
to form seven counties of the first class, and fer- 
tile enough to sustain the densest population. 
The difficulties were threefold : 1. To make still 
larger a State which was already one of the 
largest in the Union. 2. To remove Indians 
from a possession which had just been assigned 
to them in perpetuity. 3. To alter the Missouri 
compromise line in relation to slave territory, 
and thereby convert free soil into slave soil. 
The two first difficulties were serious — the 
third formidable : and in the then state of the 
public mind in relation to slave territory, this en- 
largement of a great slave State, and by convert- 
ing free soil into slave, and impairing the compro- 
mise line, was an almost impossible undertaking, 
and in no Avay to be accomplished without a 
generous co-operation from the members of the 
free States. They were a majorit}' in the House 
of Representatives, and no act of Congress could 
pass for altering the compromise line without 
their aid : they were equal in the Senate, where 
no treaty for the removal of the Indians could 
be ratified except by a concurrence of two 
thirds. And all these difficulties to be over- 
come at a time when Congress was inflamed 
with angry debates upon abolition petitions, 
transmission of incendiary publications, imputed 
designs to abolish slavery ; and the appearance 
of the criminating article in South Carofina en- 
titled the " Crises," announcing a Southern con- 
vention and a secession if certain Northern 
States did not suppress the abolition societies 
witliin their limits within a limited time. 

In the face of all these discouraging obstacles 
the two Missouri senators, Messrs. Benton and 
Linn, commenced their operations. The first 
step was to procure a bill for the alteration ot 
the compromise line and the extension of the 



AXKO 1836. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



627 



boundary : it was obtained from the Judiciary 
Committee, reported by Mr. John M. Clayton 
of Delaware: and passed the Senate without 
material opposition. It went to the House of 
Representatives ; and found there no serious 
opposition to its passage. A treaty was negoti- 
ated with the Sac and Fox Indians to whom the 
country had been assigned, and was ratified by 
the requisite two thirds. And this, besides do- 
ing an act of generous justice to the State of 
jMissouri, was the noble answer which Northern 
members gave to the imputed design of abolish- 
ing slaverj^ in the States ! actually extending it ! 
and by an addition equal in extent to such Stateg 
as Delaware and Rhode Island ; and by its fer- 
tility equal to one of the third class of States. 
And this accomplished by the extraordinary 
process of altering a compromise line intended 
to be perpetual, and the reconversion of soil which 
had been slave, and made free, back again from 
free to slave. And all this when, had there been 
the least disposition to impede the proper exten- 
sion of a slave State, there were plausible reasons 
enough to cover an opposition, in the serious 
objections to enlarging a State already the lar- 
gest in the Union — to removing Indians again 
from a home to which they had just been re- 
moved under a national pledge of no more remov- 
als — and to disturbing the compromise line of 
1820 on which the Missouri question had been 
settled ; and the line between free and slave ter- 
ritory fixed for national reasons, to remain for 
ever*. The author of this View was part and 
parcel of all that transaction — remembers well 
the anxiety of the State to obtain the extension 
— her joy at obtaining it — the gratitude which all 
felt to the Northern members without whose 
aid it could not have been done ; and whose 
magnanimous assistance under such trying cir- 
cumstances he now records as one of the proofs 
— (this work contains jmrny others) — of the wil- 
lingness of the non-slaveholding part of the Union 
to be just and generous to their slaveholding 
brethren, even in disregard of cherished prejudices 
and offensive criminations. It was the second 
great proof to this effect at this identical session, 
the ratification of the Georgia Cherokee treaty 
being the other. 



CHAPTER CXXXVIII. 

ADMISSION OF THE STATKS OF ARKANSAS AND 
MICUIGAN INTO THE UNION. 

These two j'oung States had applied to Congress 
for an act to enable them to hold a convention, 
and form State constitutions, preparatory to 
admission into the Union. Congress refused to 
pass the acts, and the people of the two territo- 
ries held the convention by their own authority, 
formed their constitutions — sent copies to Con- 
gress, praying admission as States. They both 
applied at this session, and the proceedings on 
their respective applications were simultaneous 
in Congress, though in separate bills. That of 
^Michigan was taken up first, and had been 
brought before each House in a message from 
the President in these words : 

"By the act of the 11th of .January, 1805, 
all that part of the Indian Territory lying north 
of a line drawn due ' east from the southerly 
bend or extreme of Lake Michigan until it shall 
intersect Lake Erie, and east of a line drawn 
from the said southerly bend, through the mid- 
dle of said lake, to its northern extremity, and 
thence, due north, to the northern boundary of 
the United States,' was erected into a .■separate 
Ten'itory, by the name of Michigan. The Ter- 
ritory comprised within these limits being part 
of the district of country described in the 
ordinance of the 13th of July, 1787, which pro- 
vides that, whenever anj- of the States into 
which the same should be divided should have 
sixty thousand free inhabitants, such State 
should be admitted by its delegates 'into the 
Congress of the United States, on an equal 
footing with the original States in all respects 
whatever, iind sliall be at liberty to form a jkt- 
manent constitution and State govoniinont, pro- 
vided the constitution and govennnont so to be 
formed shall be republican, and in conformity 
to the principles contained in tliesc articles,' tlie 
inhabitants thereof have, during tin- juvsont 
year, in pursuance of the riglit secured by the 
ordinance, formed a constitution and State 
government. That instruiiiont, together with 
various other documents connected tlieivwith, 
has been transmitted to me lor the jinri>oso of 
being laid before Congress, to whom tin- power 
and duty of admitting new States into the 
L^^nion exclusively api)ertains ; and the whole 
are herewith ct)mmunicntod for yuur early deci- 
sion." 

The application was referred to a select com- 
mittee, Mr. Henton the chairman ; and a memo 
rial, entitled from the '' Legislature of Michigan," 



628 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



was also referred to the same committee, though 
objected to by some senators as purporting to 
come from a State which, as yet, had no exist- 
ence. But the objection was considered by 
others as being one of form — that it m^ght be 
considered as coming from the people of Michi- 
gan — and was not even material in that point 
of view, as the question was already before the 
Senate on the President's JMessagc. Some 
objection was also made to the boundaries, as 
being too large, and as trenching upon those of 
Indiana and Ohio. A bill was reported for the 
admission of the State, in support of which Mr. 
Benton said, the committee had included in the 
proposed limits a considerable portion of terri- 
tory on the northwest, and had estimated the 
superficial contents of the State at 00,000 square 
miles. The territory attached contained but a 
very small portion of Indian population. It 
was necessary to make her large and strong, 
being a frontier State both to the Indians and 
to the British possessions. It should have a 
large front on Lake Superior. The principal 
points of objection, of a permanent character, 
were, that the proceedings of the people were 
revolutionary, in forming a constitution without 
a previous act of Congress ; and her constitution 
inconsistent with that of the United States in 
admitting aliens to vote before naturalization. 
To the first it was answered that she had 
applied for an act of Congress two years ago, 
and was denied by the then dominant party, and 
that it was contradictory to object to her, for 
not having that which had been refused to be 
given ; and on the second, that the same thing 
had been done for a quarter of a century. On 
the latter point Mr. Buchanan said : 

" Michigan confined herself to such residents 
and inhabitants of her territoiy as were there 
at the signing of her constitution ; and to those 
alone she extended the right of sulirage. Now, 
we had admitted Ohio and Illinois into this 
Union ; two sister States, of whom we ought 
certainly to be very proud. He would refer sena- 
tors to the provision in the constitution of Ohio 
on that subject. By it, all white male inhabit- 
ants, twenty-one )'ears of age, or upwards, 
having resided one year in the State, are entitled 
to vote. i\Iichigan had made the projier dis- 
tinction ; she had very properly confined the 
elective franchise to inhabitants within the State 
at the time of the adoption of her constitution ; 
but Ohio had given the right of suffrage as to 
all future time to all her white inhabitants over 
the- age of twenty-one years ; a case embracing 



all time to come, and not limited as in the con« 
stitution of IMichigan. He had understood that, 
since the adoption of her constitution, Ohio had 
repealed this provision by law. He did not 
know whether this was so or not ; but here it 
was, as plain as the Englisli language could 
make it, that all the white male inhabitants of 
Ohio, above the age of twenty-one years, were 
entitled to vote at her elections. Well, what 
had Illinois done in this matter ? He would 
read an extract from her constitution, by which 
it would appear that only six months' previous 
residence was required to acquire the right of 
suffrage. The constitution of Illinois was 
therefore still broader and more liberal than 
that of Ohio. Tliere, in all elections, all white 
male inhabitants above the age of twenty-one 
years, having resided in the State six months 
previous to the election, shall enjoy the rights 
of an elector. Now, sir, it had been made a mat- 
ter of preference by settlers to go to Illinois, 
instead of the other new States, where they 
must become citizens before they could vote ; 
and he appealed to the senators from Illinois 
whether this was not now the case, and whether 
any man could not now vote in that State after 
a six months' residence. 

" [Mr. Robinson said that such was the fact.] 
" Now, here were two constitutions of States, 
the senator from one of which was most stre- 
nuously opposed to the admission of Michigan, 
who had not extended the right of suffrage as 
fiir as was done by either of them. Did Michi- 
gan do right in thus fixing the elective fran- 
chise ? He contended that she did act right ; 
and if she had not acted so. she would not have 
acted in obedience to the sjiirit, if not the very 
letter, of the ordinance of 1787. Michigan 
took the right ground, while the States of Ohio 
and Illinois went back in making perpetual in 
their constitution what was contained in the 
ordinance. When Congress admitted them and 
Indiana on this principle, he thought it very 
ungracious in any of their senators or repre- 
sentatives to declare that Micliigan should not 
be admitted, because she has extended the i-ight 
of suffrage to the few persons within her limits 
at the adoption of her constitution. lie felt 
inclined to go a good deal further into this sub- 
ject ; but as he was exceedingly anxious that 
the decision should be made soon, he would not 
extend his remarks any further. It appeared 
to hiui that an amendment might very well be 
made to this l)ill, retiuiring that the assent of 
the people of Michigan shall be given to the 
change of boundary. He did hope that by this 
bill all objections would be removed ; and that 
this State, so ready to rush into our arms, would 
not be repulsed, because of the absence of some 
formalities, which, perhaps, were very jiroper, 
but certainly not indispensable. 

On the other point, that of a revolutionary 
movement, Mr. Buchanan answered : 



ANNO 1836. ANDREW JACKSON, PREbmENT. 



629 



" I think their course is clearly justifiable ; 
but if there is any thing wrong or unusual in 
it, it is to be attributed to the neglect of Con- 
gress. For three years, they have been rapping 
at your door, and asking for the consent of Con- 
gress to form a constitution, and for admission 
into the Union ; but their petitions have not 
been heeded, and have been treated with neglect. 
Not being able to be admitted in the way they 
sought, they have been forced to take their own 
course, and stand upon their rights — rights so- 
cured to them by the constitution and a solemn 
irrepealable ordinance. They have taken the 
census of the territory ; they have formed a 
constitution, elected their officers, and the whole 
machinery of a State government is ready to be 
put in operation : they are only awaiting your 
action. Having assumed this attitude, they now 
demand admission as a matter of right : they 
demand it as an act of justice at your hands. 
Are they now to be repelled, or to be told that 
they must retrace their steps, and come into the 
Union in the way they at first sought to do, but 
could not obtain the sanction of Congress ? Sir, 
I fear the consequences of such a decision ; I 
tremble at an act of such injustice." 

The bill passed the Senate by rather a close 
vote — twenty-four to eighteen ; the latter being 
all senators in the opposition. It then went to 
the House of Representatives for concurrence. 
From the time of the admission of new States, 
it had been the practice to admit a free and 
slave State together, or alternately, so as to 
keep up a numerical equilibrium between them 
— a practice resulting from some slight jealousy 
existing, from the beginning, between the two 
classes of States. In 1820, when the Missouri 
controversy inflamed that jealousy, the State of 
Massachusetts divided herself to furnish terri- 
tory for the formation of a new free State 
(Maine) to balance Missouri ; and the acts of 
Congressjbr the admission of both, were passed 
contemporaneously, !March, 1820. Now, in 1830, 
when the slave question again was much in- 
flamed, and a State of each kind to be admitted, 
the proceedings for that purpose were kept as 
nearly together as possible, not to include them 
in the same bill. The moment, then, that the 
Michigan bill bad passed the Senate, that of 
Arkansas was taken up, under the lead of i\Ir. 
Buchanan, to whom the Arkansas application had 
been confided, as that of Micliigan liad been to Mr. 
BentorL This latter senator alluded to this cir- 
cumstance to show that the people of these young 
States had no fear of trusting their rights and 
interests to the care of senators dillcring from 
themselves on the skvery question. He said : 



" It was worthy of notice, that, on the pre- 
sentation of these two great questions for the 
admission of two States, the people of those 
States were so slightly afl'ectcd by the exer- 
tions that had been made to disturb and ulcer- 
ate the public mind on the subject of slavcrj', 
as to ])ut them in the hands of senators who 
might \)e suj)posed to entertain opinions on that 
suljject different from those held by the States 
whose interests they were charged with. Thus, 
the people of Arkansas had put their application 
into the hands of a gentleman representing a 
non-slaveholding State; and the people of Michi- 
gan had put their application into the hands of 
a senator (himself) coming from a State where 
the institutions of slaverj* existed ; affording a 
most beautiful illustration of the total impo- 
tence of all attempts to agitate and ulcerate the 
public mind on the worn-out subject of slavery. 
He would further take occasion to sa}', that the 
abolition question seemed to have died out ; 
there not having been a smgle presentation of a 
petition on tlmt subject, since the general jail 
delivery ordered by the Senate." 

Mr. Swift, of Vermont, could not vote for the 
admission of Arkansas, because the constitution 
of the State sanctioned perpetual slavery ; and 
said : 

" That, although he felt every disposition to 
vote for the admission of the new State into the 
Union, yet there were operative reasons under 
which he must vote against it. On looking at 
the constitution submitted by Arkansas, he found 
that they had made the institution of slavery 
perpetual ; and to this he could never give his 
assent. He did not mean to oppose the passage 
of the bill, but had merely risen to explain the 
reasons why he could not vote for it." 

Mr. Buchanan felt himself bound by tlio Mis- 
souri compromise to vote for the admission, and 
pointed out the ameliorating feature in the con- 
stitution which guaranteed the right of jury trials 
to slaves; and said: 

"That, on the subject of slavery, this constitu- 
tion was more liberal than the constitution of 
any of the slaveholding States that had been ad- 
mitted into the Union, It preserved the very 
words of the other constitutions, in vcpn\l to 
slavery ; but there were other provisions in it in 
favor of the slaves, and among them a provision 
which secured to them the right of trial by 
jury; tluis putting tliem, in that jwrtii-ular. on 
an equal fooling with the whites. He consiilcr- 
ed the compromise wliich had boon made, wlion 
Missouri was admitted into the Union, as having 
settled the (past ion as to slavery in the now 
South Wostorn States; and tiioconunittoo, thoro- 

[ fore, did not deem it right to intorforo witli tlio 

I question of slavery in Arkansas." 



630 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



Mr. Prentiss, of Vermont, opposed the admis- 
sion, on account of the " revolutionary " manner 
in which the State had held her convention, with- 
out the authorization of a previous act of Con- 
gress, and because her constitution had given 
perpetual sanction to slavery ; and, referring to 
the reasons which induced him to vote against 
the admission of Michigan, said: 

" That he must also vote against the admission 
of Arkansas. He viewed the movements of 
these two territories, with regard to their ad- 
mission into the Union, as decidedly revolution- 
arj-, forming their constitution without the pre- 
vious consent of Congress, and importunately 
knocking at its doors for admission. The ob- 
jections he had to the admission of Arkansas, 
particularly, were, that she had formed her con- 
stitution without the previous assent of Con- 
gress, and in that constitution had made slavery 
perpetual, as noticed by his colleague. He re- 
gretted that he was compelled to vote against 
this bill ; but he could not, in the discharge of 
his duty, do otherwise." 

Mr. Morris, of Ohio, spoke more fully on the 
objectionable point than other senators, justifying 
the right of the people of a territory, when 
amounting to 00,000 to meet and form their own 
constitution — regretting the slavery clause in 
the constitution of Arkansas, but refusing to 
vote against her on that account, as she was not 
restrained by the ordinance of 1787, nor had 
entered into agreement against slaver}'. He 
said: 

" Before I record my vote in favor of the passage 
of the bill under consideration, I must ask the 
indulgence of the Senate for a moment, while I 
offer a few of the reasons which govern me in 
the vote I shall give. Being one of the repre- 
sentatives of a free State, and believing slavery 
to be wrong in principle, and mischievous in 
practice, I wish to be clearly understood on the 
subject, both here and by those I have the honor 
to represent. I have objections to the constitu- 
tion of Arkansas, on the ground that slavery is 
recognized in that constitution, and settled and 
established as a fundamental principle in her 
government. I object to the existence of this 
principle forming a part of the organic law in 
any State ; and I would vote against the admis- 
sion of Arkansas, as a member of this Union, 
if I believed I had the power to do so. The 
wrong, in a moral sense, with which I view 
slavery, would be sulEcient for me to do this, 
did I not consider my political obligations, and 
the duty, as a member of this body, I owe to 
the constitution under which I now act, clearly 
require of me the vote! shall give. T hold that 
any portion of American citizens, who may i-e- 
Bide on a portion of the ten-itory of the United 



States, whenever their numbers shall amount to 
that which would entitle them to a representa- 
tion in the House of Representatives in Con- 
gress, have the right to provide for themselves a 
constitution and State government, and to be 
admitted into the Union whenever they shall so 
apply ; and they are not bound to Avait the ac- 
tion of Congress in the first instance, except 
there is some compact or agreement requiring 
them to do so. I place this right upon the 
broad, and, I consider, indisputable ground, that 
all persons, living within the jurisdiction of the 
United States, are entitled to equal privileges ; 
and it ought to be matter of high gratification 
to us here, that, in every portion, even the most 
remote, of our countr}^, our people are anxious 
to obtain this high privilege at as early a day as 
possible. It furnishes clear proof that the Union 
is highly esteemed, and has its foundation deep 
in the hearts of our fellow-citizens. 

" By the constitution of the United States, 
power is given to Congress to admit new States 
into the Union. It is in the character of a 
State that any portion of our citizens, inhabiting 
any part of the territory of the United States, 
must apply to be admitted into the Union ; a 
State government and constitution must first be 
formed. It is not necessary for the power of 
Congress, and I doubt whether Congress has 
such power, to prescribe the mode by which the 
people shall form a State constitution ; and, for 
this plain reason, that Congress would be en- 
tirely incompetent to the exercise of tmj coercive 
power to carry into eflect the mode they might 
prescribe. I cannot, therefore, vote against the 
admission of Arkansas into the Union, on the 
ground that there was no previous act of Con- 
gress to authorize the holding of her convention. 
As a member of Congress, I will not look be- 
yond the constitution that has been presented. 
I have no right to presume it was formed by in- 
competent persons, or that it does not fully ex- 
press the opinions and wishes of the people of 
that country. It is true that the United States 
shall guai-anteo to every State in the Union a 
republican form of govei-nment : meaning, in my 
judgment, that Congress shall not permit any 
power to establish, in any State, a goverinnent 
without the assent of the people of such State ; 
and it will not be amiss that we remember here, 
also, that that guaranty is to the State, and not 
as to the fonnation of the government b}- the 
people of the State ; but should it be admitted 
tliat Congress can look into the constitution 
of a State, in order to ascertain its character, 
before such State is admitted into the Union, 
yet I contend that Congress cannot object to it 
for the want of a republican form, if it contains 
the great principle that all power is inherent in 
the people, and that the government drew all its 
just powers from the governed. 

"The people of the territory of Arkansas, 
having formed for themselves a State govern- 
ment, having presented their constitution for 
admission into the Union, and that constitution 



ANNO 1836. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



631 



being republican in its form, and believing that 
the people who prepared and sent this constitu- 
tion here are sufficiently numerous to entitle 
them to a representative in Congress, and be- 
lieving, also, that Congress has no right or power 
to regulate the system of police these people 
have established for themselves, and the or- 
dinance of 1787 not operating on them, nor 
have they entered into any agreement with the 
United States that slavery should not be admit- 
ted in their State, have the right to choose this 
lot for themselves, though I regret that they 
made this choice. Yet, believing that this gov- 
ernment has no right to interfere with the ques- 
tion of slavery in any of the States, or prescribe 
what shall or shall not be considered property 
in the different States, or by what tenure pro- 
perty of any kind shall be holden, but that all 
these are exclusively questions of State policy, 
I cannot, as a member of this body, refuse my 
vote to admit this State into the Union, because 
her constitution recognizes the right and exist- 
ence of slavery." 

Mr. Alexander Porter, of Louisiana, would 
vote against the admission, on account of the 
" revolutionary " proceedings of the people in 
the formation of their constitution, without a 
previous act of Congress. It is believed that 
Mr. Clay voted upon the same ground. There 
were but six votes against the admission ; name- 
ly : Mr. Clay, Mr. Knight of Rhode Island, Mr. 
Porter, Mr. Prentiss, Mr. Robbins of Rhode 
Island, and Mv. Swift. It is believed that ]\Ir. 
Robbins and Mr. Knight voted on the same 
ground with Mr. Clay and Mr. Porter. So, the 
bill was easily passed, and the two bills went 
together to the House of Representatives, where 
they gave rise to proceedings, the interest of 
which still survives, and a knowledge of which, 
therefore, becomes necessary. The two bills 
were made the special order for the same day. 
\Yednesda3', the 8th of June, Congress being to 
adjourn on the 4th of July ; and the Michigan 
bill having priority on the calendar, as it had 
first passed the Senate. Mr. "Wise, of Virginia, 
on the announcement of the Michigan bill, from 
the chair, as the business before the House, 
moved to postpone its consideration until the 
ensuing Monday, in order to proceed with the 
Arkansas bill. Mr. Thomas, of Maryland, ob- 
jected to the motion, and said : 

" He would call the attention of the House to 
the position of the two bills on the Speaker's 
table, and endeavor to show that this jwstpone- 
ment is entirely unnecessary. These bills are 
from the Senate. By the rules of this House, 



two, I may say three, questions will arise, to 
be decided before they can become a law, so far 
as this House is concerned. We must first 
order each of these bills to be read a thirl time ; 
the next question then will be, when .'-liall the 
bill be read a thinl time ? And the last question 
to be decided will be, shall the bill pass ? Why, 
then, should Southern men now make an cfTort to 
give precedence to the bill for the admission of 
Arkansas into the Union ? If they manifest <lis- 
trust, must we not expect that fears will be enter- 
tained by Northern members, that unreasonable 
opposition will be made to the admission of Michi- 
gan ? Let us proceed harmonioush', until we 
find that our harmony must be interrupted. 
We shall lose nothing by so doing. If a ma- 
jority of the House be in favor of reading a 
third time the jMichigan bill, they will order it 
to be done. After that vote has been taken, we 
can refuse to read the bill a third time, go into 
Committee of the Whole on the state of the 
Union, then consider the Arkansas bill, report it 
to the House, order it to be read a third time, and 
in this order proceed to read them each a third 
time, if a majority of the House be in favor of that 
proceeding. Let it not be said that Southern 
men ma}^ be taken by surprise, if the proceeding 
here respectfully recommended be adopted. If 
the friends of Arkansas are sufficientl}- numer- 
ous to carry now the motion to postpone, they 
can arrest at any time the action of the House 
on the Michigan bill, until clear undubitable in- 
dications have been given that the ^lissouri 
compromise.is not to be disregarded." 

These latter words of iMr. Thomas revealed 
the point of jealousy between some Southcra 
and Northern members, and brought the observ- 
ance of the Missouri compromise fully into view, 
as a question to be tried. 'Mv. Wise, after some 
remarks, modified his motion by moving to re- 
fer both bills to the Committee of the Whole 
on the state of the Union, wirh instructions to 
incorporate the two bills in one bill. Mr. 
Patton, of Virginia, opix»sed tne latter motion, 
and gave his reasons at length against it. If his 
colleague would so modify his motion as to move 
to refer both bills to the Comniittee of the 
Whole House, without the instructions, he 
would vote for it. Mr. Bouldin, of Virginia, 
successor to Mr. Raudoljih, saiil : 

" He agreed with his colleague [Mr. Patton] in 
afixct too jilain for any to overlook, that I'.tth 
bills must be acted on .separately, and tliat one- 
must have the preference in point of time. 
Michigan had it at tliat lime — he was willing it 
should hold it. His colleague [Mr. PattonJ 
seemed to think that in the incipient step-in i — 
latiou to this bill, it would be well enoujjh To 
sulier Michigan to hold her present iK»sitiou ; 



632 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



but that, before the final passage of the bill, it 
would be well to reqiiirc of the House (or rather 
of the non-slavelioldinu; portion of the Union) to 
give sonic unequivocal f^uaranty to the iSouth 
that no diliiculty would be raised as to the re- 
ception of Arkansas in regard to negro slavery. 
Mr. B. was willing to go on with the bill for the 
admission of ^Michigan. He had the most im- 
plicit conildence in the House, particularly al- 
luding to the non-slaveholding part of the Union, 
that no serious difficulty would be made as to 
the admission of Arkansas in regard to negro 
slavery-. If there were anj^ serious difficulties 
to be raised in the House to the admission of 
Arkansas, upon the ground of negro slavery, he 
wished immediate notice of it. If his confidence 
was misplaced, he wished to be corrected as soon 
and as certainly as possible. If there reality was 
any intention in the House of putting the South 
under anj- difficulty, restraint, limit, any shackle 
or embarrassment on the South on jsccount of 
negro slaverj' (some gentlemen said slaver}^, but 
he said vcgro slavery), he wished to know it. 
If there were any individuals having such feeling, 
he wished to know them ; he wished to hear 
their names upon yeas and naj^s. If there were 
a majority, he should act promptl}', decisively, 
immediately upon it, and had no doubt ail the 
South would do the same. There might be 
some question as to the claim of non-slavehold- 
ing States to stop the progress of Southern 
habits and Southern influence Northward. As 
to Arkansas, there could be no question ; and if 
seriously pressed, such claims could leave no 
doubt on the minds of the South as to the object 
of those who pressed them, or the course to be 
pursued by tliem. Such a stand being taken b}' 
the non-slaveholding States, it would make little 
difference whether iMichigan Mas in or out of 
this Union. He said he would sit down, again 
assuring the House, and the gentlemen particu- 
larly from the non-slaveholding States, of his 
entire confidence that no such thing would be 
seriously attempted by any considerable num- 
bers of this House ' 

Mr. Lewis, of L'forth Carolina, took decided 
ground in favor of giving the Arkansas bill the 
priority of decision; and expressed himself thus : 

" He should vote for the proposition of the 
gentleman from Virginia [Mr. AVise] to lay the 
bill for the admission of Michigan into the Union 
on the table, until the bill for tha admission of 
Arkansas should be first passed. He should do 
this, for the obvious reason that there were 
dangers, he would not say how great, which 
beset Arkansas, and which did not beset ^lichi- 
gan. The question of slavery could be moved 
as a condition for the admission of Arkansas, and 
it could not as a condition to the admission of 
^lichigan. I look upon the Arkansas question 
as therefore the weaker of the two, and for that 
reason I would give it precedence. Besides, upon 
t.he del cate question which may be involved in 



the admission of Arkansas, we may be the weaker 
party in this House. For that reason, if gentle- 
men mean to offer no obstructions to the admission 
of Arkan.sas, let them give the assurance by help- 
ing the weaker party through with the weaker 
question. "We of the South cannot, and will not, 
as I pledge myself, offer any objections to the 
domestic institutions of Michigan with regard 
to slavery. Can any gentleman make the 
same pledge that no such proposition shall come 
from the North ? Besides, the two bills are not 
now on an equal footing. The bill for the ad- 
mission of Arkansas must be sent to a Commit- 
tee of the Wliole on the state of the Union. The 
bil. for the admission of Michigan need not ne- 
cessarily go to that committee. It will therefore 
pass in perfect safety, while we shall be left to 
get Arkansas along, through the tedious stages 
of commitment, as well as we can. The gentle- 
man from Pennsj^lvania [Mr. Sutherland] says 
that these two bills will be hostages for the 
safety of each other. Not, sir, if you pass the 
stronger bill in advance of the weaker. Besides, 
the North want no hostages on this subject. 
Their institutions cannot be attacked. "We of 
the South want a hostage, to protect us on a 
delicate question ; and the efiect of giving pre- 
cedence to the Michigan bill is to deprive us of 
that hostage." 

Mr. Gushing, of Massachusetts, addressed the 
committee at length on the subject, of which 
only the leading passages can be given. He said: 

" The House has now continued in session for 
the space of eighteen or nineteen hours, without 
any interval of refreshment or rest. It is impos- 
sible to mistake the intentions of the ruling ma- 
joritj^ I see clearly that the committee is re- 
solved to sit out the debate on these important 
bills for the admission of Michigan and Ai'kansas 
into the Union. This, it is apparent, the ma- 
jority have the power as well as the riglit to do. 
Whether it be just and reasonable, is another 
question. I shall not quarrel, however, with 
the avowed will of the House. It has done me 
the favor to hear me with patience on other oc- 
casions ; and I cannot render it the unfit return 
of trespassing on its indulgence at this unseason- 
able hour, nor seek to defeat its purposes by 
speaking against time. But having been charg- 
ed with sundry memorials from citizens of 
Massachusetts and New Hampshire, remonstrat- 
ing against that clause in the constitution of 
Arkansas which relates to the subject of slavery, 
I should be rccrcant to the trust they have re- 
posed in me, if I suffered the bill for the admis- 
sion of Arkansas to pass without a word of pro- 
tcvstation. The extraordinary circumstances 
under which I rise to address the committee 
impel me to brevitj'^ and succinctness; but they 
would afford me no justification for a passive 
acquiescence in the admission of Arkansas into 
the Union, with all the sins of its coustitutioa 
upon its head. 



ANNO 1836. ANDREW JACKSON, TRESIDENT. 



G33 



" The constitution of Arkansas, as communi- 
sated to Congress in the memorial of the people 
of that Territor}^, praying to be admitted into 
the Union, contains the following clause : ' The 
General Assembly shall have no power to pass 
laws for the emancipation of slaves without the 
consent of the owners. They shall have no 
power to prevent emigrants to this State from 
bringing with them such persons as are deemed 
slaves b}^ the laws of any one of the United 
States.' This provision of the constitution of 
Arkansas is condemned by those whom I re- 
present on this occasion as anti-repubUcan, as 
wrong on general principles of civil polity, and 
as unjust to the inhabitants of the non-slave- 
holding States. They object to it as being, in 
effect, a provision to render slavery perpetual in 
the new State of Arkansas. I concur in repro- 
bating such a clause. The legislature of Ar- 
kansas is forbidden to emancipate the slaves with- 
in its jurisdiction, even though it should be ready 
to indemnify fully their owners. It is forbidden 
to exclude slaves from being imported into the 
State. I cannot, by any vote of mine, ratify or 
sanction a constitution of government which 
undertakes in this way to foreclose in advance 
the progress of civilization and of liberty forever. 
In order to do justice to the unchangeable opin- 
ions of the North, without, in any respect, in- 
vading the rights, real or supposed, of the South, 
my colleague [Mr. Adams], the vigilant eye of 
whose unsleeping mind there is nothing which 
escapes, has moved an amendment of the bill for 
the admission of Arkansas into the Union, so 
that, if the amendment be adopted, the bill would 
read as follows : ' The State of Arkansas is ad- 
mitted into the Union upon the express condition 
that the people of the said State shall never inter- 
fere with the primary disposal of the public lands 
within tlie said State, nor shall they levy a tax 
on any of the lands of the United States within 
the said State ; and nothing in this act shall be 
construed as an assent by Congress [to the arti- 
cle in the constitution of the said State relating 
to slavery and to the emancipation of the slaves, 
or] to all or to any of the propositions contained in 
the ordinance of the said convention of the people 
of Arkansas, nor to deprive the said State of 
Arkansas of the same grants, subject to the same 
restrictions, which were made to the State of 
Missouri.' This amendment is, according to my 
judgment, reasonable and proper in itself, and 
the very least that any member from the North 
can propose in vindication of the opinions and 
principles of himself and his constituents. 

" It is opposed, however, by the gentleman 
from Virginia [Mr. Wise], with his accustomed 
vigor and ability. He alleges consideratinns 
adverse to the motion. He interrogates the 
friends of the proposed amendment in regard to 
its force, effect, and purposes, in terms which 
seem to challenge response ; or whicli, at any 
rate, if not distinctly and promptly met, would 
leave the objections which those interrogatories 
impliedly convey, to be tiiken as confessed and 



admitted by our significant silence. What may 
be the opinions of Martin Van Burcn as to this 
particular bill, what his conduct formerly in re- 
ference to a similar case, is a point concerning 
which I can have no controversj' with the gen- 
tleman from Virginia. I look only to the merit? 
of the qusetion before the committee. Tliere is 
involved in it a principle which I regard as im- 
measurably more imjiortant than the opinion 
of any individual in this nation, however high 
his present situation or his possible destiny — 
the great principle of constitutional freedom. 
The gentleman from Virginia, who. I clieerfully 
admit, is always frank and honorable in his 
course upon this floor, has just declared that, 
as a Southern man. he liad felt it to be his duty 
to come forward and take a stand in behalf of 
an institution of the South. That institution 
is slavery. In like manner, I feel it to be my 
duty, as a Northern man, to take a counter 
stand in conservation of one among the dearest 
of the institutions of the North. This institu- 
tion is liberty. It is not to assail slavery, but 
to defend liberty, that I speak. It is demanded 
of us. Do you seek to impose restrictions on 
Arkansas, in violation of the compromise under 
which Missouri entered the Union ? I might 
content myself with replying that the State of 
Massachusetts was not a party to that compro- 
mise. She never directly or indirectly assented 
to it. Most of her Representatives in Congress 
voted against it. Those of her Representatives 
who, regarding that compromise in the light of 
an act of conciliation iuipurtant to the general 
interests of the Union, voted for it, were disa- 
vowed and denounced at home, and were stig- 
matized even here, by a Southern member, as 
over-compliant towards the exactingness of the 
South. On the first introduction uf this sub- 
ject to the notice of the House, the gentleman 
from Virginia made a declaration, which I par- 
ticularly noticed at the time, for the purpose 
of having the tenor of the declaration distinctly 
understood by the House and by the country. 
The gentleman gave it to be known tJiat, if 
members from the North held themselves not 
engaged by the terms of the comi)romise under 
which Missouri entered into the Union, neither 
would members from the South hold themselves 
engaged thereby; and that, if we sought to im- 
pose "i-cstrict ions affecting slave property on the 
one hand, thev might be impelled, on the other 
hand, to introduce slavery into the heart of the 
North. I heard the suggestion with the firl- 
ings natural to one born and bred in a land of 
equality and freedom. I took occasion to pro- 
test, in the surprised impulse of the moment. 
against the idea t>f putting restrictions on liln-rty 
in one quarter of the I'nion, in retaliation of the 
attempt to limit the spread of slaviiy in an- 
other quarter. I held up to view the uicun- 
sistency and inconseiiuence of uttering the 
warmest eulogiuius on IVeedom one day, of 
pouring out aspirations that the spirit of lilK>rty 
might '"pervade the universe, and at another 



G34 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



time threatening the North with the establish- 
ment of Slaver}- within its borders, if a Northern 
member should deprecate the legal perpetuation 
of slavery in a proposed new State of the West. 
It did not fall within the rules of pertinent 
debate to pursue the subject at that time ; and 
I have but a single idea to pi-esent now. in ad- 
dition to what I then observed. It is not pos- 
sible for me to judge whether the gentleman 
from Virginia, and any of his friends or fellow- 
citizens at tlie South, deliberately and soberly 
cherish the extraordinary purpose which his 
language implied. I trust it was but a hasty 
thought, struck out in the ardor of debate. To 
introduce slavery into the heart of the North ? 
Vain idea ! Invasion, pestilence, civil war, may 
conspire to exterminate the eight millions of 
free spirits who now dwell there. This, in the 
long lapse of ages incalculable, is possible to 
happen. You may raze to the earth the 
thronged cities, the industrious villages, the 
peaceful hamlets of the North. You may lay 
waste its fertile valleys and verdant hill-sides. 
You may plant its very soil with salt, and con- 
sign it to everlasting desolation. You may 
transform its beautiful fields into a desert as 
bare as the blank face of the sands of Sahara. 
You may reach the realization of the infernal 
boast with Avhich Attila the Hun marched his 
barbaric hosts into Italy, demolishing whatever 
there is of civilization or prosperity in the 
happy dwellings of the North, and reducing 
their very substance to powder, so that a squad- 
ron of cavalry shall gallop over the site of popu- 
lous cities, unimpeded as the wild steeds on the 
savannas of the West. All this you may do : 
it is within the bounds of jAysical possibility. 
But I solemnly assvire every gentleman within 
the sound of my voice, I proclaim to the country 
and to the world, that, until all this be fully 
accomplished to the uttermost extremity of the 
letter, you cannot, you shall not, introduce 
slavery into the heart of the North." 

A point of order being raised whether the two 
bills were not required by a rule of the House 
to go before the Committee of the Whole, 
the Speaker, Mr. Polk, decided in the afiftrma- 
tive — the Arkansas bill, upon the ground of 
containing an appropriation for the salary of 
judges ; and that of Michigan because it provided 
for judges, which involved a necessity for an 
appropriation. The two bilk then went into 
Committee of the Whole, Mr. Speight, of North 
Carolina, in the chair. Many members spoke, 
and much of the speaking related to the boun- 
daries of Michigan, and especially the line be- 
tween herself and the State of Ohio — to which 
no surviving interest attaches. The debate, 
therefore, will only be pursued as it presents 
points of present and fuiure interest. These 



may be assumed under three heads: 1. The 
formation of constitutions without the previous 
assent of Congress : and this was applicable to 
both States. 2. The right of aliens to vote be- 
fore naturalization. 3. The right of Arkansas 
to be admitted with slavery by virtue of the 
rights of a State, — by virtue of the third article 
of the treaty which ceded Louisiana to the 
United States — and by virtue of the Missouri 
compromise. On these points, Mr. Ilamer, of 
Ohio, spoke thus : 

" One of the principal objections urged against 
their admission at this time is, that their pro- 
ceedings have been lawless and revolutionary ; 
and that, for the example's sake, if for no other 
reason, we should reject their application, and 
force them to go back and do all their work 
over again. I cannot assent to this proposition. 
Two ways are open to every territory that de- 
sires to emerge from its dependent condition 
and become a State. It may either petition Con- 
gress for leave to form a State constitution, and, 
when that permission is given, proceed to form 
it, and present the new State constitution for 
our approbation ; or they may meet, in the first 
instance^ form the constitution, and offer it for 
our approval. There is no impropriety in either 
mode. It is optional with Congress, at last, to 
admit the State or not, as may be thought expe- 
dient. If they wish to admit her, they can do 
it by two acts of Congress ; one to authorize 
the formation of a constitution, and the other 
to approve of it when made ; or by one act, al- 
lowing the prayer of the petitioners to become 
a State, and approving of their constitution at 
the same time. This latter course is the one 
adopted in the present case. There is nothing 
disrespectful in it. Indeed, there is much to 
justify the Territory in its proceeding. Year 
after year they petitioned for leave to form a 
constitution, and it was refused, or their appli- 
cation was treated with neglect. Wearied with 
repeated instances of this treatment, they have 
formed a constitution, brought it to us, and 
asked us to sanction it, and admit them into the 
Union. We have the authoritj' to do this ; and 
if their constitution is republican, we ought to 
do it. There is no weight in this objection, and 
I will dismiss it without further remark. An- 
other objection is, that aliens have aided in mak- 
ing this constitution, and are allowed the right 
(jf suffrage in all elections by the provisions it 
contains. As to the first point, it is sufficient 
to say that all the new States northwest of the 
Ohio formed their constitutions piccisely in the 
same way. The ordinance of 1787 does not I'c- 
quirc sixty thousand citizens of the United 
States to be resident within the limits of a new 
State, in order to authorize a constitution and 
admission into the Union. It requires that 
number of "free inhabitants;' and the alien 
who resides there, if he be a ' free inhabitant,' 



ANNO 1836. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



635 



is entitled to vote in the election of delegates 
to the convention ; and afterwards in deciding 
whether the people will accept the constitution 
formed by their convention. Such has been 
the construction and practice in all the country 
north of the Ohio ; and as the last census shows 
that there are but a few hundreds of aliens in 
Michigan, it would be hard to set aside their 
constitution, because some of these may have 
participated in its formation. It would be un- 
just to do so, if we had the power; but we have 
no authority to do it ; for if we regard the or- 
dinance as of any validity, it allows all ' free in- 
habitants' to vote in framing the State govern- 
ments which are to be created within the sphere 
of its influence. We will now turn to the re- 
maining point in this objection, and we shall see 
that it has no more force in it than the other. 

"The constitution allows all white male citizens 
over twenty-one years of age, having resided six 
months 'in Michigan, to vote at all elections ; 
and every white male inhabitant residing in the 
State at the time of signing the constitution is 
allowed the same privilege. These provisions 
undoubtedly confer on aliens the right of suf- 
frage ; and it is contended that they are in viola- 
tion of the constitution of the United States. 
That instrument declares that ' new States may 
be admitted by the Congress into this Union ;' 
that ' the United States shall guarantee to every 
State in this Union a republican form of govern- 
ment;' and that 'the citizens of each State 
shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities 
of citizens in the several States.' The ordinance 
of 1787 provides that the constitution to be form- 
ed northwest of the Ohio ' shall be republican.' 

" It is an error not very uncommon to suppose 
that the right of suffrage is inseparably connect- 
ted with the privilege of citizenship. A slight 
investigation of the subject will prove that this 
is not so. The privileges are totally distinct. 
A State cannot make an American citizen who, 
under the constitution of the United States 
shall be entitled to the rights of citizenship 
throughout the Union. The power belongs to 
the federal government. We pass all the na- 
turalization laws, by which aliens nvc trans- 
formed into citizens. We do so under the con- 
stitution of the United States, conceding to us 
this authority. But, on the other hand, we have 
no control over the right of suffrage in the dif- 
ferent States. That belongs exclusively to 
State legislation and State authority. It varies 
in almost all the States ; and yet who ever sup- 
posed that Congress could interfere to change 
the rules adopted by the people in regard to it? 
No one, I presume. Why then attempt to con- 
trol it here ? Other States have adopted the 
same provisions. Look at the constitutions 
of Ohio and other new States, and you will find 
that they require residence only, and not citi- 
zenship, to enable a man to vote. Each State 
can confer this right upon all persons within 
her limits. It gives them no rights beyond the 
limits of the State. It cannot make them citi- 



zens, for that would violate the naturalization 
laws ; or, rather, it would render them nugatorj' 
It cannot give them a right to vote in any other 
State, for that would infringe upon the author- 
ity of such State to regulate its own affairs. 
It simply confers the right of aiding in the 
choice of public officers whilst the alien remains 
in the State ; it does not make him a citizen ; 
nor is it of the slightest advantage to him be- 
yond the boundaries of ^Michigan." 

IMr. Ilamer concluded his remarks with a 
feeling allusion to the distractions which had 
prevailed during the Missouri controversy, a con- 
gratulation upon their disappearance under the 
Missouri compromise, and an earnest exhortation 
to harmony and the preservation of good feeling 
in the speedy admission of the two States ; and 
said: 

"We can put an end to a most distracting 
contest, that has agitated our country from 
Maine to Georgia, and from the Atlantic to the 
most remote settlement upon the frontier. There 
was a time when the most painful anxietj- per- 
vaded the whole nation ; and whilst each one 
waited with feverish impatience for further in- 
telligence from the disputed territory, he trem- 
bled lest the ensuing mail should bear the dis- 
astrous tidings of a civil strife in which brother 
had fallen by the hand of brother, and the soil 
of freedom had been stained by the blood of 
her own sons. But the storm has passed. The 
usual good fortune of the American people has 
prevailed. The land heaves in view, and a 
haven, with its wide-spread arms, invites us to 
enter. After so long an exposure to the fury of 
a tempest that was apparently gathering in our 
political horizon, let us seize the first opportu- 
nity to steer the ship into a safe harbor, far be- 
yond the reach of that elemental war that 
threatened her security in the open sea. Lot us 
pass this bill. It does justice to all. It concili- 
ates all. Its provisions will carry peace and 
harmony to those who are now agitated by 
strife, and disquieted by tunmlts and disonlers. 
Bj^ this just, humane, and benefioont policy, wo 
shall consolidate our liberties, and niako this 
government what^Mr. Jetfei-son, more than thirty 
years ago, declared it to be. 'the stivngest gov- 
ernment on earth ; th^ only one where even- 
man, at the call of the law, will tiy to tlie stand- 
ard of the law, and moot invasions of the public 
order as his own personal conoi'm.' With this 
policv on the part of the government, and the 
spirit of patriotism that now animates our citi- 
zens in full vigor, unite<l America may bid de- 
fiance to a world in arms ; and should Provi- 
dence continue to smile upon our country, wc 
may confidently anticipate that the fn-edom, 
the happiness, aiid the pmspority. which we now 
enjov, will I)e as perpetual as tiie lofty moun- 
tains tliat crown ouv continent, or the noble 
rivers that fertilize our plains." 



636 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



Mr. Adams commenced a speech in Committee 
of the "Whole, which was finished in the Ilonse, 
and being prepared for publication by himself, 
and therefore free from error, is here given — all 
the main parts of it — to show his real position 
on the slavery question, so much misunderstood 
at the time on account of his tenacious adher- 
ence to the right of petition. He said : 

"I cannot, consistently with my sense' of my 
obligations as a citizen of the United States, 
and bound by oath to support their constitution, 
I cannot object to the admission of Arkansas 
into the Union as a slave State ; I cannot pro- 
pose or agree to make it a condition of her ad- 
mission, that a convention of her people shall 
expunge this article from her constitution. She 
is entitled to admission as a slave State, as Lou- 
isiana and Mississippi, and Alabama, and Mis- 
souri, have been admitted, by virtue of that 
article in the treaty for the acquisition of Louis- 
iana, which secures to the inhabitants of the 
ceded territories all the rights, privileges, and 
immunities, of the original citizens of the United 
States ; and stipulates for their admission, con- 
formably to that principle, into the Union. 
Louisiana was purchased as a country wherein 
slavery was the established law of the land. 
As Congress have not power in time of peace to 
al)olish slavery in the original States of the 
Union, they are equally destitute of the power 
in those parts of the territory ceded by France 
to the United States b}^ tlie name of Louisiana, 
where slaver}^ existed at the time of the acqui- 
sition. Slavery is in this Union the subject of 
internal legislation in the States, and in peace is 
cognizable by Congi'ess only, as it is tacitly 
tolerated and protected where it exists by the 
constitution of the United States, and as it 
mingles in their intercourse with other nations. 
Arkansas, therefore, comes, and has the right to 
come into the Union with her slaves and her 
slave laws. It is written in the bond, and, 
however I may lament that it ever was so writ- 
ten. I must faithfully perform its obligations. 
I am content to receive her as one of the slave- 
holding States of this Union ; but I am unwil- 
ling that Congress, in accepting her constitution, 
should oven lie under the imputation of assent- 
ing to an article in the constitution of a State 
which withholds from its legislature the power 
of giving freedom to the slave. Upon this topic 
I will not enlarge. Were I disposed so to do, 
twenty hours of continuous session have too 
much exhausted my own physical strength, and 
the faculties as well as the indulgence of those 
who might incline to hear me. for me to trespass 
longer upon their ]»atience. When the bill shall 
be reported to the House, I may, perhaps, again 
ask to be heard, upon renewing there, as I in- 
tend, the motion for this amendment.' 

After a session of twenty-five hours, including 



the whole night, the committee rose and reported 
the two bills to the House. Of the arduousness 
of this session, which began at ten in the morn- 
ing of Thursda}', and Avas continued until eleven 
o'clock the next morning, Mr. Adams, who re- 
mained at his post the whole time, gave this 
account in a subsequent notice of the sitting : 

" On Thursday, the 9th of June, the House 
went into Committee of the Whole on the state 
of the Union upon two bills ; one to fix the 
Northern boundary of the State of Ohio, and for 
the conditional admission of the State of iNIichi- 
gan into the Union ; and the other for the ad- 
mission of the State of Arkansas into the Union. 
The bill for fixing the Northern boundary of 
the State of Ohio, and the conditional admission 
of Michigan into the Union, was first taken up 
for consideration, and gave rise to debates which 
continued till near one o'clock of the morning 
of Friday, the 10th of June: repeated motions 
to adjourn had been made and rejected. The 
committee had twice found itself without a 
quorum, and had been thereby compelled to rise, 
and report the fact to the House. In the first 
instance there had been found within private 
calling distance a sufticient number of members, 
who, though absent from their duty of attend- 
ance upon the House, were upon the alert to 
appear and answer to their names to make a 
quorum to vote against adjourning, and then to 
retire again to their amusement or repose. Upon 
the first restoration of the quorum bj' this 
operation, the delegate from Arkansas said that 
if the committee would only take up and read 
the bill, he would not urge any discussion upon 
it then, and woidd consent to the committee's 
rising, and resuming the subject at the next sit- 
ting of the House. The bill was accordingly 
read ; a motion was then made for the commit- 
tee to rise, and rejected ; an amendment to the 
bill was moved, on taking the question upon 
which there was no quorum. The usual ex- 
pedient of private call to straggling members was 
found ineftectvial. A call of the House was or- 
dered, at one o'clock in the morning. This 
operation, to be carried through all its stages, 
must necessarily consume about three hours of 
time, during which the House can do no other 
business. Upon this call, after the names of all 
the members had been twice called over, and all 
the absentees for whom any valid or plausible 
excuse was offered had been excused, there re- 
mained eighty-one names of members, who, hy 
the rules of the House, were to be taken into 
custody as they should appear, or were to be 
sent for, and taken into custod}^ Avherever thej- 
might be fjund, by special messengers appointed 
for that purpose. At this hour of the night tiie 
cit}^ of Washington was ransacked bj- these 
special messengers, and the members of the 
House were sununoned from their beds to be 
brought in custody of these special messengers, 
before the House, to answer for their absence. 



ANNO 1836. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



637 



After hearing the excuses of two of these mem- 
bers, and the acknowledged no good reason of 
a third, they were all excused in a mass, without 
payment of fees ; which fees, to the amount of 
two or three hundred dollars, have of course 
become a charge upon the people, and to be paid 
with their money. By this operation, between 
four and five o'clock of the morning, a small 
quorum of the House was obtained, and, without 
any vote of the House, the speaker left the 
chair, which was resumed b}^ the chairman of 
the Committee of the Whole." 

Mr, Adams resumed his seat, and Mr. Wise 
addressed the committee, particularly in reply 
to Mr. Cushing. Confusion, noise and disorder 
became great in the Hall. Several members 
spoke ; and cries of " order," and " question " 
were frequent. Personal reflections passed, and 
an affair of honor followed between two South- 
ern members, happily adjusted without blood- 
shed. The chairman, Mr. Speight, by great 
exertions, had procured attention to Mr. Hoar, 
of Massachusetts. Afterwards Mr. Adams again 
addressed the committee. Mr. Wise inquired 
of him whether in his own opinion, if his amend- 
ment should be adopted, the State of Arkansas 
would, by this bill, be admitted ? Mr. Adams 
answered — " Certainly, sir. There is not in my 
amendment the shadow of a restriction proposed 
upon the State. It leaves the State, like all the 
rest, to regulate the subject of slavery within 
herself by her own laws." The motion of Mr. 
Adams was rejected, only thirty-two members 
voting for it ; being not one third of the mem- 
bers from the non-slaveholding States. 

The vote was taken on the Michigan bill first, 
and was ordered to a third reading by a vote of 
153 to 45. 'J'he nays were : 

" Messrs. John Quincy Adams, Heman Allen, 
Jeremiah Bailey, John Bell, George N. Briggs, 
William B. Calhoun, George Chambers, John 
Chambers, Timothy Childs, William Clark, 
Horace Everett, William J. Graves, George 
Grennell, jr., John K. Griffin, Hiland Hall. 
Gideon Hard, Benjamin Hardin, James Harper, 
Abner Hazeltine, Samuel Hoar, Joseph K. In- 
gersoll, Daniel Jenifer, Abbott Lawrence, Levi 
Lincoln, Thomas C. Love, Samson Mason, Jona- 
than McCarty, Thomas M. T. McKcnnan, 
Charles F. Mercer, John J. Milligan, Mathias 
Morris, James Parker, James A. Pcarce, Ste- 
phen C. Phillips, David Potts, jr., John Kced, 
John Robertson, David Russell, William §!adc, 
John N. Steele, John Taliaferro. Joseph R. 
Underwood, Lewis Williams, Sherrod Williams, 
Henry A. Wise. 

It is remarkable that this Hst of nays begins 



with Mr. Adams, and ends witli Mr. Wise — a 
proof that all the negative votes, were not given 
upon the same reasons. 

The vote was immediately after taken on 
ordering to a third reading the bill for the ad- 
mission of the State of Arkansas ; which was so 
ordered by a vote of 1-13 to 50. The nays were : 

"Messrs. John Quincy Adams, Hcman Allen. 
Joseph B. Anthony, Jeremiah Bailey, A\illiam K. 
Bond, Nathaniel B. Borden, George N. Briggs, 
William B. Calhoun, Timothy Childs. William 
Clark, Joseph H. Crane, Caleb Cushing, Edward 
Darlington, Ilarmcr Denny, George Evans, 
Horace Everett. Philo C. Fuller, George Gren- 
nell. jr., Hiland Hall, Gideon Hard, James Harper, 
Abner Hazeltine, Joseph Henderson, William 
Hiester, Samuel Hoar, AVilliam Jackson. Henry 
F. Janes, Benjamin Jones, John liaporte, Ab- 
bott Lawrence, George W. Lay, Levi Lincoln, 
Thomas C. Love, Samson Mason, Jonathan 
iSIcCarthy, Thomas M. T. McKennan, Mathias 
Morris, James Parker, Dutee J. Pearce, Stephen 
C. Phillips, David Potts, jr., John Reed, David 
Russell, William N. Shinn, William Slade, John 
Thomson, Joseph R. Underwood, Samuel F. 
Vinton, Elisha Whittlesey, Lewis Williams." 

Here again the beginning and the ending of 
the list of voters is remarkable, begmning again 
with Mr. Adams, and terminating with Mr. 
Lewis Williams, of North Carolina — two gen- 
tlemen wide apart in their political courses, and 
certainly voting on this occasion on diflcrent 
principles. 

From the meagreness of these negative votes, 
it is evident that the struggle was, not to pass 
the two bills, but to bring them to a vote. This 
was the secret of the arduous session of twenty- 
five hours in the House. Besides the public 
objections which clogged their admission — 
boundaries in one, slavery in the other, alien 
voting, and (what was deemed l)y some), revolu- 
tionary conduct in both in holding conventions 
without authority of Congress ; besides these pub- 
lic reasons, there was another cause operating 
silently, and which went more to the postpone- 
ment than to the rejection of the Stnte.s. Tliis 
cause was political ami partisan, and grew out 
of the impending presidential election, to Ix? 
held before Congress .«!.ould meet again. Mr. 
Van Buren was the democratic candiilate ; Gene- 
ral AVilliam Henry Harrison was the candidate 
of the opposition ; and .Mr. Ilngli b. White, of 
Tennessee, was brought forward 1)y a fraction 
which divided from the democratic party. Jho 
new States, it was known?, would vote, if now 



638 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW 



admitted, for Mr. Van Buren ; and this furnished 
a reason to the friends of the other candidates 
(even those friendly to eventual admission, and 
on which some of them were believed to act), 
to wish to stave off the admission to the ensuing 
session. — The actual negative vote to the ad- 
mission of each State, was not only small, but 
nearly the same in number, and mixed both as 
to political parties and sectional localities ; so 
as to exclude the idea of any regular or consi- 
derable opposition to Arkansas as a slave State. 
The vote which would come nearest to referring 
itself to that cause was the one on Mr. Adams' 
proposed amendment to the State constitution ; 
and there the whole vote amounted only to 32 ; 
and of the sentiments of the greater part of 
these, including Mr. Adams himself, the speech 
of that gentleman must be considered the au- 
thentic exponent ; and will refer their opposition, 
not to any objection to the admission of the 
State as slave-holding, but to an unwiUingness 
to appear upon the record as assenting to a con- 
stitution which forbid emancipation, and made 
slavery perpetual. The number actually voting 
to reject the State, and keep her out of the 
Union, because she admitted slavery, must have 
been quite small — not more in proportion, pro- 
bably, than what it was in the Senate. 



CHAPTER CXXXIX. 

ATTEMPTED INQUIRY INTO THE MILITARY 
ACADEMY. 

This institution, soon after its organization 
under the act of 1812, began to attract public 
attention, as an establishment unfriendly to the 
rights of the people, of questionable constitu- 
tionality, as being for the benefit of the rich 
and influential ; and as costing an enormous sum 
for each officer obtained from it for actual service. 
Movements against it were soon commenced in 
Congress, and for some years perseveringly con- 
tinued, principally under the lead of Mr. Newton 
Cannon, and Mr. John Cooke, representatives 
from the State of Tennessee. Their speeches 
and statements made considerable impression 
upon the public mind, but -very little upon Con- 
gress, where no amelioration of any kind could be 
obtained, either in the organization of the in- 



stitution, or in the practical administration 
which had grown up under it. In the session 
of 1834 — '35 these efforts were renewed, chiefly 
induced by Mr. Albert Gallatin Hawcs, repre- 
sentative from Kentucky, who moved for, and 
attained the appointment of a committee of 
twenty-four, one from each State ; whicli made 
a report, for which no consideration could be 
procured — not even the printing of the report. 
Baffled in their attempts to get at their object in 
the usual forms of legislation, the members oppos- 
ed to the institution resorted to the extraordinary 
mode of attacking its existence in an appropria- 
tion bill : that is to say, resisting appropriations 
for its support — a mode of proceeding entirely 
hopeless of success, but justifiable, as they 
believed, under the circumstances ; and at all 
events as giving them an opportunity to get 
their objections before the public. 

It was at the session of 1835- 3G, that this 
form of opposition took its most determined 
course ; and some brief notices of what was said 
then may still be of service in awakening a spirit 
of inquiry in the country, and promoting inves- 
tigations which have so long been requested 
and denied. But it was not until after another 
attempt had failed to do any thing through a 
committee at this session also, that the ultimate 
resource of an attack upon the appropriation for 
the support of the institution was resorted to. 
Early in the session Mr. Ilawes offered this re- 
solution : " That a select committee of nine be 
appointed to inquire into what amendments, if 
any, are expedient to be made to the laws re- 
lating to the military Academy at West Point, 
in the State of New- York; and alsq into the ex- 
pediency of modifying the organization of said 
institution ; and also whether it would not com- 
port with the public interest to abolish the 
same: with power in the committee to report 
by bill or otherwise." Mr. Ilawes, in support 
of his motion reminded the House of the ap- 
pointment of the committee of the last session, 
of its report, and his inability to obtain action 
upon it, or to procure an order for its printing. 
The resolution which he now submitted varied 
but in one particular from that which he had 
offered the year before, and that was in the re- 
duced" number of the committee asked for. 
Twenty-four was a larger number than could 
be induced to enter into any extended or patient 
j investigation ; and he now proposed a commit' 



ANNO 1836. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



639 



tee of nine only. His resolution was only one 
of inquiry, to obtain a report for the infor- 
mation of the people, and the action of the 
House— a species of resolution usually granted 
as a matter of course ; and he hoped there would 
be no objection to his motion. Mr. Wardwell, 
of New- York, objected to the appointment of 
a select committee, and thought the inquiry 
ought to go to the standing committee on mili- 
tary affairs. Mr. F. 0. J. Smith, of jNIaine, 
wished to hear some reason assigned for this 
motion. It seemed to him that a special com- 
mittee ought to be raised ; but if the friends of 
the institution were fearful of a select commit- 
tee, and would assign that fear as a motive for 
preferring the standing committee, he would 
withdraw his objection. Mr. Briggs, of Massa- 
chusetts, believed the subject was already re- 
ferred to the military committee in the general 
reference to that committee of all that related 
in the President's message to this Academy ; 
and so believing, he made it a point of order for 
the Speaker to decide, whether the motion of 
Mr. Hawes could be entertained. The Speaker, 
Mr. Polk, said that the motion was one of in- 
quiry ; and he considered the reference of the 
President's message as not applying to the case. 
Mr. Briggs adhered to his belief that the subject 
ought to go to a standing committee. The com- 
mittee had made an elaborate report at the last 
session, which was now on the files of the House ; 
and if gentlemen wished infoi-mation from it, 
they could order it to be printed. Mr. John 
Reynolds, of Illinois, said it was astonishing 
that members of this House, friends of this in- 
stitution, were so strenuous in their opposition 
to investigation. If it was an institution founded 
on a proper basis, and conducted on proper and 
republican principles, they had nothing to fear 
from investigation ; if otherwise the people had: 
and the great dread of investigation portended 
something wrong. His constituents were dis- 
satisfied with this Academy, and expected him 
to represent them fairly in doing his part to re- 
form, or to abolish it ; and he should not dis- 
appoint them. The member from ^lassacluisctts, 
Mr. Briggs, he said, had endeavored to stifle 
this inquiry, by making it a point of order to be 
decided by the Speaker ; which augured badly 
for the integrity of the institution. Failing 
in that attempt to stifle inquiry, he had joined 
the member from New-York, Mr. Wardwell, 



in the attempt to send it to a committee where 
no inquiry would be made, and in violation of 
parliamcntiiry practice. He, Mr. Reynokls. liad 
great respect for the members of the military 
committee ; but some of them, and perhaps all, 
had expressed an ojjinion in favor of the institu- 
tion. Neither the chairman, nor any member 
of the committee had asked for this inquiry ; 
it was the law of parliament, and also of reason 
and common sense, that all inquiries should go 
to committees disposed to make them; and it 
was without precedent or justification, and in- 
jurious to the fair conducting of business, to take 
an inquiry out of the hands of a member that 
moves it, and is responsible for its adequate 
prosecution, and refer it to a committee that is 
against it, or indificrent to it. When a member 
gets up, and moves an inquiry touching any 
bi'anch of the public service, or the official con- 
duct of any officer, he incurs a responsibility 
to the moral sense of the House and of the 
country. He assumes that there is something 
wrong — that he can find it out if he has a 
chance ; and he is entitled to a chance, both for 
his own sake and the country ; and not onl}- to 
have his committee, but to be its chairman, and 
to have a majority of the members fovorable to 
its object. If it were otherwise members would 
have but poor encouragement to move inquiries 
for the public service. Cut off himself from the 
performance of his woi'k, an indifferent or pre- 
judiced committee may neglect inquiry, or per- 
vert it into defence ; and subject the mover to 
the imputation of preferring false and frivolous 
motions; and so discredit him, while injuring 
the public, and sheltering abuse. Under a 
just report he believed the Academy would 
wither and die^ Under its present oi-ganizji- 
tion it is a monopoly for the gratuitous 
education of the sons and connections of the rich 
and influential — to be afterwards prefenvd for 
army appointments, or even for civil appoint- 
ments ; and to be always provided for as the child- 
ren of the government, getting not only gratuitous 
education, but a profi'roneo in appnintnuMits. A 
private soldier, though a young David, shiying 
Goliath, could get no appointment in our anny. 
He must stand back for a West-Pointer, even the 
most inefficient, who througli favor, •>r <lrivinp, 
had gone through his course and got his diplo- 
ma. Promotion was the stimulus and tlie re- 
ward to merit. We, members of Congress, rise 



640 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



from the ranks of the people when we come 
here, and have to depend upon merit to get here. 
Why not let the same rule apply in the army, 
and give a chance to merit there, instead of giv- 
ing all the offices to those ^vho may have no 
turn for war, who only want support, and get 
it by public patronage, and ftivor, because they 
have official friends or parents ? The report 
made at the last session looks bad for the 
Academy. Let any cue read it, and be will feel 
that there is something wrong. If the friends 
of the institution would suffer that report to be 
printed, and let it go to the people, it would be 
a great satisfaction. Mr. Wardwell said the 
last Congress had refused to print the report ; 
and asked why it was that these complaints 
against the Academy came from the West? 
Was it because the Western engineers wanted 
the employment on the roads and bridges in 
place of the regular officers. Mr. Hannegan, of 
Indiana, said he was a member of the military' 
committee which made the report at the last 
session, and which Mr. Wardwell had reminded 
them the House refused to order to be printed. 
And why that refusal ? Because the friends of 
the Academy took post behind the two-thirds 
rule ; and the order for printing could not be 
obtained because two-thirds of the House could 
not be got to suspend the rule, even for one hour, 
and that the morning hour. The friends of the 
Academy rallied, he said, to prevent the suspen- 
sion of the rule, and to prevent publicity to the 
report. Mr. Hamer, of Ohio, said, why oppose 
this inquiry ? ' The people desire it. A large 
portion of them believed the Academy to be an 
aristocratical institution, which ought to be 
abolished ; others believe it to be republican, and 
that it ought to be cherished. Then why not 
inqxiire, and find out which is right, and legis- 
late accordingly ? Mr. Abijah Mann, of New- 
York, said there was a considerable interest in 
the States surrounding this institution, and he 
had seen a strong disposition in the members 
coming from those States to defend it against 
all charges. lie was a member of the committee 
of twenty-four at the last session, and concurred 
partially in the report which was made, which 
was, to say the least of it, an elaborate examina- 
tion of the institution from its foundation. He 
knew that in doing so he had incurred some 
censure from a part of his own State ; but he 
never had ffinched, and never would, flinch, from 



the performance of any duty here which he felt 
it incumbent upon him to discharge. He had 
found much to censure, and believed if the 
friends of the institution would take the trouble 
to investigate it as the committee of twenty-four 
had done, they would find more to censure in 
the principle of the establishment than they 
were aware of There were abuses in this in- 
stitution, developed in that report, of a character 
that would not find, he presumed, a single ad- 
vocate upon that floor when they came to be 
published. He believed the principle of the in- 
stitution was utterly inconsistent with the prin- 
ciple of all other institutions ; but he was not 
for exterminating it. Reformation was his ob- 
ject. It was the only avenue by which the 
people of the country could approach the offices 
of the army — the only gateway by which they 
could be reached. The principle was wrong, 
and the practice bad. We saw individuals con^ 
tinually pressing the government for admission 
into this institution, to be educated professedly 
for the military service, but very frequently, and 
too generally with the secret design in their 
hearts to devote themselves to the civil pursuits 
of society ; and this was a fraud upon the gov- 
ernment, and a poor way for the future officer to 
begin his educational life. When the report of 
the twenty-four came to be printed, as he hoped 
it would, it would be seen that this institution 
cost the government by far too much for the 
education of these young men. Whether it sprunsr 
from abuse or not, such was the fact when they 
looked at utility connected with the expenditure. 
If he recollected the report aright it proved that 
not more than two out of five who entered the 
institution remained there long enough to gradu- 
ate ; and not two more out of fire graduates 
who entered the army. If his memory served 
him right the report would show that every 
graduate coming from that institution in the last 
ten years, had cost the United States more than 
five thousand dollars ; and previously a much 
larger sum; and he believed within one year 
the graduates had cost upwards of thirty thou- 
sand dollars. If there be any truth in these 
statements the institution must be mismanaged, 
or misconducted, and ought to be thoroughly 
investigated and reformed. And he appealed 
to the friends of the Academy to withdraw their 
opposition, and suflcr the report to be printed, 
and the select committee to be raised ; but he 



I 



ANNO 1836. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



641 



appealed in vain. The opposition was kept up, 
and the t\vo-thirds rule again Resorted to, and 
effectually used to balk the friends of inquiry. 
It was after this second failure to get at the 
subject regularly through a committee, and a 
published report, that the friends of inquiry 
resorted to the last alternative — that of an at- 
tack upon the appropriation. The opportunity 
for this was not presented until near the end of 
the session, when Mr. Franklin Pierce, of New 
Hampshire, delivered a well-considered and well- 
reasoned speech against the institution, bottomed 
on facts, and sustained by conclusions, in the 
highest degree condemnatory of the Academy ; 
and which will be given in the next chapter. 



CHAPTER CXL. 

MILITARY ACADEMT— SPEECH OF »IE. PIERCE. 

"Mr. Chairman : — An attempt was made during 
the last Congress to bring the subject of the re- 
organization of the Military Academy before the 
country, through a report of a committee. The 
same thing has been done during the present 
session, again and again, but all efforts have 
proved alike unsuccessful ! Still, you do not 
cease to call for appropriations ; jou. require the 
people's money for the support of the institu- 
tion, while you refuse them the light necessary 
to enable them to judge of the propriety of 
your annual requisitions. Whether the amount 
proposed to be appropriated, by the bill upon 
your table, is too great or too small, or precisely 
sufficient to cover the current expenses of the 
institution, is a matter into which I will not at 
present inquire ; but I shall feel bound to oppose 
the bill in every stage of its progress. I cannot 
vote a single dollar until the resolution of in- 
quiry, presented by my friend from Kentticky 
(Mr. Hawes), at an early day in the session, 
shall be first taken up and disposed of. I am 
aware, sir, that it will be said, because I have 
heard the same declaration on a former occa- 
.«:ion, that this is not the proper time to discuss 
the merits of the institution ; tliat the bill is to 
make provision for expenses already incurred 
in part ; and whatever opinions may be enter- 
tained upon the necessity of a reorganization, 
the appropriation must be made. I say to gen- 
tlemen who are opposed to the principles of the 
institution, and to those who believe that abuses 
exist, which ought to be exposed and corrected, 
that now is their only time, and this tlie only 
opportunity, during the i)resent session, to at- 
tain their object, and I trust they will steadily 
resist the bill until its friends shall find it neccs- 

Vol. I.— 41 



sary to take up the resolution of inquiry, and 
give it its proper reference. 

" Sir, why has tliis investigation been rcsi.st 
ed? Is it not an institution which has already 
cost this co'^ntry more than thre^ millions of 
dollars, for which you propose, in this very Ijill, 
an appropriation of more than one hundred and 
thirty thousand dollars, and which, at the same 
time, in the estimation of a large portion of the 
citizens of tliis Union, has failed, eminently 
failed, to fulfil the objects for which it was es- 
tablished, of sufficient interest and importance 
to claim the consideration of a committee of this 
House, and of the House itself? I .should have 
expected the resolution of the gentleman from 
Kentucky (Mr. Hawes), merely proposing an 
inquiry, to pass without opposition, had I not 
witnessed the strong sensation, nay, excitement, 
that was produced liere, at the last session, l>y 
the presentation of his yet unpublished report. 
Sir, if you would have an exhibition of highly 
excited feeling, it requires little observation to 
learn that you may produce it at any moment 
by attacking such laws as confer exclusive and 
gratuitous privileges. The adoption of the re- 
solution of inquiry, at the last session of Con- 
gress, and the appointment of a select commit- 
tee under it, were made occasion of newspaper 
paragraphs, which, in tone of lamentation and 
diref^ul prediction, rivalled the most highly 
wrought specimens of the panic era. One of 
those articles I have preserved, and have bcf >re 
me. It commences thus: 'T^he architects of 
min. — This name has been appropriately given 
to those who are leading on the base, the igno- 
rant, and the unprincipled, in a remorseless war 
upon all the guards and defences of society.' 

" I introduce it here merely to show what arc, 
in certain quarters, considered the guards and 
defences of society. After various compliments, 
similar to that just cited, the artick proceeds : 
'All this is dangerous as novel, and the ulti- 
mate results cannot be contemplated without 
anxietJ^ If this .spirit extends, who can check 
it 1 " Down with the Bank ;" " down with the 
Military Academy ;"" down with the .ludifi- 
ary ;" " down with the Senate ;" will be follow- 
ed by watchwords of a worse chai-actcr.' Here, 
Mr. Chairm.m, you have the United States Hank 
first, and then the JMilitary Academy, as the 
guards and defences of j-our country. If it be 
so, you are, indeed, feebly protected. One of 
these guards and defonccs is already tottering. 
And who are the ' architects of ruin ' 
resolved its downfall ? Are they the 
ignorant, and tho unprincipled ? No, 
most pure and patriotic poition of your com- 
munity : the staid, industrious, intelligent far- 
mers and mechanics, through a jiublic servant, 
who has met responsibilities and seconde<l their 
wishes, with equal intrepidity and success, in 
the camj) ami in tlie cabinet, have accomplislufl 
this great work. .Mr. Chairman, theiv is no 
real danger to be ai)i)reheuded from this uiiich- 
dreaded levelling principle. 



that nave 

ha.se, the 

.Mr. The 



G42 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



" From the middling interest j'ou have derived 
your most able and efficient support in the most 
gloomy and trjM'nj; periods of your history. And 
what have the}^ asked in return ? Nothing but 
tlK' common advantages and blessings of a free 
government, administered under equal and im- 
l)artial laws. They are responsible for no por- 
tion of your legislation, which, through its par- 
tial and unjust operation, has shaken this Union 
to its centre. That has had its origin in a dif- 
ferent quarter, sustained by wealth, the wealth 
of monopolies, and the power and influence 
which wealth, thus accumulated and disposed, 
never fails to control. Indeed, sir, while far 
from demanding at your hands special fiivors 
for themselves, they have not, in my judgment, 
been sufficientlj^ jealous of all legislation confer- 
ring exclusive and gratuitous privileges. 

'•That the law creating the institution, of which 
I am now speaking, and the practice under it, is 
strongly marked by both these characteristics, is 
apparent at a single glance. It is gratuitous, 
because those who are so fortimate as to obtain 
admission there, receive their education without 
any obligation, except such as a sense of honor 
may impose, to return, either by service or other- 
wise, the slightest equivalent. It is exclusive, 
inasmuch as only one j^outh, out of a population 
of more than 47,000, can participate in its ad- 
vantages at the same time ; and those who are 
successful are admitted at an age, when their 
characters cannot have become developed, and 
with very little knowledge of their adapta- 
tion, mental or physical, for militarj- life. The 
.system disregards one of those great principles 
which, carried into practice, contributed, per- 
haps, more than any other to render the arms 
of Napoleon invincible for so many years. Who 
does not percievc that it destroj-s the very life 
and spring of military ardor and enthusiasm, 
by utterly foreclosing all hope of promotion to 
the soldier and non-commissioned officer? How- 
ever meritorious may be his services, however 
pre-eminent may become his qualifications for 
command, all is unavailing. The portcullis is 
dropped between him and preferment ; the wis- 
dom of your laws having provided another cri- 
terion than that of admitted courage and con- 
duct, by which to determine who are worthy of 
command. They have made an Academy, where 
a certain number of young gentlemen are edu- 
cated annually at the public expense, and to 
which there is, of consequence, a general rush, 
not so much from sentiments of patriotism and 
a taste for military life, as from motives less 
worth}' — the avenue, and the only avenue, to 
rank in j'our army. These are tniths, Mr. 
Chairman, which no man will pretend to deny ; 
and I leave it for this House and the nation to 
determine whether the}' do not exhibit a spirit 
of cxclusivtness, alike at variance with the ge- 
nius of your government, and the efficiency and 
chivalrous character of your military force. 

" Sir, no man can feel more deeply interested 
in the army, or entertain a higher regard for it, 



than myself. My earliest recollections conned 
themselves fondly and gratefully with the names 
of the brave rnen who, relinquishing the quiet 
and security of civil life, were staking their all 
upon the defence of their country's rights and 
honor. One of the most distinguished among 
that noble f^and now occupies and honors a seat 
vipon this floor. It is not fit that I should in- 
<lulge in expressions of personal respect and ad- 
miration, which I am sure would find a hearty 
response in the bosom of every member of this 
committee. I allude to him merely to express 
the hope that, on some occasion, we may have, 
upon this subject, the benefit of his experience 
and observation. And if his opinions shall dif- 
fer from my own, I promise carefully to review 
every step by which I have been led to my pre- 
sent conclusions. Y'ou cannot mistake me, sir ; 
I refer to the hero of Erie. I have declared 
myself the friend of the army. Satisfy me, then, 
what measures are best calculated to render it 
effective and what all desire it to be, and I go 
for the proposition with my whole heart. 

" But I cannot believe that the Military Aca- 
demy, as at present organized, is calculated to 
accomplish this desirable end. It may, and un- 
doubtedly does, send forth into the country 
much military knowledge ; but the advantage 
which your army, or that which will constitute 
your army in time of need, derives from it, is by 
no means commensurate with the expense you 
incur. Here, Mr. Chairman, pemiit me to say 
tlaat I deny, utterly, the expediency, and the 
right to educate, at the public expense, any 
number of young men who, on the comiiletion of 
their education, are not to form a portion of your 
military force, but to return to the walks of 
private life. Such was never the operation of 
the Military Academy, until after the law of 
1812; and the doctrine, so fiir as I have been 
able to ascertain, was first formally announced 
by a distinguished individual, at this time sufB- 
ciently jealous of the exercise of executive pa- 
tronage, and greatly alarmed by what he con- 
ceives to be the tendencies of this government 
to centralism and consolidation. It may be 
found in the report of the Secretary of War, 
communicated to Congress in 1819. 

" If it shall, upon due consideration, receive 
the sanction of Congress and the country, I can 
see no limit to the exercise of power and gov- 
ernment patronage. Follow out the princi- 
ple, and where will it lead you ? You confer 
upon the national government the absolute 
guardianship of literature and science, military 
and civil ; you need not stop at military science ; 
any one, in the wide range of sciences, becomes 
at once a legitimate and constitutional object of 
your patronage ; you are confined by no limit 
but your discretion ; you have no check but your 
own good pleasure. If you may afford instruc- 
tion, at the public expense, in the languages, in 
philosophy, in chemistry, and in the exact sci- 
ences, to young gentlemen who are under no 
obligation to enter the service of their country, 



ANNO 1836. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



643 



but are, in fact, destined for civil life, why may 
you not. by parity of reasoning, provide the 
means of a legal, or theological, or medical edu- 
cation, on the ground that the recipients of j-our 
bounty will carry forth a fund of useful know- 
ledge, that may, at some time, under some cir- 
cumstances, produce a beneficial influence, and 
promote ' the general welfore ? ' Sir, I fear that 
even some of us may live to see the day when 
this 'general welfiire' of j'our constitution will 
leave us little ground to boast of a government 
of limited powers. But I did not propose at 
this time to discuss the abstract question of 
constitutional right. I will regard the expedi- 
ency alone ; and, whether the power exist or not, 
its exercise, in an institution like this, is subver- 
sive of the only principle upon which a school, 
conducted at the public expense, can be made 
profitable to the public service — that of making 
an admission into your school, and an education 
there, secondary to an appointment in the army. 
Sir, this distinctive feature characterized all 
your legislation, and all executive recommenda- 
tions, down to 1810. 

" I may as well notice here, as at any time, 
an answer which has always been ready when 
objections have been raised to this institution — 
an answer which, if it has not proved quite sa- 
tisfactory to minds that j'ield their assent more 
readily to strong reasons than to the authority 
of great names, has 3'et, unquestionably, exer- 
cised a powerful influence upon the public mind. 
It has not gone forth upon the authority of an 
individual merely, but has been published to the 
world with the approbation of a committee of a 
former Congress. It is this : that the institu- 
tion has received, at different times, the sanc- 
tion of such names as Washington, Adams, and 
Jefierson ; and this has been claimed with such 
boldness, and in a form so imposing, as almost 
to forbid any question of its accuracJ^ If this 
were correct, in point of fact, it would be enti- 
tled to the most profound respect and considera- 
tion, and no change should be urged against the 
weight of such authority, without mature delib- 
eration, and thorough conviction of, expediency. 
Unfortunately for the advocates of the institu- 
tion, and fortunately for the interests of the 
country, this claim cannot be sustained by re- 
ference to executive documents, from the first 
report of General Knox, in 1790, to the close 
of Mr. Jelforson's administration. 

•• The error has undoubtedlv innocently oc- 
curred, by confounding the Military Academy 
at West Point as it was, with the Military Aca- 
/ demy at West Point as it is. The report of 
Secretary Knox, just referred to, is character- 
ized by this distinctive feature — that the corps 
proposed to be organized were ' to serve as an 
actual defence to the community,' and to consti- 
tute a part of the active military force of the 
country, ' to serve in the field, or on the frontier, 
or in the fortifications of the sea-coast, as the 
( ommander-in-chief may direct.' At a later pe- 
X'iod, the report of the Secretary of War (]Mr. 



McTIenry), communicated to Congress in 1800 
although it proposed a plan for military scliools, 
differing in Tnany essential particulars from those 
which had preceded it, still retained the distinc- 
tive feature just named as characterizing the re- 
port of General Knox. 

"AVith regard to educating young men gratu- 
itously, which, whatever may have 'been the 
design, I am prepared to show is the practical 
operation of the Academ}-, as at present organ- 
ized, I cannot, perhaps, exhibit more clearly the 
sentiments of the Executive at that early day, 
urgent as was the occasion, and strong as must 
have been the desire, to give strength and effi- 
ciency to the military force, than by reading one 
or two paragraphs from a suj)plementary report 
I of Secretary iSIcIIenr}-, addressed to the chair- 
, man of the Committee of Defence, on the 31st 
! January, 1800. 

'• The Seci-etary says : 'Agreeably to the [)l;ui 
of the Military Academy, the directors thereof 
are to be officers taken from the army ; conse- 
quently, no expense will be incurred by such 
appointments. Tlie plan also contemplates that 
officers of the army, cadets, and non-commis- 
sioned officers, shall receive instruction in the 
Academy. As the rations and fuel which they 
are entitled to in the armj^ will suffice for them 
in the Academy-, no additional expense will be 
required for objects of maintenance while there. 
The expenses of servants and certain incidental 
expenses relative to the police and administra- 
tion, may be defrayed by those who shall be 
admitted, out of their pa}' and emoluments.' 

"You will observe, Mr. Chairman, from the 
phraseology of the report, that all were to con- 
stitute a part of your actual military force ; and 
that whatever additional charges should be 
incurred, were to be defrayed by those who 
might receive the advantages of instruction. 
These were provisions, just, as they are impor- 
tant. Let me call 3-our attention for a moment 
to a report of Col. Williams, which was made 
the subject of a special message, communicated 
to Congress by 5lr. Jefferson, on the ISth of 
March, 1808. The extract I propose to read, as 
sustaining fully the views of Mr. ^IcIIonry upon 
this point, is in the following words: * It might 
be* well to make the plan upon such a scale us 
not only to take in the minor officers of the navy, 
but also any youths from any of the States who 
might wish for such an education, whether de- 
signed for the army or navy, or neitluT, and let 
them be assessed to the value of tlieir e<lucation, 
which might form a fund for extra or ci.ntingent 
expenses.' Sir, these are the true doct rines upon 
this subject; doctrines wortliy of the adminis- 
tration under w liicli they were pronuilgatod, 
and in accordance with the views of statesmen in 
the earlier and purer days of the Republic. (Jive 
to the officers of your army the highest advan- 
ta"es for perfectioii in all the branclies of mihtary 
science, and let those advantages be open to all, 
in rotation, and under such terms and regulations 
as shall bo at once impartial toward the olhrcrs, 



644 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



and advantageous to the service ; but let all 
young gentlemen who have a taste for military 
life, and desire to adopt arms as a profession, 
prepare themselves for subordinate situations 
at their own expense, or at the expense of their 
parents or guardians, in the same manner that the 
youth of tile country are qualified for the profes- 
sions of civil life. Sir, while upon this subject of 
gratuitous education, I will read an extract from 
'Dupiu's Military Force of Great Britain.' to show 
what favor it linds in another country, from the 
practice and experience of which we may derive 
some advantages, however far from approving of 
its institutions generally. The extract is from 
the 2d vol. 71st page, and relates to the terms on 
which young gentlemen are admitted to the ju- 
nior departments of the Royal jNIilitary College 
at Sandlmrst. 

•' FlrsL : The sons of oflBccrs of all ranks, 
whether of the land or sea forces, who have 
died in the sei'vice, leaving their families in pe- 
cuniary distress; this class ai-e instructed, board- 
ed, and habited gratutiously by the State ; be- 
ing required only to provide their equipments 
on admission, and to maintain themselves in 
linen. Secondly : The sons of all officers of the 
army above the rank of subalterns actually in 
the service, and who pay a sum proportioned to 
their ranks, according to a scale per annum re- 
gulated by the supreme board. The sons of living 
naval officers of rank not below that of master 
and commander, are also admitted on payment 
of annual stipends, similar to those of corres- 
ponding ranks in tlie army. The orphan sons 
of officers, who have not left their families in 
pecuniary difficulties, are admitted into this class 
on paying the stipends required of officers of the 
rank held by their parents at the time of their 
decease. Thirdly : The sons of noblemen and 
private gentlemen who pay a yearly sum equiv- 
alent to the expenses of their education, board, 
and clothing, according to a rate regulated from 
time to time by the commissioners.' Sir, let it 
be remembered that these are the regulations 
of a government which, with all its wealth and 
power, is, from its structure and practice, groan- 
ing under the accumulated weight of pensions, 
sinecures, and gratuities, and yet you observe, 
that only one class, ' the sons of officers of all 
ranks, whether of the land or sea forces, who 
have died in the service, leaving their families in 
pecuniary distress,' are educated gratuitously. 

" I do not approve even of this, Ijut I hold it 
up in contrast with your own principles and 
practice. If tlie patience of the committee would 
warrant me, Mr. Chairman, I could show, by 
reference to Executive communications, and the 
concurrent legislation of Congress in 1794, 179G, 
1802, and 1808, that prior to the last mentioned 
date, such an institution as we now have was 
neither recommended nor contemplated. Upon 
this point I will not detain you longer ; but 
when hereafter confronted by the authority of 
great Barnes, I trust we shall be told where the 
expressions of approbation are to be found. We 



may then judge of their applicability to the 
^lilitary Academy as at present organized. I 
am far from desiring to see this comitry desti- 
tute of a Military Academy ; but I would have 
it a school of practice, and instruction, for officers 
actually in the service of the United States : not 
an institution for educating gratuitously, young 
gentlemen, who, on the completion of their term, 
or after a few months' leave of absence, resign 
their commissions antl return to the pursuits of 
civil life. If any one doubts that tliis is the 
practical operation of your present system, I re- 
fer him to the aimual list of resignations, to be 
found in the Adjutant General's office. 

" Firmly as 1 am convinced of the necessity 
of a reorganization, I would take no step to 
create an unjust prejudice against the institution. 
All that I ask, and, so far as I know, all that 
any of the opponents of the institution ask, is, 
that after a full and impartial investigation, it 
shall stand or fall upon its merits. I know 
there are graduates of the institution who are 
ornaments to the airny, and an honor to their 
country ; but they, an(^ not the semmary, are 
entitled to the credit. Here I would remark, 
once for all, that I do not reflect upon the offi- 
cers or pupils of the Academy ; it is to the prin- 
ciples of the institution itself, as at present or- 
ganized, that I object. It is often said that the 
graduates leave the institution with sentiments 
that but ill accord with the feelings and opinions 
of the great mass of the people of that govern- 
ment from which they derive the means of edu- 
cation, and that many who take commissions 
possess few qualifications for the command of 
men, either in war or in peace. Most of the 
members of this House have had more or less 
intercourse with these young gentlemen, and I 
leave it for each individual to form his own 
opinion of the correctness of the charges. Thus 
nuich I will say for myself, that I believe that 
these, and greater evils, are the natural, if not 
the inevitable, result of the principles in which 
this institution is founded ; and any system of 
education, established upon similar principles, 
on government patronage alone, will produce 
like results, now and for ever. Sir, what are 
some of these results 1 By the report of the 
Secretary of War, dated January, 1831, we are 
informed that, " by an estimate of the last five 
years (preceding that date), it appears that the 
supply of the army from the corps of graduated 
cadets, has averaged about twenty-two annually, 
while those who graduated are about forty, 
making in each year an excess of eighteen. The 
number received annually into the Academy ave- 
rages one hundred, of which only the number 
stated, to wit, forty, pass through the pre- 
scribed course of education at schools, and be- 
come supernumerary lieutenants in the army. 
By the report of the Secretary of War, De- 
' cember, 1830, we are infonned, that " the num- 
ber of promotions to the army from this corps, 
for the last five years, has averaged about 
twenty-two annually while the number of 



ANNO 1836. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



645 



graduates has been at an average of (ortj. This 
excess, which is annually increasing, has placed 
eighty-seven in waiting until vacancies shall 
take place, and show ihat in the next year, 
probablj^ and in the succeeding one, certainly, 
there will be an excess beyond what the exist- 
ing law authorizes to be commissioned. There 
will then be 106 supernumerary brevet second 
lieutenants appurtenant to the army, at an 
average annual expense of $80,000. Sir, that 
results here disclosed were not anticipated by 
Mr. Madison, is apparent from a recurrence to 
his messages of 1810 and 1811. 

"In passing the law of 1812, both Congress 
and the President acted for the occasion, and 
they expected those who should succeed them 
to act in a similar manner. Their feelings of 
patriotism and resentment were aroused, by be- 
holding the privileges of freemen wantonly in- 
vaded, our glorious stars and stripes disregard- 
ed, and national and individual rights trampled 
in the dust. The war was pending. The ne- 
cessity for increasing the military force of the 
country was obvious and pressing, and the ur- 
gent occasion for increased facilities for military 
Instruction, equally apparent. Sir, it was under 
circumstances like these, when we had not only 
enemies abroad, but, I blush to say, enemies at 
home, that the institution, as at present organ- 
ized, had its origin. It will hardly be pretended 
that it was the original design of the law to 
augment the number of i^ersons instructed, be- 
yond the wants of the public service. Well, the 
report of the Secretary shows, that for five years 
prior to 1831. the Academy had furnished 
eighteen supernumeraries annually. A practical 
operation of this character has no sanction in the 
recommendation of Mr. Madison. The report 
demonstrates, further, the fridtfulness and 
tdility of this institution, by showing the fact, 
that but two-fifths of those who enter the 
Academj' graduate, and that but a fraction more 
than one-fifth enter the public service. This is 
not the fault of the administration of the Acade- 
my ; it is not the fault of the young gentlemen 
who are sent there ; on your present peace es- 
tablishment there can be but little to stimulate 
them, particularly in the acquisition of military 
science. There can hardly be but one object in 
the mind of the student, and that would be to 
obtain an education for the purposes of civil life. 
The difiiculty is, that the institution has out- 
lived both the occasion that called it into exist- 
ence, and its origuial design. I have before re- 
marked, that the Academy was manifestly en- 
larged to correspond with the army and militia 
actually to be called into sei-vice. Look then 
for a moment at facts, and observe with how 
much wisdom, justice, and sound policy, you re- 
tain the provisions of the law of 1812. The total 
authorized force of 1813, after the declaration of 
war, was 58,254; and in October, 1814, the 
military establishment amounted to 02,428. By 
the act of March, 1815, the peace establishment 
was limited to 10^000, and now liardly exceeds 



that number. Thus you make a reduction of 
more than 50,000 in your actual military force, 
to accommodate the expenses of the government 
to its wants. And why do you refuse to do the 
same with your grand system of public educa- 
tion? Why does that remain unchanged ? Why 
not reduce it at once, at least to the actual wants 
of the sen'ice, and dispense with your corps of 
supernumerary lieutenants 1 Sir, there is, there 
can be but one answer to the question, and that 
may be found in tlie war report of 1819, to which 
I have before had occasion to allude. Tlie Sec- 
retary saj'^s, ' the cadets who cannot be provided 
for in the array will return to private life, but 
in the event of a war their knowledge will not 
be lost to the country.' Indeed, sir, these young 
gentlemen, if they could be induced to take the 
field, would, after a lapse of ten or fifteen years, 
come up from the bar, or it ma}' be the pulpit, 
fresh in military science, and admirably quali- 
fied for command in the face of an enemy. The 
magazine of facts, to prove at the same glance 
the extravagance and unfruitfulness of this in- 
stitution, is not easily exhausted : but I am ad- 
monished by the lateness of the hour to omit 
many considerations which I regard as both in- 
teresting and important, I will only detain the 
committee to make a single statement, placing 
side by side some aggregate results. There has 
already been expended upon the institution more 
than three millions three hundred thousand dol- 
lars. Between 1815, and 1821, thirteen hundred 
and eighteen students were admitted into the 
Academy ; and of all the cadets who were ever 
there, only two hundred and sixty-five remain- 
ed in the service at the end of 1830. Here are the 
expenses you have incurred, and the products 
you have realized. 

" I leave them to be balanced by the people. 
But for myself, believing as I do, that the Acad- 
emy stands forth as an anomaly among the in- 
stitutions of this country ; that it is at variance 
with the spirit, if not the letter of the constitu- 
tion under wliich we live ; so long as this House 
shall deny investigation into its principles and 
practical operation, I, as an individual member, 
will refuse to appropriate the first dollar for its 
support." 



CHAPTER CXLI. 

EXPUNGING KESOLUTION-PEnOR.\TION OF SEN- 
ATOn BENTON'V SECONn SPEECH. 

" The condemnation of the President, combining 
as it did all that illegality and injustice could in- 
flict, had the further misfortune to In? co-oiH-ra- 
tivc in its effect with the conspiracy of the Uank 
of the United States to effect tlie most wicked 



646 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW 



and universal scheme of mischief which the 
annals of modern times exhibit. It was a plot 
against the government, and against the pro- 
perty of the country. The government was to 
be upset, and property revolutionized. Six 
hundred banks were to be broken — the general 
currency ruined — myriads bankrupted — all bu- 
siness stopped — all property sunk in value — 
all confidence destroyed ! that out of this wide 
spread ruin and pervading distress, the vengeful 
institution might glut its avarice and ambition, 
trample upon the President, take possession of 
the government, reclaim its lost deposits, and 
perpetuate its charter. These crimes, revolting 
and frightful in themselves, were to be accom- 
plished by the perpetration of a whole system 
of subordinate and subsidiary crime ! the people 
to be deceived and excited ; the President to be 
calumniated ; the effects of the bank's own con- 
duct to be charged upon him ; meetings got vip ; 
business suspended ; distress deputations or- 
ganized ; and the Senate chamber converted into 
a theatre for the dramatic exhibition of all this 
fictitious woe. That it was the deep and sad 
misfortune of the Senate so to act, as to be co- 
operative in all this scene of mischief, is too fully 
proved by the facts known, to admit of denial. 
I speak of acts, not of motives. The eflect of 
the Senate's conduct in trying the President 
and uttering alarm speeches, was to co-operate 
with the bank, and that secondarily, and as a 
subordinate performer; for it is incontestable 
that the bank began the whole affair ; the little 
book of fifty pages proves that. The bank be- 
gan it ; the bank followed it up ; the bank at- 
tends to it now. It is a case which might well 
be entered on our journal as a State is entered 
against a criminal in the docket of a court : the 
Bank of the United States versus President 
Jackson : on impeachment for removing the de- 
I)Osits. The entry would be justified by the 
facts, for these are the indubitable facts. The 
bank started the accusation ; the Senate took it 
up. The bank furnished arguments; the Se- 
nate used them. The bank excited meetings ; the 
Senate extolled them. The bank sent deputa- 
tions ; the senators received them with honor. 
The deputations reported answers for the Presi- 
dent which he never gave ; the Senate repeated and 
enforced these answers. Hand in hand through- 
out the whole process, the bank and the Senate 
acted together, and succeeded in getting up the 



most serious and afflicting panic ever known in 
this country. The whole country was agitated. 
Cities, towns, and villages, the entire country 
and the whole earth seemed to be in commotion 
against one man. A revolution was proclaimed ! 
the overthrow of all law was announced ! the 
substitution of one man's Avill for the voice of 
the whole government, was daily asserted ! the 
public sense was astounded and bewildered with 
dire and portentous annunciations ! In the 
midst of all this machinery of alarm and distress, 
many good citizens lost their reckoning ; sensi- 
ble heads went wrong ; stout hearts quailed ; old 
friends gave way ; temporizing counsels came in ; 
and the solitary defender of his country was 
urged to yield ! Oh, how much depended upon 
that one man at that dread and awful point of 
time ! If he had given way, then all was gone ! 
An insolent, rapacious, and revengeful institu- 
tion would have been installed in sovereign 
power. The federal and State governments, the 
Congress, the Presidency, the State legislatures, 
all would have fallen under the dominion of the 
bank ; and all departments of the government 
would have been filled and administered by the 
debtors, pensioners, and attorneys of that in- 
stitution. He did not yield, and the country 
was saved. The heroic patriotism of one man 
prevented all this calamity, and saved the Re- 
public from becoming the appendage and fief of 
a moneyed corporation. And what has been 
his reward ? So f\xr as the people are concerned, 
honor, gratitude, blessings, everlasting benedic- 
tions ; so far as the Senate is concerned, dis- 
honor, denunciation, stigma, infamy. And shall 
these two verdicts stand ? Shall our journal 
bear the verdict of infamy, while the hea.rts of 
the people glow and palpitate with the verdict 
of honor ? 

"President Jackson has done more for the 
human race than tlie whole tribe of politi- 
cians put together; and shall he remain stigma- 
tized and condemned for the most glorious action 
of his life ? The bare attempt to stigmatize Mr. 
Jefferson was not merely expunged, but cut out 
from the journal; so that no trace of it remains 
upon the Senate records. The designs are the 
same in both cases; but the aggravations are 
inexpressibly greater in the case of President 
Jackson. Referring to the journals of the House 
of Repi-esentatives for the character of the at- 
tempt against President Jeflerson, and the rea- 



ANNO 1836. ANDREW JACKSON, PllESIDENT. 



647 



! Bons for repulsing it, and it is seen that the 
/ attempt was made to criminate Mr. Jefferson, 
i and to charge him upon the journals with a 
violation of the laws ; and that this attempt was 
made at a time, and under circumstances insidi- 
ously calculated to excite unjust suspicion in 
the minds of the people against the Chief Magis- 
trate. Such was precisely the character of the 
charge; and the effect of the charge against 
President Jackson, with the difference only that 
the proceeding against President Jackson, was 
many ten thousand times more revolting and 
aggravated ; commencing as it did in the' Bank, 
carried on by a violent political party, prosecuted 
to sentence and condemnation ; and calculated, 
if believed, to destroy the President, to change 
the administration, and to put an end to popular 
representative government. Yes, sir, to put an 
end to elective and representative government ! 
For what are all the attacks upon President 
Jackson's administration but attacks upon the 
people who elect and re-elect him, who approve 
his administration, and by approving, make it 
their own ? To condemn such a President, thus 
supported, is to condemn the pople, to condemn 
the elective principle, to condemn the funda- 
mental principle of our governm.ent ; and to 
establish the favorite dogma of the monarchists, 
that the people are incapable of self-government, 
and will surrender themselves as collared slaves 
into the hands of military chieftains. 

" Great are the services which President 
Jackson has rendered his country. As a Gene- 
ral he has extended her frontiers, saved a city, 
and carried her renown to the highest pitch of 
glory. His civil administration has rivalled and 
transcended his warlike exploits. Indemnities 
procured from the great powers of Europe for 
spoliations committed on our citizens under 
former administrations, and which, by former 
administrations were reclaimed in vain ; peace 
and friendship with the whole world, and, what 
is more, the respect of the whole world ; the 
character of our America exalted in Europe ; 
so exalted that the American citizen treading 
the continent of Europe, and contemplating 
the sudden and great elevation of the national 
character, might feel as if he himself was an 
hundred feet high. Such is the picture abroad ! 
At home we behold a brilliant and grateful 
scene ; the public debt paid, — taxes reduced, — 
the gold currency restored, — the Southern 



States released from a useless and dangerous 
population, — all disturbing questions settled,— 
a gigantic moneyed institution repulsed in its 
march to the conquest of the government, — the 
highest prosperity attained, — and the Hero 
Patriot now crowning the list of his glorious 
services by covering his countr}* with the panoply 
of defence, and consummating his measures for 
the restoration and preservation of the currency 
of the constitution. "We have had brilliant and 
prosperous administrations ; but that of Presi- 
dent Jackson eclipses, surpasses, and casts into 
the shade, all that have preceded it. And is 
he to be branded, stigmatized, condenmcd, un- 
justly and untruly condemned; and the records 
of the Senate to bear the evidence of this out- 
rage to the latest posterity ? Shall this Presi- 
dent, so glorious in peace and in war. so success- 
ful at home and abroad, whose administration, 
now, hailed with applause and gratitude by the 
people, and destined to shine for unnumbered 
ages in the political firmament of our history : 
shall this President, whose name is to live for 
ever, whose retirement from life and services 
will be through the gate that leads to the tem- 
ple of everlasting fame ; shall Jie go down to 
posterity with this condemnation ujion him; 
and that for the most glorious action ot his life ? 

" Mr. President, I have some knowledge of 
history, and some acquaintance with the dangers 
which nations have encountered, and from 
which heroes and statesmen have saved them. 
I have read much of ancient and modem his-' 
tory, and nowhere have I found a parallel to 
the services rendered by President Jackson in 
crushing the conspiracy of the Bank, but in the 
labors of the Roman Consul in crushing the 
conspiracy of Catiline. The two conspiracies 
were identical in their objects; both dirccteil 
against the government, and the proix-rty of 
the country. Cicero extinguished the Catili- 
narcan conspiracy, and saved Rome ; President 
Jackson defeated the conspiracy of the B.ink, 
and saved our America. Their heroic sor^ico 
was the same, and their fates have been strange- 
ly alike. Cicero was condemned for violating t he 
laws and the constitution ; .«o has boon Pn><idi-nt 
Jackson. The consul was rofuse<l a hearing in his 
own defence: so has boon President Jackson. The 
life of Cicero was attempted by two a-^sassins ; 
twice was the murderous pistol 1ovo11p<1 at our 
President. All Tt;ily. the whole Roman world. 



648 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



bore Cicero to the Capitol, and tore the sentence 
of the consul's condemnation from the fasti of the 
republic : a million of Americans, fathers and 
heads of families, now demand the expuriration of 
the sentence against the President. Cicero, fol- 
lowed b}^ all that was virtuous in Rome, repaired 
to the temple of the tutelary gods, and swore 
upon the altar that he had saved his country : 
President Jackson, in the temple of the living 
God, might take the same oath, and find its re- 
sponse in the hearts of millions. Nor shall the 
parallel stop here ; but after times, and remote 
posterities shall render the same honors to 
each. Two thousand years have passed, and 
the great actions of the consul are fresh and 
green in history. The school-boy learns them ; 
the patriot studies them ; the statesman applies 
them : so shall it be with our patriot President. 
Two thousand years hence, — ten thousand, — 
nay, while time itself shall last, for who can 
contemplate the time when the memory of this 
republic shall be lost ? while time itself shall 
last, the name and fame of Jackson shall remain 
and flourish ; and this last great act by M'hich 
he saved the government from subversion, and 
property from revolution, shall stand forth as 
the seal and crown of his heroic services. And 
if any thing that I myself may do or say, shall 
survive the brief hour in which I live, it will 
be the part which I have taken, and the efforts 
which I have made, to sustain and defend the 
great defender of his country. 

" Mr. President, I have now finished the view 
which an imperious sense of duty has required 
me to take of this subject. I trust that I have 
proceeded upon proofs and facts, and have left 
nothing unsustained which I feel it to be my 
duty to advance. It is not my design to repeat, 
or to recapitulate ; but there is one further and 
vital consideration which demands the notice 
of a remark, and which I should be faithless to 
the genius of our government, if I should pre- 
termit. It is known, sir, that ambition for 
office is the bane of free States, and the conten- 
tions of rivals the destruction of their country. 
These contentions lead to every species of in- 
justice, and to evcrj^ variety of violence, and 
all cloaked with the pretext of the public good. 
Civil wars and banishment at Rome ; civil wars, 
and the ostracism at Athens ; bills of attainder, 
Ftar-chamber prosecutions, and impeachments 
in England ; all to get rid of some envied, or 



hated rival, and all pretexted with the public 
good : such has been the history of free States 
for two thousand years. The wise men who 
framed our constitution were well aware of all 
this danger and all this mischief, and took effec- 
tual care, as they thought, to guard against it. 
Banishment, the ostracism, the star-chamber 
prosecutions, bills of attainder, all those sum- 
mary and violent modes of hunting down a 
rival, which deprive the victim of defence by 
depriving him of the intervention of an accus- 
ing body to stand between the accuser and the 
trying body ; all these are proscribed by the 
genius of our constitution. Impeachments 
alone are permitted ; and these would most 
usually occur for political offences, and be of a 
character to enlist the passions of many, and 
to agitate the country. An effectual guard, it 
was supposed, was provided against the abuse 
of the impeachment power, first, by requiring a 
charge to be preferred by the House of Repre- 
sentatives, as the grand Inquest of the nation ; 
and ne.Tt, in confining the trial to the Senate, 
and requiring a majority of two-thirds to con- 
vict. The gravity, the dignity, the age of the 
senators, and the great and various poAvers with 
which they were invested — greater and more 
various than are united in the same persons 
under any other constitutional government upon 
earth — these were supposed to make the Senate 
a safe depository for the impeachment power ; 
and if the plan of the constitution is followed 
out it must be admitted to be so. But if a 
public officer can be arraigned by his rivals 
before the Senate for impeachable offences with- 
out the intervention of the House of Represen- 
tatives, and if he can be pronounced guilty by 
a simple majority, instead of a majority of two- 
thirds, then has the whole frame of our govern- 
ment miscarried, and the door left wide open to 
the greatest mischief which has ever afflicted 
the people of free States. Then can rivals and 
competitors go on to do what it was intended 
they should never do ; accuse, denounce, con- 
demn, and hunt down each other ! Great has 
been the weight of the American Senate. Time 
was when its rejections for office were fatal to 
character ; time is when its rejections are rather 
passports to public favor. Why this sad and 
ominous decline ? Let no one deceive himself. 
Public opinion is the arbiter of character in 
cur enlightened day ; it is the Areopagus from 



ANNO 1836. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



649 



which there is no appeal ! That arbiter has 
pronounced against the Senate. It has sustained 
the President, and condemned the Senate. If 
it had sustained the Senate, the Pi'esident must 
have been ruined ! as it has not, the Senate 
must be ruined, if it perseveres in its course, 
and goes on to brave public opinion ! — as an in- 
stitution, it must be ruined ! 



CHAPTER CXLII. 

DISTRIBUTION OF THE LAND EEVENUE. 

" The great loss of the bank has been in the 
depreciation of the securities ; and the only way 
to regain a capital is to restore their value. A 
large portion of them consists of State stocks, 
which are so far below their intrinsic worth that 
the present prices could not have been antici- 
pated by any reasonable man. No doubt can 
be entertained of their ultimate payment. The 
States themselves, unaided, can satisfy every 
claim against them ; they will do it speedily, if 
Congress adopt the measures contemplated for 
their relief. A division of the public lands 
among the States, which would enable them all 
to pay their debts — or a pledge of the proceeds 
of sales for that purpose — would be abundant 
security. Either of these acts would inspire 
confidence, and enhance the value of all kinds 
of property." This paragraph appeared in the 
Philadelphia National Gazette, was attributed 
to Mr. Biddle, President of the Bank of the 
United States ; and connects that institution 
with all the plans for distributing the public 
land money among the States, either in the 
shape of a direct distribution, or in the disguise 
cf a deposit of the surplus revenue ; and this for 
the purpose of enhancing the value of the State 
stocks held by it. That institution was known 
to have inteifcred in the federal legislation, to 
promote or to baffle the passage of laws, as 
deemed to be favorable or otherwise to her in- 
terests ; and this resort to the land revenue 
through an act of Congress was an eminent in- 
stance of the spirit of interference. This dis- 
tribution had become, very nearly, a part)' 
measure ; and of the party of which the bank 
was a member, and Mr. Clay the chief lie was 



the author of the scheme — had introduced it at 
several sessions — and now renewed it. Mr. Web- 
ster also made a propo.-^ition to the .';ame clfect at 
this session. It was the summer of the presiden- 
tial election ; and great calculations were made by 
the party which favored the distribution upon 
its effect in adding to their popuhiiity. Mr. 
Clay limited his plan of distribution to five years ; 
but the limitation was justly considered as no- 
thing — as a mere means of beginning the system 
of these distributions — which once began, would 
go on of themselves, while our presidential elec- 
tions continued, and any thing to divide could 
be found in the treasury. ^Ir. Benton opposed 
the whole scheme, and confronted it with a pro- 
position to devote the surplus revenue to the 
purposes of national defence ; thereby making 
an issue, as he declared, between the plunder of 
the country and the defence of tlie countn.'. 
lie introduced an antagonistic bill, as he termed 
it, devoting the surplus moneys to the public 
defences ; and showing by reports from the war 
and navy departments that seven millions a 
year for fifteen years would be required for the 
completion of the naval defences, and thirty 
millions to complete the military defences ; of 
which nine millions per annum could be benefi- 
cially expended ; and then went on to say : 

" That the reports from which he had read, 
taken together, presented a complete system of 
preparation for the national defence ; every ann 
and branch of defence was to be provided for ; an 
increase of the navy, including steamships ; ap- 
propriate fortifications, including steam batter- 
ies ; armories, foundries, arsenals, with ample 
supplies of arms and nnmitions of war; an in- 
crease of troops for the AVest and Northwest ; 
a line of posts and a military road from the Re<.l 
River to the Wisconsin, in the rear of the settle- 
ments, and mounted dragoons to scour the 
country; every thing was ei)nsiilered ; all was 
reduced to system, and a general, adequate, and 
appropriate plan of national defence was pre- 
sented, sufficient to absorb all the surphis re- 
venue, and wanting nothing but the vote i>f 
Congress to carry it into etlLCt. In this groat 
system of national defence the whole I'niou was 
equally interested; for tiie country, in all that 
concerned its defences, was but a unit, and every 
section was interested in the deft lu-e of evi-ry 
other section, and ever}- individual citizen was 
interested in the defeuee of the whole popula- 
tion. It was in vain to say that the navv was 
on the sea. and the fortiticationson the .^oaboani, 
and that the citizens in the interior State.-*, or 
in the valley of the Mississippi, had no inteiTSt 
in these remote defences. Such an idea was 



650 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



mistaken and delusive. Tlic inhabitant of Mis- 
souri and of Indiana had a direct interest in 
keeping open the mouths of the rivers, defending 
the seaport towns, and preserving a naval force 
that would protect the produce of his labor 
in crossing the ocean, and arriving safely in 
foreign markets. All' the forts at the mouth 
of the Mississippi were just as much for the 
benefit of the western States, as if those 
States were down at the mouth of that river. 
So of all the forts on the Gulf of iMexico. Five 
forts are completed in the delta of the jNIissis- 
sippi ; two are completed on the Florida or 
Alabama coast ; and seven or eight more are 
projected; all calculated to give security to 
western commerce in passing through the Gulf 
of IMexico. Much had been done for that fron- 
tier, but more remained to be done ; and among 
the great works contemplated in that quarter 
were large establishments at Pensacola, Key 
West, or the Dry Tortugas. Large military and 
naval stations were contemplated at these points, 
and no expenditure or preparations could exceed 
in amount the magnitude of the interests to be 
protected. On the Atlantic board the commerce 
of the States found its way to the ocean through 
many outlets, from Maiue to Florida; in the 
West, on the contrary, the whole commerce of 
the valley of the Mississippi, all that of the Al- 
abama, of western Florida, and some part of 
Georgiti, passes through a single, outlet, and 
reaches the ocean b}' passing between Key West 
and Cidja. Here, then, is an immense commerce 
collected into one channel, compressed into one 
line, and passing, as it were, through one gate. 
This gives to Key West and the Dry Tortugas 
an importance hardly possessed by any point on 
the globe; for, besides commanding the com- 
merce of the entire West, it will also command 
that of Mexico, of the West Indies, of the Carib- 
bean sea, and of South America down to the 
middle of that continent at its most eastern pro- 
jection, Cape Roque. To understand the cause 
of all this (Mr. B. said), it was necessary to 
look to the trade winds, which, blowing across 
the Atlantic between the tropics, strike the 
South American continent at Cape Roque, fol- 
low the retreating coast of that continent up 
to the Caribbean sea, and to the Gulf of Mexico, 
creating the gulf stream as they go. and by the 
combined effect of a current in the air and in the 
water, sweeping all vessels from this side Cape 
Roque into its stream, carrying them round west 
of Cuba and bringing them out between Key 
West and the Havana. These two i)ositions, 
then, constitute the gate through which every 
thing nmst pass that comes from the valley of 
the Mississippi, from Mexico, and from South 
America as low down as Cape Roque. As the 
masters of the Mississippi, we should be able to 
predominate in the Gulf of Mexico ; and, to do 
so, we must have great establishments at Key 
West and Pensacola. Such establishments are 
now proposed ; and every citizen of the AYest 
should look upon them as the guardians of his 



own immediate interests, the indispensable safe- 
guard to his own commerce ; and to him the 
highest, most sacred, and most beneficial object 
to which surplus revenue could be applied. The 
Gulf of Mexico should be considered as the es- 
tuary of the Mississippi. A naval and military 
supremacy should be established in that gulf, 
cost M-hat it might ; for without that supremacy 
the commerce of the entire West would lie at 
the mercy of the fleets and privateers of inimical 
powers. 

" j\Ir. B. returned to the immediate object of 
his remarks — to the object of showing that the 
defences of the country would absorb every sur- 
plus dollar that would ever be found in the trea- 
sury. He recapitulated the aggregates of those 
heads of expenditure ; for the navy, about forty 
millions of dollars, embracing the increase of 
the navy, navy yards, ordnance, and repairs of 
vessels for a series of years ; for fortifications, 
about thirty millions, reported by the engineer 
department ; and which sum, after reducing the 
size of some of the largest class of forts, not yet 
commenced, would still be large enough, with 
the sum reported by the ordnance department, 
amounting to near thirty millions, to make a 
totality not much less than one hundred millions ; 
and fixr more than sufficient to swallow up aU 
the surpluses which will ever be found to exist 
in the treasury. Even after deducting much 
from these estimates, the remainder will still go 
bejond any surplus that will actually be found. 
Every person knows that the present year is no 
criterion for estimating the revenue ; excess of 
paper issues has inflated all business, and led to 
excess in all branches of the revenue ; next year 
it will be down, and soon fall as much below 
the usual level as it now is above it. More than 
that ; what is now called a surplus in the trea- 
sury is no surplus, but a mere accumulation for 
want of passing the appropriation bills. The 
whole of it is pledged to the bills which are 
piled upon our tables, and which we cannot get 
passed ; for the opposition is strong enough to 
arrest the appropriations, to dam up the money 
in the treasury ; and then call that a surplus 
which would now be in a course of expenditure, if 
the necessary appropriation bills could be passed. 

"The public defences Avill require near one 
hundred millions of dollars; the annual amount 
required for these defences alone amount to 
thirteen or fourteen millions. The engineer 
department answers explicitly that it can bene- 
ficially expend six millions of dollars annually j 
the ordnance that it can beneficially expend 
three millions ; the navy that it can beneficially 
expend several millions ; and all this for a series 
of years. This distribution bill lias five years 
to run, and in that time, if the money is applied 
to defence instead of distribution, the great work 
of national defence will be so fixr completed as 
to place the United States in a condition to cause 
her rights and her interests, her flag and her 
soil, to be honored and respected by the whole 
world." 



ANNO 1836. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



G51 



The bill was passed in the Senate, though by 
a vote somewhat close — 25 to 20. The yeas 
were: 

Messrs. Black, Buchanan, Clay, Clayton, i 
Crittenden, Davis, Ewing of Ohio, Goldsborough, | 
Hendricks, Kent, Knight, Leigh, McKean, Man- 
gum, Naudain, Nicholas, Porter, Prentiss, Pros- 
ton, Bobbins, Southard, Swift, Tomlinson, Web- 
stei-. White. 

Nays. — Messrs. Benton, Calhoun, Cuthbert, 
Ewing of Illinois, Grundy, Hill, Hubbard, King 
of Alabama, King of Georgia, Linn, Moore, Mor- 
ris, Niles, Bives, Bobinson, Buggies, Shepley, 
Tallmadge, Walker, Wright. 

Being sent to the House for concurrence it 
became evident that it could not pass that body ; 
and then the friends of distribution in the Senate 
fell upon a new mode to effect their object, and 
in a form to gain the votes of many members 
who held distribution to be a violation of the 
constitution — among them Mr. Calhoun ; — who 
took the lead in the movement. There was a 
bill before the Senate to regulate the keeping of 
the public moneys in the deposit banks ; and 
this was turned into distribution of the surplus 
public moneys with the States, in proportion to 
their representation in Congress, to be returned 
when Congress should call for it : and this was 
called a deposit with the States ; and the faith 
of the States pledged for returning the money. 
The deposit was defended on the same argument 
on which ^Ir. Calhoun had proposed to amend 
the constitution two years before ; namely that 
there was no other way to get rid of the surplus. 
And to a suggestion from Mr. Wright that the 
moneys, when once so deposited might never be 
got back again, Mr. Calhoun answered : 

'■ But the senator from New- York objects to 
the measure, that it would, in effect, amount to' 
a distribution, on the ground, as he conceives, 
that the States would never refund. He does 
not doubt but that they would, if called on to 
refund by the government ; but he says that 
Congress will in fact never make the call. He 
rests this conclusion on the supposition that 
there would be a majority of the States opposed 
to it. He adr^its, in case the revenue should 
become deficient, that the southern or staple 
States would prefer to refund their quota, rather 
than to raise the imposts to meet the deficit ; 
but he insists that the contrary would be the 
case with the manufacturing States, which would 
prefer to increase the imposts to refunding their 
quota, on the ground that the increase of the 
duties would promote the interests of manufac- 
tures. I cannot agree with tlie senator that 
those States would assume a position so utterly 



untenable as to refuse to refund a dcj)0.-it wliich 
their faith would be plighted to return, and rest 
the refusal on the ground of preferring to lay 
a tax, because it would be a bounty to them, and 
would consequently throw the whole burden of 
the tax on the other States. But, be this as it 
may, I can tell the senator that, if they should 
take a course so unjust and monstrou.s, he may 
be assured that the other States would mast 
unquestionably resist the increase (jf the inipusts ; 
so that the govermnent would have to take its 
choice, either to go without the money, or call 
on the States to refund the deposits." 

]\Ir. Benton took an objection to this scheme of 
deposit, that it was a distribution under a false 
name, making a double disposition of the .same 
monc}' ; that the land money was to be distributed 
under the bill already passed by the Senate : and 
he moved an amendment to except that money 
from the operation of the deposit to be made with 
the States. He said it was hardly to be supposed 
that, in the nineteenth century, a grave legisla- 
tive body would pass two bills for dividing the 
same money ; and it was to save the Senate 
from the ridicule of such a blunder that he called 
their attention to it, and proposed the amend- 
ment. Mr. Calhoun said there was a remedy 
for it in a few words, by adding a proviso of ex- 
ception, if the land distribution bill became a 
law. Mr. Benton was utterly opposed to such 
a proviso — a proviso to take effect if the samo 
thing did not become law in another bill. Mr. 
Morris also wished to know if the Senate was 
about to make a double distribution of the same 
money ? As ftir it respected the action of the 
Senate the land bill was, to all intents and pur- 
poses, a law. It had passed the Senate, and they 
were done with it. It had changed its titlo 
from "bill" to "act." It was now the act of 
the Senate, and they could not know what dis- 
position the House would make of it. Mr. 
Webster believed the land bill could not pa.sa 
the House ; that it was put to rest there ; and 
therefore he had no objection to voting ft>r the 
second one: thus admitting that, under the 
name of '-distribution" the act could not pass 
the House, and that a change of name was indis- 
pensable. Mr. Wright made a siKech of state- 
ments and facts to show that there would In? no 
surplus; and taking up that idia, Mr. Benton 
spoke thus : 

" About this time two years ago, the Senate 
was eng:\ged in proclaiming tlie danpi>r of a 
bankrupt Treasury, and in proving to the pco- 



652 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



pie that litter ruin must ensue from the removal 
of the deposits from the Bank of the United 
States. The same Senate, nothing abated in 
confidence from the failure of former predictions, 
Is now engaged in celebrating the prosperity of 
the country, and proclaiming a surplus of fort}', 
und fifty, and sixty millions of dollars in that 
eame Treasury, which so short a timfe since 
they thought was going to be bankrupt. Both 
occupations are equally unfortunate. Our 
Treasury is in no more danger of bursting from 
distension now, than it was of collapsing from 
depletion then. The ghost of the panic was dri- 
ven from this chamber in May, 1834, by the re- 
port of ^Ir. Taney, showing that all the sources 
of the national revenue were in their usual rich 
and bountiful condition ; and that there was no 
danger of bankruptcy. The speech and state- 
ment, so brief and perspicuous, just delivered by 
the senator from New York [^Ir. Wright], will 
perform the same office upon the distribution 
spirit, by showing that the appropriations of the 
session will require nearly as much money as 
the public Treasury will be found to contain. 
The present exaggerations about the surplus will 
have their day, as the panic about an empty 
Treasury had its day ; and time, which corrects 
all things, will show the enormity of these errors 
which excite the public mind, and stimulate the 
public appetite, for a division of forty, fifty, and 
eixty millions of surplus treasure." 

The bill being ordered to a third reading, with 
only six dissenting votes, the author of this 
View could not consent to let it pass without 
an attempt to stigmatize it, and render it odious 
to the people, as a distribution in disguise — as a 
deposit never to be reclaimed; as a miserable 
evasion of the constitution ; as an attempt to 
debauch the people with their own money ; as 
plundering instead of defending the country; 
as a cheat that would only last till the presiden- 
tial election was over ; for there would be no 
money to deposit after the first or second quar- 
ter ; — and as having the inevitable effect, if not 
the intention, to break the deposit banks ; and, 
finally, as disappointing its authors in their 
schemes of popularity : in which he was pro- 
phetic ; as, out of half a dozen aspirants to the 
presidency, who voted for it, no one of them 
ever attained that place. The following are 
parts of his speech : 

" I now come, Mr. President (continued Mr, 
B.), to the second subject in the bill — the dis- 
tribution feature — and to which the objections 
are, not of detail, but of principle ; but which 
objections are so strong, in the mind of myself 
and sonic friends, that, far from shrinking from 
the contest, and sneaking away in our little 
mmority of six, where we were left last even- 



ing, we come forward with unabated resolution 
to renew our opposition, and to signalize our 
dissent ; anxious to have it known that we con- 
tended to the last against the seductions of a 
measure, specious to the view, and tempting to 
the taste, but fraught with mischief and fearful 
consequences to the character of this govern- 
ment, and to the stability and harmony of this 
confederac3\ 

" Stripping this enactment of statutory ver- 
biage, and collecting the provisions of the sec- 
tion into a single view, they seem to be these : 
1. The public moneys, above a specific sum, are 
to be deposited with the States, in a specified 
ratio ; 2. The States are to give certificates of 
deposit, paj'able to the United States ; but no 
time, or contingency, is fixed for the payment ; 
3. The Secretary of the Treasury is to sell and 
assign the certificates, limited to a ratable pro- 
protion of each, when necessary to meet appro- 
priations made by Congress ; 4. The certificates 
so assigned are to bear an interest of five per 
cent., payable half yearly ; 5. To bear no inte- 
rest before assignment ; 6. The principal to be 
payable at the pleasure of the State. 

"This, Mr. President, is the enactment; and 
what is such an enactment ? Sir, I will tell you 
what it is. It is, in name, a deposit ; in form, a 
loan ; in essence and design, a distribution. 
Names cannot alter things ; and it is as idle to 
call a gift a deposit, as it would be to call a stab 
of the dagger a kiss of the lips. It is a -distri- 
bution of the revenues, under the name of a 
deposit, and under the form of a loan. It is 
known to be so, and is intended to be so ; and 
all this verbiage about a deposit is nothing but 
the device and contrivance of those who have 
been for years endeavoring to distribute the 
revenues, sometimes by the land bill, sometimes 
by direct propositions, and sometimes by pro- 
posed amendments to the constitution. Finding 
all these modes of accomplishing the object met 
and frustrated by the constitution, they fall upon 
this invention of a deposit, and exult in the suc- 
cess of an old scheme under a new name. That 
it is no deposit, but a free gift, and a regular 
distribution, is clear and demonstrable, not only 
from the avowed principles, declared intentions, 
and systematic purposes of those who conduct 
the bill, but also from the means devised to ef- 
fect their object. Names are nothing. The 
thing done gives character to tae transaction ; 
and the imposition of an erroneous name cannot 
change that character. This is no deposit. It 
has no feature, no attribute, no characteristic 
no quality of a deposit. A deposit is a trust 
requiring the consent of two parties, leaving to 
one the rights of ownership, and imposing on 
the other the duties of trustee. The depositor 
retains the right of property, and reserves the 
privilege of resumption ; "the depositary is 
bound to restore. But here the right of property 
is parted with ; the privilege of resumption is 
surrendered; the obligation to render back is 
not imposed. On the contrary, our money is 



ANNO 18S6. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



C53 



put where we cannot reach it. Our treasury- 
warrant cannot pursue it. The States are to 
keep the money, free of interest, until is is need- 
ed to meet appropriations ; and then the Secre- 
tary of the Treasury is — to do what ? — call upon 
the State ? No ! but to sell and assign the cer- 
tificate ; and the State is to pay the assignee an 
interest half yearly, and the principal when it 
pleases. Now, these appropriations will never 
be made. The members of Congress are not 
yet born — the race of representatives is not yd 
known — who will vote appropriations for na- 
tional objects, to be paid out of their own State 
treasuries. Sooner will the tarilf be revived, or 
the price of public land be raised. Sooner will 
the assignability of the certificate be repealed 
by law. The contingency ^^'ill never arrive, on 
which the Secretary is to assign : so the deposit 
will stand as a loan for ever, without interest. 
At the end of some years, the nominal transac- 
tion will be rescinded ; the certificates will all 
be cancelled by one general, unanimous, harmo- 
nious vote in Congress. The disguise of a de- 
posit, like the mask after a play, will be thrown 
aside ; and the delivery of the money will turn 
out to be, what it is now intended to be, a gift 
from the beginning. This will be the end of the 
first chapter. And now, how unbecoming in 
the Senate to practise this indirection, and to 
do by a false name what cannot be done by its 
true one. The constitution, by the acknowledg- 
ment of many who conduct this bill, will not 
admit of a distribution of the revenues. Not 
further back than the last session, and again at 
the commencement of the present session, a pro- 
position was made to amend the constitution, to 
permit this identical distribution to be made. 
That proposition is now upon our calendar, for 
the action of Congress. All at once, it is disco- 
vered that a change of names will do as well as 
a change of the constitution. Strike out the 
■v-ord 'distribute,' and insert the word 'depo- 
sit ; ' and, incontinently, the impediment is re- 
moved: the constitution difficulty is surmount- 
ed ; the division of the money can be mac^„ 
This, at least, is quick work. It looks magical, 
though not the exploit of the magician. It 
commits nobody, though not the invention of 
the non-committal school. After all, it must be 
admitted to be a very compendious mode of 
amending the constitution, and such a one as 
the framers of that instrument never happened 
to think of. Is this fancy, or is it fact ? Are 
we legislating, or amusing ourselves with phan- 
tasmagoria ? Can we forget that we now have 
upon the calendar a proposition to amend the 
constitution, to cllect this very distribution, and 
that the only diflerence between that resolution 
and this thirteenth section, is in substituting 
the word 'deposit' for the word 'distribute .^' 

" Having shown this pretended deposit to be 
a distribution in disguise, and to be a mere eva- 
sion of the constitution, Mr. B. proceeded to ex- 
amine its effects, and to trace its ruinous conse- 
quences upon the federal government and the 



States. It is brought forward as a temporary 
measure, as a single operation, as a thing to >k' 
done but once ; but what career, either for pood 
or for evil, ever stopped with the first step? It 
is the first step which costs the difficulty ; that 
taken, the second liccunus easy, and repetition 
habitual. Let this distribution, in thi-^ disguise, 
take effect ; and future distribution will be com- 
mon and regular. Every presidential election 
will bring them, and larger each time ; as the 
consular elections in Kome. conuucncing with 
distributions of grain from tlie public granaries, 
went on to the exhibitions of games and shows, 
the remission of (lel)ts. largesses in money, lands, 
andprovisidus ; until tlie rival candidates oi)cnly 
bid against each other, and the diadem of em- 
pire was put up at auction, and knocked down 
to the last and liighcst bidder. Tlie purity of 
elections may not yet be affected in our young 
and vigorous country ; but how long will it be 
before voters will look to the candidates for the 
magnitude of their distributions, instead of look- 
ingto them for the qualifications whicli the pre- 
sidential office requires ? 

"The bad consequences of this distribution 
of money to the States are palpable and fright- 
ful. It "is complicating the federal and State 
systems, and multiplying their points of contact 
and hazards of collision. Take it as ostensibly 
presented, that of a deposit or loan, to be repaid 
at some future time ; then it is establishing the 
relation of debtor and creditor between tlu'in : 
a relation critical between friends, embarrassing 
between a State and its citizens ; and eminently 
dangerous between confederate States and their 
common head. It is a relation always depre- 
cated in our federal system. The land credit 
system was abolished by Congress, fifteen years 
ago, to get rid of the relation of debtor and 
creditor between the federal government and the 
citizens of the States ; and seven or eight mil- 
lions of debt, principal and interest, was then 
surrendered. The collection of a large debt 
from numerous individual debtors, was found to 
be almost impossible. How much worse if tiie 
State itself becomes the debtor ! and more, ;f 
all the States become indebted together ! Any 
attempt to collect the debt would he attcnde<l, 
first with ill blood, then with cancellation. It 
must be the representatives of the Suites who 
are to enforce the collection of the dilit. 'Ihii 
they would not do. They would stand together 
against the creditor. No meml)er of Congress 
could vote to tax his Slate to raise money (or 
the general purposes of the confederacy, ^o 
one could vote an aiipropriation wluch was to 
become a chai-o on liis own State trca^-^ury. 
Taxation would first l)e resorted to, and the 
tariff and the pu1)iic lands would bcconu" tlie 
fountain of supplv to the federal government. 
Taken as a real transaction— as a deposit with 
the States, or a loan to the Stales— as this mea- 
sure professes to be, and it is iVaupht with con- 
sequences adverse to the harmony of tlie fidcral 
system, and fraught with new biu-deiis upon the 



654 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



customs, and upon the lands ; taken as a fiction 
to avoid the constitution, as a John Doc and 
Richard Roe invention to conve}'- a gift under 
the name of a deposit, and to effect a distribu- 
tion under the disguise of a loan, and it is an 
artifice which makes derision of the constitu- 
tion, lets down the Senate from its lofty station ; 
and provides a facile way for doing an^ thing 
that any Congress may choose to do in all time 
to come. It is only to depose one word and in- 
stal another — it is merely to change a name — 
and the frowning constitution immediately smiles 
on the late forbidden attempt. 

" To the federal government the consequences 
of these distributions must be deplorable and 
destructive. It must be remitted to the helpless 
condition of the old confederacy, depending for 
its supplies upon the voluntaiy contributions 
of the States. Worse than depending upon the 
voluntary contributions, it will be left to the 
gratuitous leavings, to the eleemosynary crumbs, 
which remain upon the table after the feast of 
the States is over. God grant they may not 
prove to be the feasts of the Lapith* and 
Centaurs ! But the States will be served first ; 
and what remains may go to the objects of com- 
mon defence and national concern for which the 
confederacy was framed, and for which the 
power of raising money was confided to Con- 
gress. The distribution bills will be passed 
first, and the appropriation bills afterwards ; and 
every appropriation will be cut down to the 
lowest point, and kept off to the last moment. 
To stave off as long as possible, to reduce as 
low as possible, to defeat whenever possible, 
will be the tactics of federal legislation; and 
when at last some object of national expenditure 
has miraculously run the gauntlet of all these 
assaults, and escaped the perils of these multi- 
plied dangers, behold the enemy still ahead, and 
the recapture which awaits the devoted appro- 
priation, in the shajw of an unexpended balance, 
on the first day of January then next ensuing. 
Thus it is already; distribution has occupied us 
all the session. A proposition to amend the 
constitution, to enable us to make the division, 
was brought in in the first month of the session. 
The land bill followed, and engrossed months, 
to the exclusion of national defence. Then came 
the deposit scheme, which absorbs the remainder 
of the session. For nearly seven months we 
have been occupied with distribution, and the 
Senate has actually passed two bills to effect the 
same object, and to divide the same identical 
money. Two bills to divide money, while one 
bill cannot be got through for the great objects 
of national defence named in the constitution. 
We are now near the end of the seventh month 
of the session. The day named by the Senate 
for the termination of the session is long passed 
by ; the day fixed by the two Houses is close 
at hand. The year is half gone, and the season 
for labor largely lost ; yet what is the state of 
the general, national, and most essential appro- 
priations ? Not a shilling is yet voted for forti- 



fications ; not a shilling for the ordnance ; no- 
thing for filling the empty ranks of the skeleton 
army; nothing for the new Indian treaties: 
nothing for the continuation of the Cumberland 
road; nothing for rebuilding the burnt-down 
Treasury ; nothing for the custom-house in New 
Orleans ; nothing for extinguishing the rights 
of private corporators in the Louisville canal, 
and making that great thoroughfare free to the 
commerce of the West ; nothing for the western 
armory, and arsenals in the States which have 
none ; nothing for the extension of the circuit 
court system to the new States of the West and 
Southwest ; nothing for improving the mint 
machinery; nothing for keeping the mints 
regularly supplied with metals for coining; 
nothing for the new marine hospitals; nothing 
for the expenses of the visitors now gone to the 
Military Academy ; nothing for the chain of 
posts and the military road along the Western 
and Northwestern frontier. All these, and a 
long list of other objects, remain without a ceni 
to this day ; and those who have kept them off 
now coolly turn upon us, and say the money 
cannot be expended if appropriated, and that, on 
the first of January, it must fall into the surplus 
fund to be divided. Of the bills passed, many 
of the most essential character have been delay- 
ed for months, to the great injurj^ of individuals 
and of the public service. Clerks and salaried 
officers have been borrowing money at usury to 
support their families, while we, wholl}' absorb- 
ed with dividing surpluses, were withholding 
from them their stipulated wages. Laborers at 
Harper's Ferry Armory have been without 
money to go to market for their families, and 
some have lived three weeks without meat, 
because we must attend to the distribution bills 
before we can attend to the pay bills. Disburs- 
ing officers have raised money on their own ac- 
count, to supply the want of appropriations. 
Even the annual Indian Annuity Bill has but 
just got through ; the Indians even — the poor 
Indians, as they were wont to be called — even 
they have had to wait, in want and misery, for 
the annual stipends solemnly guarantied bj 
treaties. All this has already taken place im 
der the deplorable influence of the distribution 
spirit. 

"The progress which the distribution spirit 
has made in advaancing beyond its own preten- 
sions, is a striking feature in the history of the 
case, and ominous of what may be expected 
from its future exactions. Originall}- the pro- 
position was to divide the surplus. It was the 
surplus, and nothing but the surplus, which was 
to be taken ; that bona fide and inevitable sur- 
plus which remained after all the defences were 
provided for, and all needed apprt)priations fully 
made. Now the defences are postponed and de- 
cried ; the needful apj)ropriations arc rejected, 
stinted, and deferred, till they cannot be used ; 
and, instead of the surplus, it is the integral 
revenue, it is the money in the Treasury, it is 
the money appropriated by law, which is to he 



ANNO 1836. ANDREAV JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



655 



Beized upon and divided out. It is the unexpend- 
ed balances which are now the object of all de- 
sire and the prize of meditated distribution. 
The word surplus is not in the bill ! that word, 
which has figured in so many speeches, which 
has been the subject of so much speculation, 
which has been the cause of so much delusion 
in the public mind, and of so much excited hope; 
that word is not in the bill ! It is carefulh', 
studiously, systematically excluded, and a form 
of expression is adopted to cover all the money 
in the Treasury, a small sum excepted, although 
appropriated by law to the most sacred and 
necessary objects. A recapture of the appro- 
priated money is intended ; and thus the vor}- 
identical money which we appropriate at this 
session is to be seized upon on the first day of 
January, torn away from the objects to which 
it was dedicated, and absorbed in the fund for 
general distribution. And why? because the 
cormorant appetite of distribution grows as it 
feeds, and becomes more ravenous as it gorges. 
It set out for the surplus ; now it takes the un- 
expended balances, save five millions ; next year 
it will take all. But it is suflBcient to contemplate 
the thing as it is ; it is sufficient to contemplate 
this bill as seizing upon the unexpended balances 
on the first day of January, regardless of the 
objects to which they are appropriated ; and to 
witness its eifect upon the laws, the policy, and 
the existence of the federal government. 

" Such, then, is the progress of the distribu- 
tion spirit ; a cormorant appetite, growing as it 
feeds, ravening as it gorges ; seizing the appro- 
priated moneys, and leaving the federal govern- 
ment to starve upon crumbs, and to die of in- 
anition. But this appetite is not the sole cause 
for this seizure. There is another reason for it, 
connected with the movements in this chandler, 
and founded in the deep-seated law of self-pre- 
servation. For six months the public mind has 
been stimulated with the story of sixty millions 
of surplus money in the Treasury ; and two 
months ago, the grave Senate of the United 
States carried the rash joke of that illusory 
asseveration so far as to pass a bill to commence 
the distribution of that vast sum. It was the 
land bill which was to do it, commencing its 
swelling dividends on the 1st day of July, deal- 
ing them out every ninety days, and completing 
the splendid distribution of prizes, in the sixtj'- 
four million lottery, in eighteen months from 
the commencement of the drawing. It was two 
months ago that wc passed this bill ; and all 
attempts then made to convince the people that 
they were deluded, were vain and useless. Sixty- 
four millions they were promised, sixty-four 
millions they were to have, sixty-four millions 
they began to want ; and .slates and pencils were 
just as busy then in figuring out the dividends 
of the sixty-four millions, to begin on the 1st 
of July, as they now are in figuring out tlie 
dividends under the forty, fifty, and .sixty mil- 
lions, which are to begin on the 1 st of Januarj'- 
Dext. And now behold the end of the first 



chapter. The 1st of July is come, but the sixty- 
four millions are not in the Treasury! It is 
not there ; an<l any attempt to commence the 
distribution of that sum, according to the 
terms of the land bill, would bankrupt the 
Treasury, stop the govcrmnent, and cau.so. Con- 
gress to be called together to levy taxes or 
make loans. So much for the land bill, which 
two months ago received all the praises whicli 
are now bestowed upon the deposit bill. So 
the drawing had to be postponed, the perform- 
ance had to be adjouraed, and the 1st of Jan- 
uary was substituted for the 1st of July. ThLs 
gives six months to go upon, and defers the 
catastrophe of the mountain in labor until the 
presidential election is over. Still the first of 
January must come ; and the ridicule would be 
too great, if there was nothing, or next to no- 
thing, to divide. And notliing, or next to 
nothing, there would be, if the appropriations 
Avere fairly made, and made in time, and if 
nothing but a sin-plus was left to divide. There 
would be no more in the deposit bank, in that 
event, than has usually been in the Bank of the 
United States — say ten, or twelve, or fourteen, 
or sixteen millions ; and from which, in the 
hands of a single bank, none of those dangers 
to the country were then seen which are now 
discovered in like sums in three dozen uncon- 
nected and independent banks. Even after all 
the dclavs and reductions in the appropriations, 
the surplus will now be but a trifle — such a 
trifle as must expose to ridicule, or something 
worse, all those who have tantalized the public 
with the expectation of forty, fifty, or sixty 
millions to divide. To avoid this fate, and to 
make up something for distribution, then, the 
unexpended balances have been fallen upon ; 
the law of 1795 is nullified ; the fiscal year is 
changed; the policy of the government subvert- 
ed; rea.son, justice, propriet}' outraged; all con- 
tracts, labor, service, salaries cut oil", interrupted, 
or reduced ; appropriations recaptured, and the 
government paralyzed. Sir, the people are de- 
ceived; they are made to believe that a stirplus 
only, an unavoidable surplus, is to be dividinl, 
when the fixct is that appropriated moneys are 
to be seized. 

"Sir, lam oi)posed to the whole policy of 
this measure. I am opposed to it as going to 
sap the foundations of the Federal (iovennuent, 
and to undo the constitution, and that by eva- 
sion, in the very jxiint for which the constitu- 
tion was maiie. AViiat is tliat iHiint ? A 
Treasury ! a Treasury ! a Treasury of its own, 
unconnected with, and independent of the States. 
It was foi- this that wise an<l patriotic men 
wrote, and s])oke, and j)rayed for the fmrtoon 
years that interveueil from tlic declaration of 
independence, in 177(>, to the formation of the 
constitution in 17S0. It was for this that so 
many ajipeals were made, so many cflbrts ex- 
erted so many fruitlos attempts so long re- 
peated, to ol)tain from tlie States the jMnvor of 
raising revenue from imports. It was for thid 



656 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



that the convention of 1787 met, and but for 
this they never would have met. The forma- 
tion of a federal treasury, unconnected with the 
States, and indepencnt of the States, was the 
cause of the meeting; of that convention ; it was 
the great object of its labors ; it was the point 
to which all its exertions tended, and it was the 
point at which failure would have been the fail- 
ure of the whole object of the meeting, of the 
whole frame of the general government, and of 
the whole design of the constitution. "NYith in- 
finite labor, pains, and difficulty, they succeeded 
in erecting the edifice of the federal treasury ; we, 
not builders, but destroyers, "architects of 
ruin," undo in a night what they accomplished in 
many years. We expunge the federal treasury ; 
we throw the federal government back upon 
States for supplies ; we unhinge and undo the 
constitution ; and we effect our purpose by an 
artifice which derides, mocks, ridicules that 
sacred instrument, and opens the way to its 
perpetual evasion by every paltry performer 
that is able to dethrone one word, and exalt 
another in its place. 

"I object to the time for another reason. 
There is no necessity to act at all upon this 
subject, at this session of Congress. The dis- 
tribution is not to take effect until after we are 
in session again, and when the true state of the 
treasury shall be known. Its true state cannot 
be known now ; but enough is known to make 
it questionable whether there will be any sur- 
plus, requiring a specific disposition, over and 
beyond the wants of the country. Many ap- 
propriations are yet behind ; two Indian wars 
are yet to be finished ; when the wars are over, 
the vanquished Indians are to be removed to 
the AVest ; and when there, either the Federal 
Government or the States must raise a force to 
protect the people from them. Twenty-five thou- 
sand Creeks, seven thousand Seminoles, eigh- 
teen thousand Cherokees, and others, making a 
totality of seventy-two thousand, are to be re- 
moved ; and the expenses of removal, and the 
year's subsistence afterwards, is close upon 
seventy dollars per head. It is a problem 
whether there will be any surplus worth dis- 
posing of. The surplus party themselves admit 
there will be a disappointment unless they go 
beyond the surplus, and seize the appropriated 
moneys. The Senator from New-York [Mr. 
Wright], has made an exposition, as candid and 
perspicuous as it is patriotic and unanswerable, 
showing that there will be an excess of appro- 
priations over the money in the treasury on 
the day that we adjourn ; and that we shall 
have to depend upon the accruing revenue 
of the remainder of the year to meet the de- 
mands which we authorize. This is the state 
of the surplus question : problematical, debata- 
ble ; the weight of the evidence and the strength 
of the argument entirely against it ; time 
enough to ascertain the truth, and 3^et a deter- 
mination to reject all evidence, refuse all time, 
rush on to the object, and divide the money, 



cost what it may to the constitution, the gov- 
ernment, the good of the States, and the purity 
of elections. The catastrophe of the land bill 
project ought certainly to be a warning to us. 
Two months ago it was pushed through, as 
the only means of saving the country, as the 
blessed act which was to save the republic. It 
was to commence on the first day of July its 
magnificent operations of distributing sixty- 
four millions ; now it lies a corpse in the House 
of Representatives, a monument of haste and 
folly, its ver}'^ authors endeavoring to super- 
sede it by another measure, because it could 
not take effect without ruining the country ; 
and, what is equally important to them, ruining 
themselves. 

" Admitting that the year produces more re- 
venue than is wanting, is it Avise, is it states- 
manlike, is it consonant with our experience, 
to take fright at the event, and throw the 
money away 1 Did we not have forty millions 
of income in the year 1817 ? and did we not 
have an empty treasury in 1819 ? Instead of tak- 
ing fright and throwing the money away, the 
statesman should look into the cause of things ; 
he should take for his motto the prayer of 
Virgil : Cognoscere causa rerum. Let me 
know the cause of things ; and, learning this 
cause, act accordinglj'. If the redundant sup- 
ply is accidental and transient, it will quickly 
correct itself; if founded in laws, alter them. 
This is the part not merely of wisdom, but of 
common sense: it was the conduct of 1817, 
when the excessive supply was seen to be the 
effect of transient causes — termination of the 
war and efflorescence of the paper system — and 
left to correct itself, which it did in two years. 
It should be the conduct now, when the exces- 
sive income is seen to be the effect of the laws 
and the paper system combined, and when legis- 
lation or regulation is necessary to correct it 
Reduction of the tariff; reduction of the price 
of land to actual settlers ; rejection of bank 
paper from universal receivabiUty for public 
dues ; these are the remedies. After all, the 
whole evil may be found in a single cause, and 
the whole remedy may be seen in a single mea- 
sure. The public lands are exchangeable for 
paper. Seven hundred and fifty machines are 
at work striking off paper ; that paper is per- 
forming the grand rounds, from the banks to 
the public lands, and from the lands to the 
banks. Every body, especially a public man. 
may take as 'much as his trunks can carrj- 
The public domain is cha;iging into paper ; th., 
public treasury is filling up with paper ; the 
new States arc deluged with paper; the currency 
is ruining with paper; farmers, settlers, culti- 
vators, are outbid, deprived of their selected 
homes, or made to pay double for them, by 
I public men loaded, not like Philip's ass, with 
bags of gold, but like bank advocates, with 
bales of paper. Sir, the evil is in the unbridled 
state of the paper system, and m the unchecked 
receivability of paper for federal dues. Here is 



ANNO 18S6. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



Gj7 



the evil. Banks are our masters ; not one, but 
seven hundred and fifty ! and this splendid 
federal Congress, like a chained and chastised 
slave, lies helpless and powerless at their feet. 

"Sir, I can see nothing but evil, turn on 
which side I may, from this fatal scheme of di- 
viding money ; not surplus monej^, but appro- 
priated funds ; not by an amendment, but by a 
derisory evasion of the constitution. Where is it 
to end ? History shows us that those who begin 
revolutions never end them ; that those who com- 
mence innovations never limit them. Here is 
a great innovation, constituting in reality — not 
in figure of speech, but in reality — a revolution 
in the form of our government, "VYe set out to 
divide the surplus ; we are now dividing the 
appropriated funds. To prevent all appropria- 
tions except to the powerful States, will be the 
next step; and the small States, in self-defence, 
must oppose all appropriations, and go for a di- 
vision of the whole. They will have to stand 
together in the Senate, and oppose all appropria- 
tions. It will not do for the large States to 
take all the appropriations first, and the bulk 
of the distribution afterwards ; and there will 
be no way to prevent it but to refuse all appro- 
priations, divide out the money among the 
States, and let each State lay it out for itself. 
A new surplus party will supei'sede the present 
surplus party, as successive factions supersede 
each other in chaotic revolutions. They Avill 
make Congress the qucestor of provinces, to col- 
lect money for the States to administer. This 
will be their argument : the States know best 
what they need, and can lay out the money to 
the best advantage, and to suit themselves. One 
State will want roads and no canals ; another 
canals and no roads ; one will want forts, an- 
other troops ; one Avants ships, another steam- 
cars ; one wants high schools, another low 
schools ; one is for the useful arts, another is 
for the fine arts, for lyceums, athenjeums, muse- 
ums, arts, statuary, painting, music; and the 
paper State will want all for banks. Thus will 
things go on, and Congress will have no appro- 
priation to make, except to the President, and 
his head clerks, and their under clerks. Even 
our own pay, like it was nndei' the confedera- 
tion, may be remitted to our own States. The 
eight dollars a day may be voted to them, and 
supported by the argument that they can get 
better men for four dollars a daj' ; and so save 
half the money, and have the work better done. 
Such is the progress in this road to ruin. Sir, 
I say of this measure, as I said of its progeni- 
tor, the land bill : if I could be willing to let 
evil pass, that good might come of it, I should 
be willing to let this bill pass. A recoil, a reac- 
tion, a revulsion must take place. This con- 
federacy cannot go to ruin. 'J'liis Union has a 
place in the hearts of the people which will save 
it from nullification in disguise, as well as from 
nullification in arras. One word of myself. It 
is now ten years since schemes of distribution 
»vere broached upon this floor. They began | 

Vol. I.— 42 



with a senator from New Jersey, now Secretary 
of the navy (.Mr. Dickerson). Tlioy were 
denounced by many, for their unconstitutional- 
it}-, their corrupting tendencies, and their fatal 
eflccts upon the federal and State governments. 
I took my position then, have stood upon it 
during all the modifications of the original 
scheme ; and continue standing upon it now. 
jNIy answer then was, pay the jjublic debt and 
reduce the taxes ; my answer now is, provide 
for the public defences, reduce the taxes, and 
bridle the paper system. On this ground I 
have stood — on this I stand ; and never did I 
feel more satisfaction and more exultation in 
my vote, when triumphant in numbers, than I 
now do in a minority of six." 

The bill went to the House, and was concurred 
in by a large majority — one hundred and fifty- 
five to thirty-eight — although, under the name 
of distribution, there was no chance for it to 
pass that House. Deeming the opposition of 
this small minority courageous as well as meri 
torious, and deserving to be held in honorable 
remembrance, their names are here set doAvn ; 
to wit : 

Messrs. Michael W. Ash, James ^I. II. Beale, 
Benning M. Bean, Andrew Beaumont, John "VV. 
Brown, Robert Burns, John F. II. Claiborne, 
Walter Coles, Samuel Cushman, George C. 
Dromgoole, John Fairfield, William K. Fuller, 
Ransom H. Gillet, Joseph Hall. Thomas L. 
Hamer, Leonard Jarvis, Cave Johnson, Gerrit 
Y. Lansing, Gideon Lee, George Loyal), Abijuh 
Mann, jr., John Y. JMason, James .1. McKay, 
John IMcKeon, Isaac IMcKim, Gorham Parks, 
Franklin Pierce, Ilenr}- L. Pinclvuey, John 
Roane, James Rogers, Nicholas Sickles, AVilliam 
Taylor, Francis Thomas, Joel Turrill, Aaron 
Vanderpoel, Aaron Ward, Daniel AVardwell, 
Henry A. Wise. 

The bill passed the House, and was approved 
by the President, but with a rei)ugnaiice of feel- 
ing, and a recoil of judgment, which it rc<|uired 
great efforts of friends to overcome ; and with 
a regret for it afterwards which he often and 
publicly expressed. It was a grief that his 
name was seen to such an act. It was a most 
unfortunate act, a plain evasion of the constitu- 
tion for a bad purpose — soon gave a sjid ovor- 
throwto the democracy — and disajjiiointed ever)' 
calculation made upon it. Politically, it wiis no 
advantage to its numerous and cnuilous 8upjH)rt- 
ers — of no disservice to its few determined oppo- 
nents — only four in number, in the Senate, tlie 
two senators from Mississippi voting against it. 
for reasons found in the constitution of their 



658 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



State. To the States, it was of no advantage, 
raising expectations which were not fulfillerl, 
and npon which many of them acted as realities, 
and commenced enterprises to which they were 
inadequate. It was understood that some of 
Mr. Van Buren's friends favored the President's 
approval, and recommended him to sign it — in- 
duced by the supposed effect which its rejection 
might have on the democratic party in the elec- 
tion. The opponents of the bill did not visit 
the President to give him their opinions, nor 
had he heard their arguments. If they had 
seen him, their opinions concurring with his 
own feelings and judgment, his conduct might 
have been different, and the approval of the act 
withheld. It might not have prevented the act 
from becoming a law, as two thirds in each 
House might have been found to support it; 
but it would have deprived the bill of the 
odor of his name, and saved himself from sub- 
sequent regrets. In a party point of view, it 
was the commencement of calamities, being an 
efficient cause in that general suspension of 
Bpecie payments, which quickly occurred, and 
brought so much embarrassment on the Van 
Buren administration, ending in the great demo- 
cratic defeat of 1840. But of this hereafter. 



CHAPTER CXLIII. 

RECnAETER OF THE DISTRICT BANKS— SPEECH 
OF MR. BENTON: THE PARTS OF LOCAL AND 
TEMPORARY INTEREST OMITTED. 

" Mr. Benton rose to oppose the passage of the 
bill, notwithstanding it was at the third read- 
in"- and that it was not usual to continue oppo- 
sition, which seemed to be useless, at that late 
stan-e. But there were occasions when he never 
took such things into calculation, and when he 
continued to resist pernicious measures, regard- 
less of common usages, as long as the forms of 
parliamentary proceeding would allow him to 
go on. Thus he had acted at the passing of the 
United States Bank charter, in 1832 ; thus he 
did at the passing of the resolution against Pre- 
sident Jackson, in 1834 ; and thus he did at the 
passing of the famous land bill, at the present 
session. He had continued to speak against all 
these measures, long after speaking seemed to 



be of any avail ; and, far from regretting, he had 
reason to rejoice at the course that he had pur- 
sued. The event proved him to be right ; for 
all these measures, though floated through this 
chamber upon the swelling wave of a resistless 
and impatient majority, had quickly run their 
brief career. Their day of triumph had been 
short. The bank charter perished at the first 
general election ; the condemnatory resolution 
was received by the continent in a tempest of 
execration ; and the land bill, that last hope of 
expiring party, has dropped an abortion from 
the Senate. It is dead even here, in this cham- 
ber, where it originated — where it was once so 
omnipotent that, to speak against it, was deemed 
by some to be an idle consumption of time, and 
by others to be an unparliamentary demonstra- 
tion against the ascertained will of the House. 
Yet, that land bill is finished. That brief can- 
dle is out. The Senate has revoked that bill ; 
has retracted, recanted, and sung its palinode 
over that unfortunate conception. It has sent 
out a committee — an extraordinary committee 
of nine — to devise some other scheme for divid- 
ing that same money which the land bill divides ! 
and, in doing so, the Senate has authentically 
declared a change of opinion, and a revocation 
of its sentiments in favor of that bill. Thus it 
has happened, in recent and signal cases, that, 
by continuing the contest after the battle seemed 
to be lost, the battle was in fact gained ; and so 
it may be again. These charters may yet be 
defeated ; and whether they will be or not, is 
nothing to me. I believe them to be wrong — 
greatly, immeasm-ably wrong ! — and shall con- 
tinue to oppose them without regard to calcula- 
tions, or consequences, until the rules of par- 
liamentary proceeding shall put an end to the 
contest. Mr. B. said he had moved for a select 
committee, at the commencement of the session, 
to examine into the condition of these banks, 
and he had done so with no other object than 
to endeavor to provide some checks and guards 
for the security of the country against the abuses 
and excesses of the paper system. The select 
committee had not been raised. The standing 
Committee on the District of Columbia had been 
charged with the subject ; and, seeing that they 
had made a report adverse to his opinions, and 
brought in a bill which he could not sanction, 
it would be his part to act upon tlie meagre 
materials which had been placed before the Sen- 



ANNO 1836. ANDREW JACKSON, rRl-:Sir)ENT. 



C59 



ate, and endeavor to accomplish as a member of 
that body, what could have been attempted, witli 
better prospects of success, as a member of a 
committee which had had the management of 
the subject. 

" Mr. B. said he had wished to have been on 
a select committee for the charter of these banks ; 
he wished to have revived the idea of a bank 
without circulation, and to have disconnected 
the government from the banking of the district. 
He had failed in his attempt to raise such a 
committee; and, as an individual member of 
the Senate, he could now do no more than men- 
tion in debate the ideas which he would have 
wished to have ripened into legislation through 
the instrumentality of a committee. 

"Mr. B. said he had demonstrated that no 
bank of circulation ought to be authorized in 
this district ; and, he would add, that none to 
furnish currency, except of large notes, ought 
to be authorized any where ; yet what are we 
doing ? We are breeding six little corporations 
at a birth, to issue ^2,250,000 of paper currency : 
and on what terms 1 No bonus ; no tax on the 
capital ; none on the circulation ; no reduction 
of interest in lieu of bonus or tax ; no specie 
but what the stockholders please to put in ; and 
no liability on the part of the stockholders for a 
failure of these corporations to redeem their 
notes and pay their debts. This is what we are 
doing ; and now let us see what burdens and 
taxes these six corporations will impose upon 
the business part of the community — the pro- 
ductive classes among which they are to be per- 
petuated. First, there is the support of these 
six corporation governments ; for every bank 
must have a government, like a State or king- 
dom; and the persons who administer these 
corporation governments must be paid, and paid 
by the people, and that according to the rates 
fixed by themselves and not by the people. 
Each of these six banks must have its president, 
cashier, clerks, and messengers ; its notary pub- 
lic to protest notes ; and its attorney to bring 
suits. The aggregate salaries, fees, and perqui- 
sites, of all these officers of the six banks will 
be the first tax on the people. Next comes the 
profits to the stockholders. The nctt profits 
of banks are usually eight to ten per cent, at 
present ; the gross profits are several per cent, 
more ; and the gross profits are what the people 
pay. Assuming the gross profits to be twelve 



per cent., and the annual levy upon tlie com- 
munity will be about ($270,000. The tliird loss 
to the community will be on the fluctuations of 
prices of labor and property, and the rise and 
foil of stocks, from the expansions and contrac- 
tions of currency, produced by making money 
plenty or scarce, as it suits the interest of the 
bank managers. This item cannot be calculated, 
and depends entirely upon the moderation and 
consciences of the Neptunes who preside over 
the flux and reflux of the paper ocean ; and to 
whom all tides, whether of ebb or flow, and all 
conditions of the sea, whether of calm or storm, 
are equally welcome, equally auspicious, and 
equally productive. Then come three other 
heads of loss to the community, and of profit to 
the bank : loss of notes from wear and tear, coun- 
terfeits imposed upon the people for good notes 
and good notes rejected by the banks for coun- 
terfeits ; and then the loss to the holders from 
the stoppage and failure of banks, and the shav 
ing in of notes and stocks. Such arc the bur 
dens and taxes to be imposed upon the people 
to give them a paper currency, when, if the paper 
currency were kept away, and only large notes 
used, as in France, thej- would have a gold and 
silver currency without paying a tax to any body 
for it, and without being subject to any of the 
frightful evils resulting from the paper system. 

" Objecting to all banks of circulation, but 
not able to suppress them entirely, Mr. B. sug- 
gested some ameliorations in the charters pro- 
posed to be granted to render them less dan- 
gerous to the community. 1. The liability of 
the stockholders for all the debts of the institu- 
tion, as in the Scottish banks. 2. Tlic bank 
stock to be subject to taxation, like other pro- 
perty. 3. To issue or receive no note of less 
than twenty dollars. 4. The charters to l>e 
repealable at the will of Congress : and lie gave 
reasons for each of these improvements ; and 
first for the liability of the stockholders. He 
said : 

" Reasons for this liabilit}- were strong and 
palpable. A man that owes should |>ay while 
he has property to pay with ; and it is inii]iiitous 
and unjustifiable that a bank din>ctor. or stork- 
holdor, should riot in wealth while the businc.>i>; 
part of the community should hold the bank 
notes which they have put into circulation, and 
be able to get nothing for them after the bank 
had closed its doors. Such exemptions are c^n- 



660 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



trary to the rights of the community, and one 
of the great causes of the failure of banks. A 
liabihty in the stockbrokers is one of the best 
securities which the public can have for the cor- 
rect management and solvency of the institution. 
The flunous Scottish banks, which, in upwards 
of one hundred years' operations, had neither 
once convulsed the country with contractions 
and expansions, nor once stopped payment, were 
constituted upon this principle. All the country 
banks in England, and all the bankers on the 
continent of Europe, were liable to a still greater 
degree ; for in them each stockholder, or part- 
ner, was liable, individually, for the whole 
amount of the debts of the bank. The principle 
proposed to be incorporated in these charters 
strikes the just medium between the common 
law principle, which makes each partner liable 
for the whole debts of the firm ; and the corpo- 
i-ation principle in the United States, which 
absolves each from all liability, and leaves 
the penniless and soulless carcase of a defunct 
and eviscerated bank alone responsible to the 
community. Liability to the amount of the 
stock was an equitable principle, and with sum- 
mary process for the recovery of the amounts 
of notes and deposits, and the invalidity of 
transfers of stock to avoid this liability, would 
be found a good remedy for a great evil. If the 
stockholders in the three banks which stopped 
payment in this city during the panic session 
had been thus hable, the notes would not have 
been shaved out of the hands of the holders ; if 
the bank which stopped in Eatimore at the same 
time, had been subject to this principle, the riots, 
which have afflicted that city in consequence of 
that stoppage, would not have taken place. 
Instead of these losses and riots, law and remedy 
would have prevailed ; every stockholder would 
have been summoned before a justice of the 
peace — judgment granted against him on motion 
— for the amount held by the complainant ; and 
so on, until all were paid, or he could plead that 
he had paid up the whole amount of his stock." 
The evil of small notes he classed under three 
general heads: 1. The banishment of gold and 
silver. 2. Encouragement to counterfeiting. 
3. Throwing the burthens and losses of the 
paper system upon the laboring and small- 
dealing part of the community, who have no 
share in the profits of banking, and should not be 
made to bear its losses. On these poiuts, he said : 



"The instinct of banks to sink their circula* 
tion to the lowest denomination of notes which 
can be forced upon the community, is a trait in 
the system universally proved to exist wherever 
banks of circulation have been permitted to 
give a currency to a country ; and the effect of 
that instinct has always been to banish gold 
and silver. When the Bank of England was 
chartered, in the j'car 1694, it could issue no 
note less than £100 sterling ; that amount was 
gradually reduced by the persevering efforts of 
the bank, to £50; then to £20; then to £15 ; 
then to £10 ; at last to £5 ; and finally to £2 
and £1. Those last denominations were not 
reached until the year 1797, or until one hundred 
and three years after the institution of the 
bank ; and as the several reductions in the size 
of the notes, and the consequent increase of 
paper cunency took place, gold became more 
and more scarce ; and with the issue of the one 
and two pound notes, it totally disappeared 
from the country. 

"This effect was foretold by all political 
economists, and especially by Mr. Burke, then 
aged and retired from public life, who wrote 
from his retreat, to Mr. Canning, to say to Mr. 
Pitt, the Prime Minister, these prophetic words: 
« If this bill for the one and two pounds is per- 
mitted to pass, we shall never see another guinea 
in England.' The bill did pass, and the predic- 
tion was fulfilled ; for not another guinea, half 
guinea, or sovereign, was seen in England, for 
circulation, until the bill Avas repealed two and 
twenty years afterwards 1 After remaining 
nearly a quarter of a century without a gold 
circulation, England abolished her one and two 
pound notes, limited her paper currency to £5 
sterling, required all Bank of England notes to 
be paid in gold, and allowed four years for the 
act to take effect. Before the four years were 
out, the Bank of England reported to Parliament 
that it was ready to begiu gold payments ; and 
commenced accordingly, and has continued them 
ever since. 

" The encouragement of counterfeiting was the 
next great evil which INIr. B. pointed out as l)e- 
longing to a small note currency ; and of all the 
denominations of notes, he said those of one and 
two pounds in England (corresponding witli 
fives and tens in the United States), were those 
to which tlie demoralizing business of counter- 
feiting was chiefly directed! They were the 



ANNO 1836. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



GGi 



chosen game of the forging depredator! and 
that, for the obvious reasons that fives and tens 
were small enough to pass currently among per- 
sons not much acquainted with bank paper, and 
large enough to afford some profit to compen- 
sate for the expense and labor of producing the 
counterfeit, and the risk of passing it. Below 
fives, the profits are too small for the labor and 
risk. Too many have to be forged and passed 
before an article of any value can be purchased ; 
and the change to be got in silver, in passing 
one for a small article, is too little. Of twenty 
and upwards, though the profit is greater on 
passing them, yet the danger of detection is 
also greater. On account of its larger size, the 
note is not only more closely scrutinized before 
it is received, and the passer of it better remem- 
bered, but the circulation of them is more con- 
fined to business men and large dealers, and 
silver change will not be given for them in buj-- 
ing small articles. The fives and tens, then, in 
the United States, like the £1 and £2 in Eng- 
land, are the peculiar game of counterfeiters, 
and this is fully proved by the criminal statistics 
of the forgery department in both countries. 
According to returns made to the British Parlia- 
ment for twenty-two years — from 1797 to 1819 
— the period in which the one and two pound 
notes were allowed to circulate, the whole 
number of prosecutions for counterfeiting, or 
passing counterfeit notes of the Bank of Eng- 
land, was 998: in that number there were 313 
capital convictions ; 530 inferior convictions ; and 
155 acquittals : and the sum of £249,900, near a 
million and a quarter of dollars, was expend- 
ed by the bank in attending to prosecutions. 
Of this great number of prosecutions, the re- 
turns show that the mass of them were for 
offences connected with the one and two pound 
notes. The proportion may be distinctly seen 
in the number of counterfeit notes of different 
denominations detected at the Bank of England 
in a given period of time — from the 1st of 
January, 1812, to the 10th of April, 1818— being 
a period of six years and three months out of 
the twenty-two years that the one and two 
pound notes continued to circulate. The detec- 
tions were, of one pound notes, the number of 
107,238 ; of two pound notes, 17,787 ; of five 
pound notes, 5,82G; of ten pound notes, 419; 
of twenty pound notes, 54. Of all above twenty 
pounds, 35. The proportion of ones and twos 



to the other sizes may be well seen in the tables 
for this brief period ; but to have any idea of 
the mass of counterfeiting done upon those 
small notes, the whole period of twcnty-tw« 
jcars must be considered, and the entire king- 
dom of Great Britain taken in ; for the list only 
includes the number of counterfeits detected at 
the counter of the bank ; a place to which the 
guilty never carry their forgeries, and to which 
a portion only of those circulating in and about 
London could be carried. The proportion of 
crime connected with the small notes is here 
shown to be enormously and frightfully great. 
The same results are found in the United States. 
Mr. B. had looked over the statistics of crime 
connected with the counterfeiting of bank notes 
in the United States, and found the ratio between 
the great and small notes to be about the same 
that it was in England. lie had had recourse 
to the most authentic data — BickncH's Coun- 
terfeit Detector — and there found the editions of 
counterfeit notes of the local or State banks, to 
be eight hundred and eighteen, of which seven 
hundred and fifty-six were of ten dollars and 
under ; and sixty-two editions only were of 
twenty dollars and upwards. Of the Bank of 
the United States and its branches, he found 
eighty-two editions of fives ; scvcntA'-one edi- 
tions of tens; twenty-six editions of twenties; 
and two editions of fifties ; still showing that 
in the United States, as well as in England, on 
local banks as well as that of the United States, 
the course of counterfeiting was still the same ; 
and that the whole stress of the crime fell upon 
the five and ten dollar notes in this country, and 
their corresponding classes, the one and two 
pound notes in England. Mr. B. also exhibitcvl 
the pages of Bicknell's Counterfeit Detector, a 
pamphlet covered over column after column 
with its frightful lists, nearly all under twenty 
dollars ; and he called ujjou the Senate in the 
sacred name of the morals of the country — in 
the name of virtue and morality — to endeavor 
to check the fountain of this crime, by ptoppinjr 
the issue of the description of notes on which 
it exerted nearly its whole force. 

"Mr. B. could not quit the evils of the 
crime of counterfeiting in tiie United States 
without remarking tliiit the difliculty of legal 
detection and punislnncnt was so givat, owing 
to the distance at which the counterfoita were 
circulated from the banks purporting to issue 



662 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



them, and the still greater difficulty (in most 
cases impossible) of getting witnesses to attend 
in person, in States in which they do not reside, 
the counterfeiters all choosing to practise their 
crime and circulate their forgeries in States 
which do not contain the banks whose paper 
they are imitating. So difficult is it to obtain 
the attendance of witnesses in other States, that 
the crime of counterfeiting is almost practised 
with impunity. The notes under ^20 feed and 
supply this crime ; let them be stopped, and 
ninety-nine hundredths of this crime will stop 
with them. 

" A third objection which INIr. B. urged against 
the notes under twenty dollars was, that 
nearly the whole evils of that part of the paper 
system fell upon the laboring and small deal- 
ing part of the community. Nearly all the 
counterfeits lodged in their hands, or were 
shaved out of their hands. When a bank failed, 
the mass of its circulation being in small 
notes, sunk upon their hands. The gain to the 
banks from the wear and tear of small notes, 
came out of them ; the loss from the same 
cause, falling upon them. The ten or twelve per 
cent, annual profit for furnishing a currencj^ in 
place of gold and silver (for which no interest 
would be paid to the mint or the government), 
chiefly falls upon them ; for the paper currency 
is chiefly under twenty dollars. These evils 
they almost exclusively bear, while they have, 
over and above all these, their full proportion 
of all the evils resulting from the expansions 
and contractions which are incessantly going 
on, totally destroying the standard of value, 
periodically convulsing the country ; and in every 
cycle of five or six years making a lottery of 
all property, in which all the prizes are drawn 
by bank managers and their friends. 

" He wished the basis of circulation through- 
out the country to be in hard money. Fanners, 
laborers, and market people, ought to receive 
their payments in hard money. T1k\v ought 
not to be put to the risk of receiving bank notes 
in ail their small dealings. They are no judges 
of good or bad notes. Counterfeits arc sure to 
fall upon their hands ; and the whole business 
of counterfeiting was mainly directed to such 
notes as they handle — those mider twenty 
dollars. 

"Mr. B. said be here wished to fix the atten- 
tion of those who were in favor of a respectable 



paper currency — a currency of respectable-sized 
notes of twenty dollars and upwards — on the 
great fact, that the larger the specie basis, the 
larger and safer would be the superstructure of 
paper which rested upon it ; the smaller that 
specie basis, the smaller and more unsafe must 
be the paper which rested on it. The currency 
of England is $300,000,000, to wit : £8,000,000 
sterling (near $40,000,000)in silver ; £22,000,000 
sterling (above $100,000,000) in gold; and 
about £30,000,000 sterling (near $150,000,000) 
in bank notes. The currency of the United 
States is difficult to be ascertained, from the 
multitude of banks, and the incessant ebb and 
fiow of their issues; calculations vary; but all put 
the paper circulation at less than $100,000,000 ; 
and the proportion of specie and paper, at more 
than one half paper. This is agreed upon al! 
hands, and is sufficient for the practical result, 
that an increase of our specie to $100,000,000, 
and the suppression of small notes, will give a 
larger total circulation than we now have, and 
a safer one. The total circulation may then be 
$200,000,000,in the proportions of half paper and 
half specie ; and the specie, half gold and half 
silver. This would be an immense improve- 
ment upon our present condition, both in quan- 
tity and in quality ; the paper part would be- 
come respectable from the suppression of notes 
under twenty dollars, which are of no profit ex- 
cept to the banks which issue them, and the 
counterfeiters who imitate them ; the specie 
part would be equally improved by becoming 
one half gold. Mr. B. could not quit this im- 
portant point, namely, the practicability of soon 
obtaming a specie currency of $100,000,000, and 
the one half gold, without giving other proofs 
to show the facility with which it has been 
every where done when attempted. He refer- 
red to our own history immediately after the 
Revolution, when the disappearance of paper 
money was instantly followed, as if by magic, 
by the appearance of gold and silver ; to France, 
where the enei-gy of the great Napoleon, then 
first consul, restored an abundant supply of gold 
and silver in one year ; to England, where the 
acquisition of gold was at the rate of $24,000,000 
per annum for four years after the notes under 
five pounds were ordered to be suppressed ; and 
he referred with triumph to our own present 
history, when, in defiance of an immense and 
powerful political and moneyed combinatioB 



ANNO 1836. ANDREW JACKSON, TRESIDENT. 



C63 



against gold, we Avill have acquired about 
$20,000,000 of that metal in the two conduding 
years of President Jackson's administration. 

" Mr. B. took this occasion to express his re- 
gret that the true idea of banks seemed to be 
lost in this country, and that here we had but 
little conception of a bank, except as an issuer 
of currency. A bank of discount and deposit, 
in contradistinction to a bank of circulation, is 
hardly thought of in the United States ; and it 
may be news to some bank projectors, who sup- 
pose that nothing can be done without banks 
to issue millions of paper, to learn that the great 
bankers in London and Paris, and other capitals 
of Europe, issue no paper ; and, still more, it 
may be news to them to learn that Liverpool 
and jNIanchester, two cities which happen to do 
about as much business as a myriad of such 
cities as this our Washington put together, also 
happen to have no banks to issue currency for 
them. They use money and bills of exchange, 
and have banks of discount and deposit, but no 
banks of circulation. Mr. Gallatin, in his Essay 
upon Currency, thus speaks of them : 

" ' There are, however, even in England, where 
incorporated country banks issuing paper are 
as numerous, and have been attended with the 
same advantages, and the same evils, as our 
country banks, some extensive districts, highly 
industrious and prosperous, where no such bank 
does exist, and where that want is supplied by 
bills of exchange drawn on London. This is 
the case in Lancashire, which includes Liverpool 
and ^Lanchester, and where such bills, drawn at 
ninety days after date, are indorsed by each 
successive holder, and circulate through numer- 
ous persons before they reach their ultimate 
destination, and are paid by the drawee.' 

" Mr. B. greatly regretted that such banks as 
those in Liverpool and Manchester were not in 
vogue in the United States. They were the 
right kind of banks. They did great good, and 
were wholly free from mischief. They lent 
money ; they kept money ; they transferred 
credits on books ; they bought and sold bills of 
exchange ; and these bills, circulating through 
many hands, and indorsed by each, answered 
the purpose of large bank notes, without their 
dangers, and became stronger every time they 
were passed. To the banks it was a profitable 
business to sell them, because they got both ex- 
change and interest. To the commercial com- 



munity they were convenient, both as a remit- 
tance and as funds in hand. To thecomnmnity 
they were entirely safe. Banks of discount and 
deposit in the United States, issuing no currency, 
and issuing no bank note except of SiOO uud 
upwards, and deahng in exchange, would be en- 
titled to the favor and confidence of the people 
and of the federal government. Such banks 
only should be the depositories of the public 
moneys. 

'• It is the faculty of issuing paper currency 
which makes banks dangerous to the countrj', 
and the height to which this danger has risen 
in the L^nited States, and the progress which it 
is making, should rouse and alarm the wliole 
community. It is destroying all standard of 
value. It is subjecting the country to demoraliz- 
ing and ruinous fluctuations of price. It is mak- 
ing a lottery of property, and making merchan- 
dise of money, which has to be bought by the 
ticket holders in the great lottery at two and 
three per cent, a month. It is equivalent to the 
destruction of weights and measures, and like 
buj'ing and selling without counting, weighing, 
or measuring. It is the realization, in a differ- 
ent form, of the debasement and arbitrary alter- 
ation of the value of coins practised b}- the kings 
of Europe in former ages, and now by the Sultan 
of Turkey. It is extinguishing the idea of fixed, 
moderate, annual interest. Great duties are 
thus imposed upon the legislator ; and the first 
of these duties is to revive and favor the class 
of banks of discount and deposit ; banks to make 
loans, keep money, transfer credits on books, 
buy and sell exchange, deal in buiuoii ; but to 
issue no paper. This class of banks sliould be 
revived and favored; and the L'nited States 
could easilj' revive them by confiding to them 
the public deposits. The next great duty of the 
legislator is to limit the issues of banks of cin-u- 
lation, and make them indemnify the community 
in some little degree, by refunding, in annual 
taxes, some part of their undue gains. 

'•The progress of the banking business is 
alarming and deplorable in the United States. 
It is now computed that there arc 750 banks 
and their branches in operation, all having au- 
thority to issue currency ;' and, wlint is worse, 
all that curroncj- is receivalile by the federal 
government. The quantity of charterc<l Kink 
capital, as it is called, is estimated at noar 
$800,000,000; the amount of tliis cai)ital r«>- 



664 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



ported by the banks to have been paid in is 
about $300,000,000 ; and the quantity jf paper 
money which the}' are authorized by their char- 
ters to issue is about ,^750,000,000. How much 
of this ia actually issued can never be known 
with any precision ; for such are the fluctuations 
in the ai«ount of a paper currency, flowing from 
750 fountains, that the circulation of one day 
cannot be relied upon for the next. The amount 
of capital, reported to be paid in, is, however, well 
ascertained, and that is fixed at $300,000,000. 
This, upon its face, and without recourse to any 
other evidence, is proof that our banking system, 
as a whole, is unsolid and delusive, and a fright- 
ful imposition upon the people. Nothing but 
specie can form the capital of a bank j there are 
not above sixty or seventy millions of specie in 
the countr}-, and, of that, the banks have not 
the one half Thirty millions in specie is the 
extent ; the remainder of the capital must have 
been made up of that undefinable material called 
' specie funds,' or ' funds equivalent to specie,' 
the fallacy of which is established by the facts 
already stated, and which show that all the 
specie in the country put together is not suffi- 
cient to meet the one fifth part of these ' specie 
funds,' or ' funds equivalent to specie.' The 
equivalent, then, does not exist ! credit alone 
exists ; and any general attempt to realize these 
' specie funds,' and turn them in^o specie, would 
explode the Avhple banking system, and cover 
the country with ruin. There may be some 
solid and substantial banks in the country, and 
undoubtedly there are better and worse among 
them ; buc as a whole — and it is in that point 
of view the community is interested — as a whole, 
the system is unsolid and delusive ; and there is 
no safety for the country until great and radical 
reforms are effected. 

" The burdens which these 750 banks impose 
upon tlic people were then briefly touched by Mr. 
B. It was a great field, which he had not time 
to explore, but which could not, in justice, be 
entirely passed by. First, there were the sala- 
ries and fees of 750 sets of bank officers : presi- 
dents, cashiers, clerks, messengers, notaries pub- 
lic to protest notes, and attorneys to sue on 
them ; all these had salaries, and good salaries, 
paid by the people, though the people had no 
hand in fixing these salaries : next, the profits 
tx) the stockholders, which, at an average of ten 
per centum gross would g* '•e thirty millions of 



dollars, all levied upon the people ; then camo 
the profits to the brokers, first cousins to the 
bankers, for changing notes for money, or for 
other notes at par ; then the gain to the banks 
and their friends on speculations in property, 
merchandise, produce, and .stocks, during the 
periodical visitations of the expansions and con- 
tractions of the currency ; then the gain from 
the wear and tear of notes, which is so much 
loss to the people j and, finally, the great chap- 
ter of counterfeiting which, without being pro- 
fitable tc the bank, is a great burden to the peo- 
ple, on whose hands all the counterfeits sink. 
The amount of these burdens he could not com- 
pute ; but there was one item about which there 
was no dispute — the salaries to the officers and 
the profits to the stockholders — and this pre- 
sentets. an array of names more numerous, and 
an amount of money more excessive, than was 
to be found in the ' Blue Book,' with the Army 
and Navy Kegister inclusive. 

" Mr. B. said this was a faint sketch of the 
burdens of the banking system as carried on in 
the United States, where every bank is a coiner 
of paper currency, and where every town, in 
some States, must have its banks of circulation, 
while such cities as Liverpool and JManchester 
have no such banks, and where the paper money 
of all these machines receive wings to fly over 
the whole continent, and to infest the whole 
land, from their universal receivability by the 
federal government in paj'ment of all dues at 
their custom-houses, land-offices, post-offices, 
and by all the district attorneys, marshals, and 
clerks, employed under the federal judiciary. 
The improvidence of the States, in chartering 
such institutions, is great and deplorable ; but 
their error was triffing, compared to the impro- 
vidence of the federal government in taking the 
paper coinage of all these banks for the currency 
of the federal government, maugre that clause 
in the constitution which recognizes nothing but 
gold and silver for currency, and which was in- 
tended for ever to defend and preserve this Union 
from the evils of paper money. 

•' jNIr. B. averred, with a perfect knowledge of 
the fact, that the banking system of the United 
States was on a worse footing than it was in any 
country upon the face of the earth ; and that, in 
addition to its deep and dangerous defects, it 
was also the most expensive and burdensome, 
and gave the most undue advantages to one part 



ANNO 1836. ANDREW JACKSON, TRESIDENT. 



065 



of the community over another. lie had no 
doubt but that this banking system was more 
burdensome to the free citizens of the United 
States than ever the feudal system was to the 
villeins, and serfs, and peasants of Europe. And 
what did they get in return for this vast bur- 
den ? A pestiferous currency of small paper ! 
when they might have a gold currency without 
paying interest, or suffering losses, if their banks, 
like those in Liverpool and Manchester, issued no 
currency except as bills of exchange ; or, like 
the Bank of France, issued no notes but those 
of 500 and 1,000 francs (say ^100 and $500) ; 
or even, like the Bank of England, issued no 
note under £5 sterling, and payable in gold. And 
with how much real capital is this banking sys- 
tAn, so burdensome to the people of the United 
States, carried on ? About $;30,000,000 ! Yes ; on 
about $30,000,000 of specie rests the $300,000,000 
paid in, and on which the community are paying 
interest, and giving profits to bankers, and blind- 
ly yielding their faith and confidence, as if the 
whole $300,000,000 was a solid bed of gold and 
silver, instead of being, as it is, one tenth part 
specie, and nine tenths paper credit ! '" 

Other senators spoke against the rechartcr of 
these banks, without the amelioration of their 
charters which the public welfare required ; but 
without effect. The amendments were all re- 
jected, and the bill f)assed for the recharter of 
the whole six by a large vote — 26 to 14. The 
yeas and nays were : 

Yeas. — Messrs. Black, Buchanan, Calhoun, 
Clay, Crittenden, Cuthbert, Davis, Ewing of 
Ohio, Goldsborough, Hendricks, Hubbard, Kent, 
King of Alabama, Knight, Leigh, Naudaiii, 
Nicholas, Porter, Prentiss, Rives, Southard, 
Swift, Tallmadge, Tomlinson, Walker, Webster. 

Nays. — ^lessrs. Benton, Ewing of Hlinois, 
King of Georgia, Linn, McICean, Mangum, Mor- 
ris, Niles, l^obinson, lluggles, Shepley, AVall, 
White, Wright. 



CHAPTER CXLIV. 

INDEPENDENCE OF TEXAS. 

During several months memorials had been 
coming in from public meetings in dilferent cities 
in favor of acknowledging the independence of 
Texas— the public feeling in behalf of the people 



of that small levulled province, i-troii'^ IVuin the 
beginning of the contest, now inflamed into rago 
from the massacres of the Alamo and of Goliad. 
Towards the middle of May news of the vic- 
tory of San Jacinto arrived at Washington. 
Public feeling no longer knew any bounds. 
The people were exalted — Congress not less so 
— and a feeling for the acknowledgment of 
Texian independence, if not universal, almost 
general. The sixteenth of May — the first sitting 
of the Senate after this great news — Mr. Man- 
gum, of North Carolina, presented the proceed- 
ings of a pubUc meeting in Burke county, of that 
State, praying Congress to acknowledge the in- 
dependence of the 3'oung rei)ublic. !Mr. Preston 
said : " The effects of that victory had opened up 
a curtain to a most magnificent scene. This 
invader had come at the head of his forces, urged 
on b}- no ordinary impulse — by an infuriate fana- 
ticism — by a superstitious Catholicism, goaded 
on by a miserable priesthood, against that in- 
vincible Anglo-Saxon race, the van of which 
now approaches the del Nui-tc. It was at once 
a war of religion and of liberty. And when 
that noble race engaged in a war, victory was 
sure to perch upon their standard. This was 
not merely the retribution of the cruel war upon 
the Alamo, but that tide which was swollen 
by this extraordinary victory would roll on; 
and it was not in the spirit of prophecy to say 
where it would stop." Mr. Walker, of Missis- 
sippi, said : 

" He had, upon the 22d of April last, called 
the attention of the Senate to the strup-rle in 
Texas, and suggested the reservation of any 
surplus that might remain in the trea.sury. for 
the purpose of acquiring Texas from whatever 
government might remain the govorninent '/f' 
facto of that country. At that period (said .Mr. 
W.) no allusion had been made, he Ixlieved, l>y 
any one in either House of Congiv.ss to the .situ- 
ation of affairs in Texas. And now (said .Mr. 
AV.), u'pon the very day that he had calK-il 
the attention of the Senate to this subject, it 
appeared that Santa Anna had lioeu captured, 
and his army overthrown. Mr. W. i<i\hl he hud 
never doubted this residt. When on the 22d 
of April last, resolutions were intnxhia-d In-foro 
the Senate l)y the .senator from Ohio (Mr. Mor- 
ris), requesting Congress to recognize the inde- 
pendence of Texas, he (.Mr. W.) had opposed 
layin" these re.-^olutions on the talile. and advo- 
cated*^ their reference to a coinniitU>e of the 
Senate. Mr. W. said he had ftd(!n\»vsod tho 
Senate then under very dilferent cirounistanccs 
from those which now existed. The cries of 



666 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



the expiring prisoners at the Ahxmo were then 
resoundinir in our ears ; the victorious usurper 
was advancing onward with his exterminating 
warfare, and, in the minds of many, all was 
gloom and despondency ; but Mr. W. said that 
tlie published report of our proceedings demon- 
strated that he did not for a moment despond ; 
that his confidence in the rifle of the West was 
firm and unshaken ; and that he had then de- 
clared that the sun was not more certain to set 
in the western horizon, than that Texas would 
maintain her independence ; and this sentiment 
he had taken occasion to repeat in the debate 
on this subject in the Senate on the 9th of May 
last. Mr. W. said that what was then predic- 
tion was now reality ; and his heart beat high, and 
his pulse throbbed with delight, in contemplating 
this triumph of liberty. Sir (said Mr. W.), the 
people of the valley of the Mississippi never 
could have permitted Santa Ana and his myr- 
midons to retain the dominion of Texas." 

Mr. "Walker afterwards moved the reference 
of all the memoi'ials in relation to Texas to the 
Committee on Foreign Relations. If the accounts 
received from Texas had been official (for as 
yet there were nothing but newspaper accounts 
of the great victory), he would have moved for 
the immediate recognition of the Texian inde- 
pendence. Being unofficial, he could only move 
the reference to the committee in the expecta- 
tion that they would investigate the facts and 
bring the subject before the Senate in a suitable 
form for action. Mr. Webster said : 

"That if the people of Texas had established 
a government de facto^ it was undoubtedly 
the duty of this government to acknowledge 
their independence. The time and manner of 
doing so, however, were all matters proper 
for grave and mature consideration. He should 
have been better satisfied, had this matter 
not been moved again till all the evidence 
had been collected, and until the}' had received 
official information of the important events that 
had taken place in Texas. As this proceeding 
had been moved by a member of the adminis- 
tration party, he felt himself bound to under- 
stand that the Executive was not opposed to 
take the first steps now, and that in his opinion 
this ])roceeding was not dangerous or premature. 
Mr. W. was of opinion that it would be best 
not to act with precipitation. If this informa- 
tion was true, they would doubtless before long 
hear from Texas herself; for as soon as she felt 
that she was a country, and had a country, she 
would naturally present her claims to her neigh- 
bors, to be recognized as an independent nation. 
He did not say that it would be necessary to 
wait for this event, but he thought it would be 
discreet to do so. He would be one of the first 
to acknowledge the independence of Texas, on 



reasonable proof that she had established a gov* 
ernment. There were views connected with 
Texas which he would not now present, as it 
would be premature to do so ; but he would ob- 
serve that he had received some information 
from a respectable source, which turned his at- 
tention to the very significant expression used 
by Mr. Monroe in his message of 1822, that no 
European Power should ever be permitted to 
establish a colony on the American continent. 
He had no doubt that attempts would be made 
by some European government to obtain a ces- 
sion of Texas from the government of Mexico." 

Mr. King, of Alabama, counselled moderation 
and deliberation, although he was aware that in 
the present excited feeling in relation to Texas, 
every prudent and cautious course would be 
misunderstood, and a proper reserve be probably 
construed into hostihty to Texian independence : 
but he would, so long as he remained a member 
on that floor, be regardless of every personal 
consideration, and place himself in opposition to 
all measures which he conceived were calculated 
to detract from the exalted character of this 
country for good faith, and for undeviating ad- 
herence to all its treaty stipulations. He then 
went on to say : 

" He knew not whether the information re- 
ceived of the extraordinary successes of the Tex- 
ans was to be relied on or not ; he sincerely 
hoped it might prove true ; no man here felt a 
deeper detestation of the bloodthirsty wretches 
who had cruelly butchered their defenceless 
prisoners, than he did ; but, whether true or 
false, did it become wise, discreet, prudent men, 
bound by Che strongest considerations to pre- 
serve the honor and faith of the country, to be 
hurried along by the effervescence of feeling, 
and at once abandon the course-, and, he would 
say, the only true course, which this gx)vernment 
has invariably, heretofore, pursued towards fo- 
reign powers ? We have uniformly (said Mr. 
K.) recognized the existing governments — the 
governments de facto; we have not stopped to 
inquire whether it is a despotic or constitutional^ 
government ; whether it is a republic or a des- 
potism. All we ask is, does a government actu- 
ally exist? and, h-aving satisfied ourselves of 
that fact, we look no further, but recognize it as 
it is. It was on this principle (said Mr. K.) — 
this safe, this correct principle, that we recog- 
nized what was called the Republic of France, 
founded on the ruins of the old monarchy ; then, 
the consular government ; a little after, the irn- 
perial; and when that was crushed by a combi- 
nation of all Europe, and that extraordinary 
man who wielded it was driven into exile, we 
again acknowledged the kingly government of 
the House of Bourbon, and now the constitu- 
tional King Louis Philippe of Orleans. 



ANNO 1836. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



6G7 



" Sir (said Mr. K.), we take things as they 
are ; we ask not how governments are estab- 
lished — by what revohitions they are brought 
into existence. Let us see an independent gov- 
ernment in Texas, and he would not be behind 
the senator from jMississippi nor the senator 
from South Carolina in pressing forward to its 
recognition, aiid establishing with it the most 
cordial and friendly relations." 

Mr. Calhoun went beyond all other speakers, 
and advocated not only immediate recognition 
of the independence of Texas, but her simulta- 
neous admission into the Union ; was in favor 
of acting on both questions together, and at the 
present session ; and saw an interest in the slave- 
holding States in preventing Texas from having 
the power to annoy them. And he said : 

" He was of opinion that it would add more 
strength to the cause of Texas, to wait for a few 
days, until they received official confirmation of 
the victory and capture of Santa Anna, in order 
to obtain a more unanimous vote in favor of the 
recognition of Texas. He had been of but one 
opinion, from the beginning, that, so far from 
Mexico being able to reduce Texas, there was 
great danger of Mexico, herself, being conquered 
by the Texans. The result of one battle liad 
placed the ruler of Mexico in tlie power of the 
Texans ; and they were now able, either to dic- 
tate what terms they pleased to him, or to make 
terms mth the opposition in Mexico. This ex- 
traordinary meeting had given a handful of brave 
men a most powerful control over the destinies 
of Mexico ; he trusted they would use their 
victory with moderation. He had made up his 
mind not only to recognize the independence of 
Texas, but for her admission into this Union ; and 
if the Texans managed their aiTairs pradently, 
they would soon be called upon to decide that 
question. No man could suppose for a moment 
that that country could ever come again under 
the dominion of Mexico ; and he was of opinion 
that it was not for our interests that there 
should be an independent community between 
us and Mexico. Tliere were powerful reasons 
why Texas should be a part of this Union. Tlie 
Southern States, owning a slave jjopulation, were 
deeply interested in preventing that country 
from having the power to annoy them ; and the 
navigating and manufacturing interests of the 
North and the East were equally interested in 
making it a part of this Union. He thought 
they would soon be called on to decide these 
questions ; and when they did act on it, he was 
for acting on both together — for recognizing the 
independence of Texas, and for a(hnitting her 
into the Union. Though he felt the deepest so- 
licitude on this subject, he was for acting calmly, 
deliberately, and cautiously, but at tlie same 
time with decision and fn-nuiess. The)' should 
not violate their neutrality; but when they 
U-ere once satisfied that Texas had established 



a g'Ovemment, they should do as they had done 
in all other similar cases : recognize her as an 
independent nation ; and if her people, who were 
once citizens of this Republic, wished to come 
back to us, he would receive them with open 
arms. Tf events should goon as the}- had done, 
he could not but hope that, befure tlie close of 
the present session of Congress, they would nol 
only acknowledge the independence of Texas, 
but admit her into the Union. He hoped there 
would be no unnccessai-y delay, for, in such 
cases, delays were dangerous ; ])ut that they 
would act with unanimitj', and act promptly." 

The author of this View did not reply to Mr. 
Calhoun, being then on ill terms with him ; but 
he saw in the speech much to be considered and 
remembered — the shadowings forth of coming 
events ; the revelation of a new theatre for the 
slavery agitation ; and a design to make the 
Texas question an element in the impending 
election. Jlr. Calhoun had been one of Mr. Mon- 
roe's cabinet, at the time that Texas was ceded 
to Spain, and for reasons (as Mr. ^Monroe stated 
to General Jackson, in the private letter hereto- 
fore quoted) of internal pohcy and considera- 
tion ; that is to say, to conciliate the free States, 
by amputating slave territory, and preventing 
their opposition to future Southern presidential 
candidates. He did not use those precise wonls, 
but that was the meaning of the words used. 
The cession of Texas was made in the crisis of 
the Missouri controversy ; and both Mr. Mon- 
roe and Mr. Calhoun received the benefit of 
the conciliation J t produced: Mr. Monroe in the 
re-election, almost unanimous, of 182(^ ; and Mr. 
Calhoun in the vice-presidential elections of 
1824 and 1828 ; in which he was so much a 
favorite of the North as to get more votes thiui 
Mr. Adams received in the free States, and owed 
to them his honorable election by the ix>oplo, 
when all others were defeatetl, on the popular 
vote. Theipjustification (that of Mr. Monn^'s 
cabinet) for this cession of a great province, 
was, that the loss was temporary—" tliat it 
could be got back again whenever it was want- 
ed"— but the victory of San Jacinto was hanlly 
foreseen at that time. It was these n^asons 
(Northern conciliation, and gi-tting it back when 
we pleased) that reconciled CJeneral .Jackson 
to the cession, at the time it was made. One 
of the foremost to give away Texas, Mr. Cal- 
houn was ttie very foremost to get her b.irk ; 
and at an immense cost to our foreign relations 
and domestic peace. The immediate admission 



668 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



of Texas into the Union, was his plan. She 
was at war with ]\Icxico — we at peace : to in- 
corporate her into the Union, was to adopt her 
war. We had treaties of amity with Mexico : 
to join Texas in the war, was to be ftiithless to 
those treaties. We had a presidential election 
depending ; and to discuss the question of Texian 
admission into our Union, was to bring that ele- 
ment into the canvass, in which all prudent men 
who were adverse to the admission (as Mr. 
Van Burcn and his friends were), would be 
thrown under the force of an immense popular 
current ; while all that were in favor of it 
would expect to swim high upon the waves of 
that current. The proposition was incredibly- 
rash, tending to involve us in war and dishonor ; 
and also disrespectful to Texas herself, who had 
not asked for admission ; and extravagantly 
hasty, in being broached before there was any 
official news of the great victory. Before the 
debate was over, the author of this View took 
an opportunity to reply, without reference to 
other speakers, and to give reasons against the 
present admission of Texas. But there was 
one of Mr. Calhoun's reasons for immediate ad- 
mission, which to him was enigmatical, and at 
that time, incomprehensible ; and that was, the 
prevention of Texas "from having the power to 
annoy" the Southern slave States. We had 
just been emploj'cd in suppressing, or explod- 
ing, this annoyance, in the Northeast ; and, in 
the twinkling of an eye, it sprung up in the 
Southwest, two thousand miles off, and quite 
diagonally from its late point of apparition. 
That sudden and so distant re-appearance of the 
danger, was a puzzle, remaining unsolved until 
the Tyler administration, and the return of Mr. 
Duff Green from London, with the discovery 
of the British abolition plot ; which was to be 
planted in Texas, spread into the Sotith, and 
blow up its slavery. Mv. Bedford Brown, and 
others, answered Mr. Calhoun. Mr. Brown 
said: 

" He regarded our national character as worth 
infinitely more tliau all the tei-ritoria' posses- 
sions of Mexico, her wealth, or the wealth of all 
other nations added together. We occupied a 
standing among the nations of the earth, of 
which we might well be proud, and which we 
ought not to permit to be tarnished. We have, 
said Mr. B., arrived at tliat period of our history, 
as a nation, when it behooves us to act with the 
greatest wisdom and circumspection. But a few 
ycars since as a nation, we were comparatively 



in a state of infancy ; we were now, in the con- 
fidence of youth, and with the buoyancy of spirit 
incident to this period of our existence as a na- 
tion, about to enter on ' man's estate.' Power- 
ful in resources, and conscious of our strength, 
let us not forget the sacred obligations of jus- 
tice and good faith, which form the indispensa- 
ble basis of a nation's character — greatness and 
freedom ; and without which, no people could 
long preserve the blessings of self-government. 
Republican government was based on the prin- 
ciples of justice ; and for it to be adtninistered 
on any other, either in its foreign or domestic 
affairs, was to undermine its foundation and to 
hasten its overthrow." 

Mr. Rives concurred in the necessity for cau- 
tion ; and said : 

" This government should act with modera- 
tion, calmness, and dignity ; and, because he 
wished the Senate to act with that becoming 
moderation, calmness, and dignity, which ought 
to characterize its deliberations on international 
subjects, it was his wish that the subject might 
be referred. If it was postponed, it would come 
up again for discussion, from morning to morn- 
ing, to the exclusion of most of the business 
of the Senate, as there was nolhlng to prevent 
the presentation of petitions every morning, to 
excite discussion. It was for the purpose of 
avoiding these discussions, that he should vote 
to refer it at once to the Committee on Foreign 
Relations. A prominent member of that com- 
mittee had been long and intimatel}^ acquainted 
with the subject of our foreign relations, and 
there were members on it representing all the 
diflerent sections of the country, to whose charge 
he believed the subject could be safely commit- 
ted. It would seem, from the course of debate 
this morning, that gentlemen supposed the ques- 
tion of the recognition of the independence of 
Texas, or its admission into this Union, was di- 
rectly before the Senate ; and some gentlemen 
had volunteered their opinions in advance of the 
report of the committee. He did not vote to 
refer it to the committee to receive its quietus, 
but that they might give their views upon it ; 
nor did he feel as if he were called upon to ex- 
press an opinion upon the propriety of the mea- 
sure. It was strange that senators, who stated 
that their opinions were made up, should op- 
pose the reference." 

!Mr. Niles, of Connecticut, was entirely in 
favor of preserving the national faith inviolate, 
and its honor untarnished, and ourselves from 
the imputation of base motives in our future 
conduct in relation to Texas, and said : 

" This was a case in which this government 
should act with caution. In ordinary cases of 
this kind the question was onlv one of fact, and 
was but little calculated to compromit the in- 
terests or honor of the United States ; but tho 



ANNO 1836. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



66D 



question in regard to Texas was very different, 
and vastly more important. That is a country 
on our own borders, and its inhabitants, most 
of them, emigrants from the United States ; 
and most of the brave men constituting its 
army, who are so heroically fighting to redeem 
the province, are citizens of the United States, 
who have engaged in this bold enterprise as vo- 
lunteers. Were this government to be precipi- 
tate in acknowledging the independence of 
Texas, might it not be exposed to a suspicion 
of having encouraged these enterprises of its 
citizens ? There is another consideration of 
more importance. Should the independence of 
Texas be followed by its annexation to the 
United States, the reasons for suspicions dero- 
gatory to the national faith might be still 
stronger. If we, by our own act, contribute to 
clothe the constituted authoi-ities of the pro- 
vince with the power of sovereignty over it, 
and then accept a cession of the country from 
those authorities, might there not be some rea- 
son to charge us with having recognized the 
independence of the country as a means of getting 
possession of it ? These and other considera- 
tions require that this government should act 
with caution ; yet, when the proper time arrives 
it will be our duty to act, and to act promptly. 
But he trusted that all would feel the impor- 
tance of preserving the national faith and na- 
tional honor. They should not only be kept 
pure, but free from injurious suspicions, being 
more to be prized than any extension of terri- 
tory, wealth, population, or other acquisition, 
which enters into the elements of national pros- 
perity or power." 

The various memorials were referred to the 
committee on foreign relations, consisting of Mr. 
Clay, Mr. King of Georgia, Mr. Tallmadge, Mr. 
Mangum, and Mr. Porter of Louisiana ; which 
reported early, and unanimously, in favor of the 
recognition of the independence of Texas, as 
soon as satisfactory information should be re- 
ceived, showing that she had a civil government 
in operation capable of performing the duties 
and fulfilling the obligations of a civilized 
power. In the report which accompanied the 
Resolution, its author, Mr. Clay, said : 

" Sentiments of sympathy and devotion to 
civil liberty, which have always animated the 
people of the United States, have i)rc)nipted the 
adoption of the resolution, and other manifes- 
tations of popular feeling wliich have been 
referred to the committee, recommending an ac- 
knowledgment of the independence of Texas. 
The committee shares fully in all these senti- 
ments ; but a wise and prudent government 
should not act solely on the impulse of feeling, 
however natural and laudable it may ])C. Jt 
ought to avoid all precipitation, and not adopt so 



grave a measure as that of recognizing the inde- 
pendence of a new Power, initil it has satisfac- 
tory information, and has fully deliberated. 

'" The committee has no information respecting 
the recent movements in Texas, except such an 
is derived from the public prints. According 
to that, the war broke out in 'fexas last autiuun. 
Its professed object, like that of our revolution- 
ary contest in the commencement, was not 
separation and independence, but a redress of 
grievances. In March last, independence was 
proclaimed, and a constitution and furm of gov- 
ernment were established. No means of ascer- 
taining accurately the exact amount of the 
population of Texas are at the command of the 
committee. It has been estimated at some sixty 
or seventy thousand souls. Nor arc the precise 
limits of the country which passes under the 
denomination of Texas kno\\-n to the committee. 
They are probably not clearly defined, but they 
are supjiosed to be extensive, and suflficiently large, 
when peopled, to foiin a respectable Power.'' 

Mr. Southard concurred in the views and con- 
clusion of the report, but desired to say a few 
words in reply to that part of ]Mr. Calhoun's 
speech which looked to the '• balance of power, 
and the perpetuation of our institutions," as a 
reason for the speedy adinission of Texas into 
the Union, and said : 

'•I should not have risen to express these 
notions, if I had not understood the Senator 
from South Carolina [Mr. Calhoun] to declare 
that he regarded the acknowledgment of the in- 
depence of Texas as important, and principally 
important, because it prepared the way for the 
speedy admission of that State as a member of 
our Union; and that he looked anxiously to 
that event, as conducing to a proper balance of 
power, and to the perpetuation of our institu- 
tions. I am not now, sir, prepared to express 
an opinion on that question — a question which 
all must foresee will embrace interests as wide 
as our Union, and as lasting in their consequen- 
ces as the freedom which our institutions .secure. 
"When it shall l)c necessarily presented to me, I 
shall endeavor to meet it in a manner suitable 
to its magnit)ide, and to the vital interests which 
it involves ; but 1 will not, on tiie present ivso- 
lution, anticipate it; nor ran I pirniit an infeivnce, 
as to my decision upon it, to be drawn from 
the vote 'which I now give. That vote is ujion 
this resolution alone, and confined to it, founded 
upou principles sustained by tlie laws of na- 
tions, upon the unvarying practice of our gov- 
ernment, and upon tfie (acts us thoy are now 
known to exist, it relates to the inde|H'ndence 
of Texas, not to the admission of Texas into 
this Union. The achievement of tluM>ne, at tlic 
proper time, may bo justified ; the other may 
be found to bo oppo.sed l>v the highest and 
strongest considerations of interest and duty. 
I discuss neither at this time ; nor sun 1 willing 



670 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



that the remarks of the senator should lead, in 
or out of this chamber, to the inference that all 
those who vote for the resolution concur with 
him in opinion. The question which he has 
started should be left perfectly open and free." 

The vote in favor of the Resolution re- 
ported by Mr. Clay was unanimous — 39 senators 
present and voting. In the House of Repre- 
sentatives a similar resolution was reported 
from the House Committee of foreign relations, 
Mr. John Y, Mason, of Virginia, chairman ; and 
adopted by a vote of 118 to 22, The nays 
were: Messrs. John Qumcy Adams, Heman 
Allen, Jeremiah Bailey. Andrew Beaumont, 
James W. Bouldin, William Clark, Walter 
Coles, Edward Darlington, George Grennell, jr., 
Hiland Hall, Abner Hazeltine, William Hiester, 
Abbott Lawrence, Levi Lincoln, Thomas C. 
Love, John J. IMilligan, Dutee J. Pearce, Ste- 
phen C. Phillips, David Potts, jr., John Reed, 
David Russell, William Slade. 

It is remarkable that in the progress of this 
Texas question both Mr. Adams and Mr. Cal- 
houn revensed their positions — the former being 
against, and the latter in favor, of its alienation 
in 1819 ; the former being against, and the 
latter in favor of its recovery in 1836 — '44. — Mr. 
Benton was the last speaker in the Senate in 
favor of the recognition of independence ; and 
his speech being the most full and carefully 
historical of any one delivered, it is presented 
entire in the next chapter ; and, it is believed, 
that in going more fully than other speakers did 
into the origin and events of the Texas Revolu- 
tion, it will give a fair and condensed view of that 
remarkable event, so interesting to the American 
people. 



CHAPTER CXLV. 

TEXAS INDEPENDENCE— MR. BENTON'S SPEECn. 

' Mr. Benton rose and said he should confine 
himself strictly to the proposition presented in 
the resolution, and should not complicate the 
practical question of recognition with specula- 
tions on the future fate of Texas. Such specu- 
lations could have no good effect upon either of 
the countries interested; upon Mexico, Texas, 
or the United States, Texas has not asked for 
admission into this Union. Her independence 



is still contested by Mexico. Her boundaries 
and other important points in her political con- 
dition, are not yet adjusted. To discuss the 
question of her admission into .his Union, under 
these circumstances, is to treat her with disre- 
spect, to embroil ourselves with !Mexico, to com- 
promise the disinterestedness of our motives in 
the eyes of Europe ; and to start among ourselves 
prematurely, and without reason, a question 
which, whenever it comes, cannot be without 
its own intrinsic difficulties and perplexities. 

" Since the three months that the affairs of 
Texas have been the subject of repeated discus- 
sion in this chamber, I have imposed on myself 
a reserve, not the effect of want of feeling, but 
the efl'ect of strong feeling, and some judgment 
combined, which has not permitted me to give 
utterance to the general expression of my sen- 
timents. Once only have I spoken, and that at 
the most critical moment of the contest, and 
when the reported advance of the IMexicans 
upon Nacogdoches, and the actual movement of 
General Gaines and our own troops in that di- 
rection, gave reason to apprehend the encounter 
of flags, or the collision of arms, which might 
compromise individuals or endanger the peace 
of nations. It was then that I used those words, 
not entirely enigmatical, and which have since 
been repeated by some, without the prefix of 
their important qualifications, namely; that while 
neutrality Avas the obvious Ime of our duty and 
of our interest, yet there might be emergencies 
in which the obligation of duty could have no 
force, and the calculations of interest could have 
no place ; when, in fact, a man should have no 
head to think ! nothing but a heart to feel ! and 
an arm to strike ! and I illustrated this senti- 
ment. It was after the affair of Goliad, and the 
imputed order to unpeople the country, with 
the supposititious case of prisoners assassinated, 
women violated, and children slaughtered ; and 
these horrors to be perpetrated in the presence 
or hearing of an American army. In such a case 
I declared it to be my sentiment — and I now re- 
peat it, for I feel it to be in me — in such a case^ 
I declared it to be mj' sentiment, that treaties 
were nothing, books were nothing, laws were 
nothing ! that the paramount law of God and 
nature was every thing ! and that the American 
soldier, hearing the cries of helplessness and 
weakness, and remembering only that he was a 
maUj and born of woman, and the father of chil* 



ANNO 1836. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



G71 



dren, should fly to the rescue, and strike to pre- 
vent the perpetration of crimes which shock hu- 
manity and dishonor the age. I uttered this 
sentiment not upon impulsion, but with consid- 
eration ; not for theatrical effect, but as a rule 
for action ; not as vague declamation, but with 
an eye to possible or probable events, and with a 
view to the public justification of General Gaines 
and his men, if, under circumstances appalling 
to humanity, they should nobly resolve to obey 
the impulsions of the heart instead of coldly con- 
sulting the musty leaves of books and treaties. 
" Beyond this I did not go, and, except in this 
instance, I do not speak. Duty and interest 
prescribed to the United States a rigorous neu- 
trality ; and this condition she has faithfully ful- 
filled. Our young men have gone to Texas to 
fight ; but they have gone without the sanction 
of the laws, and against the orders of the Gov- 
ernment. They have gone upon that impulsion 
which, in all time, has carried the heroic youth 
of all ages to seek renown in the perils and glo- 
ries of distant war. Our foreign enlistment law 
is not repealed. Unlike England, in the civil 
war now raging in Spain, we have not licensed 
interference by repealing our penalties : we have 
not stimulated action by withdrawing obsta- 
cles. No member of our Congress, like General 
Evans in the British Parliament, has left his 
seat to levy troops in the streets of the metrop- 
olis, and to lead them to battle and to victory in 
the land torn by civil discord. Our statute 
against armaments to invade friendly powers is 
in full force. Proclamations have attested our 
neutral dispositions. Prosecutions have been 
ordered against violators of law. A naval force 
in the gulf, and a land force on the Sabine, have 
been directed to enforce the policy of the gov- 
ernment ; and so far as acts have gone, the ad- 
vantage has been on the side of ^Icxico; for 
the Texian armed schooner Invincible has been 
brought into an American port by an American 
ship of war. If parties and individuals still go 
to Texas to fight, the act is particular, not na- 
tional, compromising none but the parties them- 
selves, and may take place on one side as well 
as on the other. The conduct of the administra- 
tion has been strictly neutral ; and, a.s a friend 
to that administration, and from my own con- 
victions, I have conformed to its policy, avoid- 
ing the language which would irritate, and op- 
posing the acts which might interrupt pacific 



and commercial communications. Mexico is our 
nearest neiglibor, dividing with us the continent 
of North America, and possessing the elements 
of a great power. Our boundaries are co-ter- 
minous for more than two thousand miles. "We 
have inland and maritime commerce. She has 
mines ; we have ships. General considerations 
impose upon each power the duties of reciprocal 
friendship ; especial inducements invite us to 
uninterrupted commercial intercourse. As a 
western senator, coming from tlie banks of the 
Mississippi, and from the State of Missouri, I 
cannot be blind to the consequences of inter- 
rupting that double line of inland and maritime 
commerce, which, stretching to the mines of 
Mexico, brings back the perennial supply of 
solid money which enriches the interior, and 
enables New Orleans to purchase the vast accu- 
mulation of agricultural produce of which she 
is the emporium. "Wonderful are the workings 
of commerce, and more apt to find out its own 
proper channels by its own operations than to 
be guided into thcra by the hand of legislation. 
New Orleans now is what the Havana once was 
— the entrepot of the ^Mexican trade, and the 
recipient of its mineral wealth. The superficial 
reader of commercial statistics would say that 
Mexico but slightly encourages our domestic 
industry ; that she takes nothing from our ag- 
riculture, and but little from our manufactui-es. 
On the contrar}^, the close observer would see a 
very different picture. He would see the pro- 
ducts of our soil passing to all the countries of 
Europe, exchanging into fine fabrics, and these 
returning in the ships of many nations, our own 
predominant, to the city of New Orleans; and 
thence going off in small Mexican vessels to 
Matamoros, Tampico, Vera Cruz, and other Mex- 
ican ports. The return from these pirts is in 
the precious metals ; and, to confine myself to 
a single year, as a sample of the wliole, it may 
be stated that, of the ten milHons and three 
quarters of silver coin and bullion received in 
the United States, according to the custom-hou.sc 
returns during the least year, eight millions and 
one quarter of it came from Mexico alone, and the 
mass of it through the port of New Orleans. This 
an\ount of treasure is not received for nothing, 
nor, as it would seem on the comnuTcial tables, 
for foreign fabrics unconnected with American 
industry, but, in reality, for domestic pnuluc- 
tions changed into foreign fabrics, and giving 



672 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



double employment to the navigation of the 
country. New Orleans has taken the place of 
the Havana; it has become the entrepot of this 
trade ; and many circumstances, not directed by 
law, or even known to lawgivers, have combined 
to produce the result. First, the application of 
steam power to the propulsion of vessels, which, 
in the form of towboats, has given to a river 
city a prompt and facile communication with the 
sea ; then the advantage of full and assorted 
cargoes, which brings the importing vessel to a 
point Avhcre she delivers freight for two differ- 
ent empires ; then the marked advantage of a 
return cargo, with cheap and abundant supplies, 
which are always found in the grand emporium 
of the great West ; then the discriminating du- 
ties in Mexican ports in favor of JNIexican vessels, 
which makes it advantageous to the importer to 
stop and transship at New Orleans ; finally, our 
enterprise, our police, and our free institutions, 
our perfect security, under just laws, for life, 
liberty, person and property. These circum- 
stances, undirected by government, and without 
the knowledge of government, have given to 
New Orleans the supreme advantage of being 
the entrepot of the Mexican trade ; and have 
presented the unparalleled spectacle of the no- 
blest vallej' in the world, and the richest mines 
in the world, sending their respective products 
to meet each other at the mouth of the noblest 
river in the world ; and there to create in lapse 
of time, the most wonderful city which any age 
or country has ever beheld. A look upon the 
map of the great West, and a tolerable capacity 
to calculate the aggregate of geographical ad- 
vantages, must impress the beholder with avast 
opinion of the future greatness of New Orleans ; 
but hg will only look upon one half of the pic- 
ture unless he contemplates this new branch of 
trade which is making the emporium of the 
Mississippi the entrepot of ]\Iexican commerce, 
and the recipient of the Mexican mines, and 
which, though now so great, is still in its in- 
fancy. Let not government mar a consumma- 
tion so auspicious in its aspect, and teeming 
with so many rich and precious results. Let 
no unnecessary collision with Mexico interrupt 
our commerce, turn back the streams of three 
hundred mines to the Havana, and give a woimd 
to a noble city which must be felt to the head- 
spring and source of every stream that pours 
its tribute into the King of Floods. 



" Thus far Mexico has no cause of complaint. 
The conduct of our government has been that 
of rigorous neutrality. The present motion does 
not depart from that line of conduct ; for the 
proposed recognition is not only contingent upon 
the de facto independence of Texas, but it fol- 
lows in the train, and conforms to the spirit, of 
the actual arrangements of the President General 
Santa Anna, for the complete separation of the 
two counti'ies. We have authentic information 
that the President General has agreed to an 
armistice ; that he has directed the evacuation 
of the country ; that the Mexican army is in 
full retreat ; that the Rio Grande, a limit far 
bej'ond the discovery and settlement of La Salle, 
in 1684, is the provisional boundary; and that 
negotiations are impending for the establishment 
of peace on the basis of separation. Mexico has 
had the advantage of these arrangements, though 
made by a captive chief, in the unmolested re- 
treat and happy extrication of her troops from 
their perilous position. Under these circum- 
stances, it can be no infringement of neutrality 
for the Senate of the United States to adopt a 
resolution for the contingent and qualified ac- 
knowledgment of Texian independence. Even 
after the adoption of the resolution, it will re- 
main inoperative upon the hands of the Presi- 
dent until he shall have the satisfactory infor- 
mation which shall enable him to act without 
detriment to any interest, and without infrac- 
tion of any law. 

" Even without the armistice and provisional 
treaty with Santa Anna, I look upon the separa- 
tion of the two countries as being in the fixed 
order of events, and absolutely certain to take 
place. Texas and ISIexico are not formed for 
vmion. They are not homogeneous. I speak 
of Texas as known to La Salle, the bay of St. 
Bernard — (^latagorda) — and the waters which 
belong to it, being the western boundary. They 
do not belong to the same divisions of country, 
nor to the same systems of commerce, nor to 
the same pursuits of business. They have no 
affinities — no attractions — no tendencies to coa- 
lesce. In the course of centuries, and while 
Mexico has extended her settlements infinitely 
further in other directions — to the head of the 
Rio Grande in the north, and to the bay of San 
Francisco in the northwest ; yet no settlement 
had been extended cast, along the neighboring 
coast of the Gulf of Mexico. The rich and deep 



ANNO 1836. ANDREW JACKSON, PKESIDENT. 



G73 



cotton and sugar lands of Texas, though at the 
very door of Mexico, yet requiring the apphca- 
tion of a laborious industry to make them pro- 
ductive, have presented so temptation to the 
mining and pastoral population of that empire. 
For ages this beautiful agricultural and plantmg 
region had lain untouched. "Within a few years, 
and by another race, its settlement has begun 5 
and the presence of this race has not smoothed, 
but increased, the obstacles to union presented by 
nature. Sooner or later, separation would be in- 
evitable ; and the progi-ess of human events has 
accelerated the operation of natural causes. Go- 
liad has torn Texas from Mexico ; Goliad has 
decreed independence ; San Jacinto has sealed it ! 
What the massacre decreed, the victorj^ has seal- 
ed ; and the day of the martyrdom of prisoners 
must for ever be I'egarded as the day of disunion 
between Texas and Mexico. I speak of it politi- 
cally, not morally ; that massacre was a great 
political blunder, a miscalculation, an error, and 
a mistake. It was expected to put an end to 
resistance, to subdue rebellion, to drown revolt 
in blood, and to extinguish aid in terror. On 
the contrary, it has given life and invincibility 
to the cause of Texas. It has fired the souls of 
her own citizens, and imparted to their courage 
the energies of revenge and despair. It has 
given to her the sympathies and commiseration 
of the civilized world. It has given her men 
and money, and claims upon the aid and a hold 
upon the sensibilities of the human race. If the 
struggle goes on, not only our America, but 
Europe will send its chivalry to join.in the con- 
test. I repeat it; that cruel morning of the 
Alamo, and that black day of Goliad, were great 
political faults. The blood of the martyr is the 
seed of the church. The blood of slaughtered 
patriots is the dragon's teeth sown upon the 
earth, from which heroes, full grown and armed, 
leap into life, and rush into battle. Often will 
the Mexican, guiltless of that blood, feel the 
Anglo-American steel for the deed of that day, 
if this war continues. Many were the innocent 
at San Jacinto, whose cries, in broken Spanisli, 
abjuring Goliad and the Alamo, could not save 
their devoted lives from the avenging remem- 
brance of the slaughtered garrison and the mas- 
sacred prisoners. 

"Unhappy day, for ever to be deplored, that 
Sunday morning, March C, 1836, when the un- 
daunted garrison of the Alamo, victorious in so 

Vol. L— 43 



many assaults over twenty times their number 
perished to the last man by the hands of those 
part of whom they had relca.'^cd on parole two 
months before, leaving not one to tell liow they 
first dealt out to multitudes that death which 
they themselves finally received. Unliappy day, 
that Palm Sunday, March 27, wIru the five 
hundred and twelve prisoners at Goliad, issuing 
from the sally port at dawn of day, one by one, 
under the cruel delusion of a return to their 
families, found themselves enveloped in double 
files of cavalry and infantry, marched to a spot 
fit for the perpetration of the horrid deed— and 
there, without an instant to think of parents, 
country, friends, and God— in the midst of the 
consternation of terror and surprise, were in- 
humanly set upon, and pitilessly put to death, 
in spite of those moving cries which reached to 
heaven, and regardless of those supplicating 
hands, stretched forth for mercy, from which 
arms had been taken under the perfidious forms 
of a capitulation. Five hundred and six perish- 
ed that morning — young, vigorous, brave, sons 
of respectable families, and the pride of manv a 
parent's heart — and their bleeding bodies, torn 
with wounds, and many yet alive, were thrown 
in heaps upon vast fires, for the flames to con- 
sume what the steel had mangled. Six only es- 
caped, and not by mercy, but by miracles. And 
this was the work of man upon his brother ; of 
Christian upon Christian ; of those upon those 
who adore the same God, invoke the same hea- 
venly benediction, and draw precepts of charity 
and mercy from the same divine fountain. Ac- 
cursed be the ground on which the dreadful deed 
was done ! Sterile, and set apart, let it for ever 
be ! No fruitful cultivation should ever enrich 
it; no joyful edifice should ever adorn it; but 
shut up, and closed by gloomy walls, the mourn- 
ful cypress, the weeping willow, and the inscrip- 
tive monument, should for ever attest the foul 
deed of which it was the scone, and invoke from 
every passenger the throb of pity for the slain, 
and the start of horror for the slayer. An<l \ou, 
neglected victims of the Old Mission and S,'ui 
Patricio, shall you bo forgot tin because your 
numbers wore fewer, and your hapless fate more 
concealed ? No ! but to you also justice sliail 
be done. One coninmn fate l>efe!l ym .ill ; 
one connnon memorial shall perpofuate your 
names, and embalm your memories. Inexorable 
history will sit in judgment upon all conwmed, 



674 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



and will reject the plea of government orders, 
even if those orders emanated from the govern- 
ment, instead of being dictated to it. The French 
National Convention, in 1793, ordered all the 
English prisoners who should be taken in battle 
to be ptit to death. The French araiies refused 
to execute the decree. They answered, that 
French soldiers were the protectors, not the assas- 
sins of prisoners ; and all France, all Europe, the 
whole civilized world, applauded the noble reply. 
" But let us not forget that there is some relief 
to this black and bloody picture — some allevia- 
tion to the horror of its appalling features. 
There was humanity, as well as cruelty, at Go- 
liad — humanity to deplore what it could not 
prevent. The letter of Colonel Fernandez does 
honor to the human heart. Doubtless many 
other oflBcers felt and mourned like him, and 
spent the day in unavailing regrets. The ladies, 
Losero and others, of Matamoros, saving the 
doomed victims in that city, from day to day, 
by their intercessions, appear like ministering 
angels. Several public journals, and many in- 
dividuals, in Mexico, have given vent to feelings 
worthy of Christians, and of the civilization of 
the ago ; and the poor woman on the Gauda- 
loupe, who succored and saved the young 
Georgian (Iladaway), how nobly she appears ! 
He was one of the few that escaped the fate of 
the Georgia battalion sent to the Old Mission. 
Overpowered by famine and despair, without 
arms and without comrades, he entered a soli- 
tary house filled with Mexican soldiers hunting 
the fugitives of his party. His action amazed 
them ; and, thinking it a snare, they stepped out 
to look for the armed body of which he was 
supposed to be the decoy. In that instant food 
was given him by the humane woman, and in- 
stant flight to the swamp was pointed out. He 
fled, receiving the fire of many guns as he went ; 
and, escaping the perils of the way, the hazards 
of battle at San Jacinto, where he fought, and 
of Indian massacre in the Creek nation, when 
the two stages were taken and part of his 
travelling companions killed, he lives to publish 
in America that instance of devoted humanity 
in the poor woman of the Gaudaloupc. Such 
acts as all these deserve to be commemorated. 
They relieve the revolting picture of military 
barbarity — soften the resentments of nations — 
and redeem a people from the offence of indi- 
viduals. 



" Great is the mistake which has prevailed in 
Mexico, and in some parts of the United States, 
on the character of the population Avhich has 
gone to Texas. It has been common to dis- 
parage and to stigmatize them. Nothing could 
be more unjust ; and, speaking from knowledge 
either personally or well acquired (for it falls 
to my lot to know, either from actual acquaint- 
ance or good information, the mass of its inhabi- 
tants), I can vindicate them from erroneous im- 
putations, and place their conduct and character 
on the honorable ground which they deserve to 
occupy. The founder of the Texian colony was 
Mr. Moses Austin, a respectable and enterprising 
native of Connecticut, and largely engaged in 
the lead mines of Upper Louisiana when I went 
to the Territory of Missoviri in 1815. The pre- 
sent head of the colony, his son, Mr, Stephen 
F. Austin, then a very young man, was a mem- 
ber of the Territorial Legislature, distinguished 
for his intelligence, business habits, and gentle- 
manly conduct. Among the grantees we dis- 
tinguish the name of Robertson, son of the 
patriarchal founder and first settler of "West 
Tennessee. Of the body of the emigrants, most 
of them are heads of families or enterprising 
young men, gone to better their condition by re- 
ceiving grants of fine land in a fine climate, and 
to continue to live under the republican form of 
government to which they had been accustomed. 
There sits one of them (pointing to Mr. Carson, 
late member of Congress from North Carolina, 
and now Secretary of State for Texas). We all 
know him ; our greetings on his appearance in 
this chamber attest our respect ; and such as 
we know him to be, so do I know the multitude 
of those to be who have gone to Texas. They 
have gone, not as intruders, but as grantees ; 
and to become a barrier between the Mexicans 
and the marauding Indians who infested their 
borders. 

" Heartless is the calumny invented and pro- 
pagated, not from this floor, but elsewhere, on 
the cause of the Texian revolt. It is said to be 
a war for the extension of slaver}-. It had as 
well be said that our own Revolution was a war 
for the extension of slavery. So far from it, 
that no revolt, not even our own, ever had a 
more just and a more sacred origin. The set- 
tlers in Texas went to live under the form of 
government which they had left behind in the 
United States — a government which extends so 



ANNO 1836. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



675 



many guarantees for life, liberty, property, and 
the pursuit of happiness, and which their Amer- 
can and English ancestors had vindicated for 
so many hundred years. A succession of violent 
changes in government, and the rapid overthrow 
of rulers, annoyed and distressed them ; but 
they remained tranquil imder every violence 
which did not immediately bear on themselves. 
In 1822 the republic of 1821 was superseded by 
the imperial diadem of Iturbide. In 1823 ho 
was deposed and banished, returned and was 
shot, and Victoria made President. Mentuiio 
and Bravo disputed the presidency with Vic- 
toria ; and found, in banishmoitt, the mildest 
issue known among Mexicans to unsuccessful 
civil war. Pedraza was elected in 1828 ; Guer- 
rero overthrew him the next year. Then Bus- 
tamente overthrew Guerrero ; and, quickly, 
Santa Anna overthrew Bustamente, and, with 
him, all the forms of the constitution, and the 
whole frame of the federative government. By 
his own will, and by force, Santa Anna dissolved 
the existing Congress, convened another, formed 
the two Houses into onCj called it a convention ; 
and made it the instrument for deposing, with- 
out trial, the constitutional Vice-President, Go- 
mez Farias, putting Barragan into his place, 
annihilating the State governments, and estab- 
lishing a consolidated government, of which he 
was monarch, under the retained republican title 
of President. Still, the Texians did not take up 
arms : they did not acquiesce, but they did not 
revolt. They retained their State government 
in operation, and looked to the other States, 
older and more powerful than Texas, to vindi- 
cate the general cause, and to re-establish the 
federal constitution of 1824, In September, 
1835, this was still her position. In that month, 
a ]\fexican armed vessel appeared off the coast 
of Texas, and declared her ports blockaded. 
At the same time. General Cos appeared in the 
West with an army of fifteen hundred men, 
with orders to arrest the State authorities, to 
disarm the inhabitants, lea\-ing one gun to evcr}'^ 
five hundred souls ; and to reduce the State to 
unconditional submission. Gonzales was the 
selected point for the commencement of the exe- 
cution of these orders ; and the first thing was 
the arms, those trusty rifles which the settlers 
had brought with them from the United States, 
which were their defence against savages, their 
resource for game, and the guard which convert- 



ed their houses into castles stronger than thoso 
'which the king cannot enter.' A detachment 
of General Cos's army appeared at the village of 
Gonzales, on the 28th of September, and de- 
manded the arms of the inhabitants ; it was the 
same demand, and for the same purpose, which 
the British detachment, under Major Pitcairn. 
had made at Lexington, on the 19th of April, 
1775. It was the same demand ! and the .«;ame 
answer was given — resistance — battle — \-ictory ! 
for the American blood was at Gonzales as it 
had been at Lexington ; and between using their 
arms, and surrendering their arms, that blood 
can never hesitate. Then followed the rapid 
succession of brilliant events, which, in two 
months, left Texas without an armed enemy in 
her borders, and the strong forts of Goliad and 
the Alamo, with their garrisons and cannon, the 
almost bloodless prizes of a few hundrcfl Texian 
rifles. This was the origin of the revolt ; and 
a calumny more heartless can never be imagined 
than that which would convert this just and 
holy defence of life, libertj", and property, into 
an aggression for the extension of slavery. 

"Just in its origin, valiant and humane in its 
conduct, sacred in its object, the Texian revolt 
has illustrated the Anglo-Saxon character, and 
given it new titles to the respect and admiration 
of the world. 

" It shows that liberty, justice, vhlor — moral, 
phj'sical, and intellectual power — discriminate 
that race wherever it goes. Let our America 
rejoice, let Old England rejoice, that tlic Brassos 
and Colorado, new and strange names — streams 
far beyond the western bank of the Father of 
Floods — have felt tiie impress, and witnessed the 
exploits of a people sprung from their loin.s, 
and carrying their langiiage, law.s, and cus- 
toms, their 7)ia^na charla and its glorious 
privileges, into new regions and far dist.-int 
climes. Of the individuals who have purcha.>*e<l 
lasting renown in this young war, it would 
be impossible, in this i)lace to sj^ak in detail, 
and invidious to discriuiinatc ; but then' is one 
among them whose position forms an oxoop- 
tion, and whose early association with my- 
self justifies and claims the tribute of a jxir- 
ticular notice. I speak of him whoso romantic 
victory has given to the Jacinto* that immor- 
tality in grave and serious history which the 

• Ilyacintli; hyaciuUius; hUkklnUios; w»Usr floww 



676 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



diskos of Apollo had given to it in the fabu- 
lous pages of the heathen mythology. General 
Houston was born in the State of Virginia, 
county of Rockbridge : he was appointed an en- 
sign in the army of the United States, during 
the late war with Great Britain, and served in 
the Creek campaign under the banners of Jack- 
son. I was the lieutenant colonel of the regi- 
ment to which he belonged, and the first field 
officer to whom he reported. I then marked in 
him the same soldierly and gentlemanly quali- 
ties which have since distinguished his eventful 
career : frank, generous, brave ; ready to do, or 
to suffer, whatever the obligations of civil or 
military duty imposed ; and always prompt to 
answer the call of honor, patriotism, and friend- 
ship. Sincerely do I rejoice in his victory. It 
is a victory without alloy, and without parallel, 
except at New Orleans. It is a victory which 
the civilization of the age, and the honor of the 
human race, required him to gain : for the nine- 
teenth century is not the age in which a repeti- 
tion of the Goliad matins could be endured. 
Nobly has he answered the requisition ; fresh 
and luxuriant are the laurels which adorn his 
brow. 

" It is not within the scope of my present 
purpose, to speak of military events, and to 
celebrate the exploits of that vanguard of the 
Anglo-Saxons who are now on the confines of 
the ancient empire of Montezuma; but that 
combat of the San Jacinto ! it must for ever re- 
main in the catalogue of militsT miracles. 
Seven hundred and fifty citizens, miscellane- 
ously armed with rifles, muskets, belt pistols, 
and knives, under a leader who had never seen 
service, except as a subaltern, march to at- 
tack near double their numbers — march in open 
day across a clear prairie, to attack upwards of 
twelve hundred veterans, the elite of an invad- 
ing army of seven thousand, posted in a wood, 
their flanks secured, front intrenched ; and com- 
manded by a general trained in civil wars, vic- 
torious in numberless battles ; and chief of an 
empire of which no man becomes chief except 
as conqueror. In twenty minutes, the position 
is forced. The combat becomes a carnage. The 
flowery prairie is stained with blood; the hya- 
cinth is no longer blue, but scarlet. Six hun- 
dred Mexicans are dead ; six hundred more are 
prisoners, half wounded ; the President General 
himself is a prisoner ; the camp and baggage all 



taken; and the loss of the victors, six killed 
and twenty wounded. Such are the results, and 
which no European can believe, but those who 
saw Jackson at New Orleans. Houston is the 
pupil of .Jackson ; and he is the first self-made 
general, since the time of Mark Antony, and the 
King Antigonus, who has taken the general of 
the army and the head of the government cap- 
tive in battle. Different from Antony, he has 
spared the life of his captive, though forfeited 
by every law, human and divine. 

"I voted, in 1821, to acknowledge the abso- 
lute independence of Mexico ; I vote now to re- 
cognize the contingent and expected independ- 
ence of Texas. In both cases, the vote is given 
upon the same principle — upon the principle of 
disjunction where conjunction is impossible or 
disastrous. The Union of Mexico and Spain 
had become impossible ;^ that of Mexico and 
Texas is no longer desirable or possible. A 
more fatal present could not be made than that 
of the future incorporation of the Texas of La 
Salle with the ancient empire of Montezuma. 
They could not live together, and extermination 
is not the genius of the age ; and, besides, is 
more easily talked of than done. Bloodshed 
only could be the fruit of their conjunction ; 
and every drop of that blood would be the dra- 
gon's teeth sown upon the earth. No wise 
Mexican should wish to have this Trojan horse 
shut up within their walls." 



_ CHAPTER CXLVI. 

THE SPECIE CIRCUL.\R. 

The issue of the Treasury order, known as 
the " Specie Circular," was one of the events 
which marked the foresight, the decision, and 
the invincible firmness of General Jackson. It 
was issued immediately after the adjournment 
of Congress, and would have been issued before 
the adjournment, except for the fear that Con- 
gress would counteract it by law. It was an 
order to all the land-oftices to reject paper money, 
and receive nothing but gold and silver in pay- 
ment of the public lands ; and was issued under 
the authority of the resolution of the year 1816, 
which, in giving the Secretary of the Treasury 



ANNO 1836. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESmENT. 



G77 



discretionary authority to receive the notes of 
specie paying banks in revenue payments, gave 
him also the right to reject them. The num- 
ber of these banks had now become so great, 
the quantity of notes issued so enormous, (he 
facility of obtaining loans so universal, and the 
temptation to converting shadowy paper into 
real estate, so tempting, that the rising streams 
of paper from seven hundred and fifty banks took 
their course towards the new States, seat of the 
public domain — discharging in accumulated vol- 
ume there collected torrents upon the different 
land-offices. The sales were running up to five 
millions a month, with the prospect of unbound- 
ed increase after the rise of Congress; and it 
was this increase from the land sales which made 
that surplus which the constitution had been 
burlesqued to divide among the States. And 
there was no limit to this conversion of public 
land into inconvertible paper. In the custom- 
house branch of the revenue there was a limit 
in the amount to be received — limited by the 
amount of duties to be paid : but in the land-office 
branch there was no limit. It was therefore at 
that point that the remedy was wanted ; and, 
for that reason, the " Specie Circular " was limit- 
ed in its application to the land-offices ; and 
totally forbade the sale of the public lands for 
aay thing but hard money. It was an order of 
incalculable value to the United States, and 
issued by President Jackson in known disregard 
of the will both of the majority of Congress and 
of his cabinet. 

Before the adjournment of Congress, and in 
concert with the President, the author of this 
View had attempted to get an act of Congress to 
stop the evil ; and in support of his motion to 
that effect gave his opinion of the evil itself, and 
of the benefits which would result from its sup- 
pression. He said: 

" He was able to inform the Senate how it 
happened that the sales of the public lands had 
deceived all calculations, and run up from four 
millions a year to five millions a quarter ; it was 
this : speculators went to banks, borrowed five, 
ten, twenty, fifty thousand dollars in paper, in 
small notes, usually under twenty dollars, and 
engaged to carry off these notes to a great dis- 
tance, sometimes five hundred or a thousand 
miles ; and there Laid them out for public lands. 
Being land-office money, thoy would circulate in 
the country ; many of these small notes would 
never return at all, and their loss would be a 
clear gain to the bank ; others would not return 
for a long time ; and the bank would draw in- 



terest on them for years before they had to ro« 
deem them. Tlius speculators, loaded with pa- 
per, would outbid settlers and cultivators, who 
had no undue accommodations from banks, and 
who had nothing but specie to give for lands, 
or the notes which were its real equivalent. Mr. 
B. said that, living in a new State, it caniewitli- 
in his knowledge that such accommodations as 
he had mentioned were the main cau.«e of the 
excessive sales \\'hich had taken place in the 
public lands, and that the effect was equally in- 
jurious to every interest concerned — except the 
banks and the speculators : il; was injurious to 
the treasury, which was filling up with pajx?r ; 
to the new States, which were fioodcd with pa- 
per ; and to settlers and cultivators, who were 
outbid by speculators, loaded with this borrow- 
ed paper. A return to specie payments for lands 
is the remedy for all these evils." 

Having exposed the evil, and that to the coun- 
try generally as well as to the federal treasury, 
^Ir. B. went on to give his opinion of the bene- 
fits of suppressing it ; and said : 

'• It would put an end to every complaint now 
connected with the subject, and have a beneficial 
effect upon every public and private interest. 
Upon the federal government its effect would be 
to check the unnatural sale of the public lands 
to speculators for paper ; it would throw the 
speculators out of market, limit the sales to 
settlers and cultivators, stop the swelling in- 
creases of paper surpluses in the treasury, put 
an end to all projects for disposing of surpluses ; 
and relieve all anxiety for the fate of the public 
moneys in the deposit banks. Upon the new 
States, where the public lands are situated, its 
effects would be most auspicious. It would stop 
the flood of paper with which they are inandatc<l, 
and bring in a steady stream of gold and silver in 
its place. It would give them a hard-money 
currency, and especially a share of the gold cur- 
rency ; for every emigrant could then carry gold 
to the country. Upon the settler and cultivator 
who wished to purchase land its effect would be 
peculiarly advantageous. He would be relieved 
from the competition of speculators ; ho would 
not have to contend with those who received 
undue accommodations at banks, and came to 
the land-offices loaded with hales of hank notes 
which they had borrowed upon condition of 
carrying them far away, and turning tlu-in loose 
where many would be lost, and m-vi-r gi^t back 
to the bank that issued tlieni. All the.-^^ and 
many other good etVocts would thus 1h.» produced, 
and no hardship or evil cf any kiud could nccruo 
to the meritorious part of the country ; for the 
settler and cultivator wlio wishes to buy land 
for use, or for a settlement for his childn^-n, or 
to increase hi> farm, would have no diftirutly in 
getting hard n\ou.y to make his juirohasc. He 
has no undue acconnnodations from bank,<. He 
has no paper but what is good ; such as he can 
readily convert into specie. To him the exac- 



678 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



tion of specie payments from all purchasers would 
he a rule of equality, which would enable him 
to purchase what he needs without competition 
with fictitious and borrowed capital." 

Mr. B. gave a view of the actual condition of 
the paper currency, which he described as hide- 
ous and appalling, doomed to a catastrophe ; and 
he advised every prudent man, as well as the 
government, to fly from its embrace. His voice, 
and his warning, answered no purpose. He got 
no support for his motion. A few friends were 
willing to stand by him, but the opposition se- 
nators stood out in unbroken front against it, 
reinforced largely by the friends of the adminis- 
tration : but it is in vain to attribute the whole 
opposition to the measure merely to the mis- 
taken opinions of friends, and the resentful pol- 
icy of foes. There was another cause operating 
to the same effect ; and the truth of history re- 
quires it to be told. There were many members 
of Congress engaged in these land speculations, 
upon loans of bank paper ; and who were un- 
willing to see a sudden termination of so profit- 
able a game. The rejection of the bill it was 
thought would be sufficient ; and on the news 
of it the speculation redoubled its activity. But 
there was a remedy in reserve for the cure of 
the evil which they had not foreseen, and which 
was applied the moment that Congress was gone. 
Jackson was still President ! and he had the 
nerve which the occasion equired. He saw 
the public lands fleeting away — saw that Con- 
gress would not interfere — and knew the major- 
ity of his cabinet to be against his interference. 
He did as he had often done in councils of war 
— called the council together to hear a decision. 
He summoned his cabinet — laid the case before 
them — heard the majority of adverse opinions : 
— and directed the order to issue. Ilis private 
Secretary, Mr. Donelson, was directed to prepare 
a draught of the order. The author of tliis View 
was all the while in the office of this private 
Secretary. Mr. Donelson came to him, with 
the President's decision, and requested him to 
draw up the order. It was done — the rough 
draught carried back to the council — put into 
official form — signed — issued. It was a second 
edition of the removal of the deposits scene, and 
made an immense sensation. The disappointed 
speculators raged. Congress was considered in- 
sulted, the cabinet defied, the banks disgraced. 
But the vindication of the measure soon came, 



in the discovery of the fact, that some tens o/ 
millions of this bank paper was on its way to 
the land-offices to be changed into land — when 
overtaken by this fatal " Specie Circular," and 
turned back to the sources from which it came. 



CHAPTER CXLVII. 

DEATH OF ME. MADISON, FOURTH PRESIDENT 
OF THE UNITED STATES. 

He died in the last year of the second term of 
the presidency of General Jackson, at the ad- 
vanced age of eighty-six, his mind clear and 
active to the last, and greatly occupied with 
solicitous concern for the safety of the Union 
which he had contributed so much to establish. 
He was a patriot from the beginning. " When 
the first blood was shed in the streets of Boston, 
he was a student in the process of his education 
at Princeton College, where the next y^ar, he 
received the degree of Bachelor of Arts. He 
was even then so highly distinguished by the 
power of application and the rapidity of progress, 
that he performed all the exercises of the two 
senior collegiate years in one — while at the 
same time his deportment was so exemplary, 
that Dr. TVitherspoon, then at the head of the 
college, and afterwards himself one of the most 
eminent patriots and sages of our revolution, 
always delighted in bearing testimony to the 
excellency of his character at that early stage 
of his career ; and said to Thomas Jefferson 
long afterwards, when they were all colleagues 
in the revolutionary Congress, that in the whole 
career of Mr. Madison at Princeton, he had 
never known him say, or do, an indiscreet thing." 
So wrote Mr. John Quincy Adams in his dis- 
course upon the "Life of James Madison," 
written at the request of the two Houses of 
Congress : and in this germ of manhood is to 
be seen all the qualities of head and heart which 
mature age, and great events, so fully developed, 
and which so nobly went into the formation of 
national character while constituting his own : 
the same quick intellect, the same laborious ap- 
plication, the same purity of morals, the same 
decorum of deportment. He had a rare com- 
bination of talent — a speaker, a writer, a coun- 
sellor. In these qualites of the mind he classed 



ANNO 1836. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



679 



with General Hamilton ; and was, perhaps, the 
only eminent public man of his day who so 
classed, and so equally contended in three of the 
fields of intellectual action. Mr. Jefferson was 
accustomed to say he was the only man that 
could answer Hamilton. Perspicuity, precision, 
closeness of reasoning, and strict adherence to 
the unity of his subject, were the character- 
istics of his style ; and his speeches in Congress, 
and his dispatches from the State Department, 
may be equally studied as models of style, di- 
plomatic and parliamentary as sources of in- 
formation, as examples of integrity in conduct- 
ing public questions : and as illustrations of the 
amenity with which the most earnest debate, 
and the most critical correspondence, can be 
conducted by good sense, good taste, and good 
temper. Mr. Madison was one of the great 
founders of our present united federal govern- 
ment, equally eflScient in the working convention 
which framed the constitution and the written 
labors which secured its adoption. Co-laborer 
,vith General Hamilton in the convention and 
in che Federalist — both members of the old Con- 
gress and of the convention at the same time, 
and working together in both bodies for the at- 
tainment of the same end, until the division of 
parties in Washington's time bega^ to estrange 
old friends, and to array against each other 
former cordial political co-laborers. As the 
first writer of one party. General Hamilton 
"vVTote some leading papers, which, as the first 
writer of the other party, Mr. jNIadison was 
called upon to answer : but without forgetting 
on the part of either their previous relations, 
their decorum of character, and their mutual 
respect for each other. Nothing that either 
said could give an unpleasant personal feeling 
to the other ; and, though writing under bor- 
rowed names, their productions were equally 
known to each other and the public ; for none 
but themselves could imitate themselves. 
Purity, modesty, decorum — a moderation, tem- 
perance, and virtue in every thing — were the 
characteristics of Mr. JIadison's life and man- 
ners ; and it is grateful to look back upon such 
elevation and beauty of personal character in 
the illustrious and venerated founders of our 
Republic, leaving such virtuous private charac- 
ters to be admired, as well as such great works 
to be preserved. The offer of this tribute to 
the memory of one of the purest of public men 



is the more gratefully rendered, private reasons 
mixing with considerations of public duty. Mr. 
^ladison is the only President from whom lie 
ever asked a favor, and who granted immediately 
all that was asked — a lieutenant-colonelcy in 
the army of the United States in the late war 
with Great Britain. 



CHAPTER CXLVIII. 

DEATH OF MR. MONROE, FIFTH PRESIDENT OF 
THE UNITED STATES. 

He died during the first term of the ad- 
ministration of President Jackson, and is ap- 
propriately noticed in this work next after Mr. 
Madison, with whom he had been so long and 
so intimately associated, both in public arid in 
private life ; and whose successor he had been 
in successive high posts, including that of the 
presidency itself. He is one of our eminent 
public characters which have not attained their 
due place in history ; nor has any one attempted 
to give him that place but one — Mr John Quincy 
Adams — in hu- discourse upon the life of Mr. 
Monroe. Mr. Adams, and who could be a more 
competent judge? places him in the first iine 
of American statesmen, and contributing, during 
the fifty years of b"" connection with the public 
affairs, a full share in the aggrandi.-cment and 
advancement of his country. His parts were 
not shining, but solid. He lacked genius, but 
he possessed judgment : and it was the remark 
of Dean Swift, well illustrated in his own case 
and that of his associate friends, Harley and 
Bolingbroke (three of the rarest geniuses that 
ever acted together, and whoso causo went to niin 
notwithstanding their wit and eloquence), that 
genius was not necessary to the conducting of the 
affairs of state: that judgment, diligence, know- 
leilge, good intentions, and will, woiv .>iutVu-ient. 
Mr. Monroe was an instance of the soundness of 
this remark, as well as the three brilliant goniuRcs 
of Queen Anne's time, and on the opposite side 
of it. Mr. Monroe had nojie «if the mental 
qualities which dazzle and aslonisli nuinkind ; 
but he hail a discretion which seldom committed 
a mistake— an integrity that always looked to 
the public good— a firmness of will which car- 
ried him resolutely upon his object— a diligencw 



680 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



that mastered e\ery subject — and a perseverance 
that yielded to no obstacle or reverse. He began 
his patriotic career in the military service, at the 
commencement of the war of the revolution — 
went into the general assembly of his native 
State at an early age — and thence, while still 
young, into the continental Congress. There 
he showed his character, and laid the foundation 
of his future political fortunes in his uncompro- 
mising opposition to the plan of a treaty with 
Spain by which the navigation of the Mississip- 
pi was to be given up for twenty-five years in 
return for commercial privileges. It was the 
qualities of judgment, and perseverance, which 
he displayed on that occasion, which brought 
him those calls to diplomacy in which he was 
afterwards so much employed with three of the 
then greatest European powers — France, Spain, 
Great Britain. And it was in allusion to this 
circumstance that President Jefferson after- 
wards, when the right of deposit at New Orleans 
had been violated by Spain, and when a mini-ster 
was wanted to recover it, said, " Monroe is the 
man : the defence of the Mississippi belongs to 
him." And under this appointment he had the 
felicity to put his name to the treaty which se- 
cured the Mississippi, its navigaixon and all the 
territory drained by its western waters, to the 
United States for ever. Several times in his life 
he seemed to miscarry, and to fall fi-om the 
top to the bottom of the political ladder : but 
always to reascend as high, or higher than ever. 
Recalled by Washington from the French mis- 
sion, to which he had been appointed from the 
Senate of the United States, he returned to the 
starting point of his early career — the general 
assembly of his State — served as a member from 
his count)' — was elected Governor; and from 
that post restored by Jefferson to the French 
mission, soon to be followed by the embassies 
to Spain and England. Becoming estranged 
from Mr. Madison about the time of that gentle- 
man's first election to the presidency, and hav- 
ing returned from his missions a little mortified 
that Mr. Jefferson had rejected his British treaty 
without sending it to the Senate, he was again 
at the foot of the political ladder, and apparently 
oiu of favor with those who were at its top. 



Nothing despairing, he went back to the olfl 
starting point — served again in the Virginia 
general assembly — was again elected Governor : 
and from that post was called to the cabinet of 
Mr. Madison, to be his double Secretary of State 
and War. He was the effective power in the 
declaration of war against Great Britain. Ilis 
residence abroad had shown him that unavenged 
British wrongs was lowering our character with 
Europe, and that war with the " mistress of the 
seas " was as necessary to our respectability in 
the eyes of the world, as to the security of our 
citizens and commerce upon the ocean. He 
brought up .Mr. Madison to the war point. He 
drew the war report which the committee ou 
foreign relations presented to the House — that 
report which the absence of Mr. Peter B. Porter, 
the chairman, and the hesitancy of JMr. Grundy, 
the second on the committee, threw into the 
hands of Mr. Calhoun, the third on the list and 
the youngest of the committee ; and the pre- 
sentation of which immediately gave him a na- 
tional reputation. Prime mover of the war, he 
was also one of its most eflScient supporters, 
taking upon himself, when adversity pressed, 
the actual duties of war minister, financier, and 
foreign secretary at the same time. He was an 
enemy to all'extravagance, to all intrigue, to all 
indirection in the conduct of business. Mr. 
Jefferson's comprehensive and compendious eu- 
logium upon him, as brief as true, was the 
faithful description of the man — " honest and 
brave." He was an enemy to nepotism, and 
no consideration or entreaty — no need of the 
support which an office would give, or interces- 
sion from friends — could ever induce him to 
appoint a relative to any place under the go- 
vernment. He had opposed the adoption of 
the constitution until amendments were ob- 
tained; but these had, he became one of its 
firmest supporters, and labored faithfully, anx- 
iously and devotedly, to administer it in its puri- 
ty. He was the first President under whom the 
author of this View served, commencing his first 
senatorial term with the commencement of the 
second presidential term of this last of the men 
of the revolution who were spared to fill the office 
in the great Republic which they had founded. 



ANNO 1836. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



681 



CHAPTER CXLIX. 

DEATH OF CHIEF JUSTICE MARSHALL. 

He died in the middle of the second term of 
General Jackson's presidency, having been chief 
justice of the Supreme Court of the United 
States full thirty-five years, presiding all the 
while (to use the inimitable language of Mr. 
Randolph), " with native dignity and unpre- 
tending grace." He was supremely fitted for 
high judicial station: — a solid judgment, great 
reasoning powers, acute and penetrating mind : 
with manners and habits to suit the purity and 
the sancity of the ermine : — attentive, patient, 
laborious ; grave on the bench, social in the 
intercourse of life: simple in his tastes, and in- 
exorably just. Seen by a stranger come into a 
room, and he would be taken for a modest coun- 
try gentleman, without claims to attention, and 
ready to take the lowest place in company, or 
at table, and to act his part without trouble to 
any body. Spoken to, and closely observed, he 
would be seen to be a gentleman of finished 
breeding, of winning and prepossessing talk, and 
JTist as much mind as the occasion required 
him to show. Coming to man's estate at the 
beginning of the revolution he followed the cur- 
rent into which so many young men, destined 
to become eminent, so ardently entered; and 
served in the army, and with notice and obser- 
vation, under the eyes of Washington. Elected 
to Congress at an early age he served in the 
House of Representatives in the time of the 
elder Mr. Adams, and found in one of the pro- 
minent questions of the day a subject entirely 
fitted to his acute and logical turn of mind — the 
case of the famous Jonathan Robbins, claiming 
to be an American citizen, reclaimed by the 
British government as a deserter, delivered up, 
and hanged at the yard-arm of an English man- 
of-war. Party spirit took up the case, and it 
was one to inflame that spirit. Mr. Marshall 
spoke in defence of the administration, and 
made the master speech of the day, when (here 
were such master speakers in Congress as 
Madison, Gallatin, AVilliam B. Giles, Edward 
Livingston, John Randolph. It was a judicial 
Btibject, adapted to the legal mind of Mr. Mar- 
shall, requiring a legal pleading : and well did 
he plead it. Mr. Randolph has often been heard 



to say that it distanced competition — leaving all 
associates and opponents far behind, and cnrrv- 
ing the case. Seldom has one speech brought 
so much fame, and high appointment to any one 
man. "When he had delivered it his reputation 
was in the zenith : in less than nine brief 
months thereafter he was Secretar}^ at War. 
Secretary of State, Minister to France, and Chief 
Justice of the Supreme Court of the United 
States. Politically, he classed with the federal 
party, and was one of those high-minded and 
patriotic men of that party, who, acting on 
principle, commanded the respect of those even 
who deemed them wrons:. 



CHAPTER CL. 

DEATH OF COL. BURH, THIRD VICE-PRESIDENT 
OF THE UNITED STATES. 

He was one of the few who, entering the war 
of independence with ardor and brilliant pros- 
pects, disappointed the expectations he had 
created, dishonored the cause he had espoused, 
and ended in shame the career which he Iiad 
opened with splendor. He was in the adven- 
turous expedition of Arnold througii tlie wilder- 
ness to Quebec, went ahead in the disguise of 
a priest to give intelligence of the approach of 
aid to General Montgomery, arrived safely 
through many dangers, captivated the General 
by the courage and address which he had shown, 
was received by him into his military family ; 
ard was at his side when he was killed. Re- 
turning to the scat of war in tlie Xorthom 
States he was invited by Washington, captiva- 
ted like ^lontgomerj- by the soldierly and intel- 
lectual qualities he had shown, to his head- 
quarters, Avith a view to placing him on his 
staff; but he soon pcrceive<l that the brilliaiit 
young man lacked principle ; and (|uietly pot 
rid of him. The after part of his Ife wa.s sucli 
as to justifv (he opinion wliich Wasliington h.id 
formed of him ; but such Wius liis address and 
talent as to rise to high political distinction: 
Attorney General of New-Ycrk. Senator in 
Congress, and Vice-Prosidont of the Tnitcd 
States. At tlie cIo.'jc of the pro.sidenti.al election 
of 1800, he stood cquul with Mr. Jeflerson in 
the vote which ho ivceivcd, and his undoubtoii 



682 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



successor at the end of Mr. Jefferson's term. 
But there his honors came to a stand, and took 
a downward turn, nor ceased descending until 
he was landed in the abyss of shame, misery, 
and desolation. lie intrigued with the federal- 
ists to supplant Mr. Jefferson — to get the place 
of President, for which he had not received a 
single vote — was suspected, detected, baflfled — 
lost the respect of his party, and was thrown 
upon crimes to recover a position, or to avenge 
his losses. The treasonable attempt in the 
West, and the killing of General Hamilton, 
ended his career in the United States. But 
although ho had deceived the masses, and 
reached the second ofiBce of the government, 
with the certainty of attaining the first if he 
only remained still, yet there were some close 
observers whom he never deceived. The early 
mistrust of "Washington has been mentioned : 
it became stronger as Burr mounted higher in 
the public favor ; and in 1794, when a senator 
in Congress, and when the republican party had 
taken him for their choice for the French mission 
in the place of Mr. Monroe recalled, and had 
sent a committee of which Mr. Madison was 
chief to ask his nomination from Washington, 
that wise and virtuous man peremptorily re- 
fused it. giving as a categorical reason, that his 
rule was invariable, never to appoint an im- 
moral man to any office. Mr. Jefferson had the 
same ill opinion of him, and, notwithstanding his 
party zeal, always considered him in market 
■when the federalists had any high office to 
bestow. But General Hamilton was most 
thoroughly imbued with a sense of his un- 
worthiness, and deemed it due to his country to 
balk his election over Jefferson; and did .«o. 
His letters to the federal members of Congress 
painted Burr in his true character, and dashed 
far from his grasp, and for ever, the gilded prize 
his hand was touching. For that frustration 
of his hopes, four years afterwards, he killed 
Hamilton in a duel, having on the part of Burr 
the spirit of an assassination — cold-blooded, cal- 
culated, revengeful, and flilsely-pretexted. He 
alleged some trivial and recent matter for the 
challenge, such as would not justify it in any code 
. of honor; and went to the ground to kill upon 
an old grudge which he was ashamed to avow. 
Hard was the fate of Hamilton — losing his life 
at the early age of fort/-two for having done 
justice to his country in the person of the man 



to whom he stood most politically opposed, and 
the chief of the parly by which he had been 
constrained to retire from the scene of public 
life at the age of thirty-four — the age at which 
most others begin it — he having accomplished 
gigantic works. He was the man most eminently 
and variously endowed of all the eminent men 
of his day — at once soldier and statesman, with a 
head to conceive, and a hand to execute : a writer, 
an orator, a jurist: an organizing mind, able to 
grasp the greatest system ; and administrative, 
to execute the smallest details : wholly turned 
to the practical business of life, and with a ca- 
pacity for application and production which 
teemed with gigantic labors, each worthy to be 
the sole product of a single master intellect ; but 
lavished in litters from the ever teeming fecun- 
dity of his prolific genuis. Hard his fate, when, 
withdrawing from public life at the age of 
thirty -four, he felt himself constrained to appeal 
to posterity for that justice which contempo- 
raries withheld from him. And the appeal was 
not in vain. Statues rise to his memory : his- 
tory embalms his name: posterity will do jus- 
tice to the man who at the age of twenty was 
"the principal and most confidential aid of 
Washington," who retained the love and confi- 
dence of the Father of his country to the last ; 
and to whom honorable opponents, while op- 
posing his systems of policy, accorded honor, 
and patriotism, and social affections, and tran- 
scendental abilities. — This chapter Avas com- 
menced to write a notice of the character of 
Colonel Burr; but that subject will not re- 
main under the pen. At the appearance of 
that name, the spirit of Hamilton starts up to 
rebuke the intrusion — to drive back the foul 
apparition to its gloomy abode — and to concen- 
trate all generous feeling on itself. 



CHAPTER CLI. 

DEATH OF WILLIAM B. GILES, OF VIRGINIA. 

He also died under the presidency of General 
Jackson. He was one of the eminent public 
men coming upon the stage of action with the 
establishment of the new constitution — with 
the change from a League to a Union ; from tho 
confederation to the unity of the States — and 



ANNO 1836. ANDREW jACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



G83 



was one of the most conspicuous in the early- 
annals of our Congress. He had that kind of 
speaking talent which is most effective in legis- 
lative bodies, and which is so different from 
set-speaking. He was a debater ; and was con- 
sidered by Mr. Randolph to be, in our House of 
Representatives, what Charles Fox was admit- 
ted to be in the British House of Commons : 
the most accomplished debater which his coun- 
try had tvev seen. But their acquired advan- 
tages were very different, and their schools of 
practice very opposite. Mr. Fox perfected him- 
self in the House, speaking on every subject ; 
Mr. Giles out of the House, talking to every 
body. Mr. Fox, a ripe scholar, addicted to liter- 
ature, and imbued with all the learning of all 
the classics in all time ; Mr. Giles neither read 
nor studied, but talked incessantly with able 
men, rather debating with them all the while : 
and drew from this source of information, and 
from the ready powers of his mind, the ample 
means of speaking on every subject with the 
fulness which the occasion required, the quick- 
ness which confounds an adversarj^, and the 
effect which a lick in time always produces. 
He had the kind of talent which was necessary 
to complete the circle of all sorts of ability 
which sustained the administration of Mr. Jef- 
ferson. Macon was wise, Randolph brilliant, 
Gallatin and Madison able in argument; but 
Giles was the ready champion, always ripe for 
the combat— always furnished with the ready 
change to meet every bill. He was long a 
member of the House ; then senator, and gov- 
ernor ; and died at an advanced age, like Patrick 
Henry, without doing justice to his genius in 
the transmission of his labors to posterity ; be- 
cause, like Henry, he had been deficient in edu- 
cation and in reading. He was the intimate 
friend of all the eminent men of his day, which 
sufficiently bespeaks him a gentleman of manners 
and heart, as well as a statesman of head and 
tongue. 



CH APT Ell CLII. 

PRK9IDENTIAL ELECTION OF 1S36. 

Mr. Van Buren was the candidate of the demo- 
sratic party ; General Harrison the candidate of 



the opposition ; and Mr. Hugh L. White that of 
a fragment of the demixrracy. Mr. Van Buren 
was elected, receiving one hundred ami seventy 
electoral votes, to seventy-three given to Gene- 
ral Harrison, and twenty-six given toMr. AVhito. 
The States voting for each, were : — Mr. Van 
Buren : Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode I.sland, 
Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, 
North Carolina, Louisiana, Mis.^issippi, niinois, 
Alabama, Mis.souri, Michigan, Arkansas. For 
General Harrison : Vermont, New Jersey, Dela- 
ware, Maryland, Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana. For 
Mr. White : Georgia and Tennessee. Ma'vsachu- 
setts complimented Mr. Webster by bestowing 
her fourteen votes upon him ; and South Caro- 
lina, as in the two preceding elections, threw 
her vote away iipon a citizen not a candidate, 
and not a child of her soil — Mr. Mangum of 
North Carolina — disappointing the expcctationR 
of Mr. White's friends, whose standing for the 
presidency had been instigated by Mr. Calhoun, to 
divide the democratic part}' and defeat Mr. Van 
Buren. Colonel Richard M. Johnson, of Ken- 
tucky, was the democratic candidate for the vice- 
presidency, and received one hundred and forty- 
seven votes, which, not being a majority of the 
whole number of votes given, the election was 
referred to the Senate, to choose between the 
two highest on the list ; and that body being 
largely democratic, he was duly elected : receiv- 
ing thirty-three out of forty-nine senatorial 
votes. The rest of the vice-presidential vote, in 
the electoral colleges, had been between Mr. 
Francis Granger, of New York, who received 
seventy-seven votes ; Mr. John Tyler, of Virgi- 
nia, who received forty-seven ; and Mr. William 
Smith, of South CaroUna, complimente<l by Vir- 
ginia with her twenty-three votes. Mr. Gran- 
ger, being the next highest on the H.-'t, after 
Colonel Johnson, was voted for as one of the two 
referred to the Senate ; and received sixttn-n 
votes. A list of the senators voting for each 
will show the stn-ngth of the resportivo parties 
in the Senate, at the approaching end of Pn-^i- 
dent Jackson's administration ; and how signally 
all the efforts intended to overthrow him had 
ended in the disconiliture of their author-*, and 
converted an absolute m.ajority of the whole 
Senate into a meagre minority of one thinl. 
The votes for Colonel Johnson were : Mr. B.-n- 
ton of Missouri; Mr. Black of Mi.ssis.Mppi : Mr. 
Bedfonl Brown of North Carolina ; Mr. Buchau- 



684 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



an of Pennsylvania ; Mr. Cuthbert of Georgia ; 
Mr. Dana of ]\Iaine ; Mr. Ewing of Illinois ; Mn 
Fulton of Arkansas ; Mr. Grundy of Tennessee ; 
Mr. Hendricks of Indiana; Mr. Hubbard of 
Maine ; Mr. AVilliam Rufus King of Alabama ; 
Mr. John P. King of Georgia ; ^Mr. Louis F. 
Linn of Missouri ; Mr. Lucius Lyon of Michi- 
gan ; Mr. McKean of Pennsylvania ; Mr. Gabriel 
Moore of Alabama ; Mr. Morris of Ohio ; Mr. 
Alexander Mouton df Louisiana; Mi\ Wilson 
C. Nicholas of Louisiana ; Mr. Niles of Connec- 
ticut ; Mr. Johu NorvcU of Michican ; Mr. John 
Page of New Hampshire ; Mr. Richard E. Par- 
ker of Virginia ; Mr. Rives of Virginia ; Mr. 
John M. Robinson of Illinois ; Mr. Ruggles of 
Maine ; Mr. Ambrose H. Sevier <5f Arkansas ; 
Mr, Peleg Sprague of Maine ; Mr. Robert Strange 
of North Carolina ; Mr. Nathaniel P. Talmadge 
of New York ; Mr. Tipton of Indiana ; Mr. Ro- 
bert J. Walker of Mississippi ; Mr. Silas Wright 
of New York. Those voting for Mr. Francis 
Granger were : Mr. Richard H. Bayard of Dela- 
ware ; Mr. Clay ; Mr. John M. Clayton of Dela- 
ware ; Mr. John Crittenden of Kentucky ; Mr. 
John Davis of Massachusetts ; INIr. Thomas 
Ewing of Ohio ; Mr. Kent of Maryland ; Mr. 
Nehemiah Knight of Rhode Island ; Mr. Pren- 
tiss of Vermont ; Mr. Asher Robbins of Rhode 
Island ; Mr. Samuel L. Southard of New Jer- 
sey ; Mr. John S. Spence of Maryland ; Mr. 
Swift of Vermont ; Mr. Gideon Tomlinson of 
Connecticut ; Mr. Wall of New Jersey ; Mr. 
Webster. South Carolina did not vote, neither 
in the person of Mr. Calhoun nor in that of his 
colleague, Mr. Preston : an omission which could 
not be attributed to absence or accident, as both 
were present ; nor fail to be remarked and con- 
sidered ominous in the then temper of the State, 
and her refusa' to vote in the three preceding 
presidential elections. 



CHAPTER CLIII. 

LAST ANNUAL MESSAGE OF PRESIDENT JACKSON. 

At the opening of the second Session of the 
twenty-fourth Congress, President Jackson de- 
livered his last Annual Message, and imder cir- 
cumstances to be grateful to his heart. The 
powerful opposition in Congress had been broken 



down, and he saw full majorities of ardent and 
tried friends in each House. We were in peace 
and friendship with all the world, and all excit- 
ing questions quieted at home. Industry in all 
its branches was prosperous. The revenue was 
abundant — too much so. The people were hap- 
py. His message, of course, was first a recapitu- 
lation of this auspicious state of things, at home 
and abroad ; and then a reference to the ques- 
tions of domestic interest and policy which re- 
quired attention, and might call for action. At 
the head of these measures stood the deposit 
act of the last session — the act which under the 
insidious and fabulous title of a deposit of a 
surplus of revenue with the States — made an 
actual distribution of that surplus ; and was in- 
tended by its contrivers to do so. His notice 
of this measure went to two points — his own 
regrets for having signed the act, and his mis- 
givings in relation to Its future observation. He 
said: 

" The consequences apprehended, when the 
deposit act of the last session received a re- 
luctant approval, have been measurably realized. 
Though an act merely for the deposit of the 
surplus moneys of the United States in the 
State Treasuries, for safe keeping, until they 
may be wanted for the service of the general 
government, it has been extensively spoken of 
as an act to give the money to the several States ; 
and they have been advised to use it as a gift, 
without regard to the means of refunding it 
when called for. Such a suggestion has doubt- 
less been made without a due consideration of 
the obligation of the deposit act, and without 
a proper attention to the various principles 
and interests which are affected by it. It is 
manifest that the law itself cannot sanction such 
a suggestion, and that, as it now stands, the 
States have no more authority to receive and 
use these deposits without intending to return 
them, than any deposit bank, or any individual 
temporarily charged with the safe-keeping or 
application of the public money, would now 
have for converting the same to their private 
use, Avithout the consent and against the will of 
the government. But, independently of the 
violation of public faith and moral obligation 
which are involved in this suggestion, when 
examined in reference to the terms of the pre- 
sent deposit act, it is believed that the con- 
siderations which should govern the future 
legislation of Congress on this subject, will be 
equally conclusive against the adoption of any 
measure recognizing the principles on which 
the suggestion has been made." 

This misgiving was well founded. Before th? 



ANNO 1836. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



GS5 



session was over there was actually a motion to 
release the States from their obligation to re- 
store the money — to lay which motion on the 
table there were seventy-three resisting votes — 
an astonishing number in itself, and the more 
so as given by the same members, sitting in the 
same seats, who had voted for the act as a de- 
posit a few months before. Such a vote was 
ominous of the fate of the monej^ ; and that 
fate was not long delaj-ed. Akin to this mea- 
sure, and in fact the parent of which it was the 
bastard progeny, was distribution itself, under 
its own proper name ; and which it was evident 
was soon to be openly attempted, encouraged 
as its advocates were by the success gained in 
the deposit act. The President, with his char- 
acteristic frankness and firmness, impugned that 
policy in advance ; and deprecated its effects un- 
der every aspect of public and private justice, 
and of every consideration of a wise or just 
policy. He said : 

"To collect revenue merely for distribution 
to the States, would seem to be highly impolitic, 
if not as dangerous as the proposition to retain it 
in the Treasury. The shortest retiection must 
satisfy every one that to require the people to 
pay taxes to the government merely that they 
may be paid back again, is sporting with the 
substantial interests of the country, and no 
system which produces such a result can be 
expected to receive the public countenance. 
Nothing could be gained by it, even if each in- 
dividual who contributed a portion of the tax 
could receive back promptly the same portion. 
But it is apparent that no system of the kind 
can ever be enforced, which will not absorb a 
considerable portion of the money, to be distri- 
buted in salaries and commissions to the agents 
employed in the process, and in the various 
losses and depreciations which arise from other 
causes ; and the practical effect of such an at- 
tempt must ever be to burden the people with 
taxes, not for purposes beneficial to them, but 
to swell tlie profits of deposit banks, and sup- 
port a band of useless public officers. A distri- 
bution to tlie people is impracticable and unjust 
in other respects. It would be taking one man's 
property and giving it to another. Such would 
be the unavoidable result of a rule of ecjuality 
(and none other is spoken of, or would be likely 
to be adopted), inasmuch as there is no mode by 
which the amount of the individual contribu- 
tions of our citizens to the public revenue can 
be ascertained. We know tl.at they contribute 
uncquall!/, and a rule therefore that would dis- 
tribute to them equally^ would be liable to all 
the objections which apply to the principle of 
an equal division of property. To make the 
general government the instrument of carrying 



this odious principle into effect, would bo at 
once to destro}' the means of its usefulness, an<l 
change the character designed for it by the 
framers of the constitution." 

There was another consiilcration connected 
with this policy of distribution which the Pre- 
sident did not name, and could not, in the deco- 
rum and reserve of an official communication to 
Congress : it was the intended clfcct of these 
distributions — to debauch the people with their 
own money, and to gain presidential votes by 
lavishing upon them the spoils of their country. 
To the honor of the people this intended effect 
never occurred; no one of those contriving these 
distributions ever reaching the high object of 
their ambition. Instead of distribution — mstead 
of raising money from the people to be returned 
to the people, with all the deductions wliich the 
double operation of collecting and dividing 
would incur, and with the losses which unfaith- 
ful agents might inflict — instead of that idle 
and wasteful process, which would have been 
childish if it had not been vicious, he recom- 
mended a reduction of taxes on the comforts 
and necessaries of life, and the levy of no more 
money than was necessary for the economical 
administration of the government ; and said : 

"In reducing the revenue to the wants of the 
government, your particular attentiiui is invited 
to those articles which constitute the necessaries 
of life. The duty on salt was laid as a war tax, 
and was no doubt contiinied to assist in jimvid- 
ing for the payment of the war debt. There is 
no article the release of which from taxation 
would be felt so generally and so beneficially. 
To this may be added all kinds of fuel and pro- 
visions. Justice and benevolence unite in favor 
of releasing the poor of our cities from bunlens 
which are not necessary to the supjwrt of oiu- 
government, and tend only to increase the 
wants of the destitute." 

The issuance of the '"Treasury Circular" 
naturally claimed a place in the President's 
message ; and received it. The President guvo 
his reason for the mciusui-e in tlio necessity of 
saving the public domain from being cxchangotl 
for bank jiaper money, which was not wanted, 
and might be of little value or use when want- 
ed ; and expressed himself thus: 

"The effects of an extension of bank credits, 
and over-issues of bank paper, have Ixvn stnk- 
inglv illustrated in the sales of the public lands. 
From the returns made by the various registers 
and receivers in tlie eaily part of last summur 



686 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



it was perceived that the receipts arising from 
the sales of the public lands, were increasing to 
an unprecedented amount. In effect, however, 
these receipts amounted to nothing more than 
credits in bank. The banks lent out their notes 
to speculators ; they were paid to the receivers, 
and immediately returned to the banks, to be 
lent out again and again ; being mere instru- 
ments to transfer to speculators the most valu- 
able public land, and pay the government by a 
credit on the books of the banks. Those cre- 
dits on the books of some of the western banks, 
usually called deposits, were already greatly 
beyond their immediate means of payment, and 
were rapidly increasing. Indeed each specula- 
tion furnished means for another ; for no sooner 
had one individual or company paid in the 
notes, than they were immediately lent to ano- 
ther for a like purpose ; and the banks were 
extending their business and their issues so 
largely, as to alarm considerate men, and render 
it doubtful whether these bank credits, if per- 
mitted to accumulate, would ultimately be of 
the least value to the government. The spirit 
of expansion and speculation was not confined 
to the deposit banks, but pervaded the whole 
multitude of banks throughout the Union, and 
was giving rise to new institutions to aggravate 
the evil. The safety of the public funds, and 
the interest of the people generally, required 
that these operations should be checked ; and it 
became the duty of ever}^ branch of the general 
and State governments to adopt all legitimate 
and proper means to produce that salutary 
effect. Under this view of my duty, I directed 
the issuing of the order which will be laid be- 
fore you by the Secretary of the Treasury, re- 
quiring payment for the public lands sold to be 
made in specie, with an exception until the 15th 
of the present month, in favor of actual settlers. 
This measure has produced many salutary con- 
sequences. It checked the career of the Western 
banks, and gave them additional strength in 
anticipation of the pressure which has since 
peiTaded our Eastern as well as the European 
commercial cities. By preventing the extension 
of the credit system, it measurably cut off the 
means of speculation, and retarded its progress 
in monopolizing the most valuable of the public 
lands. It has tended to save the new States 
from a non-resident proprietorship, one of the 
greatest obstacles to the advancement of a new 
country, and the prosperity of an old one. It 
has tended to keep open the public lands for 
the entry of emigrants at government prices, 
instead of their being compelled to purchase of 
speculators at double or treble prices. And it 
is conve3ung into the interior large sums in 
silver and gold, there to enter permanently into 
the currency of the country, and place it on a 
firmer foundation. It is confidently believed 
that the country will find in the motives which 
induced that order, and the happy consequences 
which will have ensued, much to commend and 
nothing to condemn." 



The people were satisfied with the Treasury 
Circular ; they saw its honesty and good effects; 
but the politicians were not satisfied with it 
They thought they saw in it a new exercise of 
illegal power in the President — a new tampering 
with the currency — a new destruction of the 
public prosperity; and commenced an attack 
upon it the moment Congress met, very much 
in the style of the attack upon the order for the 
removal of the deposits ; and with fresh hopes 
from the resentment of the " thousand banks," 
whose notes had been excluded, and from the 
discontent of many members of Congress whose 
schemes of speculation had been balked. And 
notwithstanding the democratic majorities in 
the two Houses, the attack upon the "Circular" 
had a great success, many members being in- 
terested in the exclnded banks, and partners in 
schemes for monopolizing the lands. A bill in- 
tended to repeal the Circular was actually 
passed through both Houses ; but not in direct 
terms. That would have been too flagrant. It 
was a bad thing, and could not be fairly done, 
and therefore gave rise to indirection and ambi- 
guity of provisions, and complication of phrases, 
and a multiplication of amphibologies, which 
brought the bill to a very ridiculous conclusion 
when it got to the hands of General Jackson. 
But of this hereafter. 

The intrusive efforts made by politicians and 
missionaries, first, to prevent treaties from being 
formed with the Indians to remove from the 
Southern States, and then to prevent the re- 
moval after the treaties were made, led to se- 
rious refusals on the part of some of these 
tribes to emigrate ; and it became necessary to 
dispatch officers of high rank and reputation, 
with regular troops, to keep down outrages and 
induce peaceable removal. Major General 
Jesup was sent to the Creek nation, where he 
had a splendid success in a speedy and bloodless 
accomplishment of his object. Major General 
Scott was sent to the Cherokees, where a perti- 
nacious resistance was long encountered, but 
eventually and peaceably overcome. The Semi- 
nole hostilities in Florida were just breaking 
out ; and the President, in his message, thus 
notices all these events : 

" The military movements rendered necessary 
by the aggressions of the hostile portions of the 
Seminole and Creek tribes of Indians, and by 
other circumstances, have required the active 



ANNO 1836. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



687 



emploj-raent of nearly our whole regular force 
including the marine corps, and of large bodies 
of militia and volunteers. "With all these events, 
so for as they were known at the seat of govern- 
ment before the termination of your last session, 
you are already acquainted ; and it is therefore 
only needful in this place to lay before you a 
brief summary of what has since occurred. The 
war with the Seminoles during the summer was, 
on our part, chiefly confined to the protection 
of our frontier settlements from the incursions 
of the enemy ; and, as a necessary and impor- 
tant means for the accomplishment of that end, 
to the maintenance of the posts previously es- 
tablished. In the course of this duty several 
actions took place, in which the bravery and 
discipline of both officers and men were con- 
spicuously displayed, and which I have deemed 
it proper to notice in respect to the former, by 
the granting of brevet rank for gallant services 
in the field. But as the force of the Indians 
was not so far weakened by these partial suc- 
cesses as to lead them to submit, and as their 
savage inroads were frequently repeated, early 
measures were taken for placing at the disposal 
of Governor Call, who, as commander-in-chief 
of tlie tcrritoi-ial militia, had been temporarily 
invested with the command, an ample force, for 
the purpose of resuming oflensive operations in 
the most efficient manner, so soon as the season 
should permit. Major General Jesup was also 
directed, on the conclusion of his duties in the 
Creek country, to repair to Florida, and assume 
the command. Happily for the interests of 
humanity, the hostilities with the Creeks were 
brought to a close soon after your adjournment, 
without that effusion of blood, which at one time 
was apprehended as inevitable. The uncondi- 
tional submission of the hostile party was fol- 
lowed by their speedy removal to the country 
assigned them west of the Mississippi. The in- 
quiry as to the alleged frauds in the purchase 
of the reservations of these Indians, and the 
causes of their hostilities, requested by the re- 
solution of the House of Representatives of the 
1st of July last to be made by the President, is 
now going on, through the agency of commis- 
sioners appointed for that purpose. Their report 
may be expected during your present session. 
The difficulties apprehended in the Cherokee 
country have been prevented, and the peace and 
safety of that region and its vicinity eli'ectually 
secured, by the timely measures taken by the 
war department, and still continued." 

The Bank of the United States was destined 
to receive another, and a parting notice from 
General Jackson, and greatly to its further dis- 
credit, brought upon it by its own lawless and 
dishonest course. Its charter had expired, and 
it had delayed to refund the stock paid for by 
the United States, or to pay the back dividend ; 
and had transferred itself with all its effects. 



and all its subscribers except the United States, 
to a new corporation, under the same name, 
created hy a. proviso to a road bill in the General 
Assembly of Pennsylvania, obtained by bribery, 
as subsequent legislative investigation proved. 
This transfer, or transmigration,, was a new 
and most amazing procedure. The metempsy- 
chosis of a bank was a novelty which confound- 
ed and astounded the senses, and set the wits 
of Congress to work to find out how it could 
legally be done. The President, though a good 
lawyer and judge of law, did not trouble him- 
self with legal subtleties and disquisitions. He 
took the broad, moral, practical, business view of 
the question ; and pronounced it to be dishonest, 
unlawful, and irresponsible ; and recommended 
to Congress to look after its stock. The mes- 
sage said : 

" The conduct and present condition of that 
bank, and the great amount of capital vested in 
it by the United States, require your careful at- 
tention. Its charter expired on the third day 
of March last, and it has now no power but that 
given in the 2Ist section, ' to use the corporate 
name, style, and capacity, for the purpose of 
suits, for the final settlement and liquidation of 
the afiairs and accounts of the corporation, and 
for the sale and disposition of their estate, real, 
personal, and mixed, and not for any other pur- 
pose, or in any other manner whatsoever, nor for 
a period exceeding two years after the expira- 
tion of the said term of incorporation.' Before 
the expiration of the charter, the stockholders 
of the bank obtained an act of incorporation 
from the legislature of Pennsylvania, excluding 
only the United States. Instead of proceeding 
to wind up their concerns, and pay over to the 
United States the amount due on account of the 
stock held by them, the president and directors 
of the old bank appear to have transferred the 
books, papers, notes, obligations, and most or all 
of its property, to this new corporation, which 
entered upon business as a continuation of the 
old concern. Amongst other acts of questiona- 
ble validity, the notes of the expired corporation 
are known to have been used as its own, and 
again put in circulation. That the old bank 
had no right to issue or reissue its notes after 
the expiration of its charter, cannot be denied ; 
and that it could not confer any such right on 
its substitute, any more than exercise it itself, 
is equallj^ plain. In law and honesty, the notes 
of the bank in circulation, at the expiration of 
its charter, should have been called in by public 
advertisement, paid up as presented, and, to- 
gether with those on hand, cancelled and de- 
stroyed. Their re-issue is sanctioned by no law, 
and warranted by no necessity. If the United 
States be responsible in their stock for the pay- 
ment of these notes, their re-iseue by the new 



688 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



corporation, for their own profit, is a fraud on 
the government. If the United States is not 
responsible, then there is no legal responsibility 
in any quarter, and it is a fraud on the country. 
They are the redeemed notes of a dissolved 
partnership, but, contrary to the wishes of the 
retiring partner, and without his consent, are 
again rc-issued and circulated. It is the high 
and peculiar duty of Congress to decide whether 
any further legislation be necessary for the se- 
curity of the large amount of public property 
now held and in use by the new bank, aud for 
vindicating the rights of the government, and 
compelling a speedy and honest settlement with 
all the creditors of the old bank, public and pri- 
vate, or whether the subject shall be left to the 
power now possessed by the executive and 
judiciary. It remains to be seen whether the 
persons, who, as managers of the old bank, un- 
dertook to control the government, retained the 
public dividends, shut their doors upon a com- 
mittee of the House of Representatives, and filled 
the country with panic to accomplish their own 
sinister objects, may now, as managers of a new 
Bank, continue with impunity to flood the coun- 
try with a spurious currency, use the seven mil- 
lions of government stock for tlieir own profit, 
and refuse to the United States all information 
as to the present condition of their own proper- 
ty, and the prospect of recovering it into their 
own possession. The lessons taught by the 
bank of the United States cannot well be lost 
upon the American people. Thej^ will take care 
never again to place so tremendous a power in 
irresponsible hands, and it will be fortunate if 
they seriously consider the consequences which 
are likely to result on a smaller scale from the 
facility with which corporate powers are granted 
by their State government." 

This novel and amazing attempt of the bank to 
transmigrate into the body of another bank with 
all its etlects, was a necessity of its position — the 
necessity which draws a criminal to even insane 
acts to prevent the detection, exposure, and ruin 
from which guilt recoils in not less guilty contriv- 
ances. The bank was broken, and could not wind 
up, and wished to postpone, or by chance avert 
the dreaded discovery. It was in the position of 
a glass vase, cracked from top to bottom, and 
ready to split open if touched, but looking as 
if whole while sitting unmoved on the shelf. 
The great bank was in this condition, and there- 
fore untouchable, and saw no resource except in 
a metempsychosis — a difiBcult process for a soul- 
less institution — and thereby endeavoring to 
continue its life without a change of name, form, 
or substance. The experiment was a catastro- 
phe, as might have been expected beforehand ; 
and as was soon seen afterwards. 



The injury resulting to the public service 
from the long delay in making the appropria- 
tions at the last session — delayed while occupied 
with distribution bills until the season for labor 
had well passed away. On this point the mes- 
sage said : 

" No time was lost, after the making of the 
requisite appropriations, in resuming the great 
national work of completing the unfinished for- 
tifications on our seaboard, and of placing them 
in a proper state of defence. In consequence, 
however, of the very late day at which those 
bills were passed, but little progress could be 
made during the season which has just closed. 
A very large amount of the moneys granted at 
your last session accordingly remains unexpend- 
ed ; but as the work will be again resumed at 
the earliest moment in the coming spring, the 
balance of the ex-isting appropriations, and, in 
several cases which will be laid before you, with 
the proper estimates, further sums for the like 
objects, may be usefully expended during the 
next year." 

Here was one of the evils of dividing the pub- 
lic money, and of factious opposition to the gov- 
ernment. The session of 1834 — '5 had closed 
without a dollar for the military defences, leav- 
ing half finished works unfinished, and finished 
works unarmed ; and that in the presence of a 
threatening collision with France ; and at the 
subsequent session of 1835- 6, the appropriations 
were not made until the month of fJuly and 
when they could not be used or applied. 

Scarcely did the railroad sj^stem begin to 
spread itself along the highways of the United 
States than the effects of the monopoly and ex- 
tortion incident to moneyed corporations, began 
to manifest itself in exorbitant demands for the 
transportation of the mails, and in capricious 
refusals to carry them at all except on their own 
terms. President Jackson was not the man to 
submit to an imposition, or to capitulate to a 
corporation. lie brought the subject before 
Congress, and invited particular attention to it 
in a paragraph of his message; in which he 
said: 

" Your particular attention is invited to the 
subject of mail contracts Avith railroad com- 
panies. The present laws providing for the mak- 
ing of contracts are based upon the presumption 
that competition among bidders will secure the 
service at a fair price. But on most of the rail 
road lines there is no competition in that kind 
of transportation, and advertising is therefore 
useless. No contract can now be made with 
them, except such as shall be negotiated before 



ANNO 1836. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



689 



the time of offering or afterwards, and the power 
of the Postmaster-general to pay them high 
prices is. practically, without limitation. It 
would be a relief to him, and no doubt would 
conduce to the public interest, to prescribe by 
law some equitable basis upon which such con- 
tracts shall rest, and restrict him hy a fixed rule 
of allowance, tinder a liberal act of that sort, 
he would undoubtedly be able to secure the ser- 
vices of most of the railroad companies, and the 
mterest of the Department would be thus ad- 
vanced." 

The message recommended a friendly super- 
vision over the Indian tribes removed to the 
West of the Mississippi, with the important 
suggestion of preventing intestine war by mili- 
tary interference, as well as improving their con- 
dition by all the usual means. On these points, 
it said : 

'' The national policy, founded aUke in interest 
and in humanity, so long and so steadily pursued 
b}' this government, for the removal of the In- 
dian tribes originally settled on this side of the 
Mississippi, to the west of that river, may be 
said to have been consummated by the conclusion 
of the late treaty with the Cherokees. The 
measures taken in the execution of that treaty, 
and in relation to our Indian affairs generally, 
will fully appear by referring to the accompany- 
ing papers. Without dwelling on the numerous 
and important topics embraced in them, I again 
invite your attention to the importance of pro- 
viding a well-digested and comprehensive system 
for the protection, supervision and improvement 
of the various tribes now planted in the Indian 
country. The suggestions submitted by the 
commissioner of Indian affairs, and enforced by 
the secretary, on this subject, and also in regard 
to the establishmentof additional military posts 
in the Indian country, are entitled to your pro- 
found consideration. Both measures are neces- 
sary for the double purpose of protecting the 
Indians from intestine war, and in other respects 
complying with our engagements to them, and 
of securing our Western frontier against incur- 
sions, which otherwise will assuredly be made 
on it. The best hopes of humanity, in regard 
to the aboriginal race, the welfare of our rapidly 
extending settlements, and the honor of the Uni- 
ted States, are all deeply involved in the rela- 
tions existing between this government and the 
emigrating tribes. I trust, therefore, that the 
various matters submitted in the accompanying 
documents, in respect to those relations, will re- 
ceive your early and mature deliberation ; and 
that it may issue in the adoption of legislative 
measures adapted to the circumstances and du- 
ties of the present crisis." 

This suggestion of preventing intestine wars 
(as they are called) in the bosoms of the tribes, 
is founded equally in humanity to the Indians 

Vol. I.— 44 



and duty to ourselves. Such wars are nothing 
but massacres, assassinations and confiscations. 
The stronger party oppress a hated, or feared 
minority or chief; and slay with impunity (in 
some of the tribes), where the assumption of a 
form of government, modelled after that of the 
white race, for which they have no capacity, 
gives the justification of executions to what is 
nothing but revenge and assassination. Under 
their own ancient laws, of blood for blood, and 
for the slain to avenge the wrong, this liability 
of personal responsibility restrained the killings 
to cases of pubhc justifiable necessity. Since 
the removal of that responsibility, revenge, am- 
bition, plunder, take their course: and the con- 
sequence is a series of assassinations which have 
been going on for a long time ; and still continue. 
To aggravate many of these massacres, and to 
give their victims a stronger claim upon the pro- 
tection of the United States, they are done upon 
those who are friends to the United States, 
upon accusations of having betrayed the interest 
of the tribe in some treaty for the sale of lands. 
The United States claim jurisdiction over their 
country, and exercise it in the punishment of 
some classes of criminals ; and it would be good 
to extend it to the length recommended by Pre- 
sident Jackson. 

The message would have been incomplete 
without a renewal of the standing recommenda- 
tion to take the presidential election out of the 
hands of intermediate bodies, and give it direct- 
ly to the people. He earnestly urged an amend- 
ment to the constitution to that effect ; but that 
remedy being of slow, difficult, and doubtful at- 
tainment, the more speedy process by the action 
of the people becomes the more necessary. Con- 
gressional caucuses were put down by the people 
in the election of 1824: their substitute and suc- 
cessor — national conventions — ruled by a minor- 
ity, and managed by intrigue and corruption, 
are about as much worse than a Congress cau- 
cus as Congress itself would be if the members 
appointed, or contrived the appointment, of tliem- 
selves, instead of being elected by the people. 
The message appropriately concluded with thanks 
to the people for the high honors to which they 
had lifted him, and their support under arduous 
circumstances, and said : 

" Having now finished the observations deem 
ed proper on this, the last occasion I shall have 
of communicating with the two Houses of Co«»- 



690 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



gress at their meeting, I cannot omit an expres- 
sion of the n^ratitufle which is due to the great 
body of my follow citizens, in whose partiality and 
indulgence I have found encouragement and sup- 
port in- the many difficult and tr3'ing scenes 
through which it has been my lot to pass dur- 
ing my public career. Though deeply sensible 
that mj' exertions have not been crowned with a 
success corresponding to the degree of favor be- 
stowed upon me, I am sure that they will be 
considered as having been directed by an earnest 
desire to promote the good of my country ; and 
I am consoled by the persuasion that whatever 
errors have been committed will find a corrective 
in the intelligence and patriotism of those who 
will succeed us. All that has occurred during 
my administration is calculated to inspire me 
with increased confidence in the stability of our 
institutions, and should I be spared to enter up- 
pon that retirement which is so suitable to my 
age and infirm health, and so much desired by 
me in other i-espects, I shall not cease to invoke 
that beneficent Being to whose providence we 
are already so signally indebted for the continu- 
ance of his blessings on our beloved country." 



CHAPTER CLIV. 

FINAL KEMOVAL OF THE INDIANS. 

At the commencement of the annual session of 
1836~'37, President Jackson had the gratifica- 
tion to make known to Congress the completion 
of the long-pursued policy of removing all the 
Indians in the States, and within the organized 
territories of the Union, to their new homes 
west of the Mississippi. It was a policy com- 
mencing with Jefferson, pursued by all succeed- 
ing Presidents, and accompHshed by Jackson. 
The Creeks and Cherokees had withdrawn from 
Georgia and Alabama; the Chickasaws and 
Choctaws from Mississippi and Alabama ; the 
Seminoles had stipulated to remove from Flori- 
da; Louisiana, Arkansas and IMissouri had all 
been relieved of their Indian population ; Ken- 
tucky and Tennessee, by earlier treaties with 
the Chickasaws, had received the same advan- 
tage. This freed the slave States from an ob- 
stacle to their growth and' prosperity, and left 
them free to expand, and to cultivate, to the 
fidl measure of their ample boundaries. All 
the free Atlantic States had long been relieved 
from their Indian populations, and in this re- 
spect the northern and southern States were 
now upon an equality. The result has been 



proved to be, what it was then believed it would 
be, beneficial to both parties ; and still more so 
to the Indians than to the whites. With them 
it was a question of extinction, the time only 
the debatable point. They were daily wasting 
under contact with the whites, and had before 
their eyes the eventual but certain fate of the 
hundreds of tribes found by the early colonists 
on the Roanoke, the James River, the Potomac, 
the Susquehannah, the Delaware, the Connecti- 
cut, the Merrimac, the Kennebec and the Pen- 
obscot. The removal saved the southern tribes 
from that fate ; and in giving them new and 
unmolested homes beyond the verge of the 
white man's settlement, in a country temperate 
in climate, fertile in soil, adapted to agriculture 
and to pasturage, with an outlet for hunting, 
abounding with salt water and salt springs — it 
left them to work out in peace the problem of 
Indian civilization. To all the relieved States 
the removal of the tribes within their borders 
was a great benefit — to the slave States trans- 
ccndently and inappreciably great. The largest 
tribes were within their limits, and the best of 
their lands in the hands of the Indians, to the 
extent, in some of the States, as Georgia, Ala- 
bama and Mississippi, of a third or a quarter of 
their whole JU"ea. I have heretofore shown, in 
the case of the Creeks and the Cherokees in 
Georgia, that the ratification of the treaties for 
the extinction of Indian claims within her lim- 
its, and which removed the tribes which encum- 
bered her, received the cordial support of north- 
ern senators ; and that, in fact, without that 
support these great objects could not have been 
accomplished. I have now to say the same of 
all the other slave States. They wei-e all re- 
lieved in like manner. Cliickasaws and Choc- 
taws in Mississippi and Alabama; Cliickasaw 
claims in Tennessee and Kentucky ; Seminoles 
in Florida ; Caddos and Quapaws in Louisiana 
and in Arkansas ; Kickapoos, Delawares. Shaw- 
nees, Osages, lowas, Pinkeshaws, TVeas, Pc- 
orias, in Missouri ; all underwent the same pro- 
cess, and with the came support and result. 
Northern votes, in the Senate, came to the ratifi- 
cation of every treaty, and to the passage ol 
every necessary appropriation act in the House 
of Representatives. Northern men may be 
said to have made the treaties, and passed the 
acts, as without their aid it could not have been 
done, constitutmg, as they did, a large majority 



ANXO 1836. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



691 



in the House, and being equal in the Senate, 
where a vote of two-thirds was wanting. I do 
not go over these treaties and laws one by one, 
to show their passage, and by what votes. I 
did that in the case of the Creek treaty and the 
Cherokee treaty, for the removal of these tribes 
from Georgia ; and showed that the North was 
unanimous in one case, and nearly so in the 
other, while in both treaties there was a south- 
ern opposition, and in one of them (the Chero- 
kee), both Mr. Calhoun and Mr. Clay in the 
negative : and these instances may stand for an 
Illustration of the whole. And thus the area of 
slave population has been almost doubled in the 
slave States, by sending away the Indians to make 
room for their expansion; and it is unjust and 
cruel — unjust and cruel in itself, independent of 
the motive — to charge these Northern States 
with a design to abolish slavery in the South, 
If they liad harbored such design — if they had 
been merely unfriendly to the growth and pros- 
perity of these Southern States, there was an 
easy way to have gratified their feelings, with- 
out committing a breach of the constitution, or 
an aggression or encroachment upon these 
States: they had only to sit still and vote 
against the ratification of the treaties, and the 
enactment of the laws which effected this great 
removal. They did not do so — did not sit still 
and vote against their Southern brethren. On 
the contrary, they stood up and spoke aloud, and 
gave to these laws and treaties an effective and 
zealous support. And I, who was the Senate's 
chairman of the committee of Indian afiairs at 
this time, and know how these tilings were done, 
and who was so thankful for northern help at 
the time ; I, who know the truth and love jus- 
tice, and cherish the harmony and union of the 
American people, feel it to be my duty and my 
privilege to note this great act of justice from the 
North to the South, to stand in history as a per- 
petual contradiction of all imputed design in the 
free States to abolish slavery in the slave States. 
I speak of States, not of individuals or societies. 
I have shown that this policy of the uni- 
versal removal of the Indians from the East to 
the West of the Mississippi originated with Mr. 
Jefferson, and from the most humane motives, 
and after having seen the extinction of more than 
forty tribes in his own State of Virginia ; and 
had been followed up under all subsequent ad- 
ministrations. With General Jackson it was 



nothing but the continuation of an established 
policy, but one in which he heartily concurred, 
and of which his local position and his experience 
made him one of the safest of judges ; but, like 
every other act of his administration, it was 
destined to obloquy and opposition, and to mis- 
representations, which have survived the object 
of their creation, and gone into history. He was 
charged with injustice to the Indians, in not 
protecting them against the laws and jurisdiction 
of the States ; with cruelty, in driving them 
away from the bones of their fathers ; with rob- 
bery, in taking their lands for paltry considera- 
tions. Parts of the tribes were excited to 
resist the execution of the treaties, and it even 
became necessary to send troops and distinguish- 
ed generals — Scott to the Chcrokees, Jesup to 
the Creeks — to effect their removal ; which, by 
the mildness and steadiness of these generals, 
and according to the humane spirit of their 
orders, was eventually accomplished without the 
aid of force. The outcry raised against General 
Jackson, on account of these measures, reached 
the ears of the French traveller and writer on 
American democracy (De Tocqueville), then so- 
journing among us and collecting materials for 
his work, and induced him to write thus in his 
chapter 18 : 

" The ejectment of the Indians very often takes 
place, at the present day, in a regular, and, as it 
were, legal manner. When the white popula- 
tion begins to approach the limit of a desert 
inhabited by a savage tribe, the government of 
the United States usually dispatches envoys to 
them, who assemble the Indians in a large plain, 
and having first eaten and drunk with them, 
accost them in the following manner : ' What 
have you to do in the land of your fathers ? 
Before long you must dig up their bones in order 
to live. In what respect is the country you in- 
habit better than another ? Are there no woods, 
marshes or prairies, except where you dwell ? 
and can you live nowhere but under your own 
sun ? Beyond those mountains, which you see 
at the horizon — beyond the lake which bounds ^ 
your territory on the west — there lie vast coun- 
tries where beasts of chase are found in great 
abundance. Sell your lands to us, and go and 
live happily in those solitudes.' 

"After holding this language, they spread 
before the eyes of the Indians fire-arms, woollen 
garments, kegs of brandy, glass neckhices, brace- 
lets of tinsel, ear-rings, and looking-glasses. 
If, when they have beheld all these riches, they 
still hesitate, it is insinuated that they have not 
the means of refusing their required consent^ 



692 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



and that the government itself will not long 
have the power of protecting them in their 
rights. What arc they to do ? Half convinced, 
half compelled, they go to inhahit new deserts, 
where the importunate whites will not permit 
them to remain ten years in tranquillity. In 
this manner do the Americans obtain, at a very 
low price, whole provinces, which the richest 
sovereigns in Europe could not purchase." 

The Grecian Plutarch deemed it necessary to 
reside forty years in Rome, to qualify himself 
to write the lives of some Roman citizens ; and 
then made mistakes. European writers do not 
deem it necessary to reside in our country at all 
in order to write our history. A sojourn of some 
months in the principal towns — a rapid flight 
along some great roads — the gossip of the steam- 
boat, the steam-car, the stage-coach, and the 
hotel — the whispers of some earwigs — with the 
reading of the daily papers and the periodicals, 
all more or less engaged in partisan warfare — 
and the view of some debates, or scene, in Con- 
gress, which may be an exception to its ordinary 
decorum and intelligence: these constitute a 
modem European traveller's qualifications to 
write American history. No wonder that they 
commit mistakes, even where the intent is honest. 
And no wonder that Mons. de Tocqueville, with 
admitted good intentions, but with no '" forty 
years " residence among us, should be no excep- 
tion to the rule which condemns the travelling 
European writer of American history to the 
compilation of facts manufactured for partisan 
effect, and to the invention of reasons supplied 
from his own fancy. I have already had occa- 
sion, several -times, to correct the errors of Mons. 
de Tocqueville. It is a compliment to him, 
implicative of respect, and by no means extend- 
ed to others, who err more largely, and of pur- 
pose, but less harmfully. His error in all that 
he has here written is profound ! and is injuri- 
ous, not merely to General Jackson, to whom 
his mistakes apply, but to the national charac- 
ter, made up as it is of the acts of individuals ; 
and which character it is the duty of every 
American to cherish and exalt in all that is 
worthy, and to protect and defend from all un- 
just imputation. It was in this sense that I 
marked this passage in De Tocqueville for re- 
futation as soon as his book appeared, and took 
steps to make the contradiction (so far as the 
alleged robbery and cheating of the Indians was 
concerned) authentic and complete, and as pub- 



lic and durable as the archives of the govern- 
ment itself In this sense I had a call made for 
a full, numerical, chronological and ofDcial state- 
ment of all our Indian purchases, from the be- 
gining of the federal government in 1789 to that 
day, 1840 — tribe b}^ tribe, cession by cession, 
year by year — for the fifty years which the gov- 
ernment had existed ; with the number of acres 
acquired at each cession, and the amount paid 
for each. 

The call was made in the Senate of the Uni- 
ted States, and answered by document No. 616, 
1st session, 2Gth Congress, in a document of 
thirteen printed tabular pages, and authenticated 
by the signatures of Mr. Van Buren, President ; 
Mr. Poinsett, Secretary at War ; and Mr. Hart- 
ley Crawford, Commissioner of Indian Affairs. 
From this document it appeared, that the Uni- 
ted States had paid to the Indians eighty-five 
millions of dollars for land purchases up to the 
year 1810 ! to which five or six millions maj- 
be added for purchases since — say ninety mil- 
lions. This is near six times as much as the 
United States gave the great Napoleon for 
Louisiana, the whole of it, soil and jurisdiction; 
and nearly three times as much as all three of 
the great foreign purchases — Louisiana, Florida 
and California — cost us ! and that for soil alone, 
and for so much as would only be a fragment 
of Louisiana or California. Impressive as this 
statement is in the gross, it becomes more so in 
the detail, and when applied to the particular 
tribes whose imputed sufferings have drawn so 
mournful a picture from Mons. de Tocqueville. 
These are the four great southern tribes — Creeks, 
Cherokees, Chickasaws and Choctaws. Applied 
to them, and the table of purchases and pay- 
ments stands thus : To the Creek Indians 
twenty-two millions of dollars for twenty-five 
millions of acres ; which is seven millions more 
than was paid France for Louisiana, and seven- 
teen millions more than was paid Spain for 
Florida. To the Choctaws, twenty-three mil- 
lions of dollars (besides reserved tracts), for 
twenty millions of acres, being three millions 
more than was paid for Louisiana and Florida. 
To the Cherokees, for eleven millions of acres, 
was paid about fifteen millions of dollars, the 
exact price of Louisana or California. To the 
Chickasaws, the whole net amount for which 
this country sold under the land system of the 
United States, and by the United States land 



ANNO 1836. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



693 



officers, three millions of dollars for six and 
three-quarter millions of acres, being the way 
the nation chose to dispose of it. Here are 
fifty-six millions to four tribes, leaving thirty 
millions to go to the small tribes whose names 
are unknown to history, and which it is probable 
the writer on American democracy had never 
heard of when sketching the picture of their 
fancied oppressions. 

I will attend to the case of these small re- 
mote tribes, and say that, besides their propor- 
tion of the remaining thirty-six millions of 
dollars, they received a kind of compensation 
Buitcd to their condition, and intended to induct 
them into the comforts of civilized life. Of 
these I will give one example, drawn from a 
treaty with the Osages, in 1839 ; and which was 
only in addition to similar benefits to the same 
tribe, in previous treaties, and which were ex- 
tended to all the tribes which were in the hunt- 
ing state. These benefits were, to these Osages, 
two blacksmith's shops, with four blacksmiths, 
with five hundred pounds of iron and sixty 
pounds of steel annually; a grist and a saw 
mill, with millers for the same ; 1,000 cows and 
calves ; two thousand breeding swine ; 1,000 
ploughs ; 1,000 sets of horse-gear ; 1,000 axes ; 
1,000 hoes ; a house each for ten chiefs, costing 
two hundred dollars apiece; to furnish these 
chiefs with six good wagons, sixteen carts, 
twenty-eight yokes of oxen, with yokes and 
log-chain ; to pay all claims for injuries com- 
mitted by the tribe on the white people, or on 
other Indians, to the amount of thirty thousand 
dollars ; to purchase their reserved lands at two 
dollars per acre ; three thousand dollars to re- 
imburse that sum for so much deducted from 
their annuity, in 1825, for property taken from 
the whites, and since returned ; and, finally, 
three chousand dollars more for an imputed 
wrongful withholding of that amount, for the 
same reason, in the annuity payment of the 
year 1829. In previous treaties, had been given 
seed grains, and seed vegetables, with fruit seeds 
and fruit trees ; domestic fowls ; laborers to 
plough up their ground and to make their fences, 
to raise crops and to save them, and teach the 
Indians how to farm ; with spinning, weaving, 
and sewing implements, and persons to show 
their use. Now, all this was in 'one single trea- 
ty, with an inconsiderable tribe, which had been 
largely provided for in the same way in six dif- 



ferent previous treaties ! And all the rude tribes 
— those in the hunting state, or just emerging 
from it — were provided for in the same manner, 
the object of the United States being to train 
them to agriculture and pasturage — to conduct 
them from the hunting to the pastoral and agri- 
cultvu'al state ; and for that purpose, and in ad- 
dition to all other benefits, are to be added the 
support of schools, the encouragement of mis- 
sionaries, and a small annual contribution to 
religious societies who take charge of their civ- 
ilization. 

Besides all this, the government keeps up a 
large establishment for the special care of the 
Indians, and the management of their affairs ; a 
special bureau, presided over by a commissioner 
at Washington City ; superintendents in differ- 
ent districts ; agents, sub-agents, and interpret- 
ers, resident with the tribe; and all charged 
with seeing to their rights and interests — seeing 
that the laws are observed towards them ; that 
no injuries are done them by the whites ; that 
none but licensed traders go among them ; that 
nothing shall be bought from them which is ne- 
cessary for their comfort, nor any thing sold to 
them which may be to their detriment. Among 
the prohibited articles are spirits of all kinds ; 
and so severe are the penalties on this head, that 
forfeiture of the license, forfeiture of the whole 
cargo of goods, forfeiture of the penalty of the 
bond, and immediate suit in the nearest federal 
court for its recovery, expulsion from the Indian 
country, and disability for ever to acquire another 
license, immediately follow every breach of the 
laws for the introduction of the smallest quan- 
tity of any kind of spirits. How unfortunate, 
then, in M. de Tocqueville to write, that kegs 
of brandy are spread before the Indians to in- 
duce them to sell their lands I How unfortunate 
in representing these purchases to be made in 
exchange for woollen garments, glass necklaces, 
tinsel bracelets, ear-rings, and looking-glasses ! 
What a picture this assertion of his makes by 
the side of the eighty-five millions of dollars at 
that time actually paid to those Indians for their 
lands, and the long and large list of agricultural 
articles and implements— long and large list of 
domestic animals and fowls— the ample supply 
of mills and shops, with mechanics to work 
them and teach their use— the provisions for 
schools and missionaries, for building fences and 
houses— which are found in the Osage treaty 



694 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



quoted, and which are to be found, more or less, 
in every treaty with every tribe emerging from 
the htmtcr state. The fact is, that the govern- 
ment of the United States has made it a fixed 
policy to cherish and protect the Indians, to im- 
prove their condition, and turn them to the 
habits of civilized life ; and great is the wrong 
and injury which the mistake of this writer has 
done to our national character abroad, in repre- 
senting the United States as cheating and rob- 
bing these children of the forest. 

But Mons. de Tocqucville has quoted names 
and documents, and particular instances of im- 
position upon Indians, to justify his picture ; and 
in doing so has committed the mistakes into 
which a stranger and sojourner may easily fall. 
lie cites the report of Messrs. Clark and Cass, 
and makes a wrong application — an inverted ap- 
plication — of what they reported. They were 
speaking of the practices of disorderly persons 
in trading with the Indians for their skins and 
furs. They were reporting to the government 
an abuse, for correction and punishment. They 
were not speaking of United States commission- 
ers, treating for the purchase of lands, but of 
individual traders, violating the laws. They 
were themselves those commissioners and super- 
intendents of Indian affairs, and governors of 
Territories, one for the northwest, in Michigan, 
the other for the far west, in Missouri ; and both 
noted for their justice and humanity to the In- 
dians, and for their long and careful adminis- 
tration of their affairs within their respective 
superintendencies. Jlons. de Tocqucville has 
quoted their words correctly, but with the comi- 
cal blunder of reversing thoir application, and 
applying to the commissioners themselves, in 
their land negotiations for the government, the 
cheateries which they were denouncing to the 
government, in the illicit traffic of lawless 
traders. This was the comic blunder of a 
stranger : yet this is to appear as American his- 
tory in Europe, and to be translated into our 
own language at home, and commended in a pre- 
face and notes. 



CHAPTER CLV. 

EECISION OF THE TKEASUEY CIRCULAR. 

Immediatkly upon the opening of the Senate 
and the organization of the body, Mr. Ewing, 
of Ohio, gave notice of his intention to move a 
joint resolution to rescind the treasury circular ; 
and on hearing the notice, Mr. Benton made it 
known that he would oppose the resolution at 
the second reading — a step seldom resorted to, 
except when the measure to be so opposed 
is deemed too flagrantly wrong to be entitled 
to the honor of rejection in the usual forms of 
legislation. The debate came on promptly, and 
upon the lead of the mover of the resolution, in 
a prepared and well-considered speech, in which 
he said : 

" This extraordinary paper was issued by the 
Secretary of the Treasury on the llth of July 
last, in the form of a circular to the receivers of 
public money in the several land offices in the 
United States, directing them, after the 15th of 
August then next, to receive in payment for 
public lands nothing but gold and silver and 
certificates of deposits, signed by the Treasurer 
of the United States, with a saving in favor of 
actual settlers, and bona fide residents in the 
State in which the land happened to lie. This 
saving was for a limited time, and expires, I 
think, to-morrow. The professed object of this 
order was to check the speculations in public 
lands ; to check excessive issues of bank paper 
in the West, and to increase the specie currency 
of the country ; and the necessity of the mea- 
sure was supported, or pretended to be support- 
ed, by the opinions of members of this body and 
the other branch of Congress. But, before I pro- 
ceed to examine in detail this paper, its charac- 
ter, and its consequences, I will briefly advert 
to the state of things out of which it g.-^ew. I 
am confident, and I believe I can make the thing 
manifest, that the avowed objects were not the 
onl}', nor even the leading objects for which this 
order was framed ; they may have influenced the 
minds of some who advised it, but those who 
I)lanned, and those who at last virtually exe- 
cuted it, were governed by other and different 
motives, which I shall proceed to explain. It 
was foreseen, prior to the commencement of the 
last session of Congress, that there would be a 
very large surplus of money in the public trea- 
sury beyond the wants of the country for all 
their reasonable expenditures. It was also well 
understood that the land bill, or some other 
measure for the distribution of this fund, would 
be again presented to Congress ; and, if the true 



ANNO 1836. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



695 



condition of the public sentiment were known 
and understood, that its distribution, in some 
form or other, would be demanded by the coun- 
try. On the other hand, it seems to have been 
determined by the party, and some of those who 
act with it thoroughly, that the money should 
remain where it was in the deposit banks, so 
that it could be wielded at pleasure by the exe- 
cutive. This order grew out of the contest to 
which I have referred. It was issued not by 
the advice of Congress or under the sanction of 
any law. It w^s delayed until Congress was 
fairly out of the city, and all possibility of inter- 
ference by legislation was removed ; and then 
came forth this new and last expedient. It was 
known that these funds, received for public 
lands, had become a chief source of revenue, and 
it may have occurred to some that the passage 
of a treasury order of this kind would have a 
tendency to embarrass the country ; and as the 
bill for the regulation of the deposits had just 
passed, the public might be brought to believe 
that all the mischief occasioned by the order 
was the effect of the distribution bill. It has, 
indeed, happened, that this scheme has failed; 
the public \inderstand it rightly, but that was 
not by any means certain at the time the mea- 
sure was devised. It was not then foreseen that 
the people would as generally see through the 
contrivance as it has since been found that they 
do. There may have been various other motives 
which led to the measure. Many minds were 
probably to be consulted ; for it is not to be pre- 
sumed that a step like this was taken without 
consultation, and guided by the will of a single 
individual alone. That is not the way in which 
these things are done. No doubt one effect 
hoped for by some was, that a check would be 
put to the sales of the public lands. The ope- 
ration of the order would naturally be, to raise 
the price of land by raising the price of the cur- 
rency in which it was to be paid for. But, while 
this 'would be the effect on small buyers, those 
who purchased on a large scale would be ena- 
bled to sell at an advance of ten or fifteen per 
cent, over what would have been given if the 
ITnited States lands had been open to purchasers 
in the ordinary way. Those who had borrowed 
money of the deposit banks and paid it out for 
lands, would thus be enabled to make sales to 
advantage ; and by means of such sales make 
payment to the banks who found it necessary 
to call in their large loans, in order to meet the 
provisions of the deposit bill. The order, tt.ere- 
fore, was likely to operate to the common benefit 
of the deposit banks and the great land dealers, 
while it counteracted the effect of the obnoxious 
deposit bill. There may have been yet another 
motive actuating some of those who devised this 
order. There was danger that the deposit banks, 
when called upon to refund the public treasure, 
would be unable to do it : indeed, it was said 
on this floor that the immediate effect of the 
distribution bill would be to break those banks. 
Now this treasury order would operate to col- 



lect the specie of the country into the land of- 
fices, whence it Avould inunediately go into the 
deposit banks, and would prove an acceptable 
aid to them while making the transfers required 
by law. These seem to me to have been among 
the real motives which led to the adoption of 
that order." 

Mr. Ewing then argued at length against the 
legality of the treasury circular, quoting the 
joint resolution of 1816, and insisting that its 
provisions had been violated ; also insisting on 
the largeness of the surplus, and that it had 
turned out to be much larger than was admitted 
by the friends of the administration ; which 
latter assertion was in fact true, because the 
appropriations for the public service (the bills 
for which were in the hands of the opposition 
members) had been kept off till the middle of 
the summer, and could not be used ; and so left 
some fifteen millions in the treasury of appro- 
priated money which fell under the terms of the 
deposit act, and became divisible as surplus. 

Mr. Benton replied to Mr. Ewing, saying : 

" In the first of these objects the present 
movement is twin brother to the famous reso- 
lution of 1833, but without its boldness ; for 
that resolution declared its object upon its face, 
while this one eschews specification, and insidi- 
ously seeks a judgment of condemnation by in- 
ference and argument. In the second of these 
objects every body will recognize the great de- 
sign of the second branch of the same famous 
resolution of 1833, which, in the restoration of 
the deposits to the Bank of the United States, 
clearly went to the establishment of the paper 
system, and its supremacy over the federal gov- 
ernment. The present movement, therefore, is 
a second edition of the old one, but a lame and 
impotent affair compared to that. Then, we had 
a magnificent panic ; now, nothing but a misera- 
ble starveling! For though the letter of the 
president of the Bank of the United States an- 
nounced, early m November, that the meeting 
of Congress was the time for the new distress 
to become intense, yet we are two weeks deep 
in the session, and no distress memorial, no dis- 
tress deputation, no distress committees, to this 
hour! Nothing, in fact, in that line, but the 
distress speech of the gentleman from Ohio [.Mr 
Ewing] ; so that the new panic of 1830 has all 
the signs of being a lean and slender affair— a 
mere church-mouse concern— a sort ot dwarl- 
ish, impish imitation of the gigantic spectre which 
stalked through the laud in 1833." 

Mr. Benton then showed that this subaltern 
and Lilliputian panic was brought upon the stage 
in the same way, and by the same managers, with 
its gi-antic brother of 1833-'34 ; and quoted from 



696 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



a published letter of Mr. Biddle in November 
preceding, and a public speech of Mr. Clay in 
the month of September precedinp;, in which 
thej^gavo out the programme for the institution 
of the little panic ; and the proceeding against 
the President for violating the laws ; and against 
the treasury order itself as the cause of the new 
distress. Mr. Biddle in his publication said: 
" Our pecuniary condition seems to be a strange 
anomaly. When Congress adjourned, it left 
the country with abundant crops, and high 
prices for them — with every branch of industry 
flourishing, and with more specie than we ever 
had before — with all the elements of univei'sal 
prosperity. None of these have midergone the 
slightest change ; yet, after a few months, Con- 
gress will re-assemble, and find the whole coun- 
tr}"^ suffering intense pecuniary distress. The 
occasion of this, and the remedy for it, will oc- 
cupy our thoughts. In my judgment, the main 
aiuse of it is the mismanagement of the reve- 
nue — mismanagement in two respects : the mode 
of executing the distribution law, and the order 
requiring specie for the payment of the public 
lands — an act which seems to me a most wan- 
ton abuse of power, if not a flagrant usurpation. 
The remedy follows the causes of the evils. The 
first measure of relief, therefoi'e, should be the 
instant repeal of the treasury order requiring 
specie for lands ; the second, the adoption of a 
proper system to execute the distribution law. 
These measures would restore confidence in 
twenty-four hours, and repose in at least as 
many days. If the treasury will not adopt them 
voluntarily. Congress should immediately com- 
mand it." This was the recommendation, or 
mandate, of the president of the Bank of the 
Uniteel States, still acting as a part of the na- 
tional legislative power even in its new trans- 
formation, and keeping an eye upon that dis- 
tribution which. Congress passed as a deposit, 
which he had recommended as raising the price 
of the State stocks held by the bank ; and the 
delay in the delivery of which he considers as 
one of the causes which had brought on the new 
distress. ;\Ir. Clay in his Lexington speech had 
taken the same grounds ; and speaking of the 
continued tampering with the currency by the 
sidnunistration, went on to say : 

'■ One rash, lawless, and crude experiment 
succeeds another. He considered the late trea- 
sury order, by which all payments for public lands 



were to be in specie, with one exception, for a 
short duration, a most ill-advised, illegal, and 
pernicious measure. In principle it was wrong 
in practice it will fovor the very speculation 
which it professes to endeavor to suppress. 
The officer who issued it, as if conscious of its 
obnoxious character, shelters himself behind the 
name of the President. But the President and 
Secretary had no right to promulgate any such 
order. The law admits of no such discrimina- 
tion. If the resolution of the 3()th of April, 
1816, continued in operation (and the adminis- 
tration on the occasion of the removal of the de- 
posits, and on the present occasion, relies upon 
it as in full force), it gave the Secretary no such 
disci'etion as he has exercised. That resolution 
required and directed the Secretary of the 
Treasury to adopt such measures as he might 
deem necessary, ' to cause, as soon as may be, 
all duties, taxes, debts, or sums of money, ac- 
cruing or becoming payable to the United States, 
to be collected and paid in the legal currency of 
the United States, or treasury notes, or notes 
of the Bank of the United States, as by law pro- 
vided and declared, or in notes of banks which 
are payable and paid on demand, in said legal 
currency of the United States.' This resolution 
was restrictive and prohibitorj- upon the Secre- 
tary only as to the notes of banks not rcdeem-i 
able in specie on demand. As to all such notes, 
he was forbidden to receive them from and after 
the 20th of February, 1817. As to tlie notes 
of banks which were payable and paid on de- 
mand in specie, the resolution was not merely 
permissive, it was compulsory and mandatory. 
He was bound, and is yet bound, to receive 
them, until Congress interfere." 

Mr. Benton replied to the arguments of Mr. 
Ewing, the letter of jNIr. Biddle, and the speech 
of Mr. Clay ; and considered them all as identi- 
cal, and properly answered in the lump, without, 
special reference to the co-operating assailants. 
On the point of the alleged illegality of the 
treasury order, he produced the Joint Resolu- 
tion of 181G under which it was done ; and then 
said: 

" This is the law, and nothing can be plainer 
than the right of selection which it gives to 
the Secretary of the Treasury. Four differ- 
ent media are mentioned in which the revenue 
may be collected, and the Secretary is made 
the actor, the agent, and the power, by which 
the collection is to be effected. He is to 
do it in one, or in another. He may choose 
several, or all, or two, or one. All are in 
the disjunctive. No two are joined together, 
but all are disjoined, and presented to him in- 
dividually and separately. It is clearly the 
right of the Secretary to order the collections 
to be made in either of the four media mention- 
ed. That the resolution id not mandatory in 



ANNO 1836. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



697 



favor of any one of the four, is obvious from the 
manner in which the notes of the Bank of the 
United States are mentioned. They were to be 
received as then provided for by law ; for the 
bank charter had then just passed ; and the 14th 
section had provided for the reception of the 
notes of this mstitution until Congress, by law 
should direct otherwise. The right of the in- 
stitution to deliver its notes in payment of the 
revenue, was anterior to this resolution, and al- 
ways held under that 14th section, never under 
this joint resolution, and when that section was 
repealed at the last session of this Congress, that 
right was admitted to be gone, and has never 
been claimed since. The words of the law are 
clear ; the practice under it has been uniform 
and uninterrupted from the date of its passage 
to the present day. For twenty years, and un- 
der three Presidents, all the Secretaries of the 
Treasury have acted alike. Each has made se- 
lections, permitting the notes of some specie- 
paying banks to be received, and forbidding 
others. Mr. Crawford did it in numerous in- 
stances ; and fierce and universal as were the 
attacks upon that eminent patriot, during the 
presidential canvass of 1824, no human being 
ever thought of charging him with illegality in 
this respect. Mr. Rush twice made similar se- 
lections, during the administration of Mr. Adams, 
and no one, either in the same cabinet with him, 
or out of the cabinet against him, ever complain- 
ed of it For twenty years the practice has 
been uniform ; and every citizen of the West 
knows that that practice was the general, though 
not universal, exclusion of the Western specie- 
paying bank paper from the Western land offices. 
This every man in the West knows, and knows 
that that general exclusion continued down to 
the day that the Bank of the United States ceas- 
ed to be the depository of the public moneys. 
It was that event which opened the door to the 
receivability of State bank paper which has 
since been enjoyed." 

Having vindicated the treasury order from 
the charge of illegality, Mr. Benton took up the 
head of the new distress, and said : 

" The news of all this approaching calamity 
was given out in advance in the Kentucky 
speech and the Philadelphia letter, already re- 
ferred to ; and the fact of its positive advent 
and actual presence was vouched by the senator 
from Ohio [Mr. Ewing] on the last day that the 
Senate was in session. I do not permit myself 
(said Mr. B.) to bandy contradictory assevera- 
tions and debatable assertions across tliis floor. 
I choose rather to make an issue, and to test 
assertion by the application of evidence. In this 
way I will proceed at present. I will take the 
letter of the president of the Bank of the United 
States as being oflBcial in this case, and most au- 
thoritative in the distress department of this com- 
bined movement against President Jackson. He 
announces, in November, the forthcoming of the 



national calamity in December ; and after charg- 
ing part of this ruin and mischief on the mor?e 
of executing what he ostentatiously styles the 
distribution law, when there is no such law in 
the country, he goes on to cliarge the remainder, 
being ten-fold more than the former u;)on the 
Treasury order which excludes paper money 
from the land ofBces." 

^Ir. Benton then read Mr. Biddle's description 
of the new distress, which, in his publication 
was awful and appalling, but which, he said, was 
nowhere visible except in the localities where 
the bank had power to make it. It was a pic- 
ture of woe and ruin, but not without hope and 
remedy if Congress followed his directions ; in 
the mean time he thus instructed the country 
how to behave, and promised his co-operation — 
that of the bank — in the overthrow of President 
Jackson, and his successor, Mr. Van Buren (for 
that is what he meant in this passage) : 

" In the mean time, all forbearance and calm- 
ness should be maintained. There is great rea- 
son for anxiety — none whatever for alarm ; and 
with mutual confidence and courage, the coun- 
try may yet be able to defend itself against the 
government. In that struggle my own poor 
efforts shall not be wanting. I go for the coun- 
try, whoever rules it. I go for the country, 
best loved when worst governed — and it will 
afibrd me far more gratification to assist in re- 
pairing wrongs, than to triumph over those who 
inflict them." 

This pledge of aid in a struggle with the gov- 
ernment was a key to unlock the meaning of the 
movements then going on to produce the general 
suspension of specie payments in all the banks 
which saluted the administration of Mr. Van 
Buren in the first quarter of its existence, and 
was intended to produce it in its first month. 
Considering specie payments as the only Sftfe^y 
of the country, and foreseeing the general bank 
explosions, chiefly contrived by the Bank of the 
United States, which was to rc-appcar in the 
ruin, and claim its re-establishment as the only 
remedy for the evils which itself and its confed- 
erates created, Mr. Benton said : 

" There is no safety for the federal revenues 
but in the total exclusion of local paper, and 
that from every branch of the revenue — customs, 
lands, and post olfice. There is no saR^ty for 
the national finances but in the constitutional 
medium of gold and silver. vUter forty years 
of wandering in the wilderness of ))aper money, 
we have approached the confines of the consti- 
tutional medium. Seventy-five millions of specie 
m the country, with the prospect of annual in- 



698 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



ci'case of ten or twelve millions for the next four 
years ; three branch mints to commence next 
spring, and the complete restoration of the f!;old 
currenc}' ; announce the success of President 
Jackson's gieat measures for the reform of the 
current) and vindicate the constitution from the 
libel of having prescribed an impracticable cur- 
rency. The success is complete ; and there is 
no way to thwart it, but to put down the treas- 
ur}' order, and to re-open the public lands to the 
inundation of paper monej'. Of this, it is not 
to be dissembled, there is great danger. Four 
deeply interested classes are at work to do it — 
speculators, local banks, United States Bank, 
and politicians out of power. They may succeed, 
but he (Mr. B.) would not despair. The dark- 
est hour of night is just before the break of day ; 
and, through the gloom ahead, he saw the bright 
vision of the constitutional currency erect, ra- 
diant, and victorious. Through regulation, or 
explosion, success must eventually come. If re- 
form measures go on, gold and silver will be 
gradually and temperately restored ; if reform 
measures are stopped, then the paper system 
runs riot, and explodes from its own expansion. 
Then the Bank of the United States will exult 
in the catastrophe, and claim its own re-estab- 
lishment, as the only adequate regulator of the 
local banks. Then it will be said the specie ex- 
periment has failed ! But no ; the conti-ary will 
be known, that the specie experiment has not 
failed, but it was put down by the voice and 
power of the interested classes, and must be put 
up again by the voice and power of the disinter- 
ested community." 

This was uttered in December 183G: in April 
1837 it was history. 

Mr. Crittenden, of Kentucky, replied to Mr. 
Benton ; and said : 

•• The senator from Missouri had exhibited a 
table, the results of which he had pressed with 
a very triumphant air. Was it extraordinary 
that the deposit banks should be strengthened? 
The effect of the order went directly to sustain 
them. But it was at the expense of all the 
other banks of the country. Under this order, 
all the specie was collected and carried into their 
vaults : an operation which went to disturb and 
embarrass the general circulation of the country, 
and to produce that pecuniary difficulty which 
was felt in all quarters of tlie Union. Mr. C. 
did not profess to be competent to judge how 
far the whole of this distress was attributable 
to the operation of the treasury order, but of 
this at least he was very sure, through a great 
part of the Western country, it was universally 
attril)uted to that cause. The senator from 
Missoui'i supposed that the order had produced 
no part of this pressure. If not, he would ask 
what it had produced ? Had it increased the 
specie in the coantry ? Had it increased the 
Bpecie in actual and general circulation ? If it 
Iiad done no evilj what good had it done '? This, 



he believed was as yet undiscovered. So far aa 
it had operated at all, it had been to derange 
the state of the currency, and to give it a direc- 
tion inverse to the course of business. The 
honorable senator, however, could not see ho'n 
moving money across a street could operate tc 
affect the currency ; and seemed to suppose that 
moving money from west to east, or from east 
to west, would have as little effect. Money, 
however, if left to itself, would always move ac- 
cording to the ordinary course of business trans- 
actions. This course might indeed be disturbed 
for a time, but it would be like forcing the needle 
away from the pole : 3'ou might turn it round 
and round as often as you pleased, but, left to 
itself, it would still settle at the north. Our 
great commercial cities were the natural reposi- 
tories where money centred and settled. There 
it was wanted, and it was more valuable if left 
there than if carried into the interior. Any in- 
telligent business man in the West would rather 
have money paid him for a debt in New-York 
than at his own door. It was worth more to 
him. If, then, specie was forced, by treasury 
tactics, to take a direction contrary to the natu- 
ral course of business, and to move from east to 
west, the operation would be beneficial to none, 
injurious to all. It was not in the power of gov- 
ernment to keep it in a false direction or posi- 
tion. Specie was in exile whenever it was forced 
out of that place where business called for it. 
Such an operation did no real good. It was a 
forced movement and was soon overcome by the 
natural course of things. 

"Mr. C. was well aware that men might be 
deluded and m^ystified on this subject, and that 
while the delusion lasted, this treasury order 
might be held up before the eyes of men as a 
splendid arrangement in finance ; but it was 
only like the natural rainbow, which owed its 
very existence to the mist in which it had its 
being. The moment the atmosphere was clear, 
its bright colors vanished from the view. So it 
would be with this matter. The specie of the 
country must resume its natural course. Man 
might as well escape from the physical necessi- 
ties of their nature, as from the laws which gov- 
erned the movements of finance : and the man 
who professed to reverse or dispense with the 
one was no greater quack than he who made 
the same professions with regard to the other. 

" But it was said to be the distribution bill 
which had done all the mischief; and Mr. C. 
was ready to admit that the manner in which 
the government had attempted to carr}' that 
law into effect might in part have furnished the 
basis for such a supposition. He had no doubt 
that the pecuniary evils of the country had been 
aggravated by the manner in which this had 
been done." 

I\Ir. Webster also replied to Mr. Benton, in an 
elaborate speech, in whicli, before arguing the 
legal question, he said : 



ANNO 1836. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



699 



" The honorable member from Missouri (Mr. 
Benton) objects even to giving the resokition to 
rescind a second reading. He avails himself of 
hLs right, though it be not according to general 
practice, to arrest the progress of the measure 
at its first stage. This, at least, is open, bold, 
and manly warfare. The honorable member, in 
his elaborate speech, founds his opposition to 
this resolution, and his support of the treasury 
order, on those general principles respecting 
currency which he is known to entertain, and 
which he has maintained for many yeiirs. His 
opinions some of us regard as altogether ultra 
and impracticable ; looking to a state of things 
not desirable in itself, even if it were practica- 
ble ; and, if it were desirable, as being far be- 
yond the power of this government to bring 
about. 

'• The honorable member has manifested much 
perseverance and abundant labor, most undoubt- 
edly, in support of his opinions ; he is under- 
stood, also, to have had countenance from high 
places ; and what new hopes of success the pre- 
sent moment holds out to him, I am not able to 
judge, but we shall probably soon see. It is pre- 
cisely on these general and long-known opinions 
that he rests his support of the treasury order. 
A question, therefore, is at once raised between 
the gentleman's principles and opinions on the 
subject of the currency, and the principles and 
opinions which have generally prevailed in the 
countrj", and which are, and have been, entirely 
opposite to his. That question is now about to 
be put to the vote of the Senate. In the pro- 
gress and by the termination of this discussion, 
we shall learn whether the gentleman's senti- 
ments are or are not to prevail, so far, at least, 
as the Senate is concerned. The country will 
rejoice, I am sure, to see some declaration of the 
opinions of Congress on a subject about which 
so much has been said, and which is so well cal- 
culated, by its perpetual agitation, to disquiet 
and disturb the confidence of society. 

•' We are now fast approaching the day when 
one administration goes out of office, and an- 
other is to come in. The country has an inte- 
rest in learning, as soon as possible, whether the 
new administration, while it receives the power 
and patronage, is to inherit, also, the topics and 
the projects of the past ; whether it is to keep 
up the avowal of the same objects and the same 
schemes, especially in regard to the currency. 
The order of the Secretary is prospective, an 1, 
on the face of it, perpetual. Nothing in )r 
about it gives it the least appearance of a tem- 
porary measure. On the contrary, its terms 
imply no limitation in point of duration, and the 
gradual manner in which it is to come into ope- 
ration shows plainly an intention of making it 
the settled and permanent policy of government. 
Indeed, it is but now beginning its complete ex- 
istence! It is only five or six days since its full 
operation has commenced. Is it to stand as the 
law of the land and the rule of the treasury, 
under the administration which is to ensue? 



And are those notions of an exclusive specia 
currency, and opposition to all banks, on which 
it is defended, to be espoused and maintained by 
the new administration, as they have been by its 
predecessor ? These are questions, not of mere 
curiosity, but of the highest interest to the 
whole country. In considering this order, th« 
first thing naturally is, to look for the causes 
which led to it, or are assigned for its promulga- 
tion. And these, on the face of the order itselfj 
are declared to be ' complaints which have been 
made of frauds, speculations, and monopolies, in 
the purchase of the public lands, and the aid 
which is said to be given to effect these objects, 
by excessive bank credits, and dangerous, if not 
partial, facilities through bank drafts and bank 
deposits, and the general evil influence likely to 
result to the public interest, and especially the 
safety of the great amount of money in the trea 
sury, and the sound condition of the currency 
of the coimtry, from the further exchange of the 
national domain in this manner, and chiefly for 
bank credits and paper money.' 

" This is the catalogue of evils to be cured by 
this order. In what these frauds consist, what 
are the monopolies complained of, or what is 
precisely intended by these injurious specula- 
tions, we are not informed. All is left on the 
general surmise of fraud, speculation, and mono- 
poly. It is not avowed or intimated that the 
government has sustained any loss, either by 
the receipt of the bank notes which proved not 
to be equivalent to specie, or in any other way. 
And it is not a little remarkable that these evils, 
of fraud, speculation, and monopoly, should have 
become so enormous and so notorious, on the 
11th of July, as to require this executive inter- 
ference for their suppression, and yet that they 
should not have reached such a height as to 
make it proper to lay the subject before Con- 
gress, although Congress remained in session 
until within seven days of the date of the order. 
And what makes this circumstance still more 
remarkable, is the fact that, in his annual mes- 
sage, at the commencement of the same session, 
the President had spoken of the rapid sales of 
the public lands as one of the most gratifying 
proofs of the general prosperity of the country, 
without suggesting that any danger whatever 
was to be apprehended from fraud, speculation, 
or monopoly. His words were: -Among the 
evidences of the increasing prosperity of the 
country, not the least gratifying, is that aiVonlcd 
by the receipts from the sales of the public 
lands, which amount, in the present year, to the 
unexpected sum of eleven millions.' From the 
time of the delivery of that message, down to 
the date of the treasury order, there liad not 
been the least change, so far as I know, t>r so 
far as wc are informed, in the manner of rcceiv- 
ino- payment for the public lands. Every tiling 
stood, on the ILth of July, 1830. as it had .^tood 
at the opening of the session, in December, Iboo. 
How so difl'erent a view of tilings happened to 
be taken at the two periods, wc may be able to 



700 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



learn, perhaps, in the further progress of this 
debate, 

"The order speaks of the 'evil influence' 
likely to result from the further exchange of the 
public lands into ' paper money.' Now, this is 
the very language of the gentleman from Mis- 
souri, lie habituall}' speaks of the notes of all 
banks, however solvent, and however promptly 
their notes may be redeemed in gold and silver, 
as ' paper money.' The Secretary has adopted 
the honorable member's phrases, and he speaks, 
too, of all the bank notes received at the land 
offices, although every one of them is redeem- 
able in specie, on demand, but as so much ' paper 
money.' In this respect, also, sir, I hope we 
may know more as we grow older, and be able 
to learn whether, in times to come, as in times 
recently passed, the justly obnoxious and odious 
character of ' paper money ' is to be applied to 
the issues of all the banks in all the States, 
with whatever punctuality they redeem their 
bills. This is quite new, as financial language. 
By paper money, in its obnoxious sense. I under- 
stand paper issues on credit alone, without capi- 
tal, witliout funds assigned for its payment, rest- 
ing only on the good faith and the future abihty 
of those who issue it. Such was the paper mo- 
ney of our revolutionary times ; and such, per- 
haps, may have been the true character of the 
paper of particular institutions since. But the 
notes of banks of competent capitals, limited in 
amount to a due proportion to such capitals, 
made payable on demand in gold and silver, and 
alwa)'s so paid on demand, are paper monej' in 
no sense but one ; that is to say, they are made 
of paper, and they circulate as money. And it 
may be proper enough for those who maintain 
that nothing shoidd so circulate but gold and 
silver, to denominate such bank notes 'paper mo- 
nej',' since they regard them but as paper intrud- 
ers into channels which should flow only with 
gold and silver. If this language of the order 
is authentic, and is to be so hereafter, and all 
bank notes are to be regarded and stigmatized 
as mere ' i)aper monej'^,' the sooner the country 
knows it the better. 

"The member from Missouri charges those 
who wish to rescind the treasury order with 
two objects : first, to degrade and disgrace the 
President ; and, next, to overthrow the consti- 
tutional currency of the country. For my own 
part, sir, I denoimce nobody ; I seek to degrade 
or disgrace nobody. Holding the order illegal 
and unwise, I shall certainly vote to rescind it ; 
and, in the discharge of this duty, I hope I am 
not expected to shrink back, lest I might do 
something which might call in question the wis- 
dom of the Secretary, or even of the President. 
And I hope that so much of independence as 
may be manifested by free discussion and an 
honest vote is not to cause denunciation from 
any quarter. If it should, let it come." 

It became a very extended debate, in which 



Mr. Niles, Mr. Rives, IMr. Hubbard, Mr. South- 
ard, Mr. Strange of N. C, Mr. Clay, Mr. Walker 
of Miss., and others partook. The subject having 
been referred to the committee of public lands, 
of which Mr. Walker was chairman, reported a 
bill, '' limiting and designating the funds receiv- 
able for the revenues of the United States ; " the 
object of which was to rescind the treasur}' cir- 
cular without naming it, and to continue the 
receipt of bank notes in payment of all dues to 
the government. Soon after the bill was re- 
ported, and had received its second reading, a 
motion was made in the Senate to lay the im- 
pending subject (public lands) on the table for 
the purpose of considering the bill reported by 
Mr. Walker to limit and designate the funds 
receivable in public dues. Mr. Benton was taken 
by surprise by this motion, which was imme- 
diately agreed to, and the bill ordered to be en- 
grossed for a third reading the next day. To 
that third reading Mr. Benton looked for his 
opportunity to speak ; and availed himself of it, 
commencing his speech with giving the reason 
why he did not speak the evening before when 
the question was on the engrossment of the 
bill. He said he could not have foreseen that 
the subject depending before the Senate, the bill 
for limiting the sales of the public lands to ac- 
tual settlers, would be laid down for the purpose 
of taking up this subject out of its order ; and, 
therefore, had not brought with him some mem- 
orandums which he intended to use when this 
subject came up. He did not choose to ask for 
delay, because his habit was to speak to subjects 
when they were called ; and in this particular 
cause he did not think it material when he spoke ; 
for he was very well aware that his speaking 
would not affect the fate of the bill. It would 
pass ; and that was known to all in the chamber. 
It was known to the senator from Ohio (Mr. 
Ewing) who indulged himself in saying he 
thought otherwise a few days ago; but that 
was only a good-natured way of stimulating his 
friends, and bringing them up to the scratch. 
The bill would pass, and that by a good vote, 
for it would have the vote of the opposition, and 
a division of the administration vote. Why, 
then, did he speak ? Because it was due to his 
position, and the part he had acted on the cur- 
rency questions, to express his sentiments more 
fully on this bill, so vital to the general curren- 
cy, than could be done by a mere negative vote. 



ANNO 1836. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



vol 



He should, therefore, speak against it, and 
should direct his attention to the bill reported 
by the Public Land Committee, which had so 
totally changed the character of the proceeding 
on this subject. The recision of the treasury 
order was introduced a resolution — it went out 
a resolution — but it came back a bill, and a bill 
to regulate, not the land oflBce receipts only, but 
all the receipts of the federal goyernment ; and 
in this new form is to become statute law, and 
a law to operate on all the revenues, and to re- 
peal all other laws upon the subject to which it 
related. In this new form it assumes an im- 
portance, and acquires an eSect, infinitely be- 
yond a resolution, and becomes in fact, as well 
as in name, a totally new measure. Mr. B. 
reminded the Senate that he had, in his first 
speech on this subject, given it as his opinion, 
that two main objects were proposed to be ac- 
complished by the rescinding i-esolution ; first, 
the implied condemnation of President Jackson 
for violating the laws and constitution, and de- 
stroying the prosperity of the country ; and, se- 
condly, the imposition of the paper currency of 
the States upon the federal government. "With 
respect to the first of these objects, he presumed 
it was fully proved by the speeches of all the 
opposition senators who had spoken on this sub- 
ject ; and, with respect to the second, he be- 
lieved it would find its proof in the change which 
the original resolution had undergone, and the 
form it was now assuming of statute law, and 
especially with the proviso which was added at 
the end of the second section. 

Mr. B. then took up the bill reported by the 
committee, and remarked, first, upon its phrase- 
ology, not in the spirit of verbal criticism, but 
in the spirit of candid objection and fair argu- 
ment. There were cases in which words were 
things, and this was one of those cases. Money 
was a thing, and the only words in the constitu- 
tion of that thing were, " gold and silver coin." 
The bill of the committee was systematically 
exclusive of the words which meant this thing, 
and used words which included things which 
were not money. These words were, then, a 
fair subject of objection and argument, because 
they went to set aside the money of the consti- 
tution, and to admit the pubhc revenues to be 
paid in something which was not money. The 
title of the bill uses the word '' funds." It pro- 
fesses to designate the funds receivable for the 



revenues of the United States. Upon this word 
Mr. B. had remarked before, as being one of the 
most indefinite in the English language ; and, 
so far from signifying money only, even paper 
money only, that it comprehended every varietj^ 
of paper security, public or private, individual or 
corporate out of which monej' could be raised. 
The retention of this word by the committee, 
after the objections made to it, were indicative 
of their intentions to lay open the federal trea- 
sury to the reception of something which was 
not constitutional money ; and this intention, 
thus disclosed in the title to the bill, was fully 
carried out in its enactments. The words " legal 
currency of the United States " are twice used 
in the first section, when the words " gold and 
silver " would have been more appropriate and 
more definite, if hard money was intended. 

Mr. B. admitted that, in the eye of a regular 
bred constitutional lawyer, legal currency might 
imply constitutional currency ; but certain it 
was that the common and popular meaning of 
the phrase was not limited to constitutional 
money, but included every currency that the 
statute law made receivable for debts. Thus, 
the notes of the Bank of the United States were 
generally considered as legal currency, because 
receivable by law in payment of public dues ; 
and in like manner the notes of all specie-paying 
banks would, under the committee's bill, rise to 
the dignity of legal currency. The second sec- 
tion of the bill twice used the word " cash ; " a 
word which, however understood at the Bank 
of England, where it always means ready money, 
and where ready money signifies gold coin in 
hand, yet with the banks with which we have 
to deal it has no such meaning, but includes all 
sorts of current paper money on hand, as well 
as gold and silver on hand. 

Having remarked upon the phraseology of the 
bill, and shown that a paper currency composed 
of the notes of a thousand local banks, not only 
might become the currency of the federal go- 
vernment, but was evidently intended to be 
made its currency ; and that in the face of all 
the protestations of the friends of the adniinis- 
tration in favor of re-establishing the national 
gold currency, Mr. B. would now take up tho 
bill of the committee under two or three other 
aspects, and show it to be as mistaken in its 
design as it would be impotent in its elfect. In 
the first place, it transferred the business of 



702 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



suppressing the small note circulation from 
the deposit branch to the collecting branch of 
the public revenue. At present, the business 
was in a course of progress through the deposit 
banks, as a condition of holding the public 
moneys ; and, as such, had a place in the deposit 
act of the last session, and also had a place in 
the President's message of the last session, 
where the suppression of paper currency under 
twenty dollars was expressly referred to the 
action of the deposit banks, and as a condition 
of their retaining the public deposits. It was 
through the deposit banks, and not through the 
reception of local bank paper, that the suppres- 
sion of small notes should be effected. In the 
next place, he objected to the committee's bill, 
because it proposed to make a bargain with each 
of the thousand banks now in the United States, 
and the hundreds more which will soon be born ; 
and to give them a right — a right by law — to 
have their notes received at the federal treasury. 
He was against such a bargain. He had no idea 
of making a contract with these thousand banks 
for the reception of their notes. He had no idea 
of contracting with them, and giving them a 
right to plead the constitution of the United 
States against us, if, at any time, after having 
agreed to receive their notes, upon condition 
that they would give up their small circulation, 
they should choose to say we had impaired the 
contract by not continuing to receive them ; and 
so either relapse into the issue of this small trash, 
or have recourse to the judicial process to com- 
pel the United States to abide the contract, and 
continue the reception of all their notes. Mr. 
B. had no idea of letting down this federal go- 
vernment to such petty and inconvenient bar- 
gains with a thousand moneyed corporations. 
The government of the United States ought to 
act as a government, and not as a contractor. 
It should prescribe conditions, and not make 
bargains. It should give the law. lie was 
against these bargains, even if tliey were good 
ones ; but they were bad bargains, wretchedl}- 
bad, and ought to be rejected as such, even if 
all higher and nobler considerations were out of 
the question. What is the consideration that 
the United States is to receive ? A mere indi- 
vidual agreement with each bank by itself, that 
in three years it will cease to issue notes under 
ten dollars and in five years it will cease to issue 
notes under twenty dollars. What is the price 



which she pays for this consideration ? In the 
first place, it receives the notes of such bank as 
gold and silver at all the land-ofiices, custom- 
houses, and post-offices, of the United States ; 
and, of course, pays them out again as gold and 
silver to all her debtors. In the next place, it 
compels the deposit banks to credit them as cash. 
In the third place, it accredits the whole circu- 
lation of the banks, and makes it current all over 
the United States, in consequence of universal 
receivability for all federal dues. In other words, 
it endorses, so far as credit is concerned, the 
whole circulation of every bank that comes into 
the bargain thus proposed. This is certainly a 
most wretched bargain on the part of the United 
States — a bargain in which what she receives is 
ruinous to her ; for the more local payment she 
receives in paj-ment of her revenues, the worse 
for her, and the sooner will her treasury be filled 
with unavailable funds. 

Mr. B. having gone over these objections to 
the committee's bill, would now ascend to a 
class of objections of a higher and graver cha- 
racter. He had already remarked that the 
committee had carried out a resolution, and had 
brought back a bill ; that the committee pro- 
posed a statutory enactment, where the senator 
from Ohio [Mr. Ewing], and the senator from 
Virgiitia [Mr. Rives], had only proposed a joint 
resolution ; and he had already further remarked, 
that in addition to this total change in the 
mode of action, the committee had added what 
neither of these senators had proposed, a clause, 
under a proviso, to enact paper money into cash 
— to pass paper money to the credit of the 
United States, as cash — and to punish, by the 
loss of the deposits, any deposit bank which 
should refuse so to receive, so to credit, and so 
to pass, the notes " receivable " under the provi- 
sions of their bill. These two changes make en- 
tirely a new measure — one of wholly a different 
character from the resolutions of the two sena- 
tors — a measure which openly and in terms, and 
under jienalties undertakes to make local State 
paper a legal tender to the federal government, 
and to compel the reception of all its revenues in 
the notes '' receivable " under the provisions of 
the committee's bill. After this gigantic step — 
this colossal movement — in favor of paper money, 
there was but one step more for the committee 
to take ; and that was to make these notes a 
legal tender in all payments from the federal 



ANNO 1836. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



703 



government. But that step was unnecessary 
to be taken in words, for it is taken in fact, when 
the other great step becomes law. For it is in- 
contestable that what the government receives, 
it must pay out ; and what it pays out becomes 
the currency of the country. So that when 
this bill passes, the paper money of the local 
banks will be a tender by law to the federal 
government, and a tender by duresse from the 
government to its creditors and the people. 
This is the state to which the committee's bill 
will bring us ! and now, let us pause and con- 
template, for a moment, the position we occupy, 
and the vast ocean of paper on which we are 
proposed to be embarked. 

Wc stand upon a constitution which recog- 
nizes nothing but gold and silver for money ; we 
stand upon a legislation of near fifty years, 
which recognizes nothing but gold and silver 
money. Now, for the first time, we have a sta- 
tutory enactment proposed to recognize the 
paper of a wilderness of local banks for money, 
and in so doing to repeal all prior legislation by 
law, and the constitution by fact. This is an 
era in our legislation. It is statute law to con- 
trol all other law, and is not a resolution to 
aid other laws, and to express the opinions of 
Congress. It is statutory enactment to create 
law, and not a declaratory resolution to expound 
law ; and the effects of this statute would be, to 
make a paper government — to insure the ex- 
portation of our specie — to leave the State 
banks without foundations to rest upon — to pro- 
duce a certain catastrophe in the whole paper 
system — to revive the pretensions of the United 
States Bank — and to fasten for a time the Adam 
Smith system upon the Federal Government and 
the whole Union, 

Mr. Benton concluded his speech with a 
warning against the coming explosion of the 
banks ; and said : 

The day of revulsion may come sooner or later, 
and its effects maybe more or less disastrous ; but 
come it must, and disastrous, to some degree, it 
must be. The present bloat in the paper system 
cannot continue ; the present depreciation of 
money exemplified in the high price of every 
thing dependent upon the home market, cannot 
last. The revulsion will come, as surely as it did 
in 1819-'20. But it will come with less force if 
the treasury order is maintained, and if paper 



money shall be excluded from the federal trear 
sury. But, let these things go as they may 
and let reckless or mischievous banks do what 
they please, there is still a refuge for the wise 
and good ; there is still an ark of safety for 
every honest bank, and for every prudent man ; 
it is in the mass of gold and silver now in the 
country— the seventy odd millions which tlie 
wisdom of President Jackson's administration 
has accumulated — and by getting their share of 
which, all who are so disposed can take care of 
themselves. Sir (said IMr. B.), I have performed 
a duty to myself, not pleasant, but nccessarj'. 
This bill is to be an era in our legislation and in 
our political history. It is to be a point upon 
which the future age will be thrown back, and 
from which future consequences will be traced. 
I separate myself from it ; I wash my hands of 
it ; I oppose it. I am one of those who pro- 
mised gold, not paper. I promised the currency 
of the constitution, not the currency of corpo- 
rations. I did not join in putting down the 
Bank of the United States, to put up a wilder- 
ness of local banks. I did not join in putting 
down the paper curency of a national bank, to 
put up a national paper currency of a thousand 
local banks, I did not strike Caesar to make 
Anthony master of Rome. 

Mr. Walker replied to what he called the bill 
of indictment preferred b}- the senator from 
Missouri against the committee on public lands; 
and after some prefatory remarks went on to 
say: 

"But when that senator, having exhausted 
the argument, or having none to oftor, had i^ 
dulged in violent and intemperate denunciation 
of the Committee on Public Lands, and of tlie 
report made by him as their organ, Mr. AV. 
could not withhold the expression of iiis sur- 
prise and astonishment. Mr. W. said it was liis 
good fortune to be upon terms of the kindest 
personal intercourse with every senator, and 
these friendly relations should not be inter- 
rupted by any aggression upon his part. And 
now, Mr. \{. said, he called upon tlie whole 
Senate to bear witness, as he was sure they all 
cheerfully would, that in this controversy he 
was not tlie aggressor, and that notliing liad 
been done or said by him to provoke tlic wratii 
of the senator from Missouri, unless, iudeetl. to 
differ from him in opinion upon any subject 
constituted an ofiTence in the mind of that sena- 
tor. If such were the views of that gentk'iuan. 
if he was prepared to immolate every senator 
who would not worship the s:uue images of gold 
and silver which decorated the political chapel 



704 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



of the honorable gentleman, Mr. "W. was fearful 
that the senator from Missouri woulrl do execu- 
tion upon every member of the Senate but 
himself, and be left here alone in his priory. Mr. 
W. said he recurred to the remarks of the 



senator from Missouri with feelings of 



regret, 



rather than of anger or excitement ; and that 
he could not but hope, that when the senator 
from Missouri had calmly reflected upon this 
subject, he would himself see much to regret 
in the course he had pursued in relation to the 
Committee on Public Lands, and much to recall 
that he had uttered under feelings of temporary 
excitement. Sir (said Mr. W.), being deeply 
solicitous to preserve unbroken the ranks of the 
democratic party in this body, participating with 
the people in grateful recollection of the distin- 
guished services rendered by the senator from 
Missouri to the democracy of the Union, he 
would pass by many of the remarks made by 
that senator on this subject. 

" [Mr. Benton here rose from his chair, and 
demanded, with much warmth, that Mr. Walker 
should not pass by one of them. Mr. W. asked, 
what one "? Mr. B. replied, in an angry tone. 
Not one, sir. Then Mr. W. said he would ex- 
amine them all, and in a spirit of perfect free- 
dom ; that he would endeavor to return blow 
for blow ; and that, if the senator from Missouri 
desired, as it appeared he did, an angry contro- 
vei'sy with him^ in all its consequences, in and 
out of this house, he could be gratified.] 

"Sir (said Mr. AY.), why has the senator 
from Missouri assailed the Committee on Pub- 
lic Lands, and himself, as its humble organ ? 
He was not the author of this measure, so much 
denounced by the senator from Missouri, nor 
had he said one word upon the subject. The 
measure originated with the senator from Vir- 
ginia [Ml". Rives]. He was the author of the 
measure, and had been, and still was, its able, 
zealous, and successful advocate. Why, then, 
had the senator from Missouri assailed him 
^r. W.), and permitted the author of the 
measure to escape unpunished? Sir, are the 
arrows which appear to be aimed by the senator 
from Missouri at the humble organ of the Com- 
mittee on Public lands, who reported this bill, 
intended to inflict a wound in another quarter ? 
Is one senator the apparent object of assault, 
when another is designed as the real victim ? 
Sir, when the senator fi'om Missouri, without 
any provocation, like a thunderbolt from an 
unclouded sky, broke upon the Senate in a per- 
fect tempest of wrath and fiuy, bursting upon 
his poor head like a tropical tornado, did he in- 
tend to sweep before the avenging storm another 
individual more ol^noxious to his censure? 

■' Sir (said ^Ir. W.), the senator from Missouri 
has thrice repeated the prayer, ' God save the 
country from the Committee on Public Lands ; ' 
but Mr. AV. fully believed if the prayer of tlie 
country could be heard within these walls, 
it would be, God save us from the wild, vision- 
ary, ruinous, and impracticable schemes of the 



senator of Missouri, for exclusive gold and sil- 
ver currency ; and such is not only the prayer 
of the country, but of the Senate, with scarcely 
a dissenting voice. Sir, if the senator from 
Missouri could, by his mandate, in direct op- 
position to the views of the President, hereto- 
fore expressed, sweep from existence all the 
banks of the States, and establish his exclusive 
constitutional currency of gold and silver, he 
would bring upon this country scenes of ruin 
and distress without a parallel — an immediate 
bankruptcy of nearly every debtor, and of al- 
most every creditor to whom large amounts 
were due, a prodigious depreciation in the price 
of all j)roperty and all products, and an imme- 
diate cessation by States and individuals of near- 
ly every work of private enterprise or public 
improvement. The country would be involved 
in one universal bankruptcy, and near the grave 
of the nation's prosperity would perhaps repose 
the scattered fragments of those great and 
glorious institutions which give happiness to 
millions here, and hopes to millions more of 
disenthralment from despotic power. Sir. in 
resistance to the power of the Bank of the 
United States, in opposition to the re-establish- 
ment of any similar institution, the senator from 
Missouri would find Mr. AY. with him ; but he 
could not enlist as a recruit in this new crusade 
against the banks of his own and every other 
State in the Union. These institutions, whether 
for good or evil, are created by the States, 
cherished and sustained by them, in many cases 
owned in whole or in part b}^ the States, and 
closely united with their prosperity ; and what 
right have we to destroy them? AYhat right 
had he, a humble servant of the people of Mis- 
sissippi, to say to liis own, or any other State, 
your State legislation is wrong — your State in- 
stitution, your State banks, must be annihilated, 
and we will legislate here to effect this object. 
Are we the masters or servants of the sovereign 
States, that we dare speak to them in language 
like this — that we dare attempt to prostrate 
here those institutions which are created and 
maintained by those very States which we 
represent on this floor? These may be the 
opinions entertained by some senators of their 
duty to the States they represent, but they were 
not his (Mr. AV''s) views or his opinions. He 
was sincerely desirous to co-operate with his 
State in limiting any dangerous powers of the 
banks, in enlarging the circulation of gold and 
silver, and in suppressing the small note cur- 
rency, so as to avoid that explosion which was 
to be apprehended from excessive issues of bank 
paper. But a total annihilation of all the banks 
of his own State, now possessing a chartered 
capital of near forty millions of (lollars, would, 
Mr. AY. knew, produce almost universal bank- 
ruptcy, and was not, he believed, anticipated by 
any one of his constituents. 

" But the senator from Missouri tells us that 
this measure of the committee is a repeal of the 
constitution, by authorizing the receipt of paper 



ANJfO 1836. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



70") 



money in revenue payments. If so, then the 
constitution never has had an existence ; for the 
period cannot be designated when paper money 
was not so receivable by the federal govern- 
ment. This species of money was expressly 
made receivable for the public dues by an act 
of Congress, passed immediately after the adop- 
tion of the constitution, and which remained in 
force until eighteen hundred and eleven. It 
was so received, as a matter of practice, from 
eighteen hundred and eleven until eighteen 
hundred and sixteen, when, again, by an act of 
Congress then passed, and which has just ex- 
pired, it was so authorized to be received during 
all that period. Now, although these acts have 
expired, there is that which is equivalent to a 
law still in force, expressly authorizing the 
notes of the specie-paying banks of the States 
to be received in revenue payments. It is the 
joint resolution of eighteen hundred and six- 
teen, adopted by both houses of Congress, and 
approved by President Madison. 

" Where is the distinction, in principle, as re- 
gards the reception of bank paper on public ac- 
count, between the two provisions ? And the 
senator from Missouri, in thus denouncing the 
bill of the committee as a repeal of the consti- 
tution, denounces directly the President of the 
United States. Congress, no more than a State 
legislature, can make any thing but gold or sil- 
ver a tender in payment of debts by one citizen 
to another ; but that Congress, or a State legis- 
lature, or an individual, may waive their con- 
stitutional rights, and receive bank paper or 
drafts, in payment of any debt, is a principle of 
universal adoption in theory and practice, and 
never doubted by any one until at the present 
session by the senator from Missouri. The 
distinction of the senator in this respect was as 
incomprehensible to him (Mr. W.) as he be- 
lieved it was to every senator, and, indeed, was 
discernible only by the magnifying powers of a 
Bolar microscope. It was a point-no-point, 
which, like the logarithmic spiral, or asymptote 
of the hyperbolic curve, might be for ever ap- 
proached without reaching ; an infinitesimal, the 
ghost of an idea, not only without length, 
breadth, thickness, shape, weight, or dimensions, 
but without position — a mere imaginary noth- 
ing, which flitted before the bewildered vision 
of the honorable senator, when traversing, in 
his fitful somnambulism, that tesselated pave- 
ment of gold, silver, and bullion, which that 
senator delighted to occupy. Sir, the senator, 
from Missouri might have heaped mountain 
high his piles of metal ; he might have swept, 
in his Quixotic flight, over the banks of the 
States, putting to the sword their officers, stock- 
holders, directory, and legislative bodies by 
which they were chartered; he might, in his 
reveries have demolished their charters, and 
consumed their paper by the fire of his elo- 
quence; he might have transacted, in fancy, 
with a metallic currency of twenty-eight mil- 
lions in circulation, an actual annual business 

Vol. I.— 45 



of fifteen hundred millions, and Mr. "\Y. would 
not have disturbed his beatific visions, nor 
would any other senator — for they were visions 
only, that could never be realized — but when, 
descending from his ethereal flights, he seized 
upon the Committee on Public Lands as crimi- 
nals, arraingcd them as violators of the coni^ti- 
tution, and prayed Heaven for deliverance from 
them, Mr. ^V. could be silent no longer. Yes, 
even then he would have passed lightly over 
the ashes of the theories of the honorable Sena- 
tor, for, if he desired to make assaults upon any, 
it would be upon the living, and not the dead ; 
but that senator, in the opening of his (Mr. 
W.'s) address, had rejected the olive branch 
which, upon the urgent solicitation of mutual 
friends, against his own judgment, he had ex- 
tended to the honorable senator. The senator 
from Missouri had thus, in substance, declared 
his ' voice was still for war.' Be it so ; but he 
hoped the Senate would all recollect that he 
(Mr. W.) was not the aggressor; and that, 
whilst he trusted he never would wantonly 
assail the feelings or reputation of any senator, 
he thanked God that he was not so abject or 
degraded as to submit, with impunity, to un- 
provoked attacks or unfounded accusations from 
any quarter. Could he thus submit, he would 
be unfit to represent the noble, generous, and 
gallant people, whose rights and interests_ it 
was his pride and glory to endeavor to protect, 
whose honor and character were dearer to hiip 
than life itself, and should never be tarnished 
by any act of his, as one of their humble repre- 
sentatives upon this floor." 

Mr. Rives returned thanks to Mr. "Walker 
for his able and satisfactory defence of the bill, 
which in fact was his own resolution changed 
into a bill. He should not be able to add much 
to what had been said by the honorable senator, 
but was desirous of adding his mite in reply to so 
much of what had been so zealously urged by 
the senator from Missouri (Mr. Benton), as had 
not been touched upon by the chairman of the 
land committee; and did so in an elaborate 
speech a few days thereafter. Mr. Benton did 
not reply to either of the senators ; ho believed 
that the events of a few months would answer 
them, and the vote being immediately taken, 
the bill was passed almost unanimously— only 
five dissenting votes. The yeas and nays were : 

Yeas— Messrs. Black, Brown, Buchan;\n,Clay, 
Clayton, Crittenden, Cuthbcrt, Dana, Davis, 
Ewin"- of Illinois, Ewing of Ohio, Fulton. Grun- 
dy Hendricks, Hubbard, Kent, King of Alar 
bama, King of Georgia, Knight, MeKoan Moore, 
Nicholas, Niles, Norvell, Page. Parker, Prentiss, 
Preston, Rives, Bobbins, Robmson, Sov.cr, 
Southard, Swift, Tallmadge, Tipton, lomlmson, 
Walker, WaU, AVebster, White— 41. 



706 



THIRTi^ YEARS' VIEW. 



Nays — ]\Iessrs. Benton, Linn, Morris, Rug- 
gles, "Wright — 5. 

The name of ^Ir. Calhoun is not in either list 
of these votes. He had a reason for not votinc;, 
which he expressed to the Senate, before the 
vote was taken ; thus : 

" lie had been very anxious to express his 
opinions somewhat at large upon this subject. 
He put no Hxith in this measure to arrest the 
downward course of the country. He believed 
the state of the currency was almost incurably 
bad, so that it was very doubtful whether the 
highest skill and wisdom could restore it to 
soundness ; and it was destined, at no distant 
time, to undergo an entire revolution. An ex- 
plosion he considered inevitable, and so much 
the greater, the longer it should be delayed. 
Mr. C. would have been glad to go over the 
whole subject ; but as he was now unprepared 
to assign his reasons for the vote which he 
might give, he was unwilling to vote at all." 

The explosion of the banks, which Mr. Cal- 
houn considered inevitable, was an event so fully 
announced by its " shadow coming before," 
that Mr. Benton was astonished that so many 
senators could be blind to its approach, and 
willing, by law, to make their notes receivable 
in all payments to the federal government. The 
bill went to the House of Representatives, where 
a very important amendment was reported from 
the Committee of Ways and Means to which the 
bill had been referred, intended to preserve to the 
Secretary of the Treasury his control over the 
receivability of money for the public dues, so as 
to enable him to protect the constitutional cur- 
rency and reject the notes of banks deemed by 
him to be unworthy of credit. That amend- 
ment was in these words, and its rejection goes 
to illustrate the character of the bill that was 
passed : 

" And be it further enacted. That no part of 
this act shall be construed as repealing any ex- 
isting law relative to the collection of the reve- 
nue from customs or public lands in the legal 
currency, or as substituting bank notes of any 
description as a lawful currency for coin, as pro- 
vided in the constitution of the United States ; 
nor to deprive the Secretary of the Treasury of 
the power to direct the collectors or receivers 
of the public revenue, whetlier derived from du- 
ties, taxes, debts, or sales of the public lands, 
not to receive in payment, for any sum due to 
the United States, the notes of any bank or 
banks which the said Secretary may have reason 
to believe unworthy of credit, or 'which he ap- 
prehends may be compelled to suspend specie 
payments." 



IMr. Cambreleng, chairman of the Committeo 
of Ways and Means, in support of this amend- 
ment, said it had been reported for the purpose 
of preventing a misconstruction of the bill as it 
came from the Senate, and securing the public 
revenue from serious frauds , and asked for the 
yeas and nays. The amendment was cut off by 
a sustained call for the previous question ; and 
the bill passed by a strong vote — 143 to 59. 
The na3-s were : 

Nays — Messrs. Ash, Barton, Bean, Beaumont, 
Black, Bockee Boyd, Brown, Burns, Cambre- 
leng, Chanej^, Chapin, Coles, Cushman, Double- 
day, Dromgoole, Efner, Fairfield, Farlin, Fry, 
Fuller, Galbraith, J. Hall, Hamer, Hardin, A 
G. Harrison, Hawes, Holt, Huntington, Jarvis, 
C. Johnson, B. Jones, Lansing. J. Lee, Leonard, 
Logan, Loyall, A. Mann, W. Mason, M. Mason, 
McKay, IMcKeon, INIcLean, Page, Parks, F. Pierce, 
Joseph Reynolds, Rogers, Seymour, Shinn, Sick- 
les, Smith, Taylor, Thomas, J. Thomson, Tur- 
rill, Vanderpocl, Ward, Wardwell — 59. 

It was near the end of the session before the 
bill passed the House of Representatives. It 
only got to the hands of the President in the 
afternoon of the day before the constitutional 
dissolution of the Congress. He might have re- 
tained it (for want of the ten days for considera- 
tion which the constitution allowed him), with- 
out assigning any reason to Congress for so do- 
ing ; but he chose to assign a reason which, 
though good and valid in itself, may have been 
helped on to its conclusions by the evil tendencies 
of the measure. That reason was the ambiguous 
and equivocal character of the bill, and the diver- 
sity of interpretations which might be placed 
upon its provisions ; and was contained in the 
following message to the Senate : 

" The bill from the Senate entitled ' An act 
designating and limiting the funds receivable for 
the revenues of the United States, came to my 
hands yesterday, at two o'clock P. M. On pe- 
rusing it, I found its provisions so complex and 
uncertain, that I deemed it necessar}' to obtain 
the opinion of the Attorney General of the Uni- 
ted States on several important questions, touch- 
ing its construction arid effect, before I could 
decide on the disposition to be made of it. The 
Attorney General took up the subject immedi- 
ately, and his replj'' was reported to me this 
day, at five o'clock P. M. As this officer, after 
a careful and laborious examination of the bill, 
and a distinct expression of his opinion on the 
points proposed to him, still came U) the con- 
clusion that the construction of the bill, should 
it become a law, would be yet a subject of much 



ANNO 1836. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



707 



perplexity and doubt (a view of the bill entire- 
1}^ coincident with my own), and as I cannot 
think it proper, in a matter of such interest and 
of such constant application, to approve a bill 
60 liable to diversity of interpretations, and 
more especially as I have not had time, amid the 
duties constantly pressing on me, to give the 
subject that deliberate consideration which its 
importance demands, I am constrained to retain 
the bill, without a^-ting definitively thereon ; and 
to the end that my reasons for this step may 
be fully understood, I shall cause this paper, 
with the opinion of the Attorney General, and 
the bill in question, to be deposited in the De- 
partment of State." 

Thus the firmness of the President again 
saved the country from an immense calamity, 
and in a few months covered him with the 
plaudits of a preserved and grateful country. 



CHAPTER CLVI. 

DISTKIBUTION OF LANDS AND MONEY— VARIOUS 
PROPOSITIONS. 

The spirit of distribution, having got a taste of 
tliat feast in the insidious deposit bill at the pre- 
ceding session, became ungovernable in its ap- 
petite for it at this session, and open and undis- 
guised in its efforts to effect its objects. Within 
the first week of the meeting of Congress, Mr. 
fiercer, a representative from Virginia, moved 
a resolution that the Committee of Ways and 
Means be directed to bring in a bill to release 
the States from all obligation ever to return the 
dividends they should receive under the so-called 
deposit act. It was a bold movement, considering 
that the States had not yet received a dollar, and 
that it was addressed to the same members, 
sitting in the same chairs, who had enacted the 
measure under the character of a deposit, to be 
sacredly returned to the United States when- 
ever desired; and under that character had 
gained over to the support of the act two classes 
of voters who could not otherwise have been 
obtained ; namely, those who condemned the 
policy of distribution, and those who denied its 
constitutionality. Mr. Dunlap, of Tennessee, 
met Mr. Mercer's motion at the threshold — con- 
demned it as an open conversion of deposit into 
distribution — as a breach of the condition on 
which the deposit was obtained — as unfit to be 



discussed ; and moved that it be laid upon the 
table— a motion that precludes discussion, and 
brings on an immediate vote. ^fr. Mercer asked 
for the yeas and nays, which being taken showed 
the astonishing spectacle of seventy-three mem- 
bers recording their names against the motion. 
The vote was 126 to 73. Simultaneously with Mr. 
IMercer's movement in the House to pull the mask 
from the deposit bill, and reveal it in its true 
character, was Mr. Clay's movement in the Senate 
to revive his land-money distribution bill, to 
give it immediate effect, and continue its opera- 
tion for five years. In the first days of the 
session he gave notice of his intention to bring 
in his bill ; and quickly followed up his notice 
with its actual introduction. On presenting the 
bill, he said it was due to the occasion to make 
some explanations : and thus went on to make 
them : 

" The operation of the bill which had hereto- 
fore several times passed the Senate, and once 
the House, commenced on the last of December 
1822, and was to continue five years. It pro- 
vided for a distribution of the nett proceeds of 
the public lands during that period, upon well- 
known principles. But the deposit act of the 
last session had disposed of so large a part of 
the divisible fund under the land bill, that he 
did not think it right, in the present state of the 
treasury, to give the bill — which he was about 
to apply for leave to introduce — that retrospec- 
tive character. He had accordingly, in the 
draught wliich he was going to submit, made the 
last day of the present month its comiuence- 
ment, and the last day of the year 1841 its ter- 
mination. If it should pass, therefore, in this 
shape, the period of its duration will be the 
same as that prescribed in the former bills. 
The Senate will readily comprehend the motive 
for fixing the end of the year 1841, as it is at 
that time that the biennial reductions of ten 
per cent, upon the existing duties cease, accord- 
ing to the act of the 2d March 1833, commonly 
called the compromise act, and a reduction of 
one half of the excess beyond twenty per cent. 
of any duty then remaining, is to take effect. 
By that time, a fair experiment of the land bill 
will have been made, and Congress can then de- 
termine whether the proceeds of the national 
domain shall continue to be equitably divided, 
or shall be applied to the current expenses of 
the government. The bill in his hand assigns 
to the new State of Arkansas her just propor- 
tion of the fund, and grants to her oOO.OuO acres 
of land as proposed to other States. A similar 
assignment and grant are not made to Michi- 
gan, because her admission into the I iiiou is not 
yet complete. But when that event occurs, 
provision is made by which tliat State will re- 



708 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



ceive its fair dividend. He had restored, in this 
draught, the provision contained in tlie original 
plan for the distribution of the public lands, 
which he had presented to the Senate, by vs^hich 
the States, in the application of the fund, are 
restricted to the great objects of education, in- 
ternal improvement, and colonization. Such a 
restriction would, he believed, relieve the Legis- 
latures of the several States from embarrassing 
controversies about the disposition of the fund, 
and would secure the application of what was 
common in its origin, to common benefits in its 
ultimate destination. But it was scarcely ne- 
cessary for him to say that this provision, as 
well as the fate of the whole bill, depended upon 
the superior wisdom of the Senate and of the 
House. In all respects, other than those now 
particularly mentioned, the bill is exactly as it 
passed this body at the last session." 

The bill was referred to the Committee on 
Poblic Lands, consisting of Mr. Walker of 
Mississippi, Mr. Ewing of Ohio, Mr. King of 
Alabama, Mr. Ruggles of Maine, Mr. Fulton of 
Arkansas. The committee returned the bill 
with an amendment, proposing to strike out the 
entire bill, and substitute for it a new one, to 
restrict the sale of the lands to actual settlers 
ii» limited quantities. In the course of the 
discussion of the bill, Mr. Benton offered an 
amendment, securing to any head of a family, 
any young man over the age of eighteen, and 
any widow, a settlement right in 160 acres at 
reduced prices, and inhabitation and cultivation 
for five years : which amendment was lost by a 
close vote — 18 to 20. The yeas and nays were : 

Yeas — Messrs. Benton, Black, Dana, Ewing 
of Illinois, Fulton, Hendricks, King of Alabama, 
Linn, Moore, Morris, Nicholas, Rives, Robin- 
son, Sevier, Strange, Tipton, Walker, White — 
18. 

Nays — Messrs. Bayard, Brown, Calhoun, 
Clay, Clayton, Crittenden, Davis, Ewing of 
Ohio, Hubbard, Kent, King of Georgia, Niles, 
Page, Prentiss, Bobbins, Ruggles, Swift, Tall- 
madge, Wright — 20. 

The substitute reported by the committee on 
public lands, after an extended debate, and vari- 
ous motions jf amendment, was put to the vote, 
and adopted — twenty-four to sixteen — the yeas 
and nays being : 

YtAS^^Mcssrs. Benton, Black, Brown, Bu- 
chanan, Cuthbert, Ewing of Illinois, Fulton, 
Grundy, Hendricks, Hubbard, King of Alaba- 
ma, Linn, Lyon, Moore, Mouton, Nicholas, 
Niles, Norvell, Page, Rives, Robinson, Strange, 
Walker, Wright— 24. 

Nays. — Messrs. Bayard, Calhoun, Davis, Ew- 



ing of Ohio, Kent, King of Georgia, Knight^ 
Prentiss, Bobbins, Sevier, Southard, Swift 



Tomlinson, Wall, Webster, White- 



-IG. 



So Mr. Clay's plan of a five years' open distri- 
bution of the land money to the States, in addition 
to the actual distribution, under the deposit 
mask, was now defeated in the Senate : but that 
did not put an end to kindred schemes. They 
multiplied in different forms ; and continued 
to vex Congress to almost the last day of its 
existence. Mr. Calhoun brought a plan for the 
cession of all the public lands to the States in 
which they lay, to be sold by them on graduated 
prices, extending to thirLy-five years, on condi- 
tion that the States should take the expenses of 
the land S3^stem on themselves, and pay thirty- 
three and a third per centum, of the sales, to the 
federal treasury. Mr. Benton objected, on princi- 
ple, to any complication of moneyed or property 
transactions between the States and the federal 
government, leading, as they inevitably would, 
to dissension and contention ; and ending in con- 
troversies between the members and the head 
of the federal government : and, on detail, be- 
cause the graduation was extended beyond a 
period when the new States would be strong 
enough to obtain better terms, without the com- 
plication of a contract, and the condition of a 
purchase. Within the thirty-five years, there 
would be three new apportionments of repre- 
sentatives, under the censuses of 18-10, 1850, 
and 18G0 — doubling or trebling the new States' 
representation each time ; also several new 
States admitted ; so that they would be strong 
enough to take effectual measures for the ex- 
tinction of the federal titles within the States, 
on just and equitable principles. Mr. Buchanan 
openly assailed Mr. Calhoun's proposition as a 
bid for the presidency ; and said : 

" He had heard a great deal said about bribing 
the people with their own money ; arguments 
of that kind had been reiterated, but they had 
never had mugJi effect on him. But speaking 
on the same principles on Avhich this had been 
said, and without intending any thing personal 
toward the honorable senator from South Caro- 
lina, he would say this was the most splendid 
bribe that had ever yet been offered. It was to 
give the entire public domain to the people of 
the new States, without fee or reward, and on 
the single condition that they should not bring 
all the land into tnarket at once. It was the 
first time such a proposition had been brought 
forward for legislation ; and he solemnly pro- 
tested against the principle that Congress had 



ANNO 1836. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



709 



any right, in equity or justice, to give what be- 
longed to the entire people of the Union to the 
inhabitants of any State or States whatever. 
After warmly expressiug his dissent to the 
amendment, Mr. B. said he hoped it would not 
receive the sanction of any considerable portion 
of the Senate." 

Mr. Sevier of Arkansas, said it might be very 
true that presidential candidates would bid deep 
for the favor of the West ; but that was no rea- 
son why the West should refuse a good offer, 
"when made. Deeming this a good one, and 
beneficial to the new States, he was for taking 
it. Mr. Linn, of Missouri, objected to the propo- 
sition of Mr. Calhoun, as an amendment to the 
bill in favor of actual settlers (in which form it 
was offered), because it would be the occasion 
of losing both measures ; and said : 

" He might probably vote for it as an inde- 
pendent proposition, but could not as it now 
stood- He had set out with the determination 
to vote against every amendment which should 
be proposed, as the bill had once been nearly 
lost by the multiplication of them. If this 
amendment should be received, the residue of 
the session would be taken up in discussing it, 
and nothing would be done for His constituents. 
He wanted them to know that he had done his 
utmost, which was but little, to carry into effect 
their wishes, and to secure their best interests 
in the settlement of the new country. He was 
anxious to obtain the passage of an equitable 
pre-emption law, which should secure to them 
their homes, and not throw the country into 
the hands of great capitalists, as had been done 
in the case of the Holland Land Company, and 
thus retard the settlement of the West. As to 
the evasions of previous pre-emption laws, of 
which so much had been said, he believed they 
either had no existence in Missouri, or had been 
grossly exaggerated. In the course of his pro- 
fessional duty (Mr. Linn is a physician, in large 
practice), he had occasion to become extensively 
acquainted with the people concerning whom 
these things had been asserted (he referred to 
the emigrants who had setled in that State, 
under the pre-emption law of 1814), and h^ 
could say, nothing of the kind had fallen under 
his observation. They had come there, in most 
cases, poor, surrounded by all the evils and 
disadvantages of emigration to a new country ; 
he had attended many of them in sickness ; and 
he could truly aver that they were, as a whole, 
the best and most upright body of people he 
had ever known. 

" Mr. L. said he was a practical man, though 
his temperament might be somewhat warm. He 
looked to things which were attainable, and in 
the near prospect of being obtained, rather than 
at those contingent and distant. Here was a 



bill, far advanced in the Senate, and, as he hoped, 
on the eve of passing. He believed it would 
secure a great good to his constituents ; and lie 
could not consent to risk that bill by accepting 
the amendment proposed by the senator from 
South Carolina. If the senator from Arkan.sax 
would let this go, he might possibly find that it 
was a better thing than he could ever get again. 
He wanted that Congress should so regulate the 
public lands, and so arrange the terms on which 
it was disposed of. as to furnish in the West 
an opportunity for poor n\en to become rich, 
and every worthy and industrious man pros- 
perous and happy." 

Mr. Calhoun felt himself called upon to rise 
in defence of his proposition, and in vindication 
of his own motives in offering it ; and did bo, 
in a brief speech, saying : 

" When the Senate had entered upon the pre- 
sent discussion, he had had little thought of 
offering a proposition like this. He had, indeed, 
always seen that there was a period coming 
when this government must cede to the new 
States the possession of their own soil ; but he 
had never thought, till now, that period was so 
near. What he had seen this session, liowever, 
and especially the nature and character of the 
bill which was now likely to pass, had fully 
satisfied him that the time had arrived. There 
were at present eighteen senators from the new 
States. In four years, there would be six more, 
which would make twenty-four. AU, therefore, 
must see that, in a very short period, those 
States would have this question in their own 
hands. And it had been openly said that they 
ought not to accept of the present proposition, 
because they would soon be able to get better 
terms. He thought, therefore, that, instead of 
attempting to resist any longer what must 
eventually happen, it would be better for all 
concerned that Congress should yield at once to 
the force of circumstances, and cede the public 
domain. His objects in this movement were 
high and .solemn objects. He wished to break 
down the vassalage of the new States. He de- 
sired that this government should cease to hold 
the relation of a landlord. He wished, finthor, 
to draw this great fund out of the vortex of the 
presidential contest, with which it had openly 
been announced to the Senate tlicre was an 
avowed design to connect it. He thought the 
country had been sufllcicntly agitated, corrupt- 
ed, and debased, by the influence of that con- 
test ; and he wished to take this great engine 
out of the hands of power. If he were a can- 
didate for the presidency, he would wish to 
leave it there. He wished to go further : he 
sought to remove the immense amount of pa- 
tronage connected with the management of this 
domain — a patronage which had corrujitod both 
the old and the new States to an enormous ex- 
tent. He sought to counteract the centralism, 



710 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW 



which was the great danger of this government, 
and thereby to preserve the liberties of the peo- 
ple much longer than would otherwise be possi- 
ble. As to what was to be received for these 
lands, he cared nothing about it. He would 
have consented at once to yield the whole, and 
withdraw altogether the landlordship of the 
general government over them, had he not be- 
lieved that it would be most for the benefit of 
the new States themselves that it should con- 
tinue somewhat longer. These were the views 
which had induced him to present the amend- 
ment. He ottered no gilded pill. He threw in 
no apple of discord. He was no bidder for popu- 
larity. He prescribed to himself a more humble 
aim, which was simply to do his duty. He 
sought to counteract the corrupting tendency 
of the existing course of things. He sought to 
weaken this government by divesting it of at 
least a part of the immense patronage it wield- 
ed. He held that every great landed estate re- 
quired a local administration, conducted by per- 
sons more intimately acquainted with local wants 
and interests than the members of a central 
government could possibly be. If any body 
asked him for a proof of the truth of his posi- 
tions, he might point them to the bill now be- 
fore the Senate. Such were the sentiments, 
shortly stated, which had governed him on this 
occasion. He had done his duty, and he must 
leave the result with God and with the new 
States." 

Mr. Calhoun's proposition was then put to 
the vote, and almost unanimously rejected, only 
six senators besides himself voting for it ; name- 
ly : Messrs. King of Georgia ; Moore of Alaba- 
ma ; Morris of Ohio ; Robinson of Illinois ; 
Sevier of Arkansas ; and "White of Tennessee. 
And thus a third project of distribution (count- 
ing Mr. Mercer's motion as one), at this ses- 
sion, had miscarried. But it was not the end. 
Mr. Chilton Allen, representative from Ken- 
tucky, moved a direct distribution of laud to the 
old States, equal in amount to the grants which 
had been made to the new States. Mr. Abijah 
Mann, jr., of New York, strikingly exposed the 
injustice of this proposition, in a few brief re- 
marks, saying : 

" It must be apparent, by this time, that this 
proposition was neither more nor less than a 
new edition of the old and exploded idea of dis- 
tributing the proceeds of the sales of tlie public 
lands, attempted to be concealed under rubbish 
and verbiage, and gilded over by the patriotic 
idea of applying it to the public education. Its 
paternity is suspicious, and its hope fallacious 
and delusive. The preamble to this resolution 
Is illusory and deceptive, addressed to the aipid- 
ity of the old States represented on this floor. 
It recites the grants made by Congress to each 



of the new States of the public lands in the ag- 
gregate, without specifj'ing the motive or con- 
sideration upon which they wei'e made. Its 
argument is, that an equal quantity should be 
granted to the old States, to make them respec- 
tively equal sharers in the public lands. Now, 
sir (said Mr. M.), nothing could be devised more 
disingenuous and deceptive. Let us look at it 
briefly. The idea is, that the old States granted 
these lands to the new for an implied considera- 
tion, and resulting benefit to themselves ; that 
it was a sort of Indian gift, to be refunded 
with increase. Not so, sir, at all. If Mr. M. 
imderstood the motiTes inducing those grants, 
they were paternal on the part of the old States; 
proceeding upon that generous and noble liber- 
ality which induces a wealthy father to advance 
and provide for his children. This was the 
moving consideration, though he (i\Ir. M.) was 
aware that the grants -in aid of the improve- 
ments of the new States and territories were 
upon consideration of advancing the sale and 
improvement of the remaining lands in those 
States held by the United States." 

The proposition of Mr. Alien was disposed of 
by amotion to lie on the table, which prevailed — 
one hundred and fourteen to eighty-one votes ; 
but the end of these propositions was not yet. 
Another motion to divide surpluses was to be 
made, and was made in the expiring days of the 
session, and by way of amendment to the regu- 
lar fortification bill. Mr. Bell, of Tennessee, 
moved, on the 25th of February, that a further 
deposit of all the public monies in the ti-easury 
on the first day of January, 1838, above the 
sum of five millions of dollars, should be " depo- 
sited" with the States, according to the terms of 
the " deposit " bill of the preceding session ; and 
which would have the eflfect of making a second 
" deposit " after the completion of the first one. 
The argument for it was the same which had 
been used in the first case ; the argument against 
it was the one previously used, with the addi- 
tion of the objectionable proceeding of springing 
such a proposition at the end of the session, 
and as an amendment to a defence appropriation 
bill, on its passage ; to which it was utterly in- 
congruous, and must defeat ; as, if it failed to 
sink the bill in one of the Houses, it must cer- 
tainly be rejected by the President, who, it 
was now known, would not be cheated again 
with the word deposit. It was also opposed as 
an act of supererogation, as nobody could tell 
whether thei-e would be any surplus a year 
hence ; and further, it was opposed as an act of 
usurpation and an encroachment upon the au- 
thority of the ensuing Congress. A new Con- 



ANNO 1836. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



711 



gress was to be elected, and to assemble before 
that time ; the present Congi*ess would expire 
in six days : and it was argued that it was nei- 
ther right nor decent to anticipate their succes- 
sors, and do what they, fresh from the people, 
might not do. Mr. Yell, of Arkansas, was the 
principal speaker against it ; and said : 

" I voted. Mr. Speaker, against the amend- 
ment proposed by* the gentleman from Ten- 
nessee (Mr. Bell), because I am of opinion that 
this bill, if passed, and sanctioned by the Pre- 
sident — and I trust that it never will receive 
the countenance of that distinguished man and 
illustrious statesman — will at once establish a 
system demoralizing and corrupting in its in- 
fluences, and tend to the destruction, of the 
sovereignty of the States, and render them de- 
pendant suppliants on the general government. 
This measure of distribution, since it has been 
a hobby-horse for gentlemen to ride on, has pre- 
sented an anomalous spectacle ! The time yet 
belongs to the history of this Congress, when 
honorable gentlemen, from the South and West, 
were daily found arraying themselves against 
every species of unnecessary taxation, boldly 
avowing that they were opposed to any and all 
tariff systems which would yield a revenue be- 
yond the actual wants and demands of the gov- 
ernment. Such was their language but a few 
weeks or months ago ; and, in proclaiming it, 
they struggled hard to excel each other in zeal 
and violence. And now, sir, what is the spec- 
tacle we behold ? A system of distribution — 
anotlier and a specious name for a system of 
bribery has been started ; the hounds are in full 
cry ; and the same honorable and patriotic gen- 
tlemen now step forward, and, at the watch- 
word of ' put money in thy purse ; aye, put 
money in thy purse,' vote for the distribution 
or bribery measure ; the effect of which is to en- 
tail on this country a system of taxation and 
oppression, which has had no parallel since the 
days of the tea and ten-penny tax — two frightful 
measures of discord, which roused enfeebled 
colonies to rebellion, and led to the foundation 
of this mighty republic. But we are told, Mr. 
Speaker, that this proposed distribution is only 
for momentary duration ; that it is necessary to 
relieve the Treasury of a redundant income, and 
that it will speedily be discontinued ! Indeed, 
sir ! What evidence have we of the fax;t ? What 
evidence do we require to disprove the assertion? 
This scheme was commenced the last session ; 
it has been introduced at this ; and let me tell 
^ ou, Mr. Speaker, it never will be abandoned so 
long as the high tariff party can wheedle the 
people with a siren lullaby, and cheat them out 
of their rights, by dazzhng the vision with gold, 
and deluding the fancy by the attributes of so- 
phistry. Depend upon it, sir, if this baleful 
eystem of distribution be not nipped in the bud, 
It will betray the people into submission by a 
species of taxation which no nation on earth 



should endure. Sir, continued Mr. Y., I enter 
my protest against a system of bargain and cor- 
ruption, which is to be executed by parties ol 
different political complexions, for the purpose 
of dividing the spoils wliicli they have phnidereti 
from the people. If the sales of the public lands 
are to be continued for the benefit of the specu- 
lators who go to the West in multitudes for the 
purpose of legally stealing the lands and im- 
provements of the people of tlie new States, I 
hope mj^ constituents may know who it is that 
thus imposes upon them a sj-stem of legalized 
fraud and oppression. If, sir, my constituents 
are to be sacrificed by the maintenance of a sys- 
tem of persecution, got up and carried on for the 
purpose of filling the pockets of others to their 
ruin, I wish them to know who is the author of 
the enormity. I had hoped, Mr. Speaker, and 
that hope has not yet been abandoned, that if 
ever this branch of the government is bent on 
the destruction of the rights of the people, and 
a violation of the Constitution, there is yet one 
ordeal for it to pass where it may be shorn of 
its baneful aspect. And, Mr. Speaker, I trust 
in God that, in its passage through that ordeal, 
it will find a quietus." 

Mr. Bell's motion succeeded. The secona 
" deposit " act, by a vote of 112 to 70, was en- 
grafted on the appropriation bill for completing 
and constructing fortifications ; and, thus loaded, 
that bill went to the Senate. Being referred to 
the Committee on Finance, that committee direct- 
ed their chahman, Mr. Wright of New- York, to 
move to strike it out. The motion was resisted 
by Mr, Calhoun, Mr. Clay, Mr. Webster, Mr. 
White of Tennessee, Mr. Ewing of Ohio, Crit- 
tenden, Preston, Southard, and Clayton; and 
supported by Messrs. Wright, Benton, Bedford 
Brown, Buchanan, Grundy, Niles of Connecticut, 
Rives, Strange of North Carolina: and being 
put to the vote, the motion was carried, and the 
" deposit " clause struck from the bill by a vote 
of 26 to 19. The yeas and nays were : 

"Yeas— Messrs. Benton, Black, Brown, Cuth- 
bert, Ewing of Illinois, Fulton, Grundy, Hub- 
bard, King of Alabama, King of Georgia, Linn, 
Lyon, Nicholas, Niles, Norvell, Pago, Vnvkvv, 
Rives, Ruggles, Sevier, Strange, Talluiadge, 
Walker, Wall, Wright— 26. 

;: Nays— Messrs. Bayard, Calhoun. Clayton, 
Crittenden, Davis, Ewing of Ohio. Hendricks, 
Kent, Knight, Moore, Prentiss, Preston, lv.l>- 
bins, Southard, Spence, Swift, Tomlinson, U eb- 
ster. White— ly." 

Being returned to the House, a motion was 
made to disagree to the Senate's amendment, 
and argued with great warmth on each side, tha 
opponents to the "deposit" remiuduigils friends 



712 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



of the loss of a previous appropriation bill for 
fortifications ; and warning them that their per- 
severance must now have the same effect, and 
operate a sacrifice of defence to the spirit of dis- 
tribution : but all in vain. The motion to dis- 
agree was carried — 110 to 94. The disputed 
clause then went through all the parliamentary 
forms known to the occasion. The Senate " in- 
sisted " on its amendment : a motion to " recede " 
was made and lost in the House : a motion to 
•■ adhere " was made, and prevailed : then the 
Senate "adhered": then a committee of "con- 
ference" was appointed, and they "disagreed." 
This being reported to the Houses, the bill fell — 
the fortification appropriations were lost : and in 
this direct issue between the plunder of the 
country, and the defence of the country, defence 
was beaten. Such was the deplorable progress 
which the spirit of distribution had made. 



CHAPTER CLVII. 

MILITARY ACADEMY: ITS EIDING-HOUSE. 

The annual appropriation bill for the support of 
thLs Academy contained a clause for the purchase 
of forty horses, " for instruction in light artil- 
lery and cavalry exercise ; " and proposed ten 
thousand dollars for tlie purpose. This purchase 
was opposed, and the clause stricken out. The 
bill also contained a clause proposing thirty 
thousand dollars, in addition to the amount 
theretofore appropriated, for the erection of a 
building for " recitation and military exercises," 
as the clause expressed itself. It was under- 
stood to be for the riding-house in bad weather. 
Mr. McKay, of North Carolina, moved to strike 
out the clause, upon the ground that military men 
ought to be inured to hardship, not pampered 
in effeminacy ; and that, as war was carried on 
in the field, so young officers should be learned 
to ride in the open air, and on rough ground, 
and to be afraid of no weather. The clause was 
stricken out, but restored upon re-consideration ; 
in opposition to which Mr. Smith, of Maine, was 
the principal speaker ; and said : 

" I beg leave to call the attention of the com- 
mittee to the paragraph of this bill proposed to 
be stricken out. It is an appropriation of tliirty 
thousand dollars, in addition to the amount al- 
ready' appropriated, for the erection of a build- 
ing within which to exercise and drill the cadets 



at "West Point. The gentleman from Pennsyl 
vania [IMr. Ingersoll] who reported this bill, and 
who never engages himself in any subject with- 
out making himself entire master of all its parts, 
will do the committee the justice, T trust, to 
inform them, when he shall next take the floor, 
what the amount heretofore appropriated for 
tills same building, in which to exercise the ca- 
dets, actually has been ; that, if we decide on 
the j)ro2)ricty of having such a building, we may 
also know how much we ha.ve heretofore taken 
from the public Treasury for its erection, and 
'•o what sum the thirty thousand dollars now 
proposed will be an addition. 

" The honorable gentleman from New-York 
[Mr. Cambreleng] says this proposed building 
is to protect the cadets during the inclemency 
of the winter season, when the snow is from two 
to six feet deep ; and has urged upon the com- 
mittee the extreme hardship of requiring the 
cadets to perform their exercises in the open air 
in such an inclement and cold region as that 
where West Point is situated. Sir, if the gen- 
tleman would extend his inquiries somewhat 
further North or East, he would find that at 
points where the winters are still more inclem- 
ent than at West Point, and where the snow 
lies for months in succession from two to eight 
feet deep, a very large and useful and respectable 
portion of the citizens not only incur the snows 
and storms of winter by day without workshops 
or buildings to protect them, but actually pursue 
the business of months amid such snows and 
storms, without a roof, or board, or so much as 
a shingle to cover and protect them bv either 
day or night, and do not dream of murmuring. 
But, forsooth, the young cadet at West Point, 
who goes there to acquire an education for him- 
self, who is clothed and fed, and even paid for 
his time, by the government while acquiring his 
education, cannot endure the atmosphere of 
West Point, without a magnificent building to 
shield him during the few hours in the week, 
while in the act of being drilled, as part of his 
education ! The government is called upon to 
appropriate thirty thousand dollars, in addition 
to what has already been appropriated for the 
purpose, to protect the young cadet, who is pre- 
paring to be a soldier, against this temporary 
and yet most salutary exposure, as I et^teem it. 
Sir, "is Congress prepared thus to pamper the 
efleminacy of these young gentlemen, at such 
an expense, too, upon the public Treasury ? Is 
it not enough to educate them for nothing, and 
to pay them for their time while you are educat- 
ing them, and that you provide for their comfort- 
able subsistence, comfortable lodgings, and all 
the ordinary comforts, not to say numerous 
luxuries of life, without attempting to keep them 
for ever within doors, to be raised like children ? 
I am opposed to it ; and I think, whenever tha 
people of this nation shall be made acquainted 
with the fact, they too will be opposed to it. 

" The gentleman from New- York says the ex- 
posure of the cadets is very great and thatj 



ANNO 1836. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



713 



among other duties, they are required to per- 
form camp duties for three months in the year. 
It is true, sir, that the law of Congress imposes 
three months' camp duty upon the cadet. But 
the same tender spirit of guardianship which has 
suggested the expediency of housing the cadets 
from the atmosphere while performing their drill 
duties and exercises has in some way construed 
away one third of the law of Congress upon this 
subject ; and, instead of three months' camp duty, 
as the law requires, the cadets are required, by the 
rules and regulations of the institution, to camp 
out only two months of the year ; and for this 
purpose, sir, every species of camp utensils and 
camp furniture that government money can pur- 
chase is provided for them ; and this same duty, 
thus pictured forth here by the gentleman from 
New-York as a severe hardship, is in fact so tem • 
pered to the cadets as to become a mere luxury — a 
matter of absolute preference among the cadets. 
The gentleman from New- York will find, by the 
rules and regulations of the Academy, the 
months of Jul}- and August, or of August and 
September, are selected for this camp duty : 
seasons of the year, sir, when it is absolutely 
a luxury and privilege for the cadets to leave 
theu- close quarters and confined rooms, to per- 
form duty out door, and to spend the nights in 
their well-furnished camps. Sir, the hardships 
and exposures of the cadets are nothing com- 
pared with those of the generality of our fellow- 
citizens in the North, in their ordinary pursuits ; 
and yet we are called upon to add to their luxu- 
ries — two hundred and fifty dollar horses to 
ride, splendid camp equipage to protect them 
from the dews and damp air of summer, and 
magnificent buildings to shield them in their 
winter exercises. I think it is high time for 
Congress, and for the people of this nation, to 
reflect seriously upon these matters, and to in- 
quire with somewhat of particularity into the 
diaractcr of this institution. 

" But the honorable gentleman from Pennsyl- 
vania (Mr. Ingersoll), has volunteered to put 
the reputation of the West Point Academy for 
morality in issue at this time, and sets it out in 
eloquent description, as pre- eminently pure and 
irreproachable in this respect. 

" Sir, does not the honorable gentleman know 
that the history of this mstitution, within a few 
years back only, bears quite diSerent testimony 
upon this subject? Does not the gentleman 
know the fact— a fact well substantiated by the 
Register of Debates in your library— that only 
a few years since the government was forced 
into the necessity of purchasing up, at an ex- 
pense of ten thousand dollars, a neighbormg 
tavern stand, as the only means of saving the 
institution from being overwhelmed and ruined 
by the gross immoralities of the cadets 1 Is not 
the gentleman aware that the whole argument 
urged to force and justify the government mto 
this purchase was, that the moral power of the 
Academy was unequal to the counter influences 
of the neighboring tavern? And are we to be 



told, sir, that this institution stands forth in ita 
history pre-eminently pure, and above com- 
parison with the institutions that exist upon 
the private enterprise and munificence, and 
thirst for knowledge, that characterize our 
countrymen ? I make these suggestions, and 
allude to these focts, not voluntarily, and from 
a wish to create a discussion upon either the 
merits or demerits of the Acadcm}^ When I 
made the proposition to strike from this bill 
the ten thousand dollars proposed to be appro- 
priated for the purchase of horses, I neither in- 
teded nor desired to enter into a discussion of 
the institution. I have not now spoken, except 
upon the impulse given by the remarks of 
the gentlemen from New- York and Pcnsyl- 
vania ; and now, instead of going into the facts 
that do exist in relation to the Academy, I can 
assure gentlemen that I have but scarce Ij' ap- 
proached them. I have been willing, and am 
now willing, to have these facts brought to light 
at another time, and upon a proper occasion 
that will occur hereafter, and leave the people 
of this nation to judge of them dispassionately. 
A report upon the subject of this institution 
will be made shortly, as the honorable gentle- 
man from Kentucky (Mr. Hawes) has assured 
the house. From that report, all will be able to 
form an opinion as to the policy of the institu- 
tion in its present shape and under its present 
discipline. That some gi-ave objections exist to 
both its shape and discipline, I think all will 
agree. But I wish not to discuss cither at this 
time. Let us know, however, and let the coun- 
try know, something about the expensive build- 
ings now in progress at West Point, before we 
conclude to add this further appropriation of 
thirty thousand dollars to the expenses of the 
institution ; and, while I am up, I will call the 
attention of the honorable gentleman who re- 
ported this bill to another item in it, which 
embraces forage for horses among other mattt'rs. 
and I wish him to specify to the committee what 
proportion of the sum of overthirteen thousand 
dollars contained in this item, is based upon the 
supposed supply of forage. We have st ricken out 
the appropriation for purchasing horses, and ano- 
ther part of the bill provides forage for the of- 
ficers' horses; hence a portion of tiic item now 
adverted to should probably be stricken out." 

The debate became spirited and disairsive, 
grave and gay, and gave rise to some ridiculous 
suggestions, as that if it was necessary to ju-o- 
tect these young oflBcers from bad weather when 
exercising on horseback, it ought to be done in 
no greater degree than young women are pro- 
tected in like circumstances- parasols for the 
sun, umbrellas for rain, and pelisses for cold : 
which it was insisted would be a great economy. 
On the other hand it was insisted that riding- 
houses were appurtenant to the military colleges 
of Europe, and that fine riders were trained ia 



714 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



these schools. The $30,000, in addition to pre- 
vious appropriations for the same purpose, was 
granted ; but has been found to be insufficient ; 
and a late Board of Visitors, following the lead 
of the Superintendent of the Academy, and 
powerfully backed by the War Office, at Wash- 
ington City, has earnestly recommended a fur- 
ther additional appropriation of $20,000, still 
further to improve the riding-house; on the 
ground that, "the room now used for the pur- 
pose is extremely dangerous to the lives and 
limbs of the cadets." This further accommoda- 
tion is deemed indispensable to the proper teach- 
ing of the art of " equitation : " that is to .say, 
to the art of riding on the back of a horse ; and 
the Visitors recommend this accommodation to 
Congress, in the following pathetic terms : "The 
attention of the committee has been drawn to 
the consideration of the expediency of erecting 
a new building for cavalry exercise. We are 
aware that the subject has been before Con- 
gress, upon the recommendation of former boards 
of Visitors, and we cannot add to the force of 
the arguments made use of by them, in favor 
of the measure. We would regret to be com- 
pelled to believe that there is a greater indiffer- 
ence to the safety of human life and limb in 
this country than in most others. It is enough 
for us to say that, in the opinion of the Super- 
intendent, the course of equitation cannot be 
properly taught without it, ' and that the room 
now used for the purpose is extremely danger- 
ous to the lives and limbs of the cadets.' In 
this opinion, we entirely concur. The appro- 
priation required for the erection of such a 
building will amount to some $20,000. We can 
hardly excuse ourselves, if we neglect to bring 
this subject, so far as we are able to do so, most 
emphatically to the notice of those who have 
the power, and, we doubt not, the disposition 
also, to remove the evil." 



CHAPTER CLVIII. 

SALT TAX: ME. BENTON'S FOURTH SPEECH 
AGAINST IT. 

The amount which this tax brings into the 
treasury is about 000,000 dollars, and that upon 
an article costing about 650,000 dollars ; and 
one-half of the tax received goes to the fishing 
bounties and allowances founded upon it. So 



that what upon the record is a tax of about 100 
per centum, is in the reality a tax of 200 pei 
centum ; and that upon an article of prime ne- 
cessity and universal use, while we have articles 
of luxury and superfluity — wines, silks — either 
free of tax, or nominally taxed at some ten or 
twenty per centum. The bare statement of the 
case is revolting and mortifying; but it is only 
by looking into the detail of the tax — its 
amount upon different varieties of salt — its ef- 
fect upon the trade and sale of the article — upon 
its importation and use — and the consequences 
upon the agriculture of the country, for want 
of adequate supplies of salt — that the weight 
of the tax, and the disastrous effects of its im- 
position, can be ascertained. To enable the 
Senate to judge of these effects and consequen- 
ces, and to render my remarks more intelligible, 
I will read a table of the importation of salt 
for the year 1835 — the last that has been made 
up — and which is known to be a fair index to 
the annual importations for many years past. 
With the number of bushels, and the name of 
the country from which the importations come, 
will be given the value of each parcel at the place 
it was obtained, and the original cost per busheL 

Statement of the quantity of Salt imported 
into the United States during the year 1835, 
with the value and cost thereof, per bushel, at 
the place from which it was imported : 



Countries. 

Sweden and Norway, 
Swedish West Indies, 
Danish West Indies, 
Dutch West Indies, 



No. of 
bushels. 

8,556 
6,856 
2,351 



England, 

Ireland, 

Gibraltar, 

Malta 

British West Indies, 959,786 

British Am. Colonies, 138,593 

France on Mediterra- ^q 543 

nean, *'' 

Spain on Atlantic, 360,140 
Spain on Mediterran., 101,000 
Portugal, 780,000 

Cape de Verd Islands, 8,134 
Italy, 
Sicily, 
Trieste, 
Turkey, 
Colombia, 
Brazil, 

Argentine Republic, 
Africa, 



$572 
708 
386 
12,967 



141,566 
2,613,077 412,507 
51,954 ^""'" 



17,832 
1,500 



36,742 

5,786 

7,888 

9.377 

17,162 

250 

402 



12,276 

1,385 

118 

98,497 

30,374 

2,155 

16,760 

5.443 

55.087 

'751 

1,580 

156 

255 

984 

1,227 

68 

41 

615 



Cost 
p. bus. 

6 3-4 
10 1-4 
16 

9 
16 1-2 

7 3-4 
7 3-4 

10 

6 2-3 

4 3-4 

5 1-3 
7 

9 1-10 
4 1-3 

2 2-3 

3 7-8 
10 1-10 



10 2-3 



5,735,304 655,000 



ANNO 1836. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



715 



Mr. B. would remark that salt, being brought 
in ballast, the greatest quantity came from Eng- 
land, where we had the largest trade ; and that 
its importation, with a tax upon it, being merely 
incidental to trade, this greatest quantity came 
from the place where it cost most, and was of 
far inferior kind. The salt from England was 
nearly one half of the whole quantity imported ; 
its cost was about sixteen cents a bushel ; and 
its quality was so inferior that neither in the 
United States, nor in Great Britain, could it be 
used for curing provisions, fish, butter, or any 
thing that required long keeping, or exposure 
to southern heats. T^iis was the salt commonly 
called Liverpool. It was made by artificial heat, 
and never was, and never can be made pure, as 
the mere agitation of the boiling prevents the 
separation of the bittern, and other foreign and 
poisonous ingredients with which all salt water, 
and even mineral salt, is more or less impregna- 
ted. The other half of the imported salt costs 
far less than the English salt, and is infinitely 
superior to it ; so far superior that the English 
salt will not even serve for a substitute in the 
important business of curing fish, and flesh, 
for long keeping, or southern exposure. This 
salt was made by the action of the sun in the 
latitudes approaching, and under the tropics. 
We begin to obtain it in the West Indies, and 
in large quantity on Turk's Island ; and get it 
from all the islands and coasts, under the sun's 
track, from the Gulf of Mexico to the Black Sea. 
The Cape de Verd Islands, the Atlantic and 
Mediterranean coasts of Spain and Portugal, the 
Mediterranean coast of France, the two coasts 
of Italy, the islands in the Mediterranean, the 
coasts of the Adriatic, the Archipelago, up 
to the Black Sea, all produce it and send it to 
us. The table which has been read shows that 
the original cost of this salt — the purest and 
strongest in the world — is about nine or ten 
cents a bushel in the Gulf of Mexico ; five, six 
and seven cents on the coasts of France, Spain 
and Portugal ; three and four cents in Italy and 
the Adriatic ; and less than three cents in Sicily. 
Yet all this salt bears one uniform duty ; it was 
all twenty cents a bushel, and is now near ten 
cents a bushel ; so that while the tax on the 
English salt is a little upwards of fifty per cent, 
on the value, the same tax on all the other salt 
is from one hundred to two hundred, and three 
hundred and near four hundred per cent. The 



sun-made salt is chiefly used in the Great West, 
in curing provisions; the Liverpool is chiefly 
used on the Atlantic coasts ; and thus the peo 
pie in different sections of the Union pay differ- 
ent degrees of tax upon the same articles, and 
that which costs least is taxed most. A tay 
ranging to some hundred per cent, is in itself an 
enormous tax ; and thus the duty collected by 
the federal government from all the consumers 
of the sun-made salt, is in itself excessive; 
amounting, in many instances, to double, treble, 
or even quadruple the original cost of the article. 
This is an enormity of taxation which strikes 
the mind at the first blush ; but, it is only the 
beginning of the enormity, the extent of which 
is only discoverable in tracing its effects to all 
their diversified and injurious consequences. In 
the first place, it checks and prevents the im- 
portation of the salt. Coming as ballast, and 
not as an article of commerce on which profit is 
to be made, the shipper cannot bring it except 
he is supplied with money to pay the duty, or 
surrenders it into the hands of salt dealers, on 
landing, to go his security for the payment of 
the duty. Thus, the importation of the article 
is itself checked ; and this check operates with 
the greatest force in all cases where the original 
price of the salt was least ; and, therefore, where 
it operates most injuriously to the country. In 
all such cases the tax operates as a prohibition 
to use salt as ballast, and checks its importation 
from all the places of its production nearest the 
sun's track, from the Gulf of Mexico to Con- 
stantinople. In the next place, the imposition of 
the tax throws the salt into the hands of an in- 
termediate set of dealers in the seaports, who 
either advance the duty, or go security for it, 
and who thus become possessed of nearly nU 
the salt which is imported. A ^Q^r persons em- 
ployed in this business engross the salt, and fix 
the price for all in the market; and fix it hijrhcr 
or lower, not according to the cost of the ar- 
ticle, but according to the necessities of the 
country, and the quantity on hand, and the sea- 
son of the year. The prices at which they fix 
it are known to all purchasers, and may be seen 
in all prices-current. It is generally, in the case 
of alum salt, four, five, ten, or fifteen times as 
much as it cost. It is generally forty, or fifty, 
or sixty cents a bushel, and nearly the same 
price for all sorts, without any reference to the 
original cost, whether it cost three cents, or five 



716 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



cents, or ten cents, or fifteen cents a bushel. 
About one uniform price is put on the whole, 
and the purchaser has to submit to the imposi- 
tion. Tliis results from the effect of the tax, 
throwing the article, which is nothing but bal- 
last, into the hands of salt dealers. The importer 
does not bring more money tlian the salt is 
worth, to pay the dut}^ ; he does not come pre- 
pared to pay a heavy duty on his ballast; he 
has to depend upon raising the money for paj''- 
ing the duty after he arrives in the United 
States ; and this throws him into the hands of 
tlic salt dealer, and subjects the country pur- 
chaser to all the fair charges attending this 
change of hands, and this establishment of an 
intermediate dealer, who must have his profits ; 
and also to all the additional exactions which 
he may choose to make. This should not be. 
There should be no costs, nor charges, nor in- 
termediate profits, on such an article as salt. It 
comes as ballast ; as ballast it should be handed 
out — should be handed from the ship to the 
steamboat — should escape port charges, and in- 
termediate profits — and this would be the case, 
if the duty was abolished. Thus the charges, 
costs, profits, and exactions, in consequence of 
the tax, are greater than the tax itself! But 
this is not all — a further injury, resulting from 
the tax, is yet to be inflicted upon the consumer. 
It is well known that the measured bushel of 
alum salt, and all sun-made salt is alum salt — 
it is well known that a bushel of this salt weighs 
about eighty-four pounds ; yet the custom-house 
bushel goes by weight, and not by measure, and 
fiftj'-six pounds is there the bushel. Thus the 
consumer, in consequence of having the salt sent 
through the custom-house, is shifted from the 
measured to the weighed bushel, and loses 
twenty-eight pounds by the operation ! but this 
is not his whole loss ; the intermediate salt 
dealer deducts six pounds more, and gives fifty 
pounds for the bushel ; and thus this taxed and 
custom-housed artfcle, after paying some hun- 
dred per cent, to the government and several 
hundred per cent, more to the regraters, is 
worked into a loss of thirty-four pounds on every 
bushel ! All these losses and impositions would 
vanish, if salt was freed from the necessity of 
passing the custom-houses ; and to do that, it 
must be freed in ioto from taxation. The slight- 
est duty would operate nearly the whole mis- 
chief, for it would throw the article into the 



hands of regraters, and would substitute thv 
weighed for the measured bushel. 

Such are the direct injuries of the salt tax ; 
a tax enormous in itself, disproportionate in its 
application to the same article in different parts 
of the Union, and bearing hardest upon that 
kind which is cheapest, best, and most indis- 
pensable. The levy to the government is enor- 
mous, $050,000 per annum upon an article only 
worth about $000,000 ; but what the govern- 
ment receives is a trifle, compared to what is 
exacted by the regrater, — what is lost in the 
difference between the weighed and the mea- 
sured bushel. — and the loss which the farmer 
sustains for want of adequate supplies of salt for 
his stock, and their food. Assuming the gov- 
ernment tax to be ten cents a bushel, the aver- 
age cost of alum salt to be seven cents, and the 
regrater's price to be fifty cents, and it is clear 
that he receives upwards of three times as much 
as the government does ; and that the tribute 
to those regraters is near two millions of dollars 
per annum. Assuming again that thirty-four 
pounds in the bushel are lost to the consumei- 
in the substitution of the weighed for the mea- 
sured bushel, and here is another loss amount- 
ing to nearly three-eighths of the value of the 
salt ; that is to say, to about $250,000 on an 
importation of $050,000 worth. 

These detailed views of the operation and 
effects of the salt duty, continued Mr. B., place 
the burdens of that tax in the most odious and 
revolting light; but the picture is not yet com- 
plete ; two other features are to be introduced 
into it, each of which, separately, and still more, 
both put together, go far to double its enormity, 
and to carry the iniquity of such a tax up to the 
very verge of criminality and sinfulness. The 
first of these features is, in the loss which the 
fiirmers sustain for want of adequate supplies 
of salt for their stock ; and the second, from 
the fact that the duty is a one-sided tax, being 
imposed only on some sections of the Union, 
and not at all upon another section of the 
Union. A few details will verify these addi- 
tional features. First, as to the loss which the 
country sustains fo'* want of adequate supplies 
of salt. Ever}' practical man knows that every 
description of stock requires salt — hogs, horses, 
cattle, sheep; and that all the prepared food 
of cattle requires it also — hay, fodder, clover, 
shucks, &c. In England it is ascertained, by 



ANNO 1837. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



717 



experience, that sheep require, each, half a 
pound a week, which is twenty-eight pounds, 
or half a custom-house bushel, per annum ; cows 
require a bushel and a half per annum ; young 
cattle a bushel; draught horses, and draught 
cattle, a bushel; colts, and young cattle, from 
three pecks to a bushel each, per annum ; and 
it was computed in England, before the aboli- 
tion of the salt-tax there, that the stock of the 
English farmers, for want of adequate supplies 
of salt, was injured to an annual amount far be- 
yond the product of the tax. 

Dr. Young, before a committee of the Brit- 
ish House of Commons, and upon oath, testi- 
fied to his belief that the use of salt free of 
tax would benefit the agricultural interest, in 
the increased value of their stock alone, to 
the annual amount of three millions sterling, 
near fifteen millions of dollars. Such was the 
injury of the salt-tax in England to the agri- 
cultural interest in the single article of stock. 
What the injuiy might be to the agricultu- 
ral interest in the United States on the same 
article, on account of the stinted use of salt 
occasioned by the tax, might be vaguely con- 
ceived from general observation and a few 
established facts. In the first place, it was 
known to every body that stock in our country 
was stinted for salt ; that neither hogs, horses, 
cattle, or sheep, received any thing near the 
quantity found by experience to be necessary 
in England ; and, as for their food, that little or 
no salt was put upon it in the United States ; 
while in England, ten or fifteen pounds of salt 
to the ton of hay, clover, &c. was used in curing 
it. Taking a single branch of the stock of the 
United States, that of sheep, and more decided 
evidence of the deplorable deficiency of salt can- 
not be produced. The sheep in the United States 
were computed by the wool-growers, in 1832, in 
their petitions to Congress, at twenty millions ; 
this number, at half a bushel each, would re- 
quire about ten millions of bushels ; now the 
whole supply of salt in the United States, both 
home-made and imported, barely exceeds ten 
millions ; so that, if the sheep received an ade- 
quate supply, there would not remain a pound 
for any other purpose ! Of course, the sheep 
did not receive an adequate supply, nor perhaps 
the fourth part of what was necessary ; and so 
of all other stock. To give an opinion of the 
total loss to the agricultural interest in the 



United States for want of the free use of this 
article, would require the minute, comprehen- 
sive, sagacious, and peculiar turn of mind of 
Dr. Young ; but it may be suflicient for the ar- 
gument, and for all practical purposes, to assume 
that our loss, in proportion to the number of 
our stock, is greater than that of the English 
farmers, and amounts to fifteen or twenty times 
the value of the tax itself ! 



CHAPTER CLIX. 

EXPUNGING KESOLUTION-PEEPARATION FOR 
DECISION. 

It was now the last session of the last term of 
the presidency of General -Jackson, and tlic work 
of the American Senate doing justice to itself by 
undoing the wrong which it had done to itself 
in its condemnation of the President, was at 
hand. The appeal to the people had produced 
its full effect ; and, in less time than had been 
expected. Confident from the beginning in the 
verdict of the people, the author of the move- 
ment had not counted upon its delivery until 
several years — probably until after the retire- 
ment of Generel Jackson, and until the subsi- 
dence of the passions which usually pursue a 
public man while he remains on the stage of 
action. Contrary to all expectation, the public 
mind was made up in less than three years, and 
before the termination of that second adminis- 
tration which was half run when the sentence 
of condemnation was passed. At the conimencj>- 
ment of this session, 1836-'37, the public voice 
had come in, and in an imperative form. A 
majority of the States had acted decisively on 
the subject — some superseding their senators 
at the end of their terms who had given the 
obnoxious vote, and replacing them by those 
who would expunge it ; others sending legisla- 
tive instructions to their senators, which carried 
along with them, in the democratic States, tho 
obligation of obedience or resignation; and of 
which it was known there were enough to obey 
to accomplish the desired cxpurp;ati()n. Ciri>at 
was the number superseded, or forced to resign. 
The great leaders, Mr. Clay, Mr. Webster, Mr. 
Calhoun, easily maintained themselves in their 



718 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



respective States ; but the mortality fell heavily 
upon their followers, and left them in a helpless 
minority. The time had come for action ; and 
on the second day after the meeting of the Sen- 
ate, Mr. Benton gave notice of his intention to 
bring in at an early period the unwelcome reso- 
lution, and to press it to a decision. Heretofore 
he had introduced it without any view to action, 
but merely for an occasion for a speech, to go to 
the people ; but the opposition, exulting in their 
strength, would of themselves call it up, against 
the wishes of the mover, to receive the rejection 
which they were able to give it. Now these 
dispositions were reversed ; the mover was for 
decision — they for staving it off. On the 26th 
day of December — the third anniversary of the 
day on which INIr. Clay had moved the condem- 
natory resolution — Mr. Benton laid upon the 
table the resolve to expunge it — followed by 
his third and last speech on the siibject. The 
following is the resolution ; the speech consti- 
tutes the next chapter : 

Resolution to e.rpunge from the Journal the 
Resolution of the Senate of March 28, 1834, 
in relation to President Jackson and the 
Removal of the Deposits. 

" TVhereas, on the 2Gth day of December, in 
the year 1833, the following resolve was moved 
in the Senate : 

" ^Resolved, That, by dismissing the late Secre- 
tary of the Treasury, because he would not, 
contrary to his own sense of duty, remove the 
money of the United States in deposit with the 
Bank of the United States and its branches, in 
conformity with the President's opinion, and by 
appointing his successor to effect such removal, 
wliich has been done, the President has assumed 
the exercise of a power over the Treasury of the 
United States, not granted him by the Constitu- 
tion and laws, and dangerous to the liberties of 
the people.' 

"Which proposed resolve was altered and 
changed by the mover thereof, on the 28th day 
of j\Iarch, in the year 1834, so as to read as 
follows : 

'■ ' Iiesolred, That, in taking upon himself the 
responsibility of removing the deposit of the 
public money from the Bank of the United 
States, the President of the United States has 
assumed the exercise of a power over the Trea- 
sury of the United States not granted to him 
by the constitution and laws, and dangerous to 
the liberties of the people.' 

" Which resolve, so changed and modified by 
the mover thereof, on the same day and year 
last mentioned, was further altered, so as to read 
in these words : 

• 'Resolved^ That the President, in the late 



executive proceedings in relation to the revenue 
has assumed upon himself authority and powei 
not conferred by the constitution and laws, but 
in derogation of both : ' 

" In which last mentioned form the said re- 
solve, on the same day and year last mentioned, 
was adopted by the Senate, and became the act 
and judgment of that body, and, as such, now 
remains upon the journal thereof: 

"And whereas the said resolve was not warrant- 
ed b3" the constitution, and was irregularly and 
illegally adopted by the Senate, in violation of 
the rights of defence which belong to every 
citizen, and in subversion of the fundamental 
principles of law and justice ; because President 
Jackson was thereby adjudged and pronounced 
to be guilty of an impeachable offence, and a 
stigma placed upon him as a violator of his oath 
of oflBce, and of the laws and constitution which 
he was sworn to preserve, protect, and defend, 
without going through the forms of an impeach- 
ment, and without allowing to him the benefits 
of a trial, or the means of defence ; 

"And whereas the said resolve, in all its 
various shapes and forms, was unfounded and 
erroneous in point of fact, and therefore unjust 
and unrighteous, as well as irregular and unau- 
thorized by the constitution ; because the said 
President Jackson neither in the act of dismiss- / 
ing Mr. Duane, nor in the appointment of Mr. v 
Taney, as specified in the first form of the re- 
solve ; nor in taking upon himself the responsi- 
bility of removing the deposits, as specified in 
the second form of the same resolve ; nor in any 
act which was then, or can now, be specified 
under the vague and ambiguous terms of the 
general denunciation contained in the third and 
last form of the resolve, did do or commit any 
act in violation or in derogation of the laws and 
constitution ; or dangerous to the liberties of the 
people : 

"And whereas the said resolve, as adopted, was 
uncertain and ambiguous, containing nothing but 
a loose and floating charge for derogating from the 
laws and constitution, and assuming ungranted 
power and authority in the late executive proceed- 
ings in relation to the public revenue; without 
specifying what part of the executive proceed- 
ings, or what part of the public revenue was in- 
tended to be referred to ; or what parts of the 
laws and constitution were supposed to have 
been infringed ; or in what part of the Union, 
or at what period of his administration, these 
late proceedings were supposed to have taken 
place ; thereby putting each senator at liberty 
to vote in favor of the resolve upon a separate 
and secret reason of his own, and leaving tlie 
ground of the Senate's judgment to be guessed 
at by the public, and to be differently and di- 
versely interpreted by individual senators, ac- 
cording to the private and particular under- 
standmg of each : contrary to all tlie ends of 
justice, and to all the forms of legal or judicial 
proceeding; to the great prejudice of the ac- 
cused, who could not know against what to 



ANNO ISSY. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



719 



defend himself; and to the loss of senatorial 
responsibility, by shielding senators from public 
accountability for making up a judgment upon 
grounds which the public cannot know, and 
which, if known, might prove to be insuflBcient 
in law, or unfounded in fact : 

" And whereas the specification contained in 
the first and second forms of the resolve having 
been objected to in debate, and shown to be 
insufficient to sustain the charges they were 
adduced to support, and it being well believed 
that no majority could be obtained to vote for 
the said specifications, and the same having been 
actually withdrawn by the mover in the face of 
the whole Senate, in consequence of such objec- 
tion and belief, and before any vote taken there- 
upon ; the said specifications could not after- 
wards be admitted by any rule of parliamentary 
practice, or by any principle of legal implication, 
secret intendment, or mental reservation, to re- 
main and continue a part of the written and 
public resolve from which they were thus with- 
drawn ; and, if they could be so admitted, they 
would not be suflScient to sustain the charges 
therein contained : 

" And whereas the Senate being the constitu- 
tional tribunal for the trial of the President, 
when charged by the House of Representatives 
with offences against the laws and the constitu- 
tion, the adoption of the said resolve, before any 
impeachment preferred by the House, was a 
breach of the privileges of the House ; not war- 
ranted by the constitution; a subversion of 
justice; a prejudication of a question which 
might legally come before the Senate; and a 
disqualification of that body to perform its con- 
stitutional duty with fairness and impartiality, 
if the President should thereafter be regularly 
impeached by the House of Representatives for 
the same offence : 

"And whereas the temperate, respectful, and 
argumentative defence and protest of the Presi- 
dent against the aforesaid proceeding of the 
Senate was rejected and repulsed by that body, 
and was voted to be a breach of its privileges, 
and was not permitted to be entered on its 
journal or printed among its documents; while 
all memorials, petitions, resolves, and remon- 
strances against the President, however violent 
or unfounded, and calculated to inflame the 
people against him, were duly and honorably 
received, encomiastically commented upon in 
speeches, read at the table, ordered to be printed 
with the long list of names attached, referred to 
the Finance Committee for consideration, filed 
away among the public archives, and now con- 
stitute a part of the public documents of the 
Senate, to be handed down to the latest pos- 
terity : 

"And whereas the said resolve was mtro- 
duced, debated, and adopted, at a time and under 
circumstances which had the effect of co-operat- 
ing with the Bank of the United States in the 
parricidal attempt which that institution was 
then making to produce a panic and pressure in 



the country ; to destroy the confidence of the 
people in President Jackson; to paralyze his 
administration; to govern the elections; to 
bankrupt the State banks ; ruin their currency ; 
fill the whole Union witii terror and distress ; 
and thereby to extort from the sdfllTings and 
the alarms of the people, the restoi-ation of the 
deposits and the renewal of its charter: 

"And whereas the said resolve is of evil ex- 
ample and dangerous precedent, and should 
never have been received, debated, or adopted 
by the Senate, or admitted to entry upon its 
journal: Wherefore, 

'■'■Resolved, That the said resolve be expunged 
from the journal ; and, for that purpose, that 
the Seci'ctary of the Senate, at such time as the 
Senate may appoint, shall bring the manuscript 
journal of the session 1833 '34 into the Senate, 
and, in the presence of the Senate, draw black lines 
round the said resolve, and write across the face 
thereof, in strong letters, the following words : 
' Expunged by order of the Senate, this — day 
of , in the year of our Lord 1837. ' " 



CHAPTER CLX. 

EXPUNGING EESOLUTION.-ME. BENTON'S THIRD 
SPEECH. 

Mr. President: It is now near three years 
since the resolve was adopted by the Senate, 
which it is my present motion to expunge from 
the journal. At the moment that this resolve 
was adopted, I gave notice of my intention to 
move to expunge it; and then expressed my 
confident belief that the motion would even- 
tually prevail. That expression of confidence 
was not an ebullition of vanity, or a presump- 
tuous calculation, intended to accelerate the 
event it affected to foretell. It was not a vain 
boast, or an idle assumption, but was the result 
of a deep conviction of the injustice done Presi- 
dent Jackson, and a thorough reliance upon the 
justice of the American people. I felt that )he 
President had been wronged ; and my heart told 
me that this wrong would be redressed ! The 
event proves that I was not mistaken. Tlie 
question of expunging this resolution has been 
carried to the people, and their decision has 
been had upon it. They decide in favor of the 
expurgation; and their decision has been both 
made and manifested, and communicated to us 
in a great variety of ways. A great number of 



720 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



States have expressly instructed their senators 
to vote for this expurgation. A very great 
majority of the States have elected senators and 
representatives to Congress, upon the express 
ground of favoring this expurgation. The Bank 
of the United States, which took the initiative 
in the accusation against the President, and 
furnished the material, and worked the ma- 
chinery which was used against him, and which 
was then so powerful on this floor, has become 
more and more odious to the public mind, and 
musters now but a slender phalanx of friends 
in the two Houses of Congress. The late Presi- 
dential election furnishes additional evidence of 
public sentiment. The candidate who was the 
friend of President Jackson, the supporter of 
his administration, and the avowed advocate 
for the expurgation, has received a large ma- 
jority of the suffrages of the whole Union, and 
that after an express declaratio^i of his senti- 
ments on this precise point. The evidence of 
the public will, exhibited in all these forms, is 
too manifest to be mistaken, too explicit to re- 
quire illustration, and too imperative to be dis- 
regarded. Omitting details and specific enu- 
meration of proofs, I refer to our own files for 
the instructions to expunge, — to the complexion 
of the two Houses for the temper of the people, 
— to the denationalized condition of the Bank 
of the United States for the fate of the im- 
perious accuser, — and to the issue of the Presi- 
dential election for the answer of the Union. 
All these are pregnant proofs of the pubUc will, 
and the last pre-eminently so : because, both 
the question of the expurgation, and the form 
of the process, was directly jnit in issue upon it. 
A representative of the people from the State 
of Kentucky formally interrogated a prominent 
candidate for the Presidency on these points, 
and required from him a public answer for the 
information of the public mind. The answer 
was given, and published, and read by all the 
voters before the election ; and I deem it right 
to refer to that answer in this place, not only 
as evidence of the points put in issue, but also 
for the purpose of doing more ample justice to 
President Jackson by incorporating into the 
legislative history of this case, the high and 
honorable testimony in his favor of the eminent 
citizen, Mr. Van Buren, who has just been ex- 
alted to the lofty honors of the American Presi- 
dency : 



" Your last question seeks to know ' my ' 
opinion as to the constitutional power of the 
Senate or House of Representatives to expunge 
or obliterate from the journals the proceedings 
of a previous session. 

" You will, I am sure, be satisfied upon fur- 
ther consideration, that there are but few ques- 
tions of a political character less connected with 
the duties of the office of President of the United 
States, or that might not with equal propriety 
be put by an elector to a candidate for that sta- 
tion, than this. With the journals of neither 
house of Congress can he properly have any 
thing to do. But. as your question has doubt- 
less been induced by the pendency of Col. Ben- 
ton's resolutions, to expunge from the journals 
of the Senate certain other resolutions touching 
the official conduct of President Jackson, I pre- 
fer to say, that I regarded the passage of Col. 
Benton's preamble and resolutions to be an act 
of justice to a f;\ithful and greatly injured public 
servant, not only constitutional in itself, but 
imperiously demanded by a proper respect for 
the well known will of the people." 

I do not propose, sir, to draw violent, un- 
warranted, or strained inferences. I do not as- 
sume to say that the question of this expurgar 
tion was a leading, or a controlling point in the 
issue of this election. I do not assume to say, 
or insinuate, that every individual, and every 
voter, delivered his suffrage with reference to 
this question. Doubtless there were many ex- 
ceptions. Still, the triumphant election of the 
candidate who had expressed himself in the terms 
just quoted, and who was, besides, the personal 
and political friend of President Jackson, and 
the avowed approver of his administration, must 
be admitted to a place among the proofs in this 
case, and ranked among the high concurring evi- 
dences of the public sentiment m favor of the 
motion which I make. 

Assuming, then, that we have ascertained 
the will of the people on this great question, 
the inquiry presents itself, how far the expres- 
sion of that will ought to be conclusive of our 
action here 1 I hold that it ought to be binding 
and obligatory upon us ! and that, not onl}^ upon 
the principles of representative government, 
which requires obedience to the known will of 
the people, but also in conformity to the prin- 
ciples upon which the proceeding against Pre- 
sident Jackson was conducted when the sentence 
against him was adopted. Then every thing 
was done with especial reference to the will of 
the people ! Their impulsion was assumed to 
be the sole motive to action ; and to them the 



ANNO 18Z1. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



721 



ultimate verdict was expressly referred. The 
whole machinery of alarm and pressure — every 
engine of political and moneyed power — was put 
in motion, and worked for many months, to ex- 
cite the people against the President ; and to stir 
up meetings, memorials, petitions, travelling 
committees, and distress deputations against 
him ; and each symptom of popular discontent 
was hailed as an evidence of public will, and 
quoted here as proof that the people demanded 
the condemnation of the President. Not only 
legislative assemblies, and memorials from large 
assemblies, were then produced here as evidence 
of public opinion, but the petitions of boys un- 
der age, the remonstrances of a few signers, 
and the results of the most inconsiderable elec- 
tions, were ostentatiously paraded and magnified, 
as the evidence of the sovereign will of our con- 
stituents. Thus, sir, the public voice was every 
thing while that voice, partiallj^ obtained through 
political and pecuniary machinations, was ad- 
verse to the President. Then the popular will 
was the shrine at which all worshipped. Now, 
when that will is regularly, soberly, repeatedly, 
and almost universally expressed through the 
ballot boxes, at the various elections, and turns 
out to be in favor of the President, certainly no 
one can disregard it, nor otherwise look at it 
than as the solemn verdict of the competent and 
ultimate tribunal upon an issue fairly made up, 
fully argued, and duly submitted for decision. 
As such verdict, I receive it. As the deliberate 
verdict of the sovereign people, I bow to it. I 
am content. I do not mean to reopen the case, 
nor to recommence the argument, I leave that 
work to others, if any others choose to perform 
it. For myself, I am content ; and, dispensing 
with further argument, I shall call for judgment, 
and ask to have execution done, upon that un- 
happy journal, which the verdict of millions of 
freemen finds guilty of bearing oa its face an im- 
true, illegal, and unconstitutional sentence of 
condemnation against the approved President 
of the Republic. 

But, while declining to reopen the argument 
of this question, and refusing to tread over again 
the ground already traversed, there is another 
and a different task to perform ; one which the 
approaching termination of President Jackson's 
administration makes peculiarly proper at this 
time, and which it is my privilege, and perhaps 
my duty, to execute, as being the suitable con- 

VoL. I— 46 



elusion to the arduous contest in which we have 
been so long engaged ; I allude to the general 
tenor of his administration, and to its effect, for 
good or for evil, upon the condition of his country. 
This is the proper time for such a view to be 
taken. The political existence of this great man 
now draws to a close. In little more than forty 
days he ceases to be a public character. Tn a 
few brief weeks he ceases to be an object of po- 
litical hope to any, and should cease to be an 
object of political hate, or envy, to all. What- 
ever of motive the servile and timeserving might 
have found in his exalted station for raising the 
altar of adulation, and burning the incense of 
praise before him, that motive can no longer ex- 
ist. The dispenser of the patronage of an em- 
pire—the chief of this great confederacy of 
States — is soon to be a private individual, strip- 
ped of all power to reward, or to punish. His 
own thoughts, as he has shown us in the con- 
cluding paragraph of that message wliich is to 
be the last of its kind that we shall ever receive 
from him, are directed to that beloved retire- 
ment from which he was drawn by the voice of 
millions of freemen, and to which he now looks 
for that interval of repose which age and infir- 
mities require. Under these circumstances, he 
ceases to be a subject for the ebullition of the 
passions, and passes into a character for the con- 
templation of histor3^ Historically, then, shall 
I view him ; and limiting this view to his civil 
administration, T demand, where is there a chief 
magistrate of whom so much evil has been pre- 
dicted, and from whom so much good has come? 
Never has any man entered upon the cliief ma- 
gistracy of a country under such appalling pre- 
dictions of ruin and woe ! never has anv one been 
so pursued with direful prognostications ! never 
has any one been so beset and impeded by a 
powerful combination of political and moneyed 
confederates ! never has any one in any coun- 
try where the administration of justice has risen 
above the knife or tlie bow.-;tring, been so law- 
lessly and shamelessly tried and condemned 
by rivals and enemies, witliout hearing, without 
defence, without the forms of law or justice! 
History has been ransacked to find examples 
of tyrants sufficiently odious to illustrate liira 
by comparison. Language has been tortured 
to find epithets sufficiently strong to paint liim 
in description. Imagination has been exhausted 
in her efforts to deck him with i-cvolting and 



722 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



inhuman attributes. Tyrant, despot, usurper ; 
destroyer of the liberties of liis country ; rash, 
ignorant, imbecile ; cndanf^cring the public peace 
with all foreign nations ; destroj'ing domestic 
prosperity at home ; ruining all industry, all 
comTnerce, all manufactures ; annihilating con- 
fidence between man and man; delivering up 
the streets of populous cities to grass and weeds, 
and the Avharves of commercial towns to the 
encumbrance of decaying vessels ; depriving 
labor of all reward ; depriving industry'- of all 
employment ; destroying the currency ; plung- 
ing an innocent and happj' people from the sum- 
mit of felicity to the depths of misery, want, and 
despair. Such is the faint outline, followed up 
b}^ actual condemnation, of the appalling denun- 
ciations daily uttered against this one MAN, 
from the moment he became an object of poli- 
tical competition, down to the concluding mo- 
ment of his political existence. 

'• The sacred voice of inspiration has told us 
that there is a time for all things. There cer- 
tainly has been a time for every evil that human 
nature admits of to be vaticinated of President 
Jackson's administration ; equally certain the 
time has now come for all rational and well-dis- 
posed people to compare the predictions with the 
fjicts, and to ask themselves if these calamitous 
prognostications have been verified by events 1 
Have we peace, or war, with foreign nations ? 
Certainly, we have peace with all the world ! 
peace with all its benign, and felicitous, and bene- 
ficent influences ! Are we respected, or despised 
abroad ? Certainly the American name never was 
more honored throughout the four quarters of the 
globe, than in this very moment. Do we hear of 
indignity, or outrage in any quarter? of merchants 
robbed in foreign ports ? of vessels searched on 
the high seas ? of American citizens impressed 
into foreign service ? of the national flag insulted 
any where ? On the contrary, we see former 
wrongs repaired ; no new ones inflicted. France 
pays twenty-five millions of francs for spolia- 
tions committed thirty years ago ; Naples pays 
two millions one hundred thousand ducats for 
wrongs of the same date ; Denmark pays six 
Imndred and fiifty thousand rix dollars for wrongs 
done a quarter of a century ago ; Spain engages 
to pa)' twelve millions of reals vellon for injuries 
of fifteen years date ; and Portugal, the last in 
the list of former aggressors, admits he liability, 
and only waits the adjustment of details to close 



her account by adequate indemnity. So far 
from war, insult, contempt, and spoliation fronr 
abroad ; this denounced administration has been 
the season of peace and good will, and the aus- 
picious era of universal reparation. So far from 
suffering injury at the hands of foreign powers, 
our merchants have received indemnities for all 
former injuries. It has been the day of account- 
ing, -jf settlement, and of retribution. The 
total list of arrearages, extending through four 
successive previous administrations, has been 
closed and settled up. The wrongs done to 
commerce for thirty years back, and under so 
many different Presidents, and indemnities with- 
held from all, have been repaired and paid over 
under the beneficent and glorious administration 
of President Jackson. But one single instance 
of outrage has occurred, and that at the extremi- 
ties of the world, and by a piratical horde, 
amenable to no law but the law of force. The 
IMalays of Sumatra committed a robbery and 
massacre upon an American vessel. Wretches ! 
they did not then know that JACKSON was 
President of the United States ! and that no 
distance, no time, no idle ceremonial of treating 
with robbers and assassins, was to hold back 
the arm of justice. Commodore Downes went 
out. His cannon and his bayonets struck the 
outlaws in their den. They paid in terror and 
in blood for the outrage which was committed ; 
and the great lesson was taught to these distant 
pirates — to our antipodes themselves — that not 
even the entire diameter of this globe could pro- 
tect them ! and that the name of American 
citizen, like that of Roman citizen in the great 
days of the Republic and of the empire, was to 
be the inviolable passport of all that wore it 
throughout the whole extent of the habitable 
world. 

'•At home, the most gratifying picture pre- 
sents itself to the view : the public debt paid 
off; taxes reduced one half; the completion of 
the public defences systematically commenced ; 
the compact with Georgia, uncomplied with 
since 1802, now carried into effect, and her soil 
ready to be freed, as her jurisdiction has been 
delivered, from the presence and encumbrance 
of an Indian population. Mississippi and Ala- 
oama, Georgia, Tennessee, and North Carolina ; 
Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, and Arkansas ; 
in a word, all the States encumbered with an 
Indian population have been relieved from that 



ANNO 1837. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



723 



encumbrance ; and the Indians themselves have 
been transferred to new and permanent homes 
every way better adapted to the enjoyment of 
their existence, the preservation of their rights 
and the improvement of their condition. 

" The currency is not ruined ! On the con- 
trary, seventy-five millions of specie in the coun- 
try is a spectacle never seen before, and is the 
barrier of the people against the designs of any 
banks which may attempt to suspend payments, 
and to force a dishonored paper currency upon 
the community. These seventy-five millions are 
the security of the people against the dangers of 
a depreciated and inconvertible paper money. 
Gold, after a disappearance of thirty years, is 
restored to our country. All Europe beholds 
with admiration the success of our efforts in 
three years, to supply ourselves with the cur- 
rency which our constitution guarantees, and 
which the example of France and Holland 
shows to be so easily attainable, and of such in- 
calculable value to industry, morals, economy, 
and solid wealth. The success of these efforts 
is styled in the best London papers, not merely 
a reformation, but a revolution in the currency ! 
a revolution by which our America is now re- 
gaining from Europe the gold and silver which 
she has been sending to it for thirty years 
past. 

Domestic industry is not paralyzed; confi- 
dence is not destroyed ; factories are not stop- 
ped ; workmen are not mendicants for bread 
and employment; credit is not extinguished; 
prices have not sunk ; grass is not growing in 
the streets of populous cities ; the wharves are 
not lumbered with decaying vessels; columns 
of curses, rising from the bosoms of a ruined and 
agonized people, are not ascending to heaven 
against the destroyer of a nation's felicity and 
prosperity. On the contrary, the reverse of all 
this is true ! and true to a degree that aston- 
ishes and bewilders the senses. I know that all 
is not gold that glitters ; that there is a differ- 
5Hce between a specious and a solid prosperity. 
I know that a part of the present prosperity is 
apparent only — the effect of an increase of fifty 
millions of paper money, forced into circulation 
by one thousand banks ; but, after making due 
allowance for this fictitious and delusive excess, 
he real prosperity of the country is still unprece- 
dentedly and transcendently great. I know that 
every flow must be followed by its ebb, that j 



every expansion must be followed by its con- 
traction. I know that a revulsion of the paper 
system is inevitable; but I know, also, that 
these seventy-five millions of gold and silver is 
the bulwark of the country, and will enable 
every honest bank to meet its habilities, and 
every prudent citizen to take care of himself. 

Turning to some points in the civil adminis- 
tration of President Jackson, and how much do 
we not find to admire ! The great cause of the 
constitution has been vindicated from an impu- 
tation of more than forty years' duration. He 
has demonstrated, by the fact itself, that a na- 
tional bank is not 'necessary ' to the fiscal opera- 
tions of the federal government ; and in that 
demonstration he has upset the argument of 
General Hamilton, and the decision of the Su- 
preme Court of the United States, and all that 
ever has been said in favor of the constitution- 
ality of a national bank. All this argument 
and decision rested on the single assumption 
of the ' necessity ' of that institution to the fed- 
eral government. He has shown it is not ' ne- 
cessary ; ' that the currency of the constitution, 
and especially a gold currency, is all that the 
federal government wants, and that she can get 
that whenever she pleases. In this single act, 
he has vindicated the constitution from an un- 
just imputation, and knocked from under the 
decision of the Supreme Court the assumed fact 
on which it rested. He has prepared the way 
for the reversal of that decision ; and it is a 
question for lawyers to answer, whether the 
case is not ripe for the application of that writ 
of most remedial nature, as Lord Coke calls 
it, and which was invented, lest, in any case, 
there should be an oppressive defect of justice! 
the venerable writ of audita querela defenden- 
liSj to ascertain the truth of a fact happening 
since the judgment ; and upon the due finding 
of which the judgment will be vacated. Let 
the lawyers bring their books, and answer us, 
if there is not a case here presented for the 
application of that ancient and most remedial 
writ ? 

From President Jackson, the country has 
first learned the true theory and practical in- 
tent of the constitution, in giving to the Execu- 
tive a qualified negative on the legislative power 
of Congress. Far from being an odious, danger- 
ous, or kingly prerogative, this power, as vested 
in the President, is nothing but a quahfied copy 



724 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



of the famous veto power vested in the tribunes 
of the people among the Romans, and intended 
to suspend the passage of a law until the people 
themselves should have time to consider it. The 
qualified veto of the President destroys nothing; 
it only delays the passage of a law, and refers 
it to the people for their consideration and de- 
cision. It is the reference of a law, not to a 
committee of the House, or of the whole House, 
but to the committee of the whole Union. It 
is a recommitment of the bill to the people, for 
them to examine and consider ; and if, upon this 
examination, they are content to pass it, it will 
pass at the next session. The delay of a few 
months is the only effect of a veto, in a case 
where the people shall ultimately approve a 
law ; where they do not approve it, the interpo- 
sition of the veto is the barrier which saves 
them the adoption of a law, the repeal of which 
might afterwards be almost impossible. The 
qualified negative is, therefore, a beneficent pow- 
er, intended, as General Hamilton expressly 
declares in the 'Federalist,' to protect, first, 
the executive department from the encroach- 
ments of the legislative department ; and, se-* 
condly, to preserve the people from hasty, dan- 
gerous, or criminal legislation on the part of 
their representatives. This is the design and 
intention of the veto power ; and the fear ex- 
pressed by General Hamilton was, that Presi- 
dents, so far from exercising it too often, would 
not exercise it as often as the safety of the peo- 
ple required ; that they might lack the moral 
courage to stake themselves in opposition to a 
favorite measure of the majority of the two 
Houses of Congress; and thus deprive the peo- 
ple, in many instances, of their right to pass 
upon a bill before it becomes a final law. The 
cases in which President Jackson has exercised 
the veto power has shown the soundness of these 
observations. No ordinary President would 
have staked himself against the Bank of the 
United States, and the two Houses of Congress, 
in 1832. It required President Jackson to con- 
front that power — to stem that torrent — to stay 
the progress of that charter, and to refer it to 
the people for their decision. His moral cour- 
age was equal to the crisis. He arrested the 
charter until it could go to the people, and they 
liave arrested it for ever. Had he not done so, 
the charter would have become law, and its re- 
peal almost impossible. The people of the whole 



Union would now have been in the condition ol 
the people of Pennsylvania, bestrode by tha 
monster, in daily conflict with him, and main- 
taining a doubtful contest for supremacy be- 
tween the government of a State and the direc- 
tory of a moneyed corporation. 

To detail specific acts which adorn the ad- 
ministration of President Jackson, and illustrate 
the intuitive sagacity of his intellect, the firm- 
ness of his mind, his disregard of personal popu- 
larity, and his entire devotion to the public 
good, would be inconsistent with this rapid 
sketch, intended merely to present general 
views, and not to detail single actions, howso- 
ever worthy they may be of a splendid page in 
the volume of history. But how can we pass 
over the great measure of the removal of the 
public moneys from the Bank of the United 
States, in the autumn of 1833 ? that wise, he- 
roic, and masterly measure of prevention, which 
has rescued an empire from the fangs of a mer- 
ciless, revengeful, greedy, insatiate, implacable, 
moneyed power ! It is a remark for which I 
am indebted to the philosophic observation of 
my most esteemed colleague and friend (point- 
ing to Dr. Linn), that, while it requires far 
greater talent to foresee an evil before it hap- 
pens, and to arrest it by precautionary measures, 
than it requires to apply an adequate remedy 
to the same evil after it has happened, yet the 
applause bestowed by the world is always great- 
est in the latter case. Of this, the removal of 
the public moneys from the Bank of the United 
States is an eminent instance. The veto of 
1832, which arrested the charter which Con- 
gress had granted, immediately received the ap- 
plause and approbation of a majority of the 
Union : the removal of the deposits, which pre- 
vented the bank from forcing a recharter, was 
disapproved by a large majority of the coimtry, 
and even of his own friends ; yet the veto would 
have been unavailing, and the bank would inevi- 
tably have been rechartcred, if the deposits had 
not been removed. The immense sums of pub- 
lic money since accumulated would have en- 
abled the bank, if she had retamed the posses- 
sion of it, to have coerced a recharter. Nothing 
but the removal could have prevented her from 
extorting a recharter from the sufferings and 
terrors of the people. If it had not been for 
that neasure, the previous veto would have 
been unavailing; the bank would have been 



ANNO 1837. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



725 



again installed in power ; and this entire federal 
government would have been held as an append- 
age to that bank, and administered according to 
her directions, and by her nominees. That 
great measure of prevention, the removal of the 
deposits, though feebly and faintly supported 
by friends at first, has expelled the bank from 
the field, and driven her into abeyance under a 
State charter. She is not dead, but, holding 
her capital and stockholders together under a 
State charter, she has taken a position to watch 
events, and to profit by them. The royal tiger 
has gone into the jungle ; and, crouched on his 
belly, he awaits the favorable moment for emerg- 
ing from his covert, and springuig on the body 
of the unsuspicious traveller ! 

The Treasury order for excluding paper mon- 
ey from the land oflices is another wise mea- 
sure, originating in enlightened forecast, and 
preventing great mischiefs. The President fore- 
saw the evils of suffering a thousand streams of 
paper money, issuing from a thousand different 
banks, to discharge themselves on the national 
domain- He foresaw that if these currents were 
allowed to run their course, that the public 
lands would be swept awaj'^, the Treasury would 
be filled with irredeemable paper, a vast num- 
ber of banks must be broken by their folly, and 
the cry set up that nothing but a national bank 
could regulate the currency. He stopped the 
course of these streams of paper ; and, in so do- 
ing, has saved the country from a great calamity, 
and excited anew the machinations of those 
whose schemes of gain and mischief have been 
disappointed ; and who had counted on a new 
edition of panic and pressure, and again saluting 
Congress with the old story of confidence de- 
stroyed, currency ruined, prosperity annihilated, 
and distress produced, by the tyranny of one 
man. They began their lugubrious song; but 
ridicule and contempt have proved too strong 
for money and insolence ; and the panic letter 
of the ex-president of the denationalized bank, 
after limping about for a few days, has shrunk 
from the lash of public scorn, and disappeared 
from the forum of public debate. 

The diflSculty with France : whai an instance 
it presents of the superior sagacity of President 
Jackson over all the commonplace politicians 
who beset and impede his administration at 
home ! That difiBculty, inflamed and aggravated 
bj domestic faction, wore, at one time, a por- 



tentous aspect ; the skill, firmness, elevation of 
purpose, and manly frankness of the President, 
avoided the danger, accomplished the object, 
commanded the admiration of Europe, and re- 
tained the friendship of France, He conducted 
the delicate affair to a successful and mutually 
honorable issue. All is amicably and happily 
terminated, leaving not a wound, nor even a 
scar, behind— leaving the Frenchman and 
American on the ground on which they have 
stood for fifty years, and should for ever stand ; 
the ground of friendship, respect, good will, and 
mutual wishes for the honor, happiness, and 
prosperity, of each other. 

But why this specification? So beneficent 
and so glorious has been the administration of 
this President, that where to begin, and where 
to end, in the enumeration of great measures, 
would be the embarrassment of him who has 
his eulogy to make. He came into office the 
first of generals ; he goes out the first of states- 
men. His civil competitors have shared the 
fate of his military opponents ; and Washington 
city has been to the American politicians who 
have assailed him, what New Orleans was to the 
British generals who attacked his lines. Re- 
pulsed ! driven back ! discomfited ! crushed ! 
has been the fate of all assailants, foreign and 
domestic, civil and military. At home and 



abroad, the 



, i..i^ impress of his genius and of his 
character is felt. He has impressed upon the 
age in which he lives the stamp of his arms, 
of his diplomacy, and of his domestic policy. In 
a word, so transcendent have been the merits 
of his administration, that they have operated 
a miracle upon the minds of his most inveterate 
opponents. He has expunged their objections 
to military chieftains ! He has shown them thai 
they were mistaken ; that military men were 
not the dangerous rulers they had imagined, but 
safe and prosperous conductors of the vessel of 
state. He has changed their fear into love. 
"With visible signs they admit their error, and, 
instead of deprecating, they now invoke the reign 
of chieftains. They labored hard to procure a 
military successor to the present incumbent; 
and if their love goes on increasing at the same 
rate, the republic may bo put to the cxi¥?n6o of 
periodical wars, to breed a perpetual succession 
of these chieftains to rule over them and tlieir 
posterity for ever. 

To drop this irony, which the inconsistency 



726 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



of mad opponents has provoked, and to return 
to the plain delineations of historical painting, 
the mind instinctively dwells on the vast and 
unprecedented popularity of this President. 
Great is the influence, great the power, greater 
than any man ever before possessed in our 
America, which he has acquired over the public 
mind. And how has he acquired it ? Not by 
the arts of intrigue, or the juggling tricks of 
diplomacy ; not by imdermining rivals, or sac- 
rificing public interests for the gratification of 
classes or individuals. But he has acquired it, 
first, by the exercise of an intuitive sagacity 
which, leaving all book learning at an immea- 
surable distance behind, has always enabled him 
to adopt the right remedy, at the right time, 
and to conquer soonest when the men of forms 
and ofiBce thought him most near to ruin and 
despair. Next, by a moral courage which knew 
no fear when the public good beckoned him to 
go on. Last, and chiefest, he has acquired it 
by an open honesty of purpose, which knew no 
concealments ; by a straightforwardness of ac- 
tion, which disdained the forms of oflBce and the 
arts of intrigue ; by a disinterestedness of mo- 
tive, which knew no selfish or sordid calcula- 
tion ; a devotedness of patriotism, which staked 
every thing personal on the issue of every mea- 
sure which the public welfare required him to 
adopt. By these qualities, and these means, he 
has acquired his prodigious popularity, and his 
transcendent influence over the public mind; 
and if there are any who envy that influence 
and popularity, let them envy, also, and emulate, 
if they can, the quahties axid means by which 
they were acquired. 

Great has been the opposition to President 
Jackson's administration ; greater, perhaps, than 
ever has been exhibited against any government, 
short of actual insurrection and forcible resist- 
Revolution has been proclaimed 1 and 



ance. 



every thing has been done that could be ex- 
pected to produce revolution. The country has 
been alarmed, agitated, convulsed. From the 
Senate chamber to the village bar-room, from 
one end of the continent to the other, denuncia- 
tion, agitation, excitement, has been the order 
of the day. For eight years the President of 
this republic has stood upon a volcano, vomiting 
fire and flames upon him, and threatening the 
country itself with ruin and desolation, if the 
people did not expel the usurper, despot, and 



tyrant, as he was called, from the high place to 
which the suffrages of millions of freemen had 
elevated him. 

Great is the confidence which he has always 
reposed in the discernment and equity of the 
American people. I have been accustomed to 
see him for many years, and under many dis- 
couraging trials ; but never saw him doubt, for 
an instant, the ultimate support of the people. 
It was my privilege to see him often, and during 
the most gloomy period of the panic conspiracy, 
when the whole earth seemed to be in commo- 
tion against him, and when many friends were 
faltering, and stout hearts were quailing, before 
the raging storm which bank machination, and 
senatorial denunciation, had conjured up to over- 
whelm him. I saw him in the darkest moments 
of this gloomy period ; and never did I see his 
confidence in the ultimate support of his fellow- 
citizens forsake him for an instant. He always 
said the people would stand by those who stand 
by them; and nobly have they justified that 
confidence ! That verdict, the voice of millions, 
which now demands the expurgation of that 
sentence, which the Senate and the bank then 
pronounced upon him, is the magnificent re- 
sponse of the people's hearts to the implicit con- 
fidence which he then reposed in them. But it 
was not in the people only that he had confi- 
dence; there was another, and a far higher 
Power, to which he constantly looked to save 
the country, and its defendere, from every dan- 
ger ; and signal events prove that he did not 
look to that high Power in vain. 

Sir, I think it right, in approaching the ter- 
mination of this great question, to present this 
faint and rapid sketch of the brilliant, beneficent, 
and glorious administration of President Jack- 
son. It is not for me to attempt to do it jus- 
tice ; it is not for ordinary men to attempt its 
history. Ilis military life, resplendent with 
dazzling events, will demand the pen of a nerv- 
ous writer; his civil administration, replete 
with scenes which have called into action so 
many and such various passions of the human 
heart, and which has given to native sagacity 
so many victories over practised politicians, will 
require the profound, luminous, and philosophi- 
cal conceptions of a Livy, a Plutai-ch, or a Sal- 
lust. This history is not to be written in our 
day. The cotemporaries of such events are not 
the hands to describe them. Time must first do 



ANNO 1887. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



727 



its oflBce— must silence the passions, remove the 
actors, develope consequences, and canonize all 
that is sacred to honor, patriotism, and glor}-. 
In after ages the historic genius of our America 
shall produce the writers which the subject de- 
mands — men far removed from the contests of 
this day, who will know how to estimate this 
great epoch, and how to acquire an immortality 
for their own names by painting, with a mas- 
ter's hand, the immortal events of the patriot 
President's life. 

And now, sir, I finish the task which, three 
years ago, I imposed on myself. Solitary and 
alone, and amidst the jeers and taunts of my 
opponents, I put this ball in motion. The peo- 
ple have taken it up, and rolled it forward, and 
I am no longer any thing but a unit in the vast 
mass which now propels it. In the name of 
that mass I speak. I demand the execution of 
the edict of the people ; I demand the expurga- 
tion of that sentence which the voice of a few 
senators, and the power of their confederate, 
the Bank of the United States, has caused to be 
placed on the journal of the Senate ; and which 
the voice of millions of freemen has ordered to 
be expunged from it. 



CHAPTER CLXI. 

EXPUNGING EESOLUTION: ME. CLAY, MR. CAL- 
HOUN, MR. WEBSTER: LAST SCENE: RESOLU- 
TION PASSED, AND EXECUTED. 

Saturday, the 14th of January, the democratic 
senators agreed to have a meeting, and to take 
their final measures for passing the expunging 
resolution. They knew they had the numbers ; 
but they also knew that they had adversaries 
to grapple with to whom might be applied the 
proud motto of Louis the Fourteenth : " Not an 
unequal match for numbers." They also knew 
that members of the party were in the process of 
separating from it, and would require concilia- 
ting. They met in the night at the then famous 
restaurant of Boulanger, giving to the assemblage 
the air of a convivial entertainment. It continu- 
ed till midnight, and required all the modera- 
tion, tact and skill of the prime movers to ob- 
tain and maintain the union upon details, on 
the success of which the fate of the meas- 



ure depended. The men of conciliation were 
to be the efficient men of that night ; and all 
the winning resources of Wright, Allen of Ohio 
and Linn of Missouri, were put into requisiti(,n. 
There were serious differences upon tlie mode 
of expurgation, while agreed upon the thing ; 
and finally obliteration, the favorite of the 
mover, was given np ; and the mode of expurga- 
tion adopted which had been proposed in the 
resolutions of the General Assembly of Virginia ; 
namely, to inclose the obnoxious sentence in a 
square of black lines — an oblong square : a com- 
promise of opinions to which the mover agreed 
upon condition of being allowed to compose the 
epitaph—" Expunged by the order of the Se- 
nate." The agreement which was to lead to 
victory was then adopted, each one severally 
pledging himself to it, that there should be uc 
adjournment of the Senate after the resolution 
was called until it was passed ; and that it should 
be called immediately after the morning business 
on the Monday ensuing. Expecting a protract- 
ed session, extending through the day and night, 
and knowing the difficulty of keeping men 
steady to their work and in good humor, when 
tired and hungry, the mover of the proceeding 
took care to provide, as far as possible, against 
such a state of things; and gave orders that 
night to have an ample supply of cold hams, 
turkeys, rounds of beef, pickles, wines and cups 
of hot coffbe, ready in a certain committee room 
near the Senate chamber by four o'clock on the 
afternoon of Monday. 

The motion to take up the subject was made 
at the appointed time, and innnediately a debate 
of long speeches, chiefly on the other side, open- 
ed itself iipon the question. It was evident 
that comsumption of time, delay and adjourn- 
ment, was their plan. The three great leadoi"S 
did not join in the opening ; but then- place was 
well supplied by many of their friends, able 
speakers — some effective, some eloquent : Pros- 
ton of South Carolina; Kichurd II. Bayard and 
John M. Clayton of Delaware ; Crittenden of 
Kentucky; Southard of New Jersey ; AVhite <.>f 
Tennessee ; Ewiiig of Oliio. They were only the 
half in number, but strong in zeal and ability, that 
commenced the contest three years befoiv, rein- 
forced by Mr. White of Tennessee. As the dark- 
ness of approacliing night came on, and tlie great 
chandelier was lit up, spknditlly iliuniinating tlie 
chamber, then crowded with the members of the 



728 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW 



House, and the lobbies and galleries filled to 
their utmost capacity by visitors and spectators, 
the scene became grand and impressive. A few 
spoke on the side of the resolution — chiefly 



Rives, Buchanan, Niles — and with an air of 
ease and satisfaction that bespoke a quiet deter- 
mination, and a consciousness of victory. The 
committee room had been resorted to in parties 
of four and six at a time, always leaving enough 
on watch : and not resorted to by one side alone. 
The opposition were invited to a full participa- 
tion — an invitation of which those who were 
able to maintain their good temper readily avail- 
ed themselves ; but the greater part were not in 
a humor to eat any thing — especially at such a 
feast. The night was wearing away : the ex- 
pungcrs were in full force — masters of the cham- 
ber — happy — and visibly determined to remain. 
It became evident to the great opposition leaders 
that the inevitable hour had come : that the 
damnable deed was to be done that night: and 
that the dignity of silence was no longer to them 
a tenable position. The battle was going against 
them, and they must go into it, without being able 
to i"e-establish it. In the beginning, they had 
not considered the expunging movement a seri- 
ous proceeding : as it advanced they still expect- 
ed it to miscarry on some point : now the real- 



ity of the thing stood before them. 



confronting 



their presence, and refusing to " down " at any 
command. They broke silence, and gave vent 
to language which bespoke the agony of their 
feelings, and betrayed the revulsion of stomach 
with which they approached the odious subject. 
Mr. Calhoun said : 



"No one, not blinded by party zeal, can pos- 
sibly be insensible that the measure proposed is 
a violation of the constitution. The constitution 
requires the Senate to keep a journal; this re- 
solution goes to expunge the journal. If you 
may expunge a part, you may expunge the 
whole ; and if it is expunged, how is it kept ? 
The constitution says the journal shall be kept ; 
this resolution says it shall be destroyed. It 
does the very thing which the constitution de- 
clares shall not be done. That is the argument, 
the whole argument. There is none other. 
Talk of precedents 1 and precedents drawn from 
a foreign country? They don't apply. No, 
sir. This is to be done, not in consequence of 
argument, but in spite of argument. I under- 
stand the case. I know perfectly well the gen- 
tlemen have no liberty to vote otherwise. They 
are coerced by an exterior power. They try, 
indeed, to comfort their conscience by saying 
that it is the will of the people, and the voice of 



the people. It is no such thing. We all know 
how these legislative returns have been obtained. 
It is by dictation from the AVhite House. The 
President himself, with that vast mass of patron- 
age which he wields, and the thousand expecta- 
tions he is able to hold up, has obtained these 
votes of the State liCgislatures ; and this, for- 
sooth, is said to be the voice of the people. The 
voice of the people ! Sir, can we forget the 
scene which was exhibited in this chamber when 
that expunging resolution was first introduced 
here ? Have we forgotten the universal giving 
way of conscience, so that the senator from 
^Missouri was left alone ? I see before me se- 
tators who could not swallow that resolution ; 
and has its nature changed since then ? Is it 
any more constitutional now than it was then ? 
Not at all. But executive power has interpos- 
ed. Talk to me of the voice of the people ! No, 
sir. It is the combination of patronage and 
power to coerce this body into a gross and pal- 
pable violation of the constitution. Some indi- 
viduals, I perceive, think to escape through the 
particular form in which this act is to be per- 
petrated. They tell us that the resolution on 
your records is not to be expunged, but is only 
to be endorsed ' Expunged.' Really, sir, I do 
not know how to argue against such contempti- 
ble sophistry. The occasion is too solemn for 
an argument of this sort. You are going to 
violate the constitution, and you get rid of the 
infamy by a falsehood. You yourselves say that 
the resolution is expunged by your order. Yet 
you say it is not expunged. Y'ou put your act 
in express words. You record it, and then turn 
round and deny it. 

" But why do I waste my breath ? I know 
it is all utterly vain. The day is gone ; night 
approaches, and night is suitable to the dark 
deed we meditate. There is a sort of destiny 
in this thing. The act must be performed ; and 
it is an act which will tell on the political histo- 
ry of this country for ever. Other preceding 
violations of the constitution (and they have 
been many and great) filled my bosom with in- 
dignation, but this fills it only Avith grief. 
Others were done in the heat of party. Power 
was, as it were, compelled to support itself by 
seizing upon new instruments of influence and 
patronage ; and there were ambitious and able 
men to direct the process. Such was the re- 
moval of the deposits, which the President seiz- 
ed upon by a new and unprecedented act of ar- 
bitrary power ; an act which gave him ample 
means of rewarding friends and punishing ene- 
mies. Something may, perhaps, be pardoned 
to him in this matter, on the old apology of 
tyrants— the plea of necessity. But here there 
can be no such apology. Here no necessity can 
so much as be pretended. This act originates 
in pure, unmixed, personal idolatry. It is the 
melancholy evidence of a broken spirit, ready to 
bow at the feet of power. The former act was 
such a one as might have been perpetrated m 
the days of Pompey or Caisar ; but an act like 



ANNO 1837. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



729 



this could never have been consummated by a 
Roman Senate until the times of Caligula and 

Nero." 

Mr. Calhoun was right in his taunt about the 
universal giving way when the resolution was 
first introduced— the solitude in which the 
mover was then left — and in which sohtude he 
would have been left to the end, had it not been 
for his courage in reinstating the wora expunge, 
and appealing to the people. 

Mr. Clay commenced with showing -.hat he 
had never believed in the reality of the proceed- 
ing until now ; that he had considered the reso- 
lution as a thing to be taken up for a speech, 
and laid down when the speech was delivered ; 
and that the last laying down, at the previous 
session, was the end of the matter. He said : 






" Considering that he was the mover of the 
resolution of IMarch, 1834, and the consequent 
relation in which he stood to the majority of 
the Senate by whose vote it was adopted, he 
had felt it to he his duty to say something 
on this expunging resolution; and he had 
always intended to do so when he should be 
persuaded that there existed a settled purpose 
of pressing it to a final decision. But it had 
been so taken up and put down at the last ses- 
sion — taken up one day, when a speech was 
prepared for delivery, and put down when it was 
pronounced — that he had really doubted whe- 
ther there existed any serious intention of ever 
putting it to the vote. At the very close of the 
last session, it will be recollected that the reso- 
lution came up, and in several quarters of the 
Senate a disposition was manifested to come to 
a definitive decision. On that occasion he had 
offered to waive his right to address the Senate, 
and silently to vote upon the resolution ; but it 
was again laid upon the table ; and laid there for 
ever, as the country supposed, and as he be- 
lieved. It is, however, now revived ; and, sun- 
dry changes having taken place in the members 
of this body, it would seem that the present 
design is to bring the resolution to an absolute 
conclusion." 



Then, after an argument against the expurga- 
tion, which, of necessity, was obliged to be a 
recapitulation of the argument in favor of the 
original condemnation of the President, he went 
on to give vent to his feelings in expressions not 
less bitter and denunciatory of the President 
and his friends than those used by Mr. Calhoun, 
saying : 

" But if the matter of expunction be contrary 
to the truth of the case, reproachful for its base 
Bubserviency, derogatory from the just and ne- 



cessary powers of the Senate, and repugnant to 
the constitution of the United States, the man- 
ner in which it is proposed to accomplish this 
dark deed is also higlily exceptionable. The 
expunging resolution, which is to blot out or 
enshroud the four or five fines in which the 
resolution of 1834 stands recorded, or rather 
the recitals by which it is preceded, are spun 
out into a thread of enormous length. It runs 
whereas, and whereas, and wlioreas, and where- 
as, and whereas, &c., into a fijrmidable array of 
nine several whereases. One who shoukl have 
the courage to begin to read them, unaware of 
what was to be their termination, would think 
that at the end of such a tremendous display he 
must find the very devil." 

And then coming to the conclusion, he con- 
centrated his wrath and grief in an apostro- 
phizing peroration, which lacked nothing but 
verisimilitude to have been grand and affecting. 
Thus: 



--k 



" But why should I detain the Senate, or 
needlessly waste my breath in fruitless exer- 
tions. Ths decree has gone forth. It is one of 
urgency, too. The deed is to be done — that foul 
deed which, like the blood-stained hands of the 
guilty Macbeth, all ocean's waters will never 
wash out. Proceed, then, with the noble work 
which lies before you, and, like other skilful 
executioners, do it quickly. And when you have 
perpetrated it, go home to the people, and tell 
them what glorious honors j-ou have achieved 
for our common country. Tell them that j'ou 
have extinguished one of the brightest and 
purest lights that ever burnt at the altar of 
civil libert}-. Tell them that yuu have silenced 
one of the noblest batteries that ever thundered 
in defence of the constitution, and bravely spiked 
the cannon. Tell them that, henceforward, no 
matter what daring or outrageous act any Presi- 
dent may perform, j^ou have for ever hermeti- 
cally sealed the mouth of the Senate. Tell 
them that he may fearlessly assume wiiat pow- 
ers he pleases, snatch from its lawful custody 
the public purse, command a military detach- 
ment 10 enter the halls of the capitul, overawe 
Congress, trample down the constitution, and 
raze every bulwark of freedom ; but that the 
Senate must stand mute, in silent submission, 
and not dare to raise its t)pposing voice. Thai 
it must wait until a House of Kepivsentative.s 
humbled and subdued like itself, and a majority 
of it composed of the partisans of the President, 
shall prefer articles of impoaoluuent. Tell theui, 
finally, that you have restored the glorious doc- 
trines of passive obedience and nou-rcsistanco. 
And, if the people do not pour oyt their indig- 
nation and imprecations, I liave yet to learn the ._-' 
character of American freemen." 

Mr. Webster spoke last, and after a pause in 
the debate which seemed to indicate its coudc- 



730 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



sion; and only rose, and thf;t slowly, as the 
question was about to be put. Having no per- 
sonal griefs in relation to General Jackson like 
Mr. Calhoun and INIr. Clay, and with a tempera- 
ment less ardent, he delivered himself with com- 
parative moderation, confining himself to a brief 
protest against the act ; and concluding, in mea- 
sured and considered language, with expressing 
his grief and mortification at what he was to 
behold ; thus : 

" "We have seen, with deep and sincere pain, 
the legislatures of respectable States instructing 
the senators of those States to vote for and sup- 
port this violation of the journal of the Senate ; 
and this pain is infinitely increased by our full 
belief, and entire conviction, that most, if not 
all these proceedings of States had their origin 
in promptings from Washington ; that they 
have been urgently requested and insisted on, 
as being necessary to the accomplishment of the 
intended purpose ; and that it is nothing else 
but the influence and power of the executive 
branch of this government which has brought 
the legislatures of so many of the free States of 
this Union to quit the sphere of their ordinary 
duties, for the purpose of co-operating to accom- 
pUsh a measure, in our judgment, so unconsti- 
tional, so derogatory to the character of the 
Senate, and marked with so broad an impression 
of compliance with power. But this resolution 
is to pass. We expect it. That cause, which 
has been powerful enough to influence so many 
State legislatures, will show itself powerful 
enough, especially with such aids, to secure the 
passage of the resolution here. We make up 
our minds to behold the spectacle which is to 
ensue. We collect ourselves to look on, in si- 
lence, while a scene is exhibited which, if we did 
not regard it as a ruthless violation of a sacred 
instrument, would appear to us to be little ele- 
vated above the character of a contemptible 
farce. This scene we shall behold ; and hun- 
dreds of American citizens, as many as may 
crowd into these lobbies and galleries, will be- 
hold it also : with what feelings I do not under- 
take to say." 

Midnight was now approaching. The dense 
masses which filled every inch of room in the 
lobbies and the galleries, remained immovable. 
No one went out: no one could get in. The 
floor of the Senate was crammed with privileged 
and it seemed that all Congress was 



persons, 

there. Expectation, and determmation to see 
the conclusion, was depicted upon every counte- 
nance. It was evident there was to be no ad- 
journment until the vote should be taken — until 
the deed was done ; and this aspect of invinci- 
ble determination, had its effect upon the ranks 



of the opposition. They began to falter undei 
a useless persistence, for they alone now did the 
speaking ; and while Mr. Webster was yet re- 
citing his protest, two senators from the oppo- 
site side, who had been best able to maintain their 
equanimity, came round to the author of this 
View, and said " This question has degenerated 
into a trial of nei'ves and muscles. It has be- 
come a question of physical endurance ; and we 
see no use in wearing ourselves out to keep off 
for a few hours longer what has to come before 
we separate. We see that you are able and 
determined to carry your measure : so call the 
vote as soon as you please. We shall say no 
more." Mr. Webster concluded. No one rose. 
There was a pause, a dead silence, and an intense 
feeling. Presently the silence was invaded by 
the single word '"question" — the parliamen- 
tary call for a vote — rising from the seats of 
different senators. One blank in the resolve 
remained to be filled — the date of its adoption. 
It was done. The acting president of the Se- 
nate, Mr. King, of Alabama, then directed the 
roll to be called. The yeas and nays had been 
previously ordered, and proceeded to be called 
by the secretary of the Senate, Mr. Asbury 
Dickens. Forty-three senators were present, 
answering : five absent. The yeas were : 

"Messrs. Benton, Brown, Buchanan, Dana, 
Ewing of Illinois, Fulton, Grundy, Hubbard^ 
King of Alabama, Linn, Morris, Nicholas, Niles, 
Page, Rives, Robinson, Ruggles, Sevier, Strange, 
Tallmadge, Tipton, Walker, Wall, Wright. ^^ J 

"Nays. — Messrs. Bayard, Black, Calhoun, 
Clay, Crittenden, Davis, Ewing of Ohio, Hen- 
dricks, Kent, Knight, Moore, Prentiss, Preston, 
Bobbins, Southard, Swift, Tomlinson, Webster, 
White." 

The passage of the resolution was announced 
from the chair. Mr. Benton rose, and said that 
nothing now remained but to execute the 
order of the Senate ; which he moved be done 
forthwith. It was ordered accordingly. The 
Secretary thereupon produced the original 
manuscript journal of the Senate, and opening 
at the page which contained the condemnatory 
sentence of March 28th, 1834, proceeded in 
open Senate to draw a square of broad black 
lines around the sentence, and to write across 
its face in strong letters these words: "Ex- 
punged by order of the Senate, this ICth day 



J 



of March, 1837." Up to this moment the crowd 



ANNO 1837. ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT. 



731 



in the great circular gallery, looking down upon 
the Senate, though sullen and menacing in their 
looks, had made no manifestation of feelino- ; 
and it was doubtless not the intention of ^Ir. 
Webster to excite that manifestation when he 
referred to their numbers, and expressed his ig- 
norance of the feeling with which they would 
see the deed done which he so much deprecated. 
Doubtless no one intended to excite that crowd, 
mainly composed, as of usual since the bank 
question Ijegan, of friends of that institution ; 
but its appearance became such that Senator 
Linn, colleague of Senator Benton, Mr. George W. 

/ I ; Jones, since senator from Iowa, and others sent 
out and brought in arms ; other friends gathered 
about him ; among them Mrs. Benton, who, re- 
membering what had happened to General 
Jackson, and knowing that, after him, her hus- 
band was most obnoxious to the bank party, 
had her anxiety suflBciently excited to wish to 
be near him in this concluding scene of a seven 
years' contest with that great moneyed power. 
Thingti were in this state when the Secretary 
of the Senate began to perform the expunging 
process on the manuscript journal. Instantly 
a storm of hisses, groans, and vociferations 
:u-03e from the left wing of the circular gallery, 

j over the head of Senator Benton. The presid- 
ing oflBcer promptly gave the order, which the 
rules prescribe in such cases, to clear the gallery. 
Mr. Benton opposed the order, saying : 

"I hope the galleries will not be cleared, as 
many innocent persons will be excluded, who 
have been guilty of no violation of order. Let 
the ruflSans who have made the disturbance 
alone be pimished: let them be apprehended. 
I hope the sergeant-at-arms will be directed to 
enter the gallery, and seize the ruflBans, ascer- 
taining who they are in the best way he can. 
Let him apprehend them and bring them to the 
bar of the Senate. Let him seize the bank ruf- 
tians. I hope that they will not now be suffered 
to insult the Senate, as they did when it was 
under the power of the Bank of the United 
States, when ruflBans, with arms upon them, 
insulted us with impunity. Let them be 
taken and brought to the bar of the Senate. 
Here is one just above me, that may easily be 
identified — the bank ruflBans ! " 

Mr. Benton knew that he was the object of 
this outrage, and that the way to treat these 
subaltern wretches was to defy and seize 
them, and have them dragged as criminals to 
the bar of the Senate. They were congregated 



immediately over his head, and had evidently 
collected into that place. His motion was agreed 
to. The order to clear the galleries was revoked ; 
the order to seize the disturbers was given, and 
immediately executed b}^ the energetic sergeant- 
at-arms, Mr. John Shackford, and his assistants. 
The ringleader was seized, and brought to the / 
bar. This sudden example intimidated the rest ; 
and the expunging process was performed in 
quiet. The whole scene was impressive ; but 
no part of it so much so as to see the great 
leaders who, for seven long years had warred 
upon General Jackson, and a thousand times 
pronounced him ruined, each rising in his place, 
with pain and reluctance, to confess themselves 
vanquished — to admit his power, and their weak- 
ness — and to exhale their griefs in unavailing 
reproaches, and impotent deprecations. It was 
a tribute to his invincibility which cast into the 
shade all the eulogiums of his friends. The 
gratification of General Jackson was extreme. 
He gave a grand dinner to the expungcrs (as 
they were called) and their wives ; and being 
too weak to sit at the table, he only met the 
company, placed the " head-expungcr " in his 
chair, and withdrew to his sick chamber. That 
expurgation ! it was the " crowning mercy " of 
his civil, as New Orleans had been of his mili- 
tary, life ! 



CHAPTER CLXII. 

THE SUPREME COUET— JUDGES AND OFFICERS. 

The death of Chief Justice Marshall had vacated 
that high ofBce, and Roger B. Taney, Esq., wivs 
nominated to fill it. He still encountered op- 
position in the Senate ; but only enough to show 
how much that opposition had declined sinco 
the time when he was rejected as Secretary of 
the Treasury. The vote against his continua- 
tion was reduced to fifteen; namely: Messrs. 
Black of Mississippi ; Calhoun. Clay, Crittenden ; 
Ewing of Ohio ; Leigh of Virginia ; Mnnguni ; 
Naudain of Delaware; Porter of Louisiana; 
Preston; Bobbins of Rhode Island; Southard, 
Tomlinson, Webster, White of Tennessee. 

Among the Justices of the Supreme Court, 
these changes took place from the cumiucucc- 



732 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



ment of this View to the end of General Jack- 
son's administration: Smith Thompson, Esq., 
of New York, in 1823, in place of Brockholst 
Livingston, Esq., deceased ; Robert Trimble, Esq., 
of Kentucky, in 182G, in place of Thomas Todd, 
deceased ; John McLean, Esq., of Ohio, in 1829, 
in place of Robert Trimble, deceased ; Henry 
Baldwin, Esq., of Pennsylvania, in 1830, in place 
of Bushrod Washington, deceased; James M. 
Wayne, Esq., of Georgia, in 1835, in place of 
William Johnson, deceased ; Philip P. Barbour, 
Esq., of Virginia, in 1830, in place of Gabriel 
Duval, resigned. 

In the same time, William GrifSth, Esq. of 
New Jersey, was appointed Clerk, in 1826, in 
place of Elias B. Caldwell, deceased ; and Wil- 
liam Thomas Carroll, Esq., of the District of 
Columbia, was appointed, in 1827, in place of 
William Griffith, deceased. Of the reporters 
of the decisions of the Supreme Court, Richard 
Peters, jr., Esq., of Pennsylvania, was appointed, 
in 1828, in place of Henry Wheaton ; and Ben- 
jamin C. Howard, Esq., of Maryland, was ap- 
pointed, in 1843, to succeed Mr. Peters, de- 
r.eased. 

The Marshals of the District, during the 
same period, were : Henry Ashton, of the Dis- 
trict of Columbia, appointed, in 1831, in place 
of Tench Ringgold ; Alexander Hunter, of the 
same District, in place of Henry Ashton ; Robert 
AVallace, in 1848 in place of Alexander Hunter, 
deceased ; Richard Walla«h, in 1849, in place of 
Robert Wallace ; and Jonah D- Hoover, in 1853, 
in place of Richard Wallach. 



CHAPTER CLXIII. 

FAREWELL ADDRESS OF PRESIDENT JACKSON- 
EXTRACT. 



Following the example of Washington, Gene- 
ral Jackson issued a Farewell Address to the 
people of the United States, at his retiring from 
the presidency ; and, like that of Washington, 
it was principally devoted to the danger of dis- 
union, and to the preservation of harmony and 
good feeling between the different sections of 
the country. General Washington only had to 
contemplate the danger of disunion, as a possi- 
bility, and as an event of future contingency ; 



General Jackson had to confront it as a present, 
actual, subsisting danger ; and said : 

"We behold systematic efforts ptiblicl,y made 
to sow the seeds of discord between difTerent 
parts of the United States, and to place party 
divisions directly upon geographical distinctions; 
to excite the South against the North, and the 
North against the South, and to force into the 
controversy the most delicate and exciting to- 
pics — topics upon which it is impossible that a 
large portion of the Union can ever speak with- 
out strong emotion. Appeals, too, are constantly 
made to sectional interests, in order to influence 
the election of the Chief Magistrate, as if it were 
desired that he should favor a particular quarter 
of the country, instead of fulfilling the duties 
of his station with impartial justice to all ; and 
the possible dissoKition of the Union has at 
length become an ordinary and familiar subject 
of discussion. Has the warning voice of Wash- 
ington been forgotten ? or have designs already 
been formed to sever the Union ? Let it not be 
supposed that I impute to all of those who have 
taken an active part in these unvrise and unpro- 
fitable discussions, a want of patriotism or of 
publio virtue. The honorable feelings of State 
pride, and local attachments, find a place in the 
bosoms of the most enlightened and pure. But 
while such men are conscious of their own in- 
tegrity and honesty of purpose, they ought 
never to forget that the citizens of other States 
are their political brethren ; and that, however 
mistaken they may be in their views, the great 
body of them are equally honest and upright 
with themselves. Mutual suspicions and re- 
proaches may in time create mutual hostility ; 
and artful and designing men will always be 
found, who are ready to foment these fatal divi- 
sions, and to inflame the natural jealousies of 
different sections of the country ! The history 
of the world is full of such examples, and espe- 
cially the history of republics. 

" What have you to gain by division and dis- 
sension ? Delude not yourselves with the be- 
lief, that a breach, once made, may be afterwards 
repaired. If the Union is once severed, the line 
of separation will grow wider and wide- : and 
the controversies which are now debated and 
settled in the halls* of legislation, will then be 
tried in fields of battle, and determined by the 
sword. Neither should you deceive yourselves 
with the hope, that the first line of separation 
would be the permanent one, and that nothing 
but harmony and concord would be found in 
the new associations formed upon the dissolu- 
tion of this Union. Local interests would still 
be found there, and unchastcned ambition. And 
if the recollection of conunon dangers, in which 
the people of these United States stood side by 
side against the common foe— the memory of 
victories won by their united valor ; the pros- 
perity and happiness they have enjoyed under 
the present constitution ; the proud name they 
bear as citizens of this great republic— if all 



ANNO 1837. ANDREW JACKSON, PEESIDEIST. 



•733 



these recollections and proofs of common inter- 
est are not strong enough to bind us together 
as one people, what tie will hold united the new 
divisions of empire, when these bonds have been 
broken and this Union dissevered ? The first 
line of separation would not last for a single 
generation; new fragments would be torn off; 
new leaders would spring up ; and this great 
and glorious republic would soon be broken into 
a multitude of petty States, without commerce, 
without credit ; jealous of one another ; armed 
for mutual aggressions; loaded with taxes to pay 
armies and leaders ; seeking aid against each 
other from foreign powers ; insulted and tram- 
pled upon by the nations of Europe; until, har- 
assed with conflicts, and humbled and debased 
m spirit, they would be ready to submit to the 
absolute dominion of any military adventurer, 
and to surrender their liberty for the sake of 
repose. It is impossible to look on the conse- 
quences that would inevitably follow the destruc- 
tion of this government, and not feel indignant 
when we hear cold calculations about the value 
of the Union, and have so constantly before us 
a line of conduct so well calculated to weaken 
its ties." 

Nothing but the deepest conviction of an ac- 
tual danger could have induced General Jackson, 
in this solemn manner, and with such pointed 
reference and obvious application, to have given 
this warning to his countrymen, at that last 
moment, when he was quitting oflSce, and re- 
turning to his home to die. He was, indeed, 
firmly impressed with a sense of that danger — 
as much so as Mr. Madison was — and with the 
same " pain " of feeling, and presentiment of 
great calamities to our country. What has 
since taken place has shown that their appre- 
hensions were not groundless — that the danger 
was deep-seated, and wide-spread ; and the end 
not yet. 



CHAPTER CLXIV. 

CONCLUSION OF GENERAL JACKSON'S ADMINIS- 
TRATION. 

The enemies of popular representative govern- 
ment may suppose that they find something in 
this work to justify the reproach of faction and 
violence which they lavish upon such forms of 
government ; but it will be by committing the 
mistake of overlooking the broad features of a 



picture to find a blemish in the detail — disregard- 
ing a statesman's hfe to find a misstep ; and shut- 
ting their eyes upon the action of trie people. The ♦ 
mistakes and errors of public men are fairly 
shown in this work ; and that might seem to justi- 
fy the reproach : but the action of the people is 
immediately seen to come in, to correct every 
error, and to show the capacity of the people for 
wise and virtuous government. It would be te- 
dious to enumerate the instances of this conserva- 
tive supervision, so continually exemplified in the 
course of this history ; but some eminent cases 
stand out too prominently to be overlooked. 
The recharter of the Bank of the United States 
was a favorite measure with politicians; the 
people rejected it ; and the wisdom of tlicir con- 
duct is now universally admitted. The distri- 
bution of land and money was a favorite mea- 
sure with pohticians ; the people condemned it 
and no one of those engaged in these distribu- 
tions ever attained the presidency. President 
•Jackson, in his last annual message to Congress, 
and in direct reference to this conservative ac- 
tion of the people, declared '• that all that had 
occurred during his administration was calcula- 
ted to inspire him with increased confidence in 
the stability of our institutions." I make the 
same declaration, founded upon the same view 
of the conduct of the people — upon the obser- 
vation of their conduct in trying circumstances; 
and their uniform discernment to see, and virtue 
and patriotism to do, whatever the honor and 
interest of the country required. The work is 
fuU of consolation and encouragement to popular 
government ; and in that point of view it may 
be safely referred to by the friends of that form 
of government. I have written veraciously 
and of acts, not of motives. I have shown :\ 
persevering attack upon President Jackson on 
the part of three eminent public men during his 
whole administration; but have made no attri- 
bution of motives. But another historian has 
not been so forbearing — one to whose testimony 
there can be no objection, either on account of 
bias, judgment, or information; and wlio, writing 
under the responsibiiit}* of history, has indicated 
a motive in two of the assailants. "Mr. Adnni.>j, 
in his history of the administration of Mr. 
Monroe, gives an account of the attempt in the 
two Houses of Congress in 1818, to censure 
General Jackson for his conduct in the Semi- 
nole war, and says : " Efforts were made in Con- 



734 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



gress to procure a vote censuring the conduct 
of General Jackson, whose fast increasing pop- 
ularity had, in all probability, already excited 
the envy of politicians. Mr. Clay and Mr. Cal- 
houn in particular favored this movement ; but 
the President himself, and ]\Ir. Adams, the Se- 
cretary of State, who had charge of the Spanish 
negotiation, warmly espoused the cause of the 
American commander." This fear of a rising 
popularity was not without reason. There were 
proposals to bring General Jackson forward for 
the presidency in 1816, and in 1820 ; to which 
he would not listen, on account of his friendship 
to Mr. Monroe. A refusal to enter the canvass 
at those periods, and for that reason, naturally 
threw him into it in 1824, when he would come 
into competition with those two gentlemen. 
Their opposition to him, therefore, dates back 
to the first term of Mr, Monroe's administra- 
tion ; that of Mr. Clay openly and responsibly ; 
that of Mr. Calhoun secretly and deceptiously, 
as shown in the " Exposition." They were both 
of the same political party school with General 



Jackson ; and it was probably his rising to the 
head of that party which threw them both out 
of it. Mr. Webster's opposition arose from his 
political relations, as belonging to the opposite 
school ; imd was always more moderate, and 
better guarded by decorum. He even appeared, 
sometimes, as the justifier and supporter of 
President Jackson's measures ; as in the well- 
known instance of South CaroUna nullification. 
Mr. Clay's efforts were limited to the over- 
throw of President Jackson ; Mr. Calhoun's ex- 
tended to tho. overthrow of the Union, and to 
the establishment of a southern confederacy of 
the slave States. The subsequent volume will 
have to pursue this subject. 

This chapter ends the view of the administra- 
tion of President Jackson, promised to him in 
his lifetime, constituting an entire work in it- 
self, and covering one of the most eventful pe- 
riods of American history — as trying to the 
virtue and intelligence of the American people 
as was the war of the revolution to their cour- 
age and patriotism. 



ANNO 1837. MARTIN VAN BUREN, PRESIDENT. 



735 



CHAPTER CLXV. 

RETIRING AND DEATH OF GENERAL JACKSON-ADMINISTRATION OF MARTIN VAN BUREN. 



The second and last term of General Jack- 
son's presidency expired on the 3d of March, 
1837. The next day, at twelve, he appeared 
with his successor, Mr. Van Buren, on the ele- 
vated and spacious eastern portico of the capitol, 
as one of the citizens who came to witness the 
inaguration of the new President, and no way 
distinguished from them, except by his place on 
the left hand of the President elect. The day 
was beautiful — clear sky, balmy vernal sun, 
tranquil atmosphere ; — and the assemblage im- 
mense. On foot, in the large area in front of 
the steps, orderly without troops, and closely 
wedged together, their faces turned to the por- 
tico — pi'esenting to the beholders from all the 
eastern windows the appearance of a field paved 
with human faces. This vast crowd remained 
riveted to their places, and profoundly silent, 
until the ceremony of inauguration was over. 
It was the stillness and silence of reverence and 
affection ; and there was no room for mistake as 
to whom this mute and impressive homage was 
rendered. For once, the rising was eclipsed by 
the setting sun. Though disrobed of power, 
and retiring to the shades of private life, it was 
evident that the great ex-President was the ab- 
sorbing object of this intense regard. At the 
moment he began to descend the broad steps of 
the portico to take his seat in the open carriage 
which was to bear him away, the deep repressed 
feeling of the dense mass brook forth, acclama- 
tions and cheers bursting from the heart and 
filling the air — such as power never commanded, 
nor man in power received. It was the affec- 
tion, gratitude, and admiration of the living age, 
saluting for the last time a great man. It was 
the acclaim of posterity, breaking from the 
bosoms of contemporaries. It was the antici- 
pation of futurity — unpurchasable homage to 



the hero-patriot who, all his life, and in all cir- 
cumstances of his life, in peace and in war, and 
glorious in each, had been the friend of his 
country, devoted to her, regardless of self. Un- 
covered, and bowing, with a look of unaffected 
humility and thankfulness, he acknowledged m 
mute signs his deep sensibility to this affecting 
overflow of popular feeling. I was looking dow.n 
from a side window, and felt an emotion which 
had never passed through me before. I had seen 
the inauguration of many presidents, and their 
going away, and their days of state, vested with 
power, and surrounded by the splendors of the 
first magistracy of a great republic. But they 
all appeared to be as pageants, empty and soul- 
less, brief to the view, unreal to the touch, and 
soon to vanish. But here there seemed to be a 
reality — a real scene — a man and the people — 
he, laying down power and withdrawing through 
the portals of everlasting fame ; — they, sounding 
in his ears the everlasting plaudits of uuborn 
generations. Two days after, I saw the patriot 
ex-President in the car which bore him off to 
his desired seclusion. I saw him depart with 
that look of quiet enjoyment which bespoke the 
inward satisfaction of the soul at exchanging the 
cares of office for the repose of home. Ilistory, 
poetry, oratory, marble and brass, will hand 
down the military exploits of Jackson : this 
work will commemorate the events of his civil 
administration, not less glorious than his mili- 
tary achievements, great as they weiT ; and tliis 
brief notice of his last appearance at the Ame- 
rican capital is intended to preserve some faint 
memory of a scene, the grandeur of which was 
so impressive to the beholder, and the solace of 
which must have been so grateful to tht heart 
of the departing patriot. 
Eight years afterwards he died at the Hermit- 



736 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



/ 



age, in the full possession of all his faculties, 
and strong to the last in the ruling passion of 
his soul — love of country. Public history will 
do justice to his public life ; but a further notice 
is wanted of him — a notice of the domestic 
man — of the man at home, with his wife, his 
friends, his neighbors, his slaves ; and this I feel 
some qualification for giving, from my long and 
varied acquaintance with him. First, his inti- 
mate and early friend — then a rude rupture — 
afterwards friendship and intimacy for twenty 
years, and until his death : in all forty years of 
personal observation, in the double relation of 
friend and foe, and in all the walks of life, public 
and private, civil and mihtary. 

The first time that I saw General Jackson 
was at Nashville, Tennessee, in 1799 — he on 
the bench, a judge of the then Superior Court, 
and I a youth of seventeen, back in the crowd, 
lie was then a remarkable man, and had his 
ascendant over all who approached him, not the 
effect of his high judicial station, nor of the 
senatorial rank which he had held and resigned ; 
nor of military exploits, for he had not then 
been to war ; but the effect of personal qualities ; 
cordial and graceful manners, hospitable temper, 
elevation of mind, undaunted spirit, generosity, 
and perfect integrity. In chargmg the jmy in 
the impending case, he committed a slight so- 
lecism in language which grated on my ear, and 
lodged on my memory, without derogating in 
the least from the respect which he inspired ; 
and without awakening the slightest suspicion 
that I was ever to be engaged in smoothing his 
diction. The first time I spoke with him was 
some years after, at a (then) frontier town in 
Tennessee, when he was returning from a 
Southern visit, which brought him through the 
towns and camps of some of the Indian tribes. 
In pulling- off his overcoat, I perceived on the 
white lining of the turning down sleeve, a dark 
speck, which had life and motion. I brushed it 
off, and put the heel of my shoe upon it — little 
thinking that I. was ever to brush away from 
him game of a very different kind. He smiled; 
and we began a conversation in which he very 
quickly revealed a leading trait of his charac- 
ter, — that of encouraging young men in their 
laudable pursuits. Getting my name and parent- 
age, and learning my intended profession, he 
manifested a regard for me, said he had received 
hospitality at my father's house in North Caro- 



hna, gave me kind invitations to visit him ; and 
expressed a belief that I would do well at the 
bar — generous words which had the effect of 
promoting what they undertook to foretell. Soon 
after, he had further opportunity to show his 
generous feelings. I was employed in a crimi- 
nal case of great magnitude, where the oldest 
and ablest counsel appeared — Haywood, Grundy, 
Whiteside, — and the trial of which General 
Jackson attended through concern for the fate 
of a friend. As junior counsel I had to pre- 
cede my elders, and did my best ; and, it being 
on the side of his feelings, he found my effort to 
be better than it was. He complimented me 
greatl}^, and from that time our intimacy began. 
I soon after became his aid, he being a Major 
General in the Tennessee militia — made so by 
a majority of one vote. How much often de- 
pends upon one vote ! — New Orleans, the Creek 
campaign, and all their consequences, date from 
that one vote ! — and after that, I was habitually 
at his house ; and, as an inmate, had opportuni- 
ties to know his domestic life, and at the period 
when it was least understood and most misrep- 
resented. He had resigned his place on the 
bench of the Superior Court, as he had previ- 
ously resigned his place in the Senate of the 
United States, and lived on a superb estate of 
some thousand acres, twelve miles from Nash- 
ville, then hardly known by its subsequent 
famous name of the Hermitage — name chosen 
for its perfect accord with his feelings ; for he 
had then actually withdrawn from the stage of 
public life, and from a state of feeling well 
known to belong to great talent when finding 
no theatre for its congenial employment. He 
was a careful farmer, overlooking everj^ thing 
himself, seeing that the fields and fences were 
in good order, the stock well attended, and the 
slaves comfortably provided for. His house was 
the seat of hospitality, the resort of friends and 
acquaintances, and of all strangers visiting the 
State — and the more agreeable to all from the 
perfect confoi-mity of Mrs. Jackson's character 
to his own. But he needed some excitement 
beyond that which a farming life can afford, and 
found it, for some years, in the animating sports 
of the turf He loved fine horses— racers of 
speed and bottom — owned several, and contest- 
ed the fom- mile heats with the best that could 
be bred, or brought to the State, and for large 
sums. That is the nearest to gaming that I 



ANNO 1837. MARTIN VAN BUREN, PRESIDENT. 



737 



ever knew him to come. Cards and the cock- 
pit have been imputed to him, but most errone- 
ously. I never saw him engaged in either. 
Duels were usual in that time, and he had his 
.share of them, with their unpleasant concomi- 
tants ; but they passed away -with all their ani- 
mosities, and he has often been seen zealously 
pressing the advancement of those against whom 
he had but lately been arrayed in deadly hos- 
tility. 

His temper was placable as well as irascible, 
and his reconciliations were cordial and sincere. 
Of that, my own case was a signal instance. 
After a deadly feud, I became liis confidential 
adviser ; was offered the highest marks of his 
favor, and received from his dying bed a mes- 
sage of friendship, dictated when life was de- 
parting, and when he would have to pause for 
breath. There was a deep-seated vein of piety 
in him, unaffectedly showing itself in his rever- 
ence for divine worship, respect for the ministers 
of the gospel, their hospitable reception in his 
house, and constant encouragement of all the 
pious tendencies of Jlrs. Jackson. And when 
they both afterwards became members of a 
church, it was the natural and regular result of 
their early and cherished feelings. He was gen- 
tle in his house, and alive to the tenderest emo- 
tions ; and of this, I can give an instance, greatly 
in contrast with his supposed character, and 
worth more than a long discourse in showing 
what that character really was. I arrived at 
his house one wet chilly evening, in February, 
and came upon him in the twilight, sitting alone 
before the fire, a lamb and a child between his 
knees. He started a little, called a servant to 
remove the two innocents to another room, and 
explained to me how it was. The child had 
cried because the lamb was out in the cold, and 
begged him to bring it in — which he had done 
to please the child, his adopted son, then not 
two years old. The ferocious man does not do 
that ! and though Jackson had his passions and 
his violence, they were for men and enemies — 
those who stood up against him — and not for 
women and children, or the weak and helpless : 
for all whom his feehngs were those of protec- 
tion and support. Ilis hospitality was active 
as well as cordial, embracing the worthy in 
every walk of life, and seeking out deserving 
objects to receive it, no matter how obscure. 
Of this, I learned a characteristic instance in 

Vol. L— 47 



relation to the .son of the famous Daniel Boone. 
The young man had come to Nashville on his 
father's business, to be detained some weeks 
and had his lodgings at a small tavern, towards 
the lower part of the town. General Jackson 
heard of it ; sought him out ; found him ; took 
him home to remain as long as his business de- 
tained him in the country, saying, "Your father's 
dog should not st<a_v in a tavern, wlicre I have a 
house." Tliis was heart ! and I had it from the 
young man himself, long after, when he was a 
State Senator of the General Assembly of Mis- 
souri, and, as such, nominated me for the United 
States Senate, at my first election, in 1820: an 
act of hereditary friendship, as our fathers had 
been early friends. 

Abhorrence of debt, public and private, dis- 
like of banks, and love of hard money — love of 
justice and love of country, were ruling pas- 
sions with Jackson ; and of these he gave con- 
stant evidence in all the situations of his life. 
Of private debts he contracted none of his own, 
and made any sacrifices to get out of those in- 
curred for others. Of this he gave a signal in- 
stance, not long before the war of 1812 — selling 
the improved part of his estate, witli the best 
buildings of the country upon it, to pay a debt 
incurred in a mercantile adventure to assist a 
young relative; and going into log-houses in the 
forest to begin a new home and farm. He wn^ 
living in these rude tenements when he van- 
quished the British at New Orleans ; and, prob- 
ably, a view of their conqueror's domicile would 
have astonished the British officers as much as 
their defeat had done. He was attached to his 
friends, and to his country, and never believed 
any report to the discredit of either, until com- 
pelled by proof. He would not believe in the 
first reports of the surrender of General Hull, 
and became sad and oppressed when force*! to 
believe it. He never gave up a 0-iend in a doubt- 
ful case, or from policy, or calculation. He was 
a firm believer in the goodness of a suixMintend- 
ing Providence, and in the eventual right judg- 
ment and justice of the people. I have seen hira 
at the most desperate part of his fortunes, and 
never saw him waver in tlie belief tliat .ill would 
come right in the end. In the time of Cromwell 
he would have been a puritan. 

The character of his mind was tlint of judg- 
ment, with a rapid and almost intuitive ivrwp- 
tion followed by an instant and decisive action. 



738 



THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. 



It was that which made him a General, and a 
President for the time in which he served. He 
had vigorous thoughts, but not the faculty of 
arranging them in a regular composition, either 
written or spoken ; and in formal papers he usual- 
ly gave his draft to an aid, a friend, or a secretary, 
to bo written ovei — often to the loss of vigor. But 
the thought? were his own vigorously express- 
ed ; and without effort, writing with a rapid 
pen, and never blotting or altering; but, as 
Carlyle says of Cromwell, hitting the nail upon 
the head as he went. I have a great deal of his 
writing now. some on public affairs and cover- 
ing several sheets of paper ; and no erasures or 
in terlineations anywhere. His conversation was 
like his writing, a vigorous flowing current, ap- 
j)areutly without the trouble of thinking, and 
always impressive. His conclusions were rapid, 
and immovable, when he was under strong con- 
victions ; though often yielding, on minor points, 
to his friends. And no man yielded quicker 
when he was convinced ; perfectly illustrating 
the difference between firmness and obstinacy. 
Of all the Presidents who have done me the 
honor to listen to my opinions, there was no one 
to whom I spoke with more confidence when I 
felt myself strongly to be in the right. 

He had a load to carry all his life ; resulting 
from a temper which refused compromises and 
bargaining, and went for a clean victory or a clean 
defeat, in every case. Hence, every step he took 
was a contest : and, it may be added, every con- 
test was a victory. I have already said that he 
was elected a Major General in Tennessee — an 
election on which so much aftei'wards depended 
— by one vote. His appointment in the United 
States regular army was a conquest from the 
administration, which had twice refused to 
appoint him a Brigadier, and once disbanded 
him as a volunteer general, and only yielded to 
liis militia victories. His election as President 
was a victory over politicians — as was every 
leading event of his administration. 

I have said that liis appointment in the regu- 
lar army was a victory over the administration, 
and it belongs to the inside view of history, and 
to the illustration of government mistakes, and 
the elucidation of individual merit surmounting 
obstacles, to tell how it was. Twice passed by 
to give preference to two others in the West 
(General Harrison and General Winchester), 
once disbanded, and omitted in all the lists of 



military nominations, how did he get at la.5t to 
be appointed Major General ? It was thus. 
Congress had passed an act authorizing the 
President to accept organized corps of volunteers. 
I proposed to General Jackson to raise a corps 
under that act, and hold it ready for service. 
He did so ; and with this corps and some militia, 
he defeated the Creek Indians, and gained the 
reputation which forced his appointment in tlie 
regular army. I drew up the address which he 
made to his division at the time, and when I 
carried it to him in the evening, I found the 
child and the lamb between his knees. He had 
not thought of this resource, but caught at it 
instantly, adopted the address, with two shght 
alterations, and published it to his division. I 
raised a regiment myself, and made the speeches 
at the general musters, which helped to raise two 
others, assisted by a small band of friends — all 
feeling confident that if we could conquer the 
difficulty — master the first step — and get him 
upon the theatre of action, he would do the rest 
himself. This is the way he got into the regu- 
lar army, not only unselected by the wisdom of 
government, but rejected by it — a stone rejected 
by the master biulders — and worked in by an 
unseen hand, to become the corner stone of the 
temple. The aged men of Tennessee will re- 
member all this, and it is time that history 
should learn it. But to return to the private 
life and personal characteristics of this extraor- 
dinary man. 

There was an innate, unvarying, self-acting 
delicacy in his intercourse with the female sex, 
including all womankind ; and on that point 
my personal observation (and my opportunities 
for observation were both large and various), 
enables me to join in the declaration of the be- 
lief expressed by his earliest friend and most 
intimate associate, the late Judge Overton, of 
Tennessee. The Eoman general won an immor- 
tality of honor by one act of continence ; what 
praise is due to Jackson, whose whole life was 
continent 1 I repeat : if he had been bom in 
the time of Cromwell, he would have been a 
puritan. Nothing could exceed his kindness 
and affection to Mrs. Jackson, always increasing 
in proportion as his elevation, and culminating 
fortunes, drew cruel attacks upon her. I knew 
her well, and that a more exemplary woman in 
all the relations of life, wife, friend, neighbor, rela^- 
tive, mistress of slaves — never lived, and never 



ANNO 1837. MARTIN VAN BUREN, PRESIDENT. 



739 



presented a more quiet, cheerful and admirable 
management of her household. She had not 
education, but she had a heart, and a good one ; 
and that was always leading her to do kind 
things in the kindest manner. She had the 
General's own warm heart, frank manners and 
hospitable temper ; and no two persons could 
have been better suited to each other, lived 
more happily together, or made a house more 
attractive to visitors. She had the faculty— a 
rare one— of retaining names and titles in a 
throng of visitors, addressing each one appro- 
priately, and dispensing hospitality to all with 
a cordiality which enhanced its value. No 
bashful youth, or plain old man, whose modesty 
sat them down at the lower end of the table, 
could escape her cordial attention, any more 
than the titled gentlemen on her right and left. 
Young persons were her delight, and she always 
had her house filled with them — clever young 
women and clever young men — all calling her af- 
fectionately, "Aimt Rachel." I was young then, 
and was one of that number. I owe it to early 



recollections, and to cherislied convictions— in 
this last notice of the Hermitage- to bear this 
faithful testimony to the memory of its long 
mistress— the loved and honored wife of a great 
man. Her greatest eulogy is in the affection 
which he bore her living, and in the sorrow 
with which he mourned her dead. She died 
at the moment of the General's first election to 
the Presidency ; and every one that had a just 
petition to present, or charitable request to 
make, lost in her death, the surest channel to 
the ear and to the heart of the President. His 
regard for her survived, and lived in the persons 
of her nearest relatives. A nephew of hers was 
his adopted son and heir, taking his own name, 
and now the respectable master of the Her- 
mitage. Another nephew, Andrew Jackson 
Donelson, Esq., was his private secretary when 
President. The Presidential mansion was pre- 
sided over during his term by her niece, the 
most amiable Mrs. Donelson ; and all his con- 
duct bespoke affectionate and lasting remem- 
brance of one he had held so dear. 



END OF VOLU^IE I 



INDEX TO YOL. I. 



A. S. Plot, The.—Charges against Wm. H. Crawford, 35; 
the A. B. papers, a series of articles which appeared in 
the newspapers, 35 ; expectation of the accuser that the 
matter would lie over until after the Presidential elec- 
tion, 35; immediate action, 35; committee appointed, 
35; answer of Crawford, 35; its character, 35; who 
written by, 35 ; proceeding in the case, 35 ; testimony 
of Edwards, 36; his proceedings, 36; report of com- 
mittee, 36. 

Adams, John, decease of, 87; sketch of his character, 87. 

Adams, John QtrmcT, Secretary of State, 7 ; his diary rela- 
tive to the unanimity of the cabinet' on the Missouri 
question, 8 ; connection with the treaty of 1818, 15 ; 
on internal improvements, 22 ; candidate for the Presi- 
dency in 1824, 44 ; commencement of his administration, 
54 ; his inaugural address, 54 ; grounds of opposition, 54 ; 
the majority of the Senate opposed, 55 ; strong minority 
of the House opposed, 55 ; position of the two Houses 
with regard to the President, 91 ; contest for Speaker, 
92; organization of the committees, 92; contents of the 
President's message, 92 ; its notice of the Panama Con- 
gress, 92 ; the finances, 93 ; uselessness of retaining a 
balance in the treasury, 93 ; members of the two Houses, 
93; array of business talent, 94; three classes of men: 
men of speech and judgment, men of judgment and no 
speech, men of speech and no judgment, 94; on the 
Committee of Bank Investigation, 241 ; his position on 
the slavery question, 636. 

Affairs, how changed by the War of 1812, and their subse- 
quent aspect. — War of 1812, 1 ; necessity and impor- 
tance, 1 ; changes it produced in American policy, 1 ; 
state of the finances and currency under which it strug- 
gled, 1 ; its termination with respect to its causes, 1 ; 
gold ceased to be a currency, 1 ; silver banished, 1 ; local 
banks, 1; suspension of specie payments, 1 ; Treasury 
notes resorted to, 1 ; depreciation, 1 ; their use, 1 ; the 
Government, paralyzed by tho state of the finances, 
forced to seek peace, 1 ; impressment the cause of the 
declaration of the war, 1 ; first time in modern history 
that a war terminated by a treaty without a stipulation 
as to its cause, 1 ; treaty of 1807, why rejected by tho 
President, 1 ; its importance, 1 ; the war showed tho 
British Government that the people of the United States 
would fight on the point of impressment, 2 ; no impress- 
ment since, 2 ; causes of the success of the war, in spite 



of the empty treasury, 2; exemption hold by right and 
by might, 2 ; the financial lesson tanght by the war, 2 ; 
the lesson when availed of, 2 ; its effects, 2. 

The second Bank grew out of the war, 2 ; currency of 
the constitution not thought of, 2 ; national bank re 
garded as the only remedy, 2 ; its constitutionality, 2 ; 
the word '^necessary,'" 2; Hamilton's grounds for a 
bank, 2 ; difficulties of tho finances during the second 
war ascribed to the want of a bank, 3 ; concessions of iU 
old opponents, 3; many subsequently convinced the 
constitutional currency had not had a fair trial, 3 ; na- 
tional bank shown to be unnecessary by the Mexican 
war, 3; constitutional question decided, 8. 

Protection of American industry as a substantive ob- 
ject grew out of tho war, 3 ; incidental protection always 
acknowledged and granted, 3 ; domestic manufactureji 
wanted, during the non-importation period of tho em- 
bargo and hostilities, 3; want of articles of defence felt 
during tho war, 3; protection for tho sake of protection 
carried in 1816, 3; course of legislation reversed, 8. 

Question of internal improvements developed by tht 
war, 3; want of facilities for transportation felt in mil- 
itary operations, 3 ; the power claimed as an incident to 
the greatest powers, 3; found in tho word "necessary," 
3; complicated tho national legislation from 1S20 to 
1850, 3; the question does not extend to territorioN 
4; no political rights under tho constitution, 4 ; rivers 
and harbors — internal improvement of based on tho com- 
mercial and revenue clause, 4 ; tho restriction contend- 
ed for, 4. 

Boundaries between tbo treaty-making power and 
the legislative departments a subject of exainin.ition. •»; 
tho broad proposition, 4 ; tho qualification, 4 ; a vital 
one, 4 ; which department to judge of encroachmont« 
by the other? 4; discussions in Congress, between 181S 
and 1820, on this point, 4. 

The doctrine of secession w.'^s born of tho war of 
1812,4; the design imputed to the llartfonl Convention. 
4; its existence raised tho question, 4; tho right then 
repudiated by tho democracy, 4 ; language respecting It 
then south of tho PoU>mac, 4 ; the question thus far 
compromised, not settled, 5. 

Slavery agitation took its rise about l'^l!>, 5; manner 
in which it was then quieted, 5; the coinpromtso a dear 
gain to tho anti-slavery side, 6 ; a southern measiire. 5 
its features, 5. 



INDEX TO VOL. I. 



Debt created by the war, 5; amount of the public 
debt at its close, 5 ; tbc problem to be solved was wheth- 
er a public debt could bo paid in time of peace, 5. 

Public distress becomes a prominent feature of subse- 
quent years, 5 ; expansion and collapse of the bank, 5 ; 
gloom of 1819 and 1S20, 5; commercial proceedings, 5; 
legislative proceedings, 5; distress the cry — relief the 
demand, 6; good results of the war, G. 
Amendment of the Constitution. — Mistakes of European 
writers on our system of Government, 3T; Thiers and 
De Tocqueville, 37 ; the electors but an instrument to 
obey the will of the people, 87; electors useless, 37; 
amendment proposed, 87 ; views of the convention 
which framed the constitution, 37 ; Benton's remarks on 
a direct vote of the people for President, 87 ; " evil of 
the want of uniformity in the choice of Presidential 
electors endangers the rights of the people, 87 ; the dis- 
trict system, 88; origin of the general ticket system in 
10 States, 38; objection to a direct vote of the people 
considered, 38 ; whence it is taken, 89 ; admit its truth, 
what then? 39; better officers elected, 89; ancient his- 
tory, 89; triumph of popular elections, 39; other objec- 
tions to intermediate electors, 40 ; time and experience 
condemn the continuance of the electoral system, 40 ; 
even if the plan of the constitution had not failed, it is 
better to get rid of the electors, 40; historical examples, 
41." 

An attempt to give the election of President and 
Vice-President to the direct vote of the people, 78 ; 
various propositions offered, 78; committee .appointed 
to report, 78 ; plan reported by the committee. 78 ; its 
prominent features, 79 ; abolition of the electors and di- 
rect vote of the people — a second election between the 
two highest— uniformity in the mode of election, 79; 
advantiigcs of the plan, 79. 

Exclusion of Members of Congress from Civil Office 
appointments. — Inquiry into the expediency of amend- 
ing the Constitution so as to exclude members from ap- 
pointment to civil office moved, 82; motion only ap- 
plied to the term for which they were elected, 82; com- 
mittee report that the exclusion should extend to the 
Presidential term during which the member was elected, 
83 ; proceedings of the convention that framed the con- 
stitution, 83 ; other conventions, 83; extracts from the 
proceedings of Federal Convention, S3; early jealousy 
on this point, 83 ; jjrovisions for the independence of 
the two Houses, 83; instance of the observance of these 
provisions, 84 ; instance of the contrary, 84 ; the Con- 
stitutional limitation a sm.all restraint, 84: views of the 
•' Federalist," 84 ; what has been the working of the 
Government ? 85 ; the effects of legislation, 85 ; other 
evils resulting from tbc appointment of members to 
office, 85; the independence of the depiirtments ceases 
between the Executive and Legislative, SG ; examples of 
early Presidents, 86. 
AhDEKSON, KiciiAED C, Jun., Representative from Ken- 
tucky, 7 ; nominated minister to Panama, 66. 
Appropriation for Defences and Fortification BilL—Vre- 
jiaration recommended in the message, 554; referred 
and reported on, 55-1; resolved unanimously that the 
treaty with Franco be maintained and its execution in- 
sisted on, 554; and that prepar.ations ought to be made 
to meet any emergency, 554; appropriation of three 
millions inserted in the Fortification bill, 554 ; rejected 
in the Senate, 654; House insist, 554; Senate adhere, 
554; remarks of Mr. King, of Alabama, 554; this mo- 
tion never resorted to until more gentle means have 
failed, 564; are gentlemen prepared to take upon them- 
selves sucn a fearful responsibility as the rejection of 



this bill ? 554; in what does it violate the constitution 
555; appropriations under Washington's administration, 
5.')5; adherence carried, 555; conference asked by ths 
House, .555; committees disagree, 555; question as to 
the hour of the termin.ation of the session, 555 ; remark 
of Mr. Cambreleng, 55C ; responsibility put on the Sen- 
ate, 556. 

Akciier, AViLLiAM S., Representative from Virginia, 7; on 
refbrence of the bank memorial to a select committee, 
234. 

Arkansas Territory, cession of a part of to the Cherokeet, 
— Reasons for making her a first-class State, 107 ; s 
treaty negotiated altering the western boundary, 107; 
can a law of Congress be abolished by an Indian treaty ? 
107 ; is it expedient to weaken the future State ? 107 ; 
supremacy of the treaty -making power considered, 107 ; 
power in Congress to dispose of territory, 108; the 
treaty ratified, lOS; a southern measure, 108; twelve 
thousand square miles taken off of slave territory, 108 ; 
object to assist in inducing the removal of the Chero- 
kees, 108; what became of the white inhabitants, 109; 
bought by the government, 109. 

Arkansas and Michigan, admission of. — Application for 
an enabling act, 627 ; Congress refuse to p.ass it, 627 ; 
people hold conventions on their own authority and 
form constitutions, 627 ; message communicating the 
constitution of Michigan, 627; referred, also a memorial 
entitled from the " Legislature of Michigan," 627 ; ob- 
jection to its title, 628; bill reported, 628; objections, 
628 ; remarks of Mr. Buchanan, 628 ; bill passed and 
sent to the House, 628; the practice of admitting a free 
and a slave State together, 629. 

Application of Arkansas taken up, 629; remarks of 
Mr. Swift against the admission, on the ground of 
slavery, 629; do. of Mr. Buchanan in favor of her ad- 
mission, 629; Prentiss opposes the admission on the 
ground of the revolutionary manner in which the State 
had held her convention, 680; remarks of Mr. Morris, 
680; bill p.assed and sent to the House, 631. 

Moved in the House to postpone the Michigan to take 
up the Arkansas bill, 681 ; remarks of Mr. Thomas, 631 ; 
the point of jealousy between some Southern and 
Northern members revealed, 631 ; remarks on the mo- 
tion to refer both bills and combine them in one, 681 ; 
Lewis's remarks on giving the Arkansas bill the priority 
of decision, 632 ; further debate, 633 ; bills referred to 
the Committee of the Whole, 634; points of the debate — 
First, the formation of constitutions without the previ- 
ous assent of Congress ; Second, the right of aliens to 
vote before natur.alization ; Third, the right of Arkansas 
to be admitted with slavery by virtue of the rights of a 
State— of the treaty of Louisiana and of tho Missouri 
Compromise, 634, 635, 686 ; an account of the session oi 
twenty -four hours, 636; bill put to vote, 6-37; struggle 
to bring the bills to a vote not to pass them, 637; causes, 
637 ; one special one, 637. 

AsTOB, John Jacob. — His colony at Astoria, 13, 109. 

AcBTiN, Moses, founder of the Texas Colony, 674. 



Baldwin, Henbt, Representative from Pennsylvania, 7 ; 
coadjutor with Clay on the Missouri question, 10; ap- 
pointed Justice of the Supreme Court, 120. 

Bank of Vie United States.— V^'hcn charter of first expired, 
1; origin of the second, 2; its course in 1819, 5. 

Constitutionality and expediency called in question in 
General Jackson's first message, 153 ; suggestion of one 
founded on the credit and revenues of the Government 



INDEX TO VOL. I. 



m 



158 ; a gold currency and an independent treasury sug- 
gested to General Jackson, and approved at once, 158; 
cause of a resort to the deposit system, 158 ; the idea of a 
government fiscal agent stigmatized, 158 ; reports of com- 
mittees, 158; war of the banlc commenced, 158; its alli- 
ance with the opposition, 158 ; its power, 158 ; statement 
of its president, 159 ; Its power to ruin and destroy local 
banks, 159. 

Ceaseless activity in behalf of the bank, since the 
President's message in lS;i9, 187 ; little done on the other 
side, 187; current all setting one way, 187; failure of 
attempts to counteract it, 187 ; permission asked to intro- 
duce a resolution against the re-charter, 187 ; speech on 
the occasion, showing that the institution had too much 
power over the people and the government — over busi- 
ness and politics; and disposed to exercise it against 
freedom and equality, 187; proposal to revive the cur- 
rency of the constitution, 187; "willing to see the 
currency of the government left to the hard money 
intended by the constitution," 187; every species of 
paper left to the State governments, 187; experience of 
France and England, 187; a hard money party against a 
paper party, 187; justification for bringing forward the 
question of renewal, 188; the reports on previous reso- 
lutions offered at the close of each session and all in 
favor of renewal, 188 ; then followed the message of 
President Jackson, 188; its reference, 188; report, etc., 
188; the conduct of the bank and its friends second 
ground for justification, 188; these proceedings, 169; an 
example drawn from the British Parliament, 189; re- 
marks of Sir Henry Parnell, 189 ; do. of Mr. Hume, 189; do. 
of Mr. Edward Ellice,189; do. of Sir William Pulteney, 
190; it is said the debate will injure the stockholders, 
depreciate the value of their property, and that it is 
wrong to sport with vested rights, 190 ; the stockholders 
know the facts and such assertions absurd, 190 ; the in- 
stitution has forfeited its charter and maybe shut up any 
hour, 190 ; the case of the Bank vs. 6wens, 190 ; parlia- 
mentary rule requiring members to withdraw who have 
an interest in the subject of discnssion, 191. 

The bank is an institution too great and powerful to 
be tolerated in a government of free and equal laws, 
191 ; on renewal, its direct power must speedily become 
boundless and uncontrollable, 191 ; authorized to own 
and issue ninety millions, 191 ; its indirect power, 191 ; to 
whom is all this power granted ? 191 ; by whom is it to be 
exercised? 191 ; it will become the absolute monopolist 
of American money, 191 ; what happened in Great Brit- 
ain in 1795, 192 ; letter of the bank directors to Pitt, 
192 ; condition of Great Britain at that time, 192 ; It sub- 
dued the minister to the purposes of the bank, 192 ; for 
twenty years the bank was the dominant power in Eng- 
l.and, 192; cannot the Bank of the United States act in 
the same way ? 192 

Its tendencies are dangerous and pernicious to the 
government and the people, 192; the heads of each 
mischief, 192, 19.3. 

The exclusive privileges and anti -republican monop- 
oly which it gives the stockholders, 193 ; the exclusive 
legal privileges it gives, 19^; twelve enumerated, 194; 
their effect and bearing, 194; copipensation made by the 
Bank of England for undrawn balances, 194; amount of 
undrawn balances, 194 ; injury suffered by the people 

;; account of the uncompensated masses of public 
.Money in the hands of the bar.k, 195; to discredit and 
disparage the notes of all other banks by excluding them 
from the collection of the revenue, 196 ; the power to 
hold real estate, receive rents, &c., 197 ; effect of this 
vast capacity to acquire and legal power to retain real 



estate, 197 ; the power to deal in pawns, merchandl.M?, 
and bills of exchange, 19S; to establish branches In the 
different St-atos without their consent and in defiance of 
their resistance, 199; exemption of tho stockholders 
from individual liability, 199; to have tho Unit'd 
States for a p.artner, 200; extract from the spoecb 
of Pulteney, 200 ; amount of stock owned by foreigncra, 
201 ; exemptions from due course of law for violations 
of its charter, 201 ; these privileges secured by a pledge 
of the public faith to charter no other bank, 202; the 
government from which we have made this copy has 
condemned the original, 202 ; correspondence between 
the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Bank directors, 
20.3; how was this Babylon prostrated? 204; effect of 
the speech, 204; how it was received, 204; leave re- 
fused, 205. 

Statement that the hank, has failed In furnishlos a 
uniform currency, 220 ; it vicious and illegal currency, 
220 ; origin of the practice, 220 ; leave to bring In a re- 
solution declaring it illegal asked for, 220; reasons, 
220 ; " the resolution expresses its own object, 221 ; 
the currency arraigned, 221; tho points of infjom- 
patibility between this currency and tho requisites of 
the charter, 221; fourteen points stated, 221; the cur- 
rency fails at every test, 221 ;■ these orders cannot serve 
as currency because they are subject to the law of en- 
dorsed paper, 222; being once paid they are done with, 
222; oper.ations of the b.ank in 1817,222; oridn of the 
branch bank orders, 223; this currency ought to be sap- 
pressed, 223 ; the fact of illegality sufficient to require 
it, 223; pernicious consequences result from it, 22;J; 
the branch bank orders arc not payable in the States in 
which they are issued, 223; practice of the Bank of 
Ireland, 224; le.ave refused, 224. 

Message of the President in 1829-50, 224; its remarks 
relative to the bank, 224 ; the position of the constitu- 
tional question, 224; the democracy opposed not only 
the b.ank but the latitndinarian construction which 
would authorize it, 225 ; it w.as the turning point be- 
tween a strong and splendid government on one side 
and a plain economical government on tho other. 
limited by a written constitution, 225; the construction 
w-is the main point, 225; effect of the message on the 
democracy of the country, 225 ; the contest at hand, 225 ; 
violent attacks upon the President, 226 ; remark of M. 
Tocquevillc on President Jackson and the bank, 226; 
every word an error, 22G; examined, 226; application 
for a renewal of the charter when and why maile, 226 ; 
action of friends of Jackson and tho bank, 227; memo- 
rial for renewal presented, 227; course of events 227; 
error of De Tocquevillo exposed, 228; another extra, t, 
228; its errors exposed, 229; consequences of rcftijlnf 
the re-charter, 229. 

/*c-e/(a;?<")\— Convention of the National Eepnbllrans 
to nominate a President, 232: the nomination*. 2.32; 
addresses of the convention, 2-32; remarks relative t« 
tho bank, 282 ; "its boneflclal character, 282; no pretext 
of any adequate motive is assigned for the President's , 
denunciation, 2.38; are tho people ready to destroy one 
of their most valuable Institutions to gratl<>' the caprice 
of the President ?2;53." 

The Bank question presented as nn Issue of the ci.c- 
tion by its friends, 2.33 ; two cla.isos of frlond.v 2-3.3 ; one 
friends of the President, the other against him, 883; how 
the consent of the former was obtained, 28.3; tnomorlal 
for re-charter presented, 2-38; referred to « select com- 
mittee in the Senate, 2-'t3: referreil to tho rommllteo of 
"Ways and Means In the House, 2.'«; re.T«on of tho dlf. 
ference, 283; motion to refer to a select committee, 21* 



INDEX TO VOL. I. 



remarks, 234 ; tbis niesisure entirely disconnected from 
tlie Baltimore convention, '234; "a select committee the 
proper one, 234; tlie course in such cases, 234; the ques- 
tion should not be taken up at this session, 234 ; the 
stockholders left the application discretionary with the 
directors, it6; it will divide the whole country, 235; the 
bank has been charged with using its funds and those 
of the people in operating upon and controlling public 
opinion, 235; this of sutlicient consequence to demand 
an accurate inquiry, 235; charged with violating its 
charter, 235 ; other charges, 235 ; memorial referred to 
Committee of Ways and Means, 285. 

Investigation ordered. — Course necessary to be pur- 
sued by the opposition, 235; to prepare the people to 
sustain the veto, 235 ; policy of the bank leaders, 286; 
reasons for taking up the investigation in the House, 
286; motion for inquiry made, 23C; manner in which 
the motion was treated, 236; resistance to investigation, 
236; "a re-charter is asked, yet the friends of the 
bank shrink from inquiry, 230 ; the inference which 
might he drawn from this resistance, 237 ; what is the 
^ound of opposition ? 23T ; how the memorial was 
treated in the other House, 23T ; result of the examina- 
tion in 1819, 237 ; three years after it went into existence, 
\t was on the verge of bankruptcy, 287 ; " right of either 
House to make the inquiry, 237; the misconduct of the 
bank in numerous instances, 287 ; list of accusations 
igalnst the bank, 288 ; the friends of the bank obliged to 
leclare in favor of examination, 238 ; modes of inves- 
.igation proposed, 289 ; restrictions proposed to the in- 
juiry, 239; remarks upon the manner in which the i)ro- 
josed inquiry has becai treated by the House, 289; re- 
marks on modes adopted by the bank for extorting 
iflsury, 240 ; another mode makes the loan take the form 
flf a domestic bill from the beginning, 240; ettect of the 
debate on the bank with the country, 240; speakers 
against the bank, 240 ; advocates of the bank, 241 ; the 
Committee of Investigation, 241 ; its composition, 241 ; 
three reports, 241 ; their character, 241. 

The three per cent. deht.—T\\\s, a portion of the revo- 
lutionary debt standing at sixty-four, 242; money in the 
bank to pay it, 242; the money retained to sustain the 
bank and the debt not paid until it rose to par, 242 ; re- 
marks on the course of the bank, 242 ; the loss to the 
people, 243. 

Bill for re-cliarter reported.— B-amarks relative to 
previous charters, 243 ; former course of "Webster, 243 ; 
his defence of his present position, 243 ; " the years th.at 
have passed, 243 ; the effects of experience, 243 ; action 
of Calhoun in procuring the present charter, 244 ; the 
vote of Webster against it, 244; his views, 244; evils of 
a disordered currency, 241; the small note currency 
cause of the sm.all amount of specie in the country, 244; " 
the grant of exclusive privileges and the bonus required 
opposed, 245 ; remarks upon them, 245 ; the present ap- 
plication of the bank opposed, 245; "some years before 
the charter expires, 245; now late in the session, 245; not 
time to do justice to the subject, 245; other subjects of 
more immediate and pressing Interest must be thrown 
aside, 245; an unfinished investigation presents another 
reason for delaying the final action of Congress on this 
subject, 245 ; the people have no opportunity to make 
np their minds on the information now printed, 246 ; 
this question belongs to the Congress elected within the 
next census, 246; looks like usurpation on the part of 
this Congress, 246; diflerent representation in the next 
Congress, 246; a charter should be granted with as little 
invasion of the rights of posterity as possible, 246 ; this 
question must effect the presidential election if not de- 



cide it, 246 ; take a lesson from the monarchial parlia 
mcnt of England, 247.'" 

A motion declaratory of the right of the States to aA 
mit or deny the rstablishmont of branches of the mother 
bank within their limits, offered, 247; rcmark.s, 247; "H 
this amendment is struck out it is tantamount to a legis- 
lative declaration that no such rights existed, 24T ; de- 
cision of the Supreme Court on the right of the States to 
tax the branches, 247 ; this is the supremacy of the 
bank and the degradation of the States, 247; the argu- 
ment that these branches are necessary to enable the 
Federal Government to carry on its fiscal operations 
and therefore ought to be independent of State legisla- 
tion, is answered by the determination of Congress it- 
self, 247 ; every thing is left to the bank itself excepj 
the branch at this place, 247; the establishment of 
branches is a mere question of profit and loss to the 
bank, 247; point of the question, 247 ; motion re- 
jected. 

Motion to strike out the exclusive privileges and tc 
make the stockholders liable, 24S; "example of the 
Scottish banks, 248; the excellence of their plan, 248, 
clauses granting exclusive privileges, 248; the establish- 
ment of any other bank by the United States prohibited 
during the existence of the charter, 248; this is contrary 
to the genius of our Government, 249 ; the restriction 
upon future Congresses is at war with every principle 
of constitutional right and legislative equality 249 ; is 
this Congress to impose restrictions upon the power of 
their successors? 249; in nine months this Congress is 
defunct, 249 ; the renewed charter will not take effect 
till three years after the full representation of the next 
Congress in power, 249." 

All amendments proposed by the opponents of the 
bank voted down, 2.'i0 ; the interest of members of the 
Senate as stockholders, 250 ; bill passed in the Senate 
and House, 2.50. 

Tlie Veto. — " If this government sells exclusive privi- 
leges, it should at least exact for them as much as they are 
worth in the market, 251 ; the present value of the monop- 
oly is seventeen millions, and the act proposes to sell it 
for three, 251 ; how can the present stockholders have any 
claim to the special favor of the Government ? 251 ; this 
act does not permit competition in the purchase of this 
monopoly, 251 ; not just to set others aside and grant this 
privilege to the few who have been fortunate enough to 
secure the stock, 251 ; " the force of precedents for consti- 
tutionality argued against, 252 ; decision of the Supreme 
Court, 252 ; examined 252 ; remarks, 252 ; " precedence is 
a dangerous source of authority, and should not be regard- 
ed as deciding questions' of constitutional power except 
where the acquiescence of the people and the States is 
well settled, 25:5 ; precedents are really against the bank, 
253 ; if the opinion of the Supreme Court covered tho 
whole ground of this act, it ought not to control the co- 
ordinate authorities of this Government, 258 ; in the case 
relied on, tho Supreme Court have not decided that all 
the features of this corporation are comp.itible with the 
constitution, 253; tho misconduct ot the institution, 
both in conducting its business and in resisting investi- 
gation, 253 ;. suspicions are entertained and charges made 
of gross violations of the charter, 253 ; the recommenda- 
tion of a majority of the committee, 253; additional 
reason for less haste and more caution, 253." 

The great speeches from the advocates of the bank 
now made to repel the effecte cf the veto, 254 ; a trans- 
fer of the question to the political arena, 254; to the 
presidential election, 254; frightful distress predicted, 
and a change of the chief magistrate the only means of 



INDEX TO VOL. I. 



averting the calamity, 254 ; remarks of Webster on this 
point, 2M ; remarks of White upon the bank taking the 
lead of a political party, 254 ; the distress pictured by 
Clayton, 254; the winding up of the bank, with regard 
to time, 255 ; case of the previous bank, 255 ; menace of 
distress from the bank if denied a renewal, entirely gra- 
tuitous, 255; vehement declamation against the veto, 
255; remarks of Clay on the veto power, 255; reply of 
Benton, 255; objects of the vetoes of the French king, 
256; " the fable of the cat and the eagle, 256; why de- 
bate the bank question, now it is vetoed, and not debate 
it before? 257; the bank is finished, why debate it 
now? 257; the bank is in the field, a fearful and tre- 
mendous combatant in the presidential election, 257 ; 
the Great West is selected a.< the theatre of her opera- 
tions, 257 ; ruin is to be the punishment of the West, 
if she votes for Jackson, 257; the bank debt has been 
created for electioneering purposes, 25S ; this point ex- 
amined, 258; the establishment of several new branches 
and the promise of more, 259; the alleged necessity for 
the prompt and vigorous collection of this debt, if the 
charter is not renewed, 259 ; the opinion of the Senator 
from Kentucky, about the legality of this trust, 259 ; 
once in every ten years the capital of this debt is paid in 
interest, 259 ; the ruinous drain of capital in hard money 
from the West, 259 ; the old banks of Ohio, Kentucky, 
and Tennessee, defended from the aspersions cast on 
them, 260; manner in which the charter was pushed 
through, pending an investigation, 260; the foreign 
stockholders of the bank, 260 ; the bank a monopoly, 
261; English authority for calling the Bank of England 
a monopoly, and the British bank in America is copied 
from it, 261 ; the President's idea of his oath, 261 ; his 
independence in construing the constitution, 262; tho 
drain upon the resources of the West, made by the bank, 
262 ; address to the Jackson bank men, 262 ; address to 
the West, 262 ; the dangerous power of the bank and 
the present audacity of her conduct, 263." 

"Dissatisfaction expressed that the speeches of some 
Senators fill the galleries, and those of others empty 
them. 263 ; charged with a want of courtesy to the Pres- 
ident, 263 ; charges of the Senator from Missouri, once 
against the President, 263. 

"No adjourned question of veracity between the Sen- 
ator from Missouri and the President, 264; the prediction 
charged upon the Senator from Missouri, 264 ; " further 
debate, 264 ; direful picture of distress drawn, 265. 

Delay in pa7jing the three per cents. — Message re- 
commended that the United States stock should be 
sold, and that a committee be appointed to investi- 
gate its condition, 2S7 ; referred to a speci.al com- 
mittee of friends of the bank, 287; objected that the 
committee should not proceed until the report of tho 
agent of the Secretary of the Treasury was m.ade, 2S7; 
its depreciation of the stock, 287; this objection falla- 
cious, 2S7 ; the loss of the bank, by depreciation, stated 
at half a million, 288; nothing before the House to make 
an inquiry into the condition of the bank desirable, 288 ; 
eventual .ability to discharge all its obligations, is not 
of itself sufficient to entitle the bank to tho confidence 
of the Government, 288 ; what was the Executive com- 
plaint against the bank ? 288 ; that it had interfered with 
the payment of the public debt, 2S8 ; effect of the 
charges upon the feelings of the corporators, 288 ; tho 
report of the agent, 288; the exhibit contrasted with its 
actual state, 288; a large surplus presented for tho 
stockholders, 289 ; the report a mere compendium of 
the bank returns, 289; proceedings of the bank with 
regard to the three per cents, 289; investigation re- 



ferred to the Committee of Ways and Means, 2>9; 
report, 239; public deposits reported entirely safe, 259; 
resolution to continue the deposits in tho bank offered, 
289; debate, 289; the bank exceeded its logitiniat* 
authority in relation to tho three per cents, 29U; liad 
the bank promptly paid the public money deposited ia 
its vaults when called for, 290 ; proceedings of the bank, 
290 ; resolution carried, 291 ; loss by the manner the 
three per cents were paid, 291. 

Sale of Stock in iAe.— Sale of United States stock In 
all corporate companies recommended by tho President, 
294; partnership of government with corporations 
condemned, 294; bill introduced, 294; moved to reject 
it, 294; debate, 294; indignation at this persecution 
of a national institution, 294; Indignities to which 
members were subjected who presumed to take 
any step concerning the bank which militated against 
that corporation, 295; a plain business proceeding. 
295; an isolated proposition, 295; the bill summarily 
rejected, 295; fifty members borrowers of the bank, 
296 ; the same thing had happened onco before, 296 ; 
proposed in 1327 to sell the stock solely on the ground 
of public advantage, 296 ; remarks on this proposition at 
the time, 296 ; reflections, 296. 

Jiemoval of the J)epo»its.—OTioT for removal Issued 
by the Secretary of the Treasury, 873; the President's 
own message, 374; reports of directors to the President, 
374; extracts from them, 374, 375; resolutions adopted 
by the board, 376; further outrages of the bank, 876; 
the exchange committee of the banks, 876 ; pap«r read 
by President Jackson to his Cabinet, .376; eStracts, 377, 
378 ; impression produced by the removal, .379. 

Proceedings of the Bank on the removal of the Pe- 
posita. — The reference of tho President's paper to a 
committee, 879 ; report, .379 ; extracts, 379 ; Its temper, 
879; gives the lead to proceedings in Congress, 330; 
the violations of law and the constitution referred to, 
380 ; amount of the charges against the President by the 
bank, 381. 

Report of the Secretary of the Treasury relative to 
removal of the Deposits. — Reasons for the cessation of 
deposits In the bank, 3S1 ; the duty of the Secretary, 
381; no prospects of a renewal of the charter, 8S2; 
other reasons, 883; the board of directors, 383; author- 
ity of the Secretory to remove the deposits, 384; the 
deposit banks, 385; dilliculty of obtaining the deiH>.<lt 
banks, 335; power of the Bank of the I'nitcd States 33.'). 

Pi the Senate. — Report considered, 393 ; proposed, that 
the Senate act upon it at once without the Intervention of 
a committee, 393 ; the House tho proper jilaco to Inves- 
tigate tho charges made in that report, Sg."?; resolution 
offered, 393; referred, 394; report, 894 ; remarks on tho 
despotism of the committee, 394; reply, ."19 »; report 
drawn by the counsel for the bank, 394 ; IneUlcienoy of 
the resolution, 395 ; no action proposed, 895; resolution 
adopted, 395. 

Resolution subsequently proposed again with another 
requiring the return of the deposits to the bank, 896; 
remarks, 896; imi>ropriety of tho resolutions so near 
the close of the session, 396; other conslderutlou-s 897; 
resolutions adopted, 897; sent to tho Hou.ie and not 
taken up, 897. 

In the //0!*.w.— Report of the Secretary, memorial of 
the bank, and of the government directors r«ferro«l, 
898 ; report, 898 ; adopted, 89*. 

Government Pirector.i, their Xomimttion and lit- 
jection. — Oppo>ltion manifested to four of the Ave nom 
inated,385; resolution of inquiry Into their fltno.vs .Vc. 
offered and rejected, 8S5 ; four rejected, »S«; no com- 



VI 



INDEX TO VOL. I. 



plaint agaiust them except from the bank, 886; rejected 
for the report made to the President, 386; re-nomi- 
nated, 386; message, 3S6; extracts, 887, 8SS; question 
raised as to which was the nominating power for bank 
directors, the President and Senate or the Bank and 
Senate, 383; determination to try this qu<;stion, 3S9; 
messaire referred to a committee, 889; report against tlie 
re-nominations, 389; the absolute right of the Senate to 
reject, 889 ; their privilege to give no reasons, 389 ; the 
general policy of making re-nominations, 889; extracts, 
889 ; memorial of the rejected directors, 389 ; extracts, 
890; their rights and duties as government directors, 
890; ox)inion of Alexander Hamilton relative to gov- 
ernment directors, 391 ; opinion of Alexander J. Dallas, 
891 ; reasons why the motion to strike out government 
directors was resisted when the charter was under con- 
sideration, 391 ; they are the guardians of the public 
interest, and to secure a just and honorable administra- 
tion of the affairs of the bank, 891 ; the nominations 
again rejected, 892 ; reasons kept secret, 892 ; motion 
made to publish the proceedings, 392 ; lost, 892 ; re- 
marks on the Report of the Committee of Investigation 
relative to the Exchange Committee, 892. 

Cull on the President for a copy of the paper read 
to his Cabinet. — Request to be informed if it was 
genuine, 399 ; and if so to furnish a copy, 399 ; Senate not 
the branch of the Legislature to call for this document, 
399 ; uses to which the paper might be put, 899 ; it can- 
not be rightfully called for, 399 ; resolution passed, 400; 
answer of the President, -100; denied the right to call, 
&c., 400. 

Attempted Investigation. — Select Committee ap- 
pointed in the House to investigate the affairs of the 
United States Bank, 458 ; objects to be ascertained, 459 ; 
authority given to the committee, 469; right of the 
House to make the investigation, 459 ; proceedings of 
the bank to defeat investigation, 459 ; report of com- 
mittee, 459 ; extracts, ■ 460 ; treatment of their call for 
certain books, 401; action under subpoenas, 461; a war- 
rant recommended for the apprehension of the presi- 
dent and directors, 461 ; the committee of 1819, 462. 

Jnzentigation hy the Senate.— 'Sivazc much ground 
lost in public opinion by resisting the investigation of 
the House to retrieve the bank, an investigation com- 
mences in the Senate, 470 ; committee moved, 470; view 
of this act of the Senate, 471 ; the members of the com- 
mittee defenders of the bank, 471; the only semblance 
of precedent, 471 ; called the " Whitewashing Commit- 
tee," 471. 

Downfall of the Bank. — Copy of resolutions of its 
stockholders, 471 ; extracts from Philadelphia papers, 
472«; report of the Finance Committee, 481 ; its friendly 
reception, 481 ; its contents, 481 ; its declarations con- 
tradicted by Senator Benton, 482 ; extracts, 482 ; impu- 
tations upon the President, Vice-President, and Senator 
Benton, 482; committee departed from the business 
with which they were charged, 4S3; the charge of hos- 
tility to the bank on the part of the President, 4S3 ; de- 
fends the Secretary of the Treasury against the imputa- 
tions of the report, 484 ; misconduct of the bank shown 
from recent facts, 484 ; the abduction of a million and a 
half from New Orleans, 485; the report eir-parte, ^%<i\ 
reply in defence of the report, 486 ; extracts, 486. See 
Jacksoii's Administration. 
Banks in the District, recliarter of. — Speech of Senator 
Benton, 658 ; "the charters wrong, 658 ; no bank of cir- 
culation ought to be authorized in this district, e-^O; 
none to furnish other currencj' than large notes should 
be chartered anywhere, 669 ; ameliorations in charters 



proposed to be granted in order to render them less 
dangerous to the community, 659 ; liability of the 
stockholders, 659; bank stock to be subject to taxation 
like other propertj' , 659 ; to Issue no notes less than 
twenty dollars, 659 ; the charters to be repealable at the 
will of Congress, 059; evil of small notes classed undei 
three heads, O'Jii; the banishment of gold and silver 
counterfeiting and throwing other burdens of losses 
upon the poorer classes, 660; the basis of circulation 
throughout the country should be hard money, 662; the 
true idea of banks seemed to be lost in the country, 663 ; 
the faculty of issuing paper money renders banks dan- 
gerous, 603; progress of banking business is alarming 
and deplorable in the United States, 663; the burdens 
which the banks impose on the people, 604 ; " recharter 
carried, 665. 

Baebour, James, Senator from Virginia, 7; governor, 7; 
votes for the Missouri Compromise, S ; on the Virginia 
resolutions, 35 ; Secretary at "War, 65 ; negotiates treaty 
with the Cherokees, 107. 

Baebour, Philip P., Representative from Virginia, 7; on 
selling the stock of the United States in the bank, 296 ; 
his character, 296. 

Barry, William T., Postmaster General, 120; appointed 
Minister to Spain, 181. 

Bayard, James, Commissioner at Ghent, 91. 

Benton, Thomas H., instigator of the clause prohibiting le- 
gislative interference with slavery in the constitution 
of Missouri, 8; his first experience in standing "solitary 
and alone,"' 16; views relative to the settlement of Ore- 
gon, 13; first suggests sending ministers to Oriental na- 
tions, 14; denounces the treaty of 1818, 15, 17; moves 
amendment to the constitution, 37 ; visit to Jefferson, 
43; offers a bill to occupy Columbia river, 50; remarks 
on the treaty with the Creeks, 61 ; on the duty on in- 
digo, 97; on the sale of the public lands, 103, 130; on 
slavery, 136; on the peroration of Webster, 142; on the 
regulation of commerce, 151 ; the repeal of the alum 
salt tax, 155; on the Bank of the United States, 187; 
his silence relative to the nomination of Van Buren as 
Minister to England, 218; letter to Van Buren, 218; on 
the illegal currency of the Bank of the United States, 
220; on government expenses, 231; against the exclu- 
sive privileges of the bank, 245 ; reply to Clay on the 
veto power, 255, 256; on the compromise tariff bill, 
319; on home valuation, 824; on Missouri resolutions, 
360 ; on report of the Secretary of the Treasury, 893 ; 
on the removal of the deposits, 406; gives notice of the 
expunging resolution, 428; on a gold currency, 486; on 
public distress, 462 ; on the Report of the Senate Com- 
mittee to investigate the affairs of the bank, 482 ; rela- 
tive to the expunging resolutions of Alabam;v, 524; on 
the Branch Mints, 551 ; on distribution of the proceeds 
of the public lands, 560 ; on the memorial to abolish 
slavery in the District of Columbia, 577 ; on French af- 
fairs, 591; on abolition petitions, 617; on the E.xpung- 
ing resolution, 645 ; on distribution of the land proceeds, 
649, 652 ; on rechartering the district banks, 668 ; on 
Te.xas Independence, 670; on the specie circular, 677; 
on revision of the specie circular, 695, 701; on the salt 
tax, 714; on the Expunging resolution, 719. 

Berrien, John M., remarks on the treaty with the Creeks, 
02; attorney-general, 120; resigns his seat in the cabi- 
net, 181. 

Bibb, George M., on home valuation, 824; on the French 
spoliation bill, 4S7. 

Birthday of Jefferson and the doctrine of nullification, 148. 

Blair, Francis P., how ltd to establisli the Globe new» 
paper, 130. 



INDEX TO VOL. I. 



vU 



BLOOMFrELD, JosEPu, Representative from New Jersey, votes 
for the admission of Missouri, 9. 

BoTTLDiN, James W., on the admission of Arlcansas, 631. 

Beanch, John, Secretary of the Navy, 120; resigns his 
seat in the cabinet, ISl. 

Branch Mints at Xew Orlea'm and in the Southern gold 
regioiis.—V,i\\ reported, 550 ; opposed by Mr. Clay, 550 ; 
unwise and injudicious to establish these branches, 550 ; 
indefinite postponement moved, 550 ; no evil in the nul- 
lification of mints, 550 ; the present one sufficient, 551 ; 
the measure would be auxiliary to the restoration of the 
metallic currency, 551; remarks of Mr. Benton, 551; 
" constitutional right to establish these mints, 551 ; an 
act of justice to the South and West, 551 ; give the mint 
five or six branches and nobody would want the bank 
paper, 552; the idea of expense on such an object 
scouted, 552; for the greater part of the goldcnn-eucy 
is in the vaults of the bank, 552; what loss has the 
Western people now sustained for want of gold? 552 ; in 
favor of measures that will put down small paper and 
put up gold and silver, 552 ; " postponement lost, 553 ; 
other motions made and lost, 553 ; bill passed, 553. 

Brituh West India Trade, recovery of. — Account of this 
trade, 124 ; six negotiations carried on between the 
United States and Great Britain on this subject, 124; 
limited concessions only obtained, 125; a primary ob- 
ject with Washington, 125 ; his letter of instructions to 
Gouvernenr Morris, 125; a prominent point in our first 
negotiation in 1794, 125; attempts of 1822 and 1S23, 125; 
remarks on the negotiation of 1822, 125 ; efi'ect of the 
word "elsewhere," 126; attemptsof Mr. Adams' admin- 
istration to negotiate, 126; effects of his failure, 126; 
Gallatin's interview with Mr. Huskisson, 126 ; despatch, 
126 ; facts communicated to Congress by President 
Adams. 12T; the case presented hopeless, 127 ; the loss 
of this trade an injury to the country, 127 ; the position 
of General Jackson, 127 ; minister sent to London, 127 ; 
reasons given for a renewed application, 128 ; point of 
right waived, 128; the trade recovered, 128; the trade 
under the act of Kirliament, 128 ; the grounds of suc- 
cess, 128. 

Beown, Bedfobd, for Van Buren as Minister to England, 
216; on the branch mints, 551; on abolition petitions, 
612. 

Brown, James, Senator from Louisiana, 7 ; votes for the Mis- 
souri Compromise, 8. 

Buchanan, James, presents memorial of the Society of 
Friends, 576 ; on French affairs, 590 ; in favor of the ad- 
mission of Arkansas, 630; on distribution of the land 
proceeds, 708. 

BtTEKB, Edmund, on the sale of the crown lands, 102. 

BuKK, Col. Aaron, decease of. — Brilliant prospects ending 
in shame, 681 ; in the expedition with Arnold, 681 ; the 
opinion of Washington, 681 ; position at the close of the 
presidential election of 1800, 681 ; his character as re- 
garded by his compeers, 682 ; his talents, 682 ; the fate 
of Hamilton, 682. 

BuKTON, Hutchins G., Representative from North Carolina, 
7; governor, 7. 

BirsH, Henet, Representative from Ohio, 7. 

BtJTLEE, Benjamin F., nominated Secretary of the Treasury, 
470. 

BtJTLEE, Thomas, Representative from Louisiana, 7, 



Calhottn, John C, Secretary at War, 7 ; on internal Im- 
provement, 22; candidate for the Vice-Presidency in 
1824,45; rupture with Jackson, 167; his friendship for 



Jackson, 218 ; on the compromise tariff bill, 815; on home 
valuation, 324; offers nullification resolutions, »«; on 
the principles of nullification, 885; on distribution oJ 
proceeds of land sales, 864, 651, 709; on the removal of 
the deposits, 411 ; on the plan of relief, 434 ; ou the ex 
punging resolutions of Alabama, 526, 527; on the brand 
mints, 553; on the combination of the tlave SUU-s, .Vs5; 
on French affairs, 591 ; on abolition petitions, 611, 614, 
619; on the independence of Texas, 667; on the Eipun^r 
ing resolution, 728. 

Cambeeleno, C. C., on the Committee of Bank Invcstigft. 
tion, 241 ; on the fortification bill, 556. 

Campbell, John W., Representative from Ohio, 7. 

Cannon, Newton, Representative from Tennessee, 7; gov- 
ernor, 7. 

Caeeoll, Cuap.les, decease of; last of the sicmcrs ortho Dec- 
laration of Independence, 476; fate of other signers fe- 
licitous, 477 ; his career, 477 ; not present on the day of 
signing, 477 ; signed afterwards, 477; incident, 477. 

Carson, Kit, application for a commission in the army, 188. 

Cass, Lewis, Secretary at War, 181. , 

Chambees, E. F., against Van Buren as Minister to Eng- 
land, 215. 

Chandlee, John, Senator from Maine, 9 ; votes for the ad- 
mission of Missouri, 9. 

Chesapeake Canal discussed, 22. 

Claeke, Gen., treaties with the Indians, 29. 

Clay, IIenby, Representative from Kentucky, 7 ; efforts for 
the declaration of war in 1812, 6; moves a joint com- 
mittee of both Houses on the admission of Missouri, 9 ; 
often complimented as the author of the Compromise 
of 1820, 10; selects the members of the joint committee 
in the House, 10; his coadjutors, 10; movement against 
the treaty of 1818, 17; on internal improvement, 22;-ad- 
dress to Lafayette, 30 ; on public distress, :32 ; lays be- 
fore the House the note of Vivian Edwards, 34 ; ap- 
points committee on charges against Crawford, 85; can- 
didate for the Presidency in 1S24, 44 ; letter to Benton 
relative to declaring his intention previously to vote for 
Adams, 48; Secretary of State, 55; Commissioner at 
Ghent, 91 ; against Van Buren as Minister to England, 
215; nominated for the Presidency, 2-32; remarks on 
the veto power, 255, 2.56 ; on the origin of the protec- 
tive policy, 267; report relative to the public lands, 275; 
candidate for the Presidency, 282 ; on the Compromise 
Tariff bill, 313; on Kendall cotton, 319; on distribution 
of proceeds of land sales, 863 ; on report of tho Secre- 
tary of the Treasury, 893; on tho removal of tho depos- 
its, 402 ; on the expunging resolutions of Alabama, 545, 
527; ou tho bill to suppress incendiary publications, 
586; on distribution of land proceeds, 707 ; on the Ki- 
punging resolution, 729. 

Clat, Mes., her appearance on tho evening provloua to the 
duel between Clay and Ranilolph, 74. 

Cl.\.tton, J. M., against Van 15uren !is Mini.*ter to England, 
215 ; on tho coming distress of the people, 254 ; on home 
valuation, 824-826; on French ntfairs, 591; moves t 
committee of Investigation ..n tho Bank .itfalns 2.H6; on 
the committee to investlgnto the alfairs of tho l^ 8. 
Bank, 241. 

Conn, Thomas W., Repre.oentaflvo from Georgia, 7. 

Cooke, John, Representative from Tennessee, 7. 

Coles, Edwakd, publishes correction of errors relaUve to 
the passage of tho ordinance of 17*7. 

Columlna Hirer, occupation of bill to authorlro tho Pn-.l- 
dent to take possession and occupy the c.Mintry offorr.l, 
50; object of the British. .V); the British pretensions ex- 
amined under their own exhibition of title. M,M,5i.W; 
title as claimed by tho United StatcA, ^4. 



Till 



INDEX TO VOL. I. 



Cornbination against General Jackson. — See Bank of the 
United States. 

Commerce, regulation of. — The power which is given to 
Congress by the constitution, 149 ; not yet been executed 
in the sense intended by the constitution, 149 ; views of Mr. 
Jefferson, of Madison, Uauiilton, &c., 149; remarks, 149; 
the principle of the regulation w.is to bo that of rccipro- 
city, loO ; mode of acting, 150 ; object to carry out these 
views on the extinction of the public debt, 150 ; bill to re- 
vive the policy of the Madison resolutions, 150 ; Madison's 
remarks, 150 ; " the commerce of the United States not 
on that respectable footing to which its n.iture and im- 
portance entitled it, 150; situation of things previous to 
the adoption of the constitution, 150 ; effects to bo pro- 
duced by the resolutions proposed, 150 ; advantageous 
position this country is entitled to stand In, 150; our 
country m.ay make her enemies feel the extent of her 
power, 160 ; " " bill proposed, 151 ; to provide for the 
sbolition of duties, 151 ; the title of the bill, 151 ; the 
bill, 162 ; the first section, 152 ; contains the principle of 
abolishing duties by the joint act of the Legislative and 
Executive departments, 152; the idea of equivalents, 
152; in what way may the restriction on our commerce 
be best removed, regulated, or counteracted? 152; two 
methods, 152 ; friendly arrangements, 152 ; the plan pro- 
posed, 152 ; benefits resulting from an abolition of du- 
ties, 153; do not our agriculture and manufactures re- 
quire better markets abroad than they possess at this 
time? 15.3; the merits of the plan, 153; its success, 153; 
advantages arising from a payment of the public debt, 
153 ; the treaties should be for limited terms, 154 ; " re- 
marks, 154. 

Committee on the charges against W. II. Crawford, 35 ; on 
amendments to the constitution, 78 ; on the reduction 
of Executive patronage, SO; on the application of the 
bank for a renewal of its charter, 233; House, to whom 
was referred the memorial of the bank, 235 ; of investi- 
gation Into the affairs of the U. S. Bank, 241 ; to investi- 
gate the affairs of the bank, 453, 470 ; on incendiary pub- 
lications, 580 ; on abolition petitions, 621. 

Congress, 22d, its members, 20S; their talent, 208; com- 
mencement of 24th, 568 ; when does the term of its ses- 
sion expire ? 59S, ."iOg. 

Cook, Daniel P., Representative from Illinois, 7. 

Ceawfoed, William II., Secretary of the Treasury, 7; de- 
vises a measure of relief for the public land debtors, 12 ; 
on internal improvement, 22 ; charges against, 35 ; can- 
didate for the Presidency in 1824, 44; declines the Sec- 
retaryship of the Treasury tendered by Adams, 55; let- 
ter to Mr. Forsyth, 182. 

Ceittenden, John J., on the recision of the specie circular, 
698. 

Ceooks, Eamset, founder of the colony at Astoria, 13. 

Ceowell, John, Representative from Alabama, 7. 

Ou/niberland Road discussed, 22. 

CtJSHiNG, Caleb, on the admission of Arkansas, 632. 



Dallas, Geoege M., presents memorial for a renewal of the 
bank charter, 227 ; remarks, 227 ; on the operation of the 
Tariff, 270 ; on home valuation, 324. 

Dane, Nathan, claimed as the author of the ordinance of 
17S7, 133. 

Daniel, on the Virginia resolutions, 351. 

Davis, John, on the compromise tariff bill, 810. 

Deht, public, amount of at the close of the second war, 5. 

Deposit Bank bill, to regulate the custody of the public 



money, 653 ; bill once defeated in the Senate, 553 ; sent 
up again and p.assed, 553. 
Dickens Asbuky, writes the answer of Crawford to charge! 

against him, 85. 
D-istrihution of the Revenue. — These propositions first op- 
posed and afterwards favored by Mr. Calhoun with the 
salvo of an amendment to the constitution, 556; com- 
mittee of inquiry appointed, 556 ; basis upon which the 
committee was proposed, 557 ; first meeting and a sub- 
committee appointed, 557; the report an ingenious and 
plausible attack upon the administration, &c., 557; de- 
bate on the report, 557 ; expenses doubled from extraor- 
dinary objects, not belonging to the Government, tem- 
porary in their nature and transient, 557 ; the distribution 
of the surplus and the amendment of the constitution, 
557; distribution the only practical depletion of the 
Treasury and remedy for the corruptions which an exu- 
berant Treasury engendered, 557; no minority report 
made, 557 ; custody of the public moneys not illegal, 
557 ; opponents of the Administration defeated the De- 
posit Regulation bill, 557 ; the report, 567 ; " what is to 
be done with the surplus? 557; existence of our institu- 
tions and the liberty of the country may depend on the 
success of this investigation, 558 ; danger from excess of 
patronage arising from excess of revenue must be tem- 
porary, 558 ; the Government in a state of passage from 
an excess of revenue to a limited revenue, 558 ; objects 
of investment, 558 ; objections to distribution, 558 ; ef- 
fects of distribution, 558; reasons for suggesting this 
proposal, 559." 

Reply of Senator Benton, 569; "proposition in the 
report to amend the constitution for eight years to ena- 
ble Congress to make the distribution, 560; eclipses all 
other propositions, 560 ; predictions from the same 
source of a deficiency of the revenue, 560; anecdote, 
560; the Treasury was to be bankrupt and the currency 
ruined, 660; the amendment of the constitution, 561 
this scheme an old .acquaintance on this floor, 561 ; the 
statement of a surplus examined, 561 ; report of the 
Secretary of the Treasury, 562 ; it is said there is no way 
to reduce the revenue before theendof 1842 without vio- 
lating the compromise, 663 ; sources from which a large 
reduction could be made, 563; it is said there is no pos- 
sibility of finding an article of general utility on which 
the surpluses could be expended, 564 ; several useful, 
necessary, and exigeant measures, 564 ; defenceless state 
of the country, 564 ; fortifying the coasts, 564 : message 
of President Monroe in 1822, 565; extracts, 566 ; remarks 
upon the extracts, 566, 667 ; " no vote ever taken on the 
amendment to the constitution, 567 ; deficiency in the 
Treasury, 567; distribution afterward took place ■without 
the amendment, 567. 

Extract from the National Gazette attributed to 
Nicholas Biddle, 649 ; distribution nearly become a party 
measure, 649 ; the plans proposed, 649 ; remarks of Sen- 
ator Benton, 649 ; introduces an antagonistic bill, devot- 
ing the surplus money to the public defences, 649 ; mak- 
ing an issue between the plunder of the country and the 
defence of the country, 649 ; every surplus dollar re- 
quired for the defences, 650; bill passed Senate, 651; 
sent to the Ilouse, 661 ; course adopted to secure votes 
in the House, 651. 

Scheme of deposit with the States, 661 ; objections, 
651; vote on the passage of the bill, 652; objections 
urged against the Dill, 652; attempt to debauch the peo- 
ple, 653 ; consequences must be deplorable and destruc- 
tive to the Federal Government, 654 ; the progress ol 
the distribution spirit, 6,")4; the measure goes to sap tho 
£)iir'l'\tiviia of tlic Fcieral Ooverainent, 655; is it wise 



INDEX TO VOL. I, 



to throw away this money ? 656 ; nothing but evil in 
this fatal scheme, 657 ; bill passes the House, 657 ; feel- 
ings of the President on approving of the act, 657. 

Moved that a bill be brought in to release the States 
from all obligations ever to return the dividends un- 
der the deposit act, 707 ; motion condemned at the out- 
set, 707 ; laid on the table, 707 ; Clay's movement to re- 
vive the land distribution bill, 707 ; his remarks, 707 ; 
a substitute reported, 708 ; kindred schemes, 70S; Cal- 
houn's proposition, 708; debate, 708; Calhoun in reply, 
709; proposition rejected, 710; Allen's proposition, 710 ; 
laid on the table, 710; deposit clause attached to the appro- 
priation bill, 711 ; struck out in the Senate, 711 ; lost, 712. 

Delaware.-— Re.r position in relation to slavery, 10. 

De Tocqueville, errors of, 159 ; errors respecting the House 
of Representatives, 205 ; errors respecting Bank of the 
United States, 226, 228. 

Duel between Clay and Randolph. — Interview between 
Randolph and Benton, 70; Eandolph declares he shall 
not fire at Clay, 70 ; circumstances of the delivery of 
the challenge, 70 ; reasons for refusing to fire at Clay, 
70; meaning of " two pledges" referred to by Mr. Ran- 
dolph, 71 ; conduct of Eandolph, 71 ; characteristics, 
71 ; Randolph's letter of acceptance, 71 ; protest of 
Eandolph, an e.T^planation, 71 ; further communications, 
72 ; remarks on Randolph's speech in the Senate, 72 ; 
attempt of the seconds to delay the meeting, 72; the 
report of Eandolph's remarks made to Clay, 73 ; inquiry 
between the seconds as to the cause of the quarrel, 73 ; 
further views on the speech, 73; " Puritan and blackleg," 
73; place of the duel, 73; interview between Benton 
and Clay, 74 ; subsequent interview between Benton 
and Eandolph, 74 ; Eandolph arranging his worldly af- 
fairs, 74 ; Eandolph at the bank, 74 ; the pieces of gold, 
75 ; manner in which the word was to be given, 75 ; 
the preparations on the ground, 75 ; an accidental dis- 
charge of a pistol, 75; Eandolph's remark, 75; after the 
first fire Benton interposes, 76 ; Clay's answer, 76 ; Ean- 
dolph's feelings and remarks, 76; the second fire of Clay, 
77; Eandolph fires in the air, 77; reconciliation and 
gratification of the parties, 77 ; the gold seals of Hamil- 
ton, Tatnall, and Eenton, 77. 

DuNCANSON, J. M., interview with Gen. Duflf Green, 128. 

DcTAt, Judge of Supreme Court, 8. 



E 



Eaele, Elias, Representative from South Carolina, 7; Gov- 
ernor, 7. 

Eaton, John H., Secretary at War, 120 ; resigns his seat in 
the Cabinet, 181 ; appointed Governor of Florida, 181 ; 
Minister to Spain, 181. 

Edwaeds, Weldon N., Eepresentative from North Caro- 
lina, 7 ; votes for the Missouri Compromise, 8. 

Edwaeds, Ninian, note of, 34 ; brought back from his mis- 
sion to Mexico, by the Sergeant-at-Arms, 35. 

Election of 1832. — The candidates, 282 ; a question of sys- 
tems and measures tried in the persons of those who 
stood out boldly in their representation, 282 ; the de- 
feat of Clay, 282 ; the success of Jackson, 282 ; the point 
and lesson of the Vice-Presidential election, 282 ; the 
vote, 282 ; Anti-masonic excitement, 283 ; its result, 283. 

Elliott, John, votes for the Missouri Compromise, 8 ; re- 
marks on the removal of the Indians, 27. 

Ellmaker, Amos, candidate for the Presidency, 282. 

EosTis, William, Eepresentative from Massachusetts, 7; 
of revolutionary memory, 7. 

EwiNG, Thomas, against Van Burcn as Minister to Eng- 
la.nd, 215 ; on the specie circular, 694. 



Expemes of Government.— 'Expenses from li520 to 1S31, 
2-30; comparison with the present day, 2-30; remark's, 
230 ; " it is said that since 1820 the expenses have 
nearly doubled, 230; excepting four years the expenses 
have not increased, 230 ; cause of reduced expenditures 
in certain years," 280; error in the basis of calculation, 
231 ; " two great and broad facts in view, 2:31 ; expendi- 
tures for different years, 231 ; object to show a great 
increase in a short time," 232; important to know Iho 
correct expenses, 2.32. 
Expiinoing resolution, notice of by Senator Benton, 429. 

Do. of Aluhama. — Eesolutions of the General Assem- 
bly of Alabama, entreating their Senators to use their 
best endeavors to cause to be expunged from the Journal 
of the Senate the resolve condemnatory of Pi)t»Jdeat.- 
Jackson for the removal of the dcposlLi, 524 {Several 
States had already given instructions, 524; inquiry of 
Mr. Clay relative to the intention of the Senator 
from Alabama relative to the resolutions, 524 ; reply of 
Mr. Benton, 524; the notice given by him at the time 
of passing the condemnatory resolution, 024; reasons 
for giving the notice, 524; answer to the inquiry of Mr. 
Clay, 525. 

Remarks of Mr. King, 525; " surprised at the question," 
625; bound to obey instructions, 525 ; if the gentleman 
from Missouri declined, he should at the proper time 
bring forward an expunging resolution, 525; further 
remarks, 525; Mr. Clay's remarks, 525; " no motion ac- 
companies these resolutions, 525; the inquiry a natural 
one, 525; a hope that the resolutions would be with- 
drawn, 526; if, after consulting precedents, the Senator 
from Alabama should deem proper to offer them, they 
would be entitled to consideration, 526 ; until then, his 
duty to resist such an unconstitutional procedure as the 
reception of these resolutions," 526. 

" Decline to accede to this proposition, 526 ; object to 
carry out his instructions, 526 ; at a proper time a dis- 
tinct proposition would be presented on this subject," 526. 

Moved to lay the resolutions on the table, by Mr. Cal- 
houn, 526; object to give the Senator an "ipportunlty to 
prepare a rescinding resolution, 626 ; curious to see how 
such a proceeding would bo reconciled with the inde- 
pendent existence of the Senate, 626; how is it pro- 
posed to repeal a journal ? 526 ; the only course left Is to 
declare that the principle upon which the Senate acted 
is not correct, 526; what is the principle to bo over- 
thrown but that " we have a riftht to express our opin- 
ions," 526; then it comes to this, that the Senate had 
no right to express its opinion in relation to the execu- 
tive, 526; "the king can do no wrong," 526; this is tho 
very question in which the expunging our legislati . o 
freedom and independence is to bo agitated, 627; n 
question of the utmost magnitude, 527; none of de«por 
or more radical importance, 627. 

Tho question on receiving tho resolutions, 527; tho 
case of Georgia legislative proceedings, 627 ; the cas« of 
Wilkes, In tho British House of Com^lon^ 527; no 
doubt of the power of the Senate to repeal, 527; have 
wo not it in our power to retrace our steps when we 
have done wrong, or to correct our journal, which ii.i>orts 
what is not true? 627; tho demoorntlc party of tho 
country had declared the facts of tho journal to b»' fiil.w, 
627; the party to which Mr. Calhoun bolonipv, 627 ; n\o- 
olutlonlaid on tho table, 528; reception and priutlDR 
refn.sed to a resolution of a sovereign State, 628, 

Expungiiiff JieMlution of Sciclor Bfiilon, !fiS : ex- 
tremely distasteful to a m;ijoHty of tho Senate, 625^; 
characterized as an indictment wlilch th* Senate Itself 
was required to try, and to degrade ILiolf In its own con- 



INDEX TO VOL. I. 



denination, 52S ; remarks, 528 ; this bitterness aggravated 
by tlie course wLicli tlie public mind was taking, 52$ ; 
resolutions of several States had arrived, instructing 
their Senators to vote for the expurgation, 529 ; speech 
of Senator Bonton on the motion, 529; time of present- 
ing the eriuiiual resolution, 529 ; length of its discussion, 
529; date of its passage, 529; an announcement of a 
series of motions for its expurgation, 529; this stop con- 
sidered for four months, 629 ; was expurgation the pro- 
per mode, 529 ; the criminating resolution combined all 
the chnrnctoristios of a case which required erasure 
and obliteration, 529; a case of the exercise of power 
without authority and without jurisdiction, 529; other 
modes Of annulling the resolution not proper in this 
case, 529 ; they would imply rightful jurisdiction, a lawful 
authority, a legal action, though an erroneous judgment, 
629 ; it is objected that the Senate have no right to ex- 
punge any thing from its journal, 529 ; it is said we have 
no right to destroy a part of the journal, 529 ; to expunge, 
it is said, is to destroy, 529 ; not so, 529 ; it is incorporated 
in the expunging resolution, and lives as long as that 
lives, 529 ; the case of the Middlesex election, 529 ; the 
resolution to expel John "VVilkes expunged from the jour- 
nals of the House of Commons, 529 ; words of the resolu- 
tion, 530 ; annually introduced from 1769 to 1782, and 
passed, 530 ; the history of the case not lost, 530 ; the res- 
olution adopted in the Senate of Massachusetts during the 
late war, adverse to the celebration of our national vic- 
tories, 530; expunged ten years afterward, 530; the Sen- 
ate tried President Jackson a year ago, now it is itself 
nominally on trial before itself, but in reality before 
America, Europe and posterity, 530; the proceedings of 
this day will not be limited to the present age ; they will 
go down to posterity, 530 ; the first President who has re- 
ceived the condemnation of the Senate for the violation 
of the laws and constitution which he is sworn to observe, 
530; the argument of public opinion in the case of the 
Middlesex election, 530 ; extract from Wilkes' speech, 
530 ; do. from Fox's speech, 531 ; an English Whig of 
the old school acknowledges the right of the people to 
instruct their representatives, 531 ; acknowledges the 
duty of Parliament to obey the voice of the people, 531 ; 
the voice of the people of the United States has been 
heard on this subject, 531 ; the resolution should be ex- 
punged because it is illegal and unjust, 531; illegal be- 
cause it contains a criminal charge, 531 ; the first step 
taken in the House on an impeachment, 531 ; the British 
Parliament pnictise an impeachment to which our con- 
stitution is conformable, .532 ; the injustice of the res- 
olution shown, 532 ; this point examined, 522 ; the res- 
olution vague and indefinite, 532; the law should be 
specified and the clause of the constitution violated, 532 ; 
Giles' accusation against General Hamilton, 532 ; differ- 
ent forms in which the resolution was presented, 533 ; 
reasons of such extraordinary metimorphoses, 533 ; op- 
portunity for any Senator to speak who would under- 
take to specify any act in which the President had vi- 
olated the constitution, 533; the resolution was unwar- 
ranted by the constitution and laws, 533; subversion of 
the rights of defence which belong to an accused and im- 
peachable officer, 533 ; of evil example, 534 ; speech of 
Mr. Macon on the vote of approbation, 534 ; the resolu- 
lution passed at u time and under circumstances to in- 
volve the political rights and pecuniary interests of the 
people of the United States in serious injury and pecu- 
liar danger, 534; this condemnation of the President 
indissolubly connected with the cause of the bank, 534; 
instructions sent to the branch banks contemporaneously 
with the progress of the debate on the criminating res- 



olutions, 535; extracts, 535; six positions taken, 536 
no new measures to destroy the Bank, 537 ; the Presi 
dent harbored no hostile and revengeful designs against 
the bank, 538 ; not true that there was any necessity fof 
the curtailment ordered in January, 539; no excuse or 
ai)ology for doubting the rates of exchange, breaking up 
the exchange business in the West, and concentrating 
the collection of exchange on the four great commercial 
cities, 540; the curtailments of these exchange regula- 
tions were political and revolutionary, and connect 
themselves with the contemporaneous proceedings of the 
Senate for the condemnation of the President, 540 ; the 
case of the Western branches, 542 ; evidence drawn from 
the bank itself, 543 ; extracts from Mr. Biddle's letters, 
543, 544 ; article in the National Gazette, 545; the distress 
of the country occasioned l)y the bank of the United 
States and the Senate of the United States, 546; history 
of the reduction of the deposits, 546 ; in 1819 the bank 
was unconnected with politics, 546 ; further proof that 
the Senate and the bank, and the Senate more than the 
bank, produced the distress during last winter, 547 ; two 
instances of the bank creating wanton pressure, 547 ; 
the resolution which it is proposed to expunge," 549. 

The expunging resolution laid on the table, 549 ; called 
up on the last, 549 ; motion to strike out the word " ex- 
punge " and insert " rescind, reverse, and make null and 
void," 549 ; the friends of the expunging resolution as- 
tonished, 549; an expurgation of the journal would be 
its obliteration, 549 ; inconsistent wi th the constitutional 
injunction "to keep a journal," 549; the mover of the 
expunging resolution yields, 550; carried, 550; exulta- 
tion of Mr. Webster that the word " expunge " was ex- 
punged, 560 ; remarks, 550 ; the original expunging re- 
solution renewed, 550. 

Kemarks of Senator Benton, 645; '-the condemnation 
of the President co-operative with the conspiracy of 
the bank to effect the most wicked scheme of mischief 
exhibited in modern times, 646; President Jackson has 
done more for the human race than the whole tribe of 
politicians put together, 646 ; his services to the country, 
647; no parallel to Jackson crushing the bank except in 
the Eoman Consul crushing Catiline, 647; further re- 
marks, 648." 

Less than three years were sufficient to express pub- 
,c sentiment in favor of reversal, 717 ; notice of the in- 
.ention to bring up the resolution, 718 ; the resolution, 
718; remarks of Senator Benton, 719; "the change in 
public sentiment, 720; ascertained, 720; how far should 
the expression of this will be conclusive of our action, 
720 ; the terror of Jackson's administration and its effect 
for good or evil on the country," 721, 722, 723, 724, 725, 

Meeting of democratic Senators, 727; final measures 
taken, 727; debate on the motion to take np the sub- 
ject, 727 ; the speakers, 727, 728 ; feelings of the oppo- 
sition, 728; expressions of Calhoun, 728; feeling and 
expressions of Clay, 729 ; Webster's protest against the 
act, 730; resolution passed, 730; the expunging done in 
open Senate, 730 ; excitement in the galleries, 731 ; din- 
ner given by President Jackson, 781. 



Farnham, Russell, founder of Colony at Astoria, 13. 

/V'reancM.— Distress of the Government in 1S20, 11 ; econ- 
omy forced upon it, 11 ; army reduced fl-om 10,000 to 
6,000 men, 11; naval appropriation reduced one half, 
11; twenty-one millions more than double the amount 
required for the actual expenses of the government, 11 
how expended, 11 ; mistake to suppose an amount ne- 
cessary to be left in the Treasury as a reserve, 11. 



INDEX TO VOL. I. 



XI 



Florida, Treaty and Cession of 7Va;a«.— Treaty of 1818, 
giving up Texas arnl acquiring Florida, 15; Its de- 
nunciation, 15 ; action of Monroe's Cabinet, 15 ; treaty 
approved by the country, 15 ; points of the treaty, 15 ; 
letter of Monroe to General Jackson, 15; repugnance of 
the Northeast to see the aggrandizement of the Union on 
the South and "West, 16; extent of this feeling, 16; views 
of Jefferson and Jackson on the cession of Texas, 16 ; 
Spain fails to ratify, 16 ; negotiations revived, 16; treaty 
ratified, 17 ; movement against the treaty, 17 ; change 
in the relations of Spain and Mexico, 17; treaty with 
Mexico, 17; three times ratified by the Senate, 17; how 
the territory was got back, 17 ; extinguished slave ter- 
ritory nearly, 17; Indian treaties, IS; largest territorial 
abolition of slavery ever effected, 18 ; how received at 
the South, IS; the inside view, 18. 

Flotd, John, Representative from Virginia, 7; moves a 
proposition for the settlement of Columbia river, 13 ; 
hia character, 13. 

Foot, Samuel A., resolution of inquiry relative to public 
lands, 130 ; against Van Buren as Minister to England, 
215. 

FoESYTH, John, on the donation to the Greeks, 63 ; for Van 
Buren as Minister to England, 216 ; on the Compromise 
taritf bill, 315 ; Seccretary of State, 477. 

Fkelinghuysen, Theodoee, against Van Buren as Minister 
to England, 215. 

French and. Spanish Land Claims, settlemeyit of. — State of 
titles in Louisiana on its transfer to the United States, 
219; the treaty protected every thing that was prop- 
erty, 279; the question was to apply it to the land titles, 
279; boards of commissions established, 279; their 
operation, 279; defects, 279; the act of 1S32, 280; its 
first section, 280 ; its successful operation, 280. 

French Ind e mn it y.— Special communication from the Presi- 
dent, 588 ; French fleet approaching the coast, 588 ; im- 
plying a design to overawe the government or to be 
ready for expected hostilities, 5SS ; remarks of the mes- 
sage on the subject of an apology, 5SS; a private at- 
tempt to obtain a dictated apology, 5SS ; an attempt 
made to get this refused apology placed on the archives 
of the government, 588 ; statement of the message, 689 ; 
the inderdiction of our ports to the entry of French 
vessels and French products recommended, 589 ; nature 
of the treaty that had been formed, 589 ; stipulated for 
a reduction of duties on wines by our government and 
the payment of indemnity by France, 589 ; advantages 
to France, 590 ; reasons of such delay on the part of 
France, 590 ; extract relative to the French armament, 
590. 

Calhoun charges upon the President a design to have 
war with France, 591 ; Benton asserts that the con- 
duct of the Senate at its last session had given to the 
French question its present hostile aspect, 591 ; remarks, 
591 ; conduct of France insulting to us, 591 ; an example 
from French history, 591 ; a party in the French Cham- 
bers working to separate the President from the people 
of the United States, and to make him responsible for 
the hostile attitude of the two countries, 592 ; comments 
on the approach of the French fleet, 593; the present 
state of aS'airs charged upon the conduct of the Senate, 
593; defence of Senators, 594; the Senate charged with 
the loss of the defence bills at the last session, 595; do- 
fence of the Senate by Webster, 596; further discussion 
on the time when the second session of Congress e.\- 
pires, 598, 599 ; American arming declared to be war on 
our side, 600 ; denied, 600. 

British 3Iediation. — Message informing the Senate 
that Great Britain had offered her friendly mediation 



between the United States and France, 600; suEpenslon 
of retaliatory measures recommended, 600; all points rn 
the controversy involving the honor of the United States 
excepted, 600 ; motives of the offer, 600, 601 ; reflections 
upon this subject, 601. 
French Spoliation Claim. — Ground of examined, 91; as- 
sumptions on which their payment by the United 
States rested, 4S7; liability of the United States to be- 
come paymasters themselves, in cases where failing, by 
war or negotiation, to obtain redress thoy make a treaty 
settlement surrendering or abandoning the claims, 4S7 ; 
this point examined, 487; governments not bound to 
push such interests to the extremity of a war, 4S7 ; oupht 
not to go back thirty-four years and call in question the 
judgment of Washington's administration, 4S3 ; another 
instance of abandonment, 438; speech of Mr. Webster, 
48S; grounds of the claims, 4S9 ; speech of Mr. Wright, 
489; relations between France and the United States 
prior to the disturbances, 489 ; stipulations of treaties, 
490, 491 ; origin of the claims which formed the subject 
of the bill, 491 ; reference to acts of Congress to prove 
that war existed between the United States and France, 
493 ; the treaty of 1800, 495 ; what object in the negotia- 
tion of 1800, 496; liabihty of tho United States, 496; 
further remarks, 497, 498 ; propositions established, 500 ; 
the advocates of the bill concede that two positions must 
be established on their part to sustain it, 600, 501, 502, 
503. 

Speech of Mr. Webster, 505; "essentially a judicial 
question, 505; oldness of the claims, 605; said most of 
them have been bought up, 505 ; report of the Secretary 
of State presenting a general view of tho history and 
character of these claims, 500 ; before the interference 
of our government with them they constituted just de- 
mands against France, 507; grounds upon which tb« 
claims are vested by the claimants, 507; points admitted, 
508; propositions to be established, 503; were theso 
subsisting claims against France at the time of the 
treaty? 508; these claims released and relinquished by 
the amendment of the tre.ity and its ratifications, 511 ; 
these claims surrendered or released by the government 
on national considerations, 511 ; further remarks," 512, 
513, 514. 

Speech of Mr. Benton, 514 ; " the whole stress of tho 
question lies in a few simple facts, 514 ; assumed grounds 
on which the claims rest, 615; on what grounds is it 
maintained that the United States received a valuable 
consideration for these claims? 515; the case as between 
France and us relative to these claims, 615 ; our obliga- 
tion under the guarantee of France, 515; the Justice and 
validity of the claims themselves, 616; how can iuo 
American people be pressed to pay theso claims when it 
would be unreasonable to press Franco herself to pay 
them? 516; it is said tho United States have received 
full consideration from France for those claims, 517 ; ex- 
ertions made by the United States on beh.ilf of these 
claims, 518; what were the losses which led to those 
claims? 619; one of tho most revolting features of this 
bill is its relation to tho insurers, 619 ; what sum of 
money will this bill abstract from the treasury ? " 620; 
bill passed the Senate, 621; lost In the House, 621; 
claim agencies and assignments should bo broken up, 
521 ; assignees and agents constitute a profession, 62L 



Gaillard, John, Senator ft-om South Carolina, 7 ; President 
of the Senate, 7; votes for the Missouri Compromlso, 8; 
decease of, 77; nearly thirty years in the Senate, 77; 



xn 



INDEX TO VOL. I. 



nine times elected president of the Senate, 77; his 
character as presiding officer 77. 

Gallatin, Albert, candidate for the Vice Presidency in 
1824, 45; commissioner at Ghent, 71; negotiates for 
joint occui)ation of Oregon, 109 ; interview with Hua- 
kisson, 126. 

Giles, Wm. B., decease of, his peculiar talent, 683; the 
Charles Fox of the House, 6S3 ; his character, 683. 

Gilmer, George, Representative from Gc-orgia, 7; Governor, 
7; action relative to the Cherokees, 165. 

Globe Ke^cspaper, the estuhlUltment of. — An interview, 
129; scheme to set aside Gen. Jackson and run Mr. 
Calhoun for the next President, 129 ; propositions, 129 ; 
communicated to General Jackson, 129 ; the Telegraph 
newspaper, 129; Francis P. Blair, 129; how brought to 
the notice of General Jackson, 129 ; establishes the 
Glole newspaper, 130 ; stand taken by, 182. 

Gold cwrrency, remarks of Mr. Benton upon a, 486 ; bills to 
equalize the value of gold and silver and legalizing the 
tender of foreign coins in either, brought forward, 469; 
the relative value of the two metals, 469 ; experience of 
Mexico and South America, 469 ; 16 to 1, 469 ; bill pass- 
ed, 469 ; its good effects, 469, 470. 

Government, the, its personal aspect inf 1820, 7. 

Granny White, the case of, 105. 

Grundy, Felix, offers anti-nullification resolutions, 34. 

K 

Hall, Thomas H., Eeprescntative from North Carolina, 7. 

Hamar, Thomas L., on the admission of Arkansas, 634. 

IIamilton, General, argument for a national bank drawn 
from the Indian War, 2. 

Hamilton, James A., acts as Secretary of State, 119. 

Hardin, Benjasiin, Eeprescntative from Kentucky, 7. 

Uartfvrd convention.— Design of secession imputed to, 4 

Hayne, Robert Y., on revision of the tariff, 99 ; on the duty 
on indigo, 99; on sales of the public lands, 182; debate 
with Webster, 138, 140; in reply to Webster, 140; 
against Van Buren as Minister to England, 215; on 
southern resistance to the tariff, 274. 

Hendricks, William, Representative from Indiana, 7. 

Hill, Isaac, on abolition petitions, 614. 

Holmes, John, Senator from Maine, 7; votes for the admis- 
sion of Missouri, 9; against Van Buren as Minister to 
England, 215. 

Horsey, Outerbridge, votes for the Missouri Compro- 
mise, 8. 

House of Itepresentatives.— 'Errors of De Tocqueville, 205 ; 
reputation of the work in Europe, 205; immense superi- 
ority attributed to the Senate arising from the different 
manner of election, 205; statement of De Tocqueville, 
205 ; its tenor to dispanige democracy— to attack the prin- 
ciple of popular elections, 205; advantage of extending 
instead of restricting the privilege of the direct vote, 206 ; 
further remarks on his statement, 206; every man of 
eminence has owed his first elevation to popular elec- 
tions, 206; experience of England, Scotland, Ireland and 
Rome, of the success of a direct vote, 206; popular elec- 
tion the safest and wisest mode of election, 206; the 
difference then between the two Houses has vanished, 
206; causes to account for an occasional difference, 206; 
etatesmen not improvised, 207; time often required to 
carry measures, 207 ; instance parliamentary reform, 
207 ; other great British measures, 207 ; short service the 
evil of the House, 207 ; instances of Adams and Randolph 
retaken up by the people when dropped from the 
Senate, 207; this error disparages the controlling branch 
of our Government, 207; the British House of Com- 



mons, 208 ; the Senate now occupies prominent pnblia 
attention, 208. 
Hunter, William, Senator from Rhode Island, 7. 



Imprisonment for debt, alolUion of— Act of Congress 
passed to abolish all imprisonment on process issuing 
from the courts of the United States, 292 : effect of the 
example, 292; report, 292; extracts, 292; "power of the 
creditor over the debtor in ancient Greece and Rome, 
292; the history of English jurisprudenee I'lnnishcs the 
remarkable fact that for many centuries pcrson.il liberty 
could not be violated for debt, 292 ; progress of imprison- 
ment in England, 293; further remarks," 293 ; act pass- 
ed, 293; eflect upon the States, 293; imprisonment con- 
demned by morality, by hum.inity, and by the science 
of political economy, 294. 

Incendiary pvhiicaiion.s circulated by mail. — Moved, 
that so much of the President's message as related to 
this subject be referred to a select committee, 580 ; op- 
posed, should go to the committee on post-offices and 
post-roads, 580; object to secure a committee that would 
calmly investigate the whole subject, 580; discussion 
relative to the committee, 580 ; special committee ap- 
pointed, 580; bill and report, 580; dissent of various 
members of the committee from the sentiments of the 
report, 5S1 ; two parts exceptionable, 581 ; the nature of 
the Federal Government founded in "compact" and on 
interference of non-slave States with slavery in other 
States, 581; extracts from the report, 581, 582,583; in- 
sldiousness of the report consisted in the assumption of 
impending danger of the abolition of slavery in all the 
slave States, and the necessity for extraordinary means to 
prevent these dire calamities, when the fact was that there 
was not one particle of any such danger, 584; the report 
foreshadows disunion, 584; in vain to expect security or 
protection for the slaveholding States except from them 
selves, and concert only wanted among them to obtain this 
end, 584; Calhoun recurs to secession for a new griev- 
ance, 585 ; remark of Clay relative to the compromise 
of 1833, 585; remarks of Mr. Webster, 586; examination 
of the features of the bill, 586 ; remarks of Mr. Clay on 
the bill, 586 ; the bill not only unnecessary, but as a law 
of dangerous, if not a doubtful authority, 586 ; whence 
did Congress derive the power to pass this law ? 587. 

Votes on the bill, 587; three successive tie votes, 587 
yeas and nays called, 5S7 ; the Vice-President called for 
587; gives the casting vote for engrossment, 587; re 
marks on the vote of various Senators, 587. 

Indian Factory System. — Its origin, 21 ; objects, 21 ; how 
carried on, 21 ; its inside working, 21 ; bill to repea. 
passed, 21 ; shows how long the Indians and the Govern 
ment may be che.ited without knowing it, 21. 

Indians, removal of. — Large tracts held by the Indians in 
South and Western States in 1821,27; early policy of 
the Government, 27; applications to the Federal Gov 
ernment incessant for their removal, 27 ; what has be- 
come of the tribes in the older States? 27; speech oj 
Elliot, 27 ; views of Jefferson, 28 ; action of Monroe's 
administration, 28; process for effecting the removal, 
28 ; bill passed, 28 ; treaties ratified, 29 ; the system of 
removal begun, 29. 

Creeks, remavalfrom Georgia. — Agreement between 
the United States and Georgia, 58 ; treaty of removal 
concluded in 1824, 58; resisted by the nation, 59; at- 
tempts to enforce it by the St.ite of Georgia, .^9; inter- 
ference of the administration, 59 ; new treaty negotiated, 
59; objections to it in the Senate, 59; further negotia- 
tion, 59 ; treaty ratified, 59 ; nn incident, 59 ; remarks 



INDEX TO VOL. I. 



xiu 



of Van Buren, 60 ; remarks of Benton, 61 ; others, 
62, 63. 

Cherokees, removal from Georgia.— •'E&ats of the ease, 
624; combination of obstacles, 624 ; proceedings relative 
to, C24 ; treaty with the Cherokees, 624 ; amount of the 
stipulation, 624; treaty opposed in the Senate, 624; pro- 
test from the Cherokee nation, 625; proposition to re- 
ject the treaty, 625 ; close vote, 625 ; saved by free State 
votes, 626; Involved an extension of slavery, 626; just 
and fraternal spirit of the free States to their southern 
brethren, 626. 

Final removal of. — This policy when commenced. 
690; completed, 690; effects, 690; extent of the re- 
movals, 690 ; increase of area of slave population, 691 ; 
conduct of the northern States, 691 ; outcry against 
General Jackson, 691; statements of De Tocqueville, 
691 ; remarks, 692 ; amount of payments to the Indians, 
692; the smaller remote tribes, 693; the Indian bureau, 
693. 

Indian sovereignties within States. — Indian oligarchies set 
up in some of the States, 163; remarks of President 
Jackson's message in 1829-30,164; "the condition and 
ulterior destiny of the Indian tribes within States, an 
object of much interest, 164 ; has the General Govern- 
ment a right to sustain them in erecting an independent 
government within the limits of a State? 164; reference 
to the constitution, 164; their efforts discountenanced," 
164; passsage of an act to enable their removal recom- 
mended, 164; an old policy taken hold of by party 
spirit, 164; proceedings in Georgia, 164; proceedings of 
the Cherokees, 164; action of Governor Gilmer relative 
to the suit of the Cherokees, 165; charge of Judge Clay- 
ton to the Grand Jury of the Indian countries, 165 ; ad- 
dress of Milner to the Foreign Missionary Society of 
London, 165 ; remarks, 166 ; the case of George Tassels, 
166 ; answer of Governor Gilmer to a request to make up 
a case before the United States Supreme Court, 166 ; set- 
tlement, 166. 

biGHAM, Samuel D., Secretary of the Treasury, 119 ; resigns 
his seat in the cabinet, 181. 

Internal Improvemeni.'i within the States, source of the 
question, 3 ; New York canal finished, 22 ; roads and 
canals all the vogue, 22; candidates for the Presidency 
spread their sails, 22 ; advocates of the measure, 22 ; 
two prominent subjects discussed, 22 ; extent of the de- 
sign, 22; Monroe's veto, 22; the statement of the ques- 
tion, 22 ; constitutional point how viewed in the mes- 
sage, 23 ; the post-ofHce and post-road grant of power, 
23 ; the war power, 23 ; the power to regulate com- 
merce, 24; to pay debts and provide for the general 
welfare, 24; to make laws necessary and proper, 25; to 
make needful rules and regulations, 26; the point on 
which Mr. Monroe yielded, 26; the act for surveys pass- 
ed, 26; places recommended for improvement, 26 ; veto 
message of Jackson, 26; fate of the system, 27. 



JACKSON, Andrew, views on the cession of Texas, 16 ; on 
internal improvement, 22 ; candidate for the Presidency 
in 1824,44; message rej^tive to a removal of the In- 
dians, 164; veto of Maysville road bill, 167; letter to 
Van Buren, relative to his agency in the rupture of the 
cabinet, 217 ; veto of the recharter of the bank, 251 ; 
elected President, 282 ; proclamation against South 
Carolina, 299 ; retains the bill to distribute the proceeds 
of the sales of the public lands, 364 ; veto, 365. 

ffis administration. — His inaugural address, 119; his 
cabinet, 119; members of Congress, 120; Speaker, 121 ; 



recommendations of his first annual message, 121 
"amendment of the constitution relative to elections of 
President and Vice President,"' 121; remarks, 122: 
amendment to the constitution too far removed front 
the people, 122; events impressively urge It, 122; not 
another example on earth of a free people surrendering 
the choice of their President, 122; exclusion of mem- 
bers of Congress from office recommended, 122 ; re- 
marks of the message on this point, 122; the policy re- 
commended respecting the navy, 122; instructions to 
Virginia Senators in ISOO, 122 ; the army and navy as 
found by President Jackson, 123; recommendations 
relative to ship building, 123 ; the inutility of the Bunk 
of the United States asserted, 123 ; remarks of the mes- 
sage, 123; manner in which they were perverted, 123 ; 
the finances, 124; other recommendations, 124. 

Breaking up of the Cabinet. — Eesignation of the 
members, 181 ; courtesy of the proceeding, ISl ; ground 
upon which the President placed the required resigna- 
tions, 181; the new cabinet, 181; excitement in party 
politics, 181 ; attack on Mr. Crawford, 181 ; his answer, 
181 ; exposure of errors of the pamphlet of Calhoun, 
181; the words of Mr. Crawford, 182; change in the 
course of the Telegraph newspaper, 182; the stand 
taken by the Globe. — See Globe neicspaper. 

Twenty-second Congress, 208; the Speaker, 209; 
message, 210; boundary between Maine and New- 
Brunswick referred to the King of Netherlands, 210; 
his opinion on the case, 210 ; our claims with France, 
210; a treaty made, 210; differences with Spain, 210; 
el.iims against Naples, 211 ; our demands on the Sici- 
lies, 211; relations with Russia, 211; effect of our treaty 
with Austria, 211 ; China and the East Indies, 212 ; 
Mexico, 212; Central America, 212; South American 
powers, 212; state of the finances, 213; insolvent 
debtors to the Government, 213 ; election of President 
and Vice President by a direct vote of the people, 213 ; 
the bank of the United States, 213. 

Message after a second election, 283; wholly confined 
to business topics, 283 ; the finances, 2S3 ; cxtinguishmeut 
of the national debt, 283; reduction of burthens on the 
people, 283 ; protection should be limited to a few articles 
of indispensable necessity, 284; views on the public 
lands, 284 ; should cease to bo a source of revenue soon 
as practicable, 284; the federal title should be extin- 
guished in the States, 284 ; donations or sales at barely 
reimbursing prices is the wise policy of the government, 
284 ; after a fixed day the surrender of that unsold 
should take place, 284; advantages of this course, 2S4; 
removal of the Indians nearly consummated, 285 ; ob- 
stacles to the removal of the Indian tribes, 285; the re- 
movals seized upon by party .spirit, 285 ; Congress ap- 
pealed to and refused to intervene, 285 ; the Supreme 
Court appealed to and refused the application, 2S5 ; the 
case of the missionaries, 285 ; the case of Tassells, 285 ; 
interference in the affairs of Georgi.'s 286 ; an Intima- 
tion given of the insolvency of the bank and the inse- 
curity of the public deposits, 286; this intimation re- 
ceived with scorn by the friends of the bank, 286 ; con- 
duct of the bank in relation to tnc payment of five mil- 
lions of the three per cent, stock, 2S6; the attitude of 
South Carolina, 236; opposition to the rovonuo laws, 
286. 

Message to 23d Congress, 371 ; the state of the flnane«'s, 
371 ; remarks relative to an economical administration, 
871 ; reasons for the removal of the public deposits, 
371 ; amendments to the constitution recommended, 372 ; 
remarks on conventions, 372. 

Cmnbination against General t/acAiOJi.— Incident in 



SIV 



INDEX TO VOL. I. 



the career of Mr. Fox, leader in the Ilouse of Commons, 
400 ; union against Gen. Jackson, 400 ; their movements 
take a personal and vindictive character, 400 ; power of 
the bank to produce distress, 401 ; speakers, 401 ; the 
business of the combination divided— distress and panic 
the object, 401 ; the friends of General Jackson, 401 ; 
speech of Mr. Clay on the removal of the deposits, 402. 

"In the midst of a revolution, hitherto bloodless, 402; 
the Judiciary has not been exempted from the prevail- 
ing rage for innovation, 402; a large proportion of the 
good and enlightened men of the Union are yielding to 
sentiments of despondency, 402; at the close of last ses- 
sion the power of Congress over the purse was left un- 
touched, 403; after all the testimonies of the safety of 
the public money, who would have supposed that the 
place would have been changed? 403; by virtue of 
•whose will, power, dictation, were the deposits re- 
moved? 404; the President has no power over the 
Public Treasury, 404 ; some of the tremendous conse- 
quences which may ensue from this high-handed meas- 
ure, 405; what security have the people against the law- 
less conduct of the President? 405; the instance of 
C;Bsar, 405 ; what is it our duty to do ? " 406 ; remarks 
in reply, 406. 

" The first of the resolutions a direct impeachment of 
the President, 406 ; we are trying an impeachment, 406 ; 
the Senate should consider well before they proceed 
further, 407 ; the right of the President to dismiss his 
secretaries, 407 ; two other impeachments going on at 
the same time, 407; the President on trial for a high 
crime, 407; for a misdemeanor, 40S; the Secretary of the 
Treasury on trial, 408 ; the charge of being the instru- 
ment of the President, 40S ; people called upon to rise 
and drive the Goths from the capitol, 409 ; the bank was 
not the Treasury of the United States, 409; fourteenth 
article of the bank charter, 409 ; the legal existence of 
the Treasury brought out by the debates," 410. 

Union of Clay and Calhoun against Jackson, 411; 
speech of Calhoun, 411 ; gives Clay assurance of aid, 
411 ; the robbery of the Treasury, 411 ; the revolution 
not to go backwards, 412; entirely owing to the military 
and nullifying attitude of South Carolina that the com- 
promise was passed, 412; a political coalition to act 
against Gen. Jackson, 412 ; opposition to the "usurpa- 
tions" of the President, 413; contempt and scorn at the 
Secretary's reasons for removing the deposits, 413; the 
removal of Secretary Duane an abuse of power, 413 ; 
Calhoun's independence of the bank, 414; Clay disclaims 
all connection with the bank, 414 ; the list of Congres- 
sional borrowers or retainers large, 415. 

Message to Congress in 1834, 477; relations with 
France, 477; the indemnity stipulated in the treaty has 
not been paid, 477 ; extracts, 477 ; question of waiting 
on the action of France, or of action on our part, referred 
to Congress, 478 ; United States should insist on a prompt 
execution, 478 ; consequences considered, 478; collision 
with France to be regretted on account of her position 
with regard to liberal institutions, 478; condition of the 
finances, 479; freedom from public debt, 479 ; seizure of 
the dividends due the United States on stock, by the 
bank, 479; other proceedings of the bank, 480; criminal- 
ity of the bank in making the distress, 480 ; bank losses 
commenced at this period, 4S0; selling the stock in the 
bank, 480; law relative to public deposits, 480; increase 
of the gold currency, 481 ; reform in the Presidential 
election, 4S1. 

Meeting of twenty-fourth Congress, 568; choice of 
Speaker, 509; message of the President, 569; "relations 
with France, 569; origin of our claims against France, 



569 ; extent of the injuries we received, 569; an affair oi 
uninterrupted negotiation for twenty years, except a 
short time when France was overwhelmed by the mili 
tary power of United Europe, 569 ; subject brought up 
in the message of 1829, 570 ; exceptions taken to the 
message by the French Government, 570; the justice of 
the claims recognized and the amount stipulated in the 
treaty of 1831,570; its ratification, 570; delays of the 
French Government in their action upon the subject of 
its fulfilment heretofore stated, 570 ; expectations found- 
ed on the promises of the French Government not real- 
ized, 571 ; consultation with Congress relative to meas- 
ures for reprisal, 571; regarded as an insult by the 
French Government, 571 ; recall of their Minister and 
suspension of all diplomatic intercourse, 571 ; having 
vindicated the dignity of France, they next proceeded 
to illustrate her justice, 571 ; bill passed in the Chamber 
of Deputies to make the appropriations necessary to 
carry into effect the treaty, 671 ; a stipulation that the 
money should not be paid until it was ascertained that 
no steps had been authorized by Congress of a hostile 
character towards France, 571 ; this point ascertained, 
572; subsequently the bill amended to require a satis- 
factory explanation of the President's message," 572; 
the apology repulsed by the President as a stain on the 
national character, 572 ; injurious effects of the loss of 
the fortification bill in the previous Congress, 572 ; the 
humane policy which governed the United States in the 
removal of the Indians, 573 ; the revival of the gold cur- 
rency and its influence on the industry of the country, 
573 ; increase of specie in the country, 573 ; the trans- 
portation of the mails by railroad and the extortion of 
the companies, 574; the transmission by mail into the 
slave States of incendiary publications tending to excite 
servile insurrection, 574 ; reform in the mode of electing 
the two first officers of the Eepublic, 575. 

Foreign Diplomacy. — Most alarm felt from this part 
of his administration by the opponents of his election, 
601 ; no part more successful, beneficial, and honorable, 
601. 

The British West India trade recovered, 602. 

The French Indemnity treaty, 602 ; efforts previously 
for redress, 602 ; the message, 602 ; Kives sent as Minis- 
ter, 602; the treaty, 602; further proceedings, 603. 

The Danish treaty of indemnity for spoliations on 
American commerce, 603; consisted of illegal seizures 
and confiscations of American vessels in Danish ports 
during the time of the British orders in Council and the 
French decrees, 603; negotiations of J. Q. Adams' ad- 
ministration, 603; subsequent success of the negotia- 
tions, 603. 

Neapolitan indemnity treaty for spoliations on Ameri- 
can commerce, 608; previous efforts to obtain indemni- 
ty, 603 ; cause of delay, 604; embarrassments, 604; suc- 
cess, 604. 

Spanish indemnity treaty for causes of complaint since 
1819, 604 ; Spanish blockades of ports of South American 
colonies, 604 ; state of negotiations, 604 ; success, 605. 

Russian commercial treaty, none before negotiated, 
605 ; many previous efforts, 605; every thing else granted 
but a commercial treaty, 605; final success of negotia- 
tions, 606. 

Portuguese indemnity for seizures during the blockade 
of Terceira, 606 ; treaty made, 606 ; inability of Portugal 
to pay, 606 ; time extended and payment made, 606. 

Treaty with the Ottoman Empire made in 1881, 606; 
first treaty with that power, 606 ; still farther treaty in 
relation to our commerce needed, 607; stipulations, 60T ; 
success, 607. 



INDEX TO VOL. I. 



XT 



Eenewal of the treaty -with Morocco, 608. 

Treaty with Siam, 608. 

Treaty with Sultan of Muscat, 608. 

Last message, 6S4; recapitulation of the auspicious 
state of things at home and abroad, 684; the deposit act, 
684; the distribution scheme, 63.5; eilects, 685; issuance 
of the Treasury circular, 685 ; attack upon the circular in 
Congress, 686; Seminole hostilities in Florida, 686; the 
stock in the Bank of the United States, 687 ; the delay 
of appropriations, 688; mail contracts with railroads, 
688 ; supervision over the Indian tribes, 689 ; the mode 
of the Presidential election, 689. 

Farewell address of President Jackson, 732 ; on dis- 
union, 732 ; his apprehensions, 733. 

Conclnsion of his administration, 733 ; remarks and re- 
flections, 733, 734 ; appearance at the inauguration of 
Van Buren, 735; his reception, 735; his retirement, 
735 ; his decease, 736 ; his first appearance to the writer, 
736 ; first interview, 736 ; intercourse, 736 ; Mrs. Jack- 
son, 737, 739 ; his character, 737, 738 ; elected Major- 
General in Tennessee, 788 ; nephews, 739. 
Jackson and Calhoun, rupture between. — Pamphlet of Mr. 
Calhoun relative to, 167 ; its title, 167 ; its contents, 167 ; 
the case as it was made out in the pamphlet an intrigue 
on the part of Van Buren to supplant a rival, 168; this 
case confronted by Jackson, 168; his previous opinion 
of Calhoun, 168; the reply of Jackson never published 
heretofore, 168 ; how it came into the possession of Ben- 
ton, 16S; letter of Kendall, 168; contents of Jackson's 
exposition, 168; justification of himself under the law of 
nations and the treaty with Spain for taking military 
possession of Florida, 168; do. under the orders of Mon- 
roe and Calhoun as Secretary of War, 168 ; a statement 
of Mj. Calhoun's conduct towards him in all that affair 
of the Seminole War, &c., 169 ; " introduction, 169 ; ex- 
tracts from orders, 169 ; letter of Calhoun, 169 ; Jack- 
son's letter to Monroe, 169 ; manner of the reception of 
the letter, 170; reply by John Ehea, 170; circumstances 
under which Jackson entered Florida, 170 ; conduct of 
the Spanish authorities, 171; the impresssions under 
which Jackson acted. 171 ; his dispatch to the Secretary 
of War, 173 ; acted within the letter and spirit of his or- 
ders, and in accordance with the secret understanding of 
the Government, in taking possession of St. Marks and 
Pensacola, 172 ; letters to the Secretary of War, 172 ; no 
replies of disapprobation, 172; statements of a Georgia 
journal, 173 ; no reason to doubt Mr. Calhoun's approval, 
173 ; further evidence, 173 ; letter of Col. A. P. Hayne, 
173; his impressions derived from Mr. Calhoun, 174; 
informed that Calhoun was the instigator of the attacks 
upon him, 174; and that Crawford was unjustly blamed, 
174; statement of Mr. Cobb, 174; inquiries of Col. Ham- 
ilton of Mr. Calhoun, 174 ; private letter of Gen. Jackson 
to Mr. Calhoun, 174 ; Calhoun's reply, 175 ; recapitula- 
tion, 175; how the suspicions of Gen. Jackson were 
awakened against Mr. Calhoun, 175 ; statement of Mr. T. 
Eingold, 175; the statement of Mr. Crawford obtained, 
175 ; Inquiry relative to its correctness, of Calhoun, 175 ; 
his reply, 175 ; note, 175 ; united testimony of the Cab- 
inet, 176; toast of Calhoun by Gen. Jackson, 177; the 
report on the resolutions of censure in the House, 177 ; 
its bitterness due to Mr. Calhoun, 177; proceedings of 
Mr. Leacock, 177 ; Calhoun's secret communications to 
him, 178 ; report of Mr. Leacock. 178 ; a darker shade 
added, 178; success of Calhoun's management thus far, 
179; the mask worn by Mr. Calhoun, 179 ; further state- 
ments," 180 ; calamitous events followed this rupture, 
180- Crawford's words relative to the production of the 
private letter of Jackson to Monroe in the Cabinet 
meeting, ISO. 



Jackson, attempted assawination of. — The President and 
Cabinet attend the funeral of AVilliam It. Uavis, 521 ; 
circumstances of the attempt to shoot the President 
521 ; the assailant knocked down and secured, 521 ; tba 
prisoner, 521 ; the pistols, 521 ; prisoner examined by 
physicians relative to the soundness of his mind, 522; 
report of physicians, 522 ; a diseased mind acted upon 
by a general outcry against a public man, 628 ; not tried, 
but treated as insane, 524. 

Jackson, President, Senatorial Condemnation of. — Clay 
and Calhoun the leading spirits in this measure, 423; 
the resolution passed, 423 ; irrelevance of the resolution 
to any right or duty of the Senate, 423 ; its effect, 428 ; 
composure of President Jackson, 424; course of his 
friends, 424 ; mischief of the distress, 424 ; the Protest of 
the President, 425 ; its contents, 425 ; extracts, 425; "it 
wants both the form and substance of a legislative meas- 
ure, 425; the whole phraseology judicial, 425; its charges, 
425; in substance an impeachment of the President, 
425 ; this impeachment originated in the Senate without 
the aid or concurrence of the House, 426 ; Senators from 
three States voted contrary to the sense of their legisla- 
tures, 426 ; words of the Protest, 427 ; an appeal to his 
private history for the patriotism and integrity of his 
life," 427 ; the excitement which ensued upon its read- 
ing in the Senate, 427. 

Notice of the Expunging resolution given, 428; re- 
marks, 42S; "instance of the House of Commons, 428; 
the question brought before the American people, 428 ; 
motion to reject the President's message, is the ques- 
tion, 429; the ch-irges of the resolution, 429; speeches in 
support of the resolution, 430 ; three characters in which 
the Senate can act, 430; one of the most difficult 
and delicate tasks in the convention was to select a 
court for the trial of impeachments, 4.30 ; it is an object 
not more to be desired, than diflicult to be obtained, 
431 ; further remarks, 431 ; the Star Chamber Court, 
4.S2; what occasion has the Senate, sitting as a court of 
impeachment, for the power of execution," 4-32 ; motion 
carried, 432 ; reasons for the Senate's refusal, 4.33. 

Jefferson, Thomas, rejects the treaty of 1807, 1; his idea 
of a commercial communication with Asia, 14 ; his inter- 
view with the traveller Ledyard, 14; seeks discov- 
ery of the Columbia river, 14 ; projects the expedition 
of Lewis and Clarke, 14 ; views on the cession of Texas, 
16 ; letter to Dr. Breckenridge, 16 ; as a statesman, 28 ; 
remarks on future French affairs, 31 ; remarks on the 
road from Georgia to New Orleans, 43; decease of, 87; 
character, 87,88; his connection with the doctrine of 
nullification, 148. 

Jessup, Gen., second to Mr. Clay In the duel with Eandolph, 
70 ; his statement, 70. 

JoHNNT, the servant of Eandolph, an.xlety for his master at 
the duel between Eandolph and Clay, 75. 

Johnson, Ceables, on reference of the Bank memorial to a 
select committee, 2-35. 

Johnson, Henrt, Senator from Louisiana, 7 ; governor, 7. 

Johnson, Eichakd M., Senator from Kentucky, 7; votes for 
the Missouri Compromise, 8 ; Judge of Supremo Court, a 
On committee of bank investigation, 241; reports on im- 
prisonment for debt, 292. 

Joint Committee of both Houses on the admission of Mis- 
souri, 9. 

Jones, Feanois, Eeprescntative from Tennessee, T. 



Kendali., Amos, letter to Calhoun, 168; Postmaster Gen- 
eral, 18L 
King, Ecfcs, Senator from New York, 7 ; appointed Minister 



XVI 



INDEX TO VOL. I. 



to Eugland, 57 ; longscrTico in the Government, 57 ; his 
manners, 57 ; dress, 57 ; courtesy between Lim and Van 
Buren, 57 ; bis suggestions to Senator Bonton, 5S ; his 
statement ofthe sentimentof the revolutionary period, 58. 

King, William K., Senator from Alabama, 7 ; votes for the 
Missouri Compromise, S ; on the Expunging resolutions 
of Alabama, 525, 526, 527. 

Kino, John P., on abolition petitions, 618, 617; on the inde- 
pendence of Texas, 666. 

Kbemek, Guokge, avowed author of an anonymous publi- 
cation against Clay ; 71. 



Lafayette, hia visit. — An absence of forty years, 29 ; manner 
of his reception, 29 ; address of Speaker Clay, 30 ; Lafay- 
ette in the presence of posterity, 30; appropriation of 
money and land to Lafayette, 30 ; the grants opposed 
80; reasons, 30; advocated, 31 ; his sacrifices, 31 ; views 
of Jefferson, 31 ; return of Lafayette to France, 31. 

Lanman, James, the case of.— On the expiration ofthe Sen- 
atorial term of Lanman, the Legislature of Connecticut 
failing to elect, the governor appointed him, 56 ; debate 
on the validity of the appointment, 56 ; not a case in 
which a governor can fill a vacancy, the vacancy fore- 
seen, not 7iappened, 56 ; i>recedents reported to the Sen- 
ate, 56; unsatisfactory, 50; motion to admit, rejected, 56. 

Lawrence, Eichaed, attempts to assassinate President 
Jackson, 521. 

Leake, Walter, votes for the Missouri Compromise, S. 

Ledyard, John, attempts the discovery of the Columbia 
river, 14. 

Letcher, Egbert P., moves the compromise tariff bill, 809. 

Le-wis, of North Carolina, on the admission of Arkansas, 632. 

Livingston, Edward, Secretary of State, 181. 

Lloyd, Edward, Senator from Maryland, 7 ; governor, 7 ; 
votes for the Missouri Compromise, S. 

LooAN, William, votes for the Missouri Compromise, 8. 

Lowndes, William, Eepresentative from South Carolina, 
7; weight of his opinions, 8; on the committee to whom 
was referred the application of Missouri, 9 ; decease, IS ; 
his character, 18. 

LowKiE, Walter, votes for the Missouri, Compromise, 8. 



m 



Macatlay, his description of removals from office, 162. 

Macon, Nathaniel, Senator from North Carolina, 7; votes 
for the Missouri Compromise, 8 ; opposes the grants to 
Lafayette, 30 ; his vote for Vice-President in 1824,45; 
answer relative to the authorship of the report on the 
Panama mission, 68. 

Eetirement of, 114; his temperament, 114; fixed the 
time for his retirement long before, 114; his resignation, 
114; his death, 114; his character, 114; sketch of his 
life, 115 ; enters the army, 115 ; refuses to leave the camp 
for the legislative assembly of his native State, 115 ; the 
battle of Guilford, 115; Macon's civil life, 110; his po- 
litical princijiles, 116; disregard of wealth, 117; his 
friendships, 117; his executor, 117; codicil to his will, 
117; his charity, 118; his dress, 118; his disinterested- 
ness, 118; his simplicity, 118; letter on the Military 
Academy, 182 ; his di.'iractcr, 534. 

Madison, James, yields in favor of the second bank, 3; on 
the regulation of commerce, 156 ; his veto of an internal 
improveracut bill, 167; his letter on slavery agitation, 
609 ; remarks, 623 ; decease of— time of his death, 67S ; 
remarks of Br. Witberspoon, 678; his talent, 677; his 
•writings, 679 ; characteristics, 679. 



McGuiRE, J. C, publishes a quarto volume of Madison'* 
letters, 149. 

Mangum, Willie P., on the branch Mints, 550. 

Marcy, William L., for Van Buren as Minister to Eng 
land, 216, 

Marshall, John, Chief Justice, 7; administers the oath oi 
office to Jackson, 119; decease of Chief Justice, 681 
his character, 681 ; his speech in the case of Jonathan 
Bobbins, 681. 

McDuFFiE, George, moves amendment to the constitu- 
tion, 37; expresses the views of the South on the re- 
vised tariff, 100 ; on revision of the tariff, 100 ; on the 
Committee of Bank Investigation, 241. 

McIntosh, William, Chief of Creek Indians, 58; negotiates 
a treaty, 58. 

McLane, Louis, Eepresentative from Delaware, 7; sent 
Minister to England, il27 ; Secretary of the Treasury, 
181. 

McLean, John, Postmaster General, 7; Postmaster-Gen- 
eral, 58; appointed Justice of the Supreme Court, 120. 

McKiNNEY, Thomas L., superintendent of the Indian fac- 
tory system, 21. 

Meigs, E. J., coadjutor with Clay on the Missouri ques- 
tion, 10. 

Memorial of the Bank Directors to Congress relative to the 
removal of the public deposits, 879 ; of the rejected 
Government Directors of the Bank to Congress, 889. 

Mercer, Charles Fenton, Eepresentative from Virginia, 7. 

Message on the South Carolina proceedings, 308; relative 
to the distribution of the proceeds of the sale of public 
lands, 865 ; to twenty-third Congress, 869 ; on the re- 
nomination of the Bank Directors, 886. 

Metcalfe, Thomas, Eepresentative from Kentucky, 7 ; gov- 
ernor, 7. 

Michigan, admission of. See Arkansas. 

Military Academy. — Numerous desertions in the army, 182 ; 
difliculty to find a remedy for the evil, 1S2 ; letter from 
Mr. Macon, 182 ; not a government in the world so un- 
friendly to the rights of the people as ours since the es- 
talishment of the West Point Institution, 182 ; oflBicers 
rise from the ranks in all countries of Europe, 183 ; re- 
turns to Parliament, 188; how is it in our service? 183; 
difficulty of obtaining a commission for a citizen in the 
regular regiments, 183; caso of Hermann Thorn, 183; 
admitted to service in Austria, 183 ; case of Kit Carson, 
188 ; rejected because ho did not come through tho West 
Point gate, 183; this rule of appointment become the 
law of the land, 183 ; popular opposition to the institu- 
tion, 184 ; it is said Washington was the founder of the 
institution, 184; the institution of his day a very dif- 
ferent affair, 184; explained, 1&4; all was right until 
1812, 184; extract from the act of 1812, 184 ; the decep- 
tion of the clause, 184; other deceptions which follow 
185 ; this establishment is mainly a school for the gra- 
tuitous education of those who have influence to got 
there, IM ; gratuitous instruction to the children of the 
living is a vicious principle, 185; vital objections to the 
institution, 185 ; a monopoly of the appointments how 
effected, 186; tho President and the academy are the 
real appointing power, and tho Sen.'ite an office for tho 
registration of appointments, 186 ; act of 1812 rests its 
constitutionality on fictions, 186; the title ofthe act fic- 
titious, 186; its title, 186; our academy an imitation of 
European military schools, 1S6; tho remedy for these 
evils is to repeal the act of 1312, 186. 

Attempted Inquiry tH<o.— Organized under the act 
of 1812 688; movements asainst early commenced, OSS; 
committee appointed, 688; report 638; no attention 
civen to it, 6;«; other motions, 6*8; debate, 689; a 
monopoly for the gratuitous education of the sons ofthe 



INDEX TO VOL. I. 



xvi 



rich and influencial, 639 ; some rule should apply to the 
army as applies to members of Congress, 640; further 
etforts to obtain an investigation, 640 ; attack on the ap- 
propriation resorted to, 641 ; remarks of Franklin Pierce, 
641 ; " grounds of opposition, 641 ; why has this investi- 
gation been resisted? 641; from the middling interest 
comes the most efficient support in trying periods, 642; 
exclusiveness of the institution, 642 ; the military acad- 
emy not calculated to make the army effective, 642; 
the institution In the times of Washington, &c., and the 
institution as it is now, 643; gratuitous education in 
Great Britain examined, 644; further remarks," 645. 

A clause in the appropriation bill for the purchase of 
forty horses, &c., erection of a building, a riding house 
in bad weather, 712 ; struck out, 712 ; opposition to its 
restoration, 712, 713 ; further debate, 714. 

i/lasouri, admission o/— Exciting question of session of 
Congress of 1820-'21, S ; the state admitted without re- 
striction, 8 ; the compromise, 8 ; work of the South, 8 ; 
unanimity of the Presidenfs cabinet, 8; unanimity of 
the Senate on the compromise, 8 ; its constitutionality 
called in question, 8 ; Senators voting for it, 8 ; vote in 
the House, 8 ; the increase of slave States avowed to be 
a question of political power between the two sections 
of the Union, 8 ; provision in the Missouri Constitution 
forbidding Legislative interference, 8 ; clause authorizing 
the prohibition of the emigration of free people of color, 
9; its treatment by Congress, 9 ; the real point of objec- 
tion, 9 ; application for admission presented and referred, 
9; report of committee, 9; resolution rejected, 9 ; its fate 
in the Senate, 9 ; House reject the resolution of the Sen- 
ate, 9; joint committee ordered and appointed in both 
Houses, 9 ; report, 9 ; adopted in the House, 9 ; in the 
Senate, 10; compliance of the General Assembly of 
Missouri, 10 ; defeat of the attempt to restrict a State 
from having slaves if she chose, 10 ; the real struggle, 
object of, 10; the objectionable clause, how since re- 
garded, 10; excitement of the occasion, 10; a federal 
movement, 10 ; sentiments of the northern democracy, 
10 ; a movement for the balance of power, 10. 

Missouri resolutions.— 'Not now discussed, 860; the old 
confederation was a league with a legislature acting on 
sovereignties, 361 ; the Federalist on the defects of the 
old system, 361 ; on the certain destruction of the Union 
when the sword is once drawn between the members, 
861 ; advantage of working if the laws operate on 
citizens and not on States, 361. 

Missouri Question, eaiension of. — Object to extend the 
boundary on the Missouri river, 626 ; difficulties, 626 ; 
threefold, 626; a bill for the alteration of the compromise 
line and the extension of the boundary reported, 627 ; 
passed both Houses, 627; this was the answer which 
northern members gave to the imputed design of abol- 
ishing slavery, 627. 

Mitchell, Geokge E., on reference of the bank memorial, 
to a select committee, 234. 

Monroe, James, negotiates the treaty of 1807, 1 ; efforts for 
the declaration of war in 1812, 6; President, 7; letter 
showing the unanimity of his cabinet on the Missouri 
question, 8 ; his letters to Jackson on the cession of Tex- 
as, 15; ditto to Jefferson, 16; cause of these letters, 17; 
veto on internal improvement bill, 22; veto of Cumber- 
land road bill, 167; decease of, his place in history, 679 ; 
his character, 679 ; genius, 679; discretion, 679; founda- 
tion of his political career, 680; remark of Jefferson, 
680 ; his career, 680. 

MoNEOE doctrine, 67. 

^ooRE, Gabriel, anecdote respecting the rejection of Van 



Buren as Minister to England, 215; against-Van Bnren 
as Minister to England, 215. 
MoRKis, Thomas, on abolition petitions, 612. 

Jfeio Mexico., internal trade wit/t. — All foreign ingress cut 
off until 1821, 41 ; iotorcoursc between Missouri and tbc 
"Western Internal I'rovinccs," 41 ; a branch of interior 
commerce, 41 ; a bill brought into the Senate to open a 
road and to afford protection against the savages, 41 ; 
statement of facts relative to the trade, 41 ; precedents 
for the construction of a road, 42 ; remarks of Mr. Jeffer- 
son on the road from Georgia to New Orleans, 43 ; the 
foreign part of the road the point of difficulty, 48; 
moved to strike out the extra territorial part of the 
national highway, 43; views of Senators, 4-3, 44; bill 
passed, 44 ; road to New Mexico built under Adams' ad- 
ministration, 44. 

NiLES, John M., on the independence of Texas, 668. 

Noble, James, votes for the Missouri Compromise, 8. 

Nidlification —Event of its origin, 95 ; the assumed right of 
a State to annul an act of Congress, 138; new turn in the 
debate, 138 ; allusions to the conduct of New England 
in 1812, 138; meetings in South Carolina on the Tariff, 
138; resolves passed, 1;38; their defence, 13S; the doc- 
trine summed up, 138; counter explanation, 139; the 
"Virginia resolution, 139 ; how the South Carolina doc- 
trine would have operated in New England, 1-39; the 
doctrine has no foundation in the constitution or in Vir- 
ginia resolutions, 1.39; "the character of the govern- 
ment, 139 ; supremacy of the constitution and laws, 
140;" interpretation of the Virginia resolutions disputed, 
140; remarks, 140; Hartford Convention, 140; pledge 
of forcible resistance to any attempt to enforce uncon- 
stitutional laws, 140 ; remarks, 141 ; Webster's perora- 
tion, 141 ; remarks of Benton, 142 ; his slowness to be- 
lieve in any design to subvert the Union, 142. 

Anniversary of Jefferson's birth-day, 148 ; a subscrip- 
tion dinner, 148; the guests, 148; the regular toasts, 
14S; conversation excited by them, 14S; toast of the 
President, 148; toast of Calhoun, 14S; remarks relative 
to Mr. Jefferson, 148; his vindication, 14S; resolves of 
Virginia, 149. 

Ordinance in South Carolina. — The fate of the 
^American system was sealed by the elections of 1832, 
297 ; the course of South Carolina, 297 ; words of the 
ordinance, 297, 298 ; it placed the State in the attitude 
of open and forcible resistance to the laws of the United 
States to take effect in the February following, 298; 
officially communicated to the President, 298 ; his oath 
of office, 298. 

Proclamation against mdlijication. — Proceedings 
of the South Carolina convention st.ited, 299; the ordi- 
nance founded not on the indefensible right of resisting 
acts which are plainly unconstitution.il and too oppres- 
sive to be endured, 299 ; but on the position that a State 
may declare the acts of Congress void and [>ri>hibit their 
execution, 300; two appeals from an unconstitutional 
act, 800; words of the social compact, 800; if this doc- 
trine had been established at an early day the Union 
would have been dissolved in its infancy, 800; our con- 
stitutional history shows it would have been repudiated 
if proposed for a feature of onr Governniont, 300; the 
constitution declares, &c., 801 ; a law repealed by a 
small majority of the voters of a single State, 301 ; the 
constitution forms a government, not a league, 801 ; ad- 
dress to the members of the convention, 802. 
Message on the South Carolina proceedin-gg.—fio- 



rviii 



INDEX TO VOL. I. 



tico in the annuiil message, 808 ; continnation and ag- 
grav.ition of the proceedings, 308; special message, 803; 
"ordinance transmitted by the Governor of South Caro- 
lina, 803 ; hope Indulged that by explaining the recom- 
mendations proposed to Congress, the authorities of 
South Carolina might recede, 303 ; hence proclamation 
issued, 803; the reasonable expectations not realized, 
808; neither the recommendations of the Executive nor 
the disposition manifested by Congress, nor the une- 
quivocal expression of public opinion, have produced 
any relaxation in the measures of opposition, 303 ; the 
State authorities actively organizing their military re- 
sources, 804 ; proclamation of the Governor has openly 
defied the authority of the Executive of the Union, 
304; determination of the authorities of South Caro- 
lina, 304 ; acts on the part of South Carolina, 304, 305 ; no 
sufficient cause for such proceedings on the part of 
South Carolina, 806 ; she still claims to be a component 
part of the Union, 806 ; the duty of the Executive, 807 ; 
recommendations of the President, 807; importance of 
the crisis," 307. 

Deep feeling of discontent in South Carolina ope- 
rated upon by polit|cians, 308; this feeling just and 
reasonable, and operated upon by politicians for per- 
sonal and ambitious objects, 30S; twofold aspect of his 
proclamation and message, 30S ; one of relief and jus- 
tice in reducing the revenue ; and the other, firm and 
mild in enforcing the laws against offenders, SOS ; two 
classes of discontented — the honest and the politicians, 
30S ; bills proposed in Congress, 308. 

Revenue Collection or Force Bill. — Bill to secure the 
execution of certain laws in South Carolina, .330 ; re- 
marks, 830; "contains no novel principle, 830; pro- 
vision for removal of the Custom House, 830; legislation 
necessary, 880 ; secession on one hand, and nullification 
on the other, 381 ; state of affairs in South Carolina, 331 ; 
the bill confers <>q the President the power ot closing 
old ports of entry and opening new ones, 331 ; a promi- 
nent cause which led to the revolution, 831 ; empower- 
ed to employ the land and naval forces to put down all 
abettors, 332 ; no ambiguity about this measure, 382 ; 
the President is charged by the constitution with the 
execution of the laws, 332; the President's measure, 
.3.32 ; the resemblance between this bill and the Boston 
Port bill, 3.33 ; the war is waged against the measures of 
the administration," 838 ; the support of Mr. 'Webster, 
3.3.3. 

Nullification resolutions. — Resolutions on the pow- 
ers of the government introduced into the Senate, 834; 
counter-resolutions offered, 3.34; source whence Mr. 
Calhoun obtained the seminal idea of nullification as a 
remedy in a government, 335; Virginia resolution of, 
98, 99; the essential idea derived from the lioman tribu- 
nltian veto, 335; considered a cure for all the disorders 
of a Koman State, 8.85 ; remarks, 335 ; " the Roman 
system, 8-35; operation of the Roman veto, 835; the 
right of a State to interfere, 336; governments of seve- 
ral States might be cited as an argument against this 
view, Si(j; the tendency to conflict in this action," 886; 
Calhoun's opinion of the defects of our form of govern- 
ment, and the- remedy for these defects, 887; the defect 
of an unchecked anlhority of the majority, 337 ; the rem- 
edy an authority in the minority to check that majority 
and to secede, 8.37; example of Jewish history, 337; its 
squint to the Virginia resolutions, 337 ; circumstances 
■ander which this remedy contended for, 837; object to 
create or find this remedy in our system, 8-37; nullifica- 
tion, resistance, secession, found by Calhoun in the 
Virginia resolutions, 83T ; all that was intended by the 



Virginia resolutions, being merely an appeal to public 
opinion, 837; debate, -887; "what was the cioiduct o 
Virginia in tlie memorable era of 9S and 99, 338 ; hei 
real intentions and policy were proved not by declara- 
tions and speeches merely, but by facts, 888; the con- 
stitution does not provide for events which must be 
preceded by its own distraction, 888; secession and nul- 
lification revolutionary, 388; it8 tendency is to break up 
the constitution as to all the other States, 8-39 ; it strikes 
a deadly blow at the vital principle of the whole Union. 
339; it arrests tho power of the law, absolves the citi- 
zen from duty, and elevates another authority to su- 
preme command, 339 ; the laws must be repealed 
throughout the whole Union, or executed in Carolina as 
well as elsewhere, 339. 

" Nature of our federal government, 389 ; a union in 
contradistinction to a league, 339 ; it is not a compact or 
confederacy between the people of tho several States in 
their sovereign capacities, 3.39 ; no State authority has 
power to dissolve these relations, 340; the constitution, 
acts of Congress, &c., the supreme law, 840 ; an attempt 
of a State at nullification a direct usurpation of the just 
powers of the federal government," 340 ; some other 
cause than the alleged one at the bottom of this desire 
of secession, 840 ; ambitious and personal proceedings 
intimated as involved in the proceedings of South Caro- 
lina, 840 ; expression of Calhoun, 340 ; a contest between 
power and liberty, 341; the freedom and the slave 
property of the South involved, 841 ; exclusion of pa- 
triotic men of the South from the Presidency, 341 ; con- 
tradicted by all history of our national elections, 841 ; 
protective tariff not the sole or main cause of the South 
Carolina discontent, 841 ; remarks on this point, 841 ; 
"another subject connected with this which will prevent 
tho return of peace and quiet, .341 ; the force bill a prac- 
tical assertion of one theory of the government against 
another, 841 ; the bill cannot be acquiesced in, unless 
the South is dead to the sense of liberty," 841 ; these 
positions not sustained by Southern sentiment, 342.— 
See Tariff, Reduction of duties. 



O 



Ordinance 0^1787.— Authorship claimed for Nathan Dane, 
1,38 ; claimed for Jefferson, 138 ; history of the case, 1*3 ; 
its ultimate passage the work of the South, 133 ; extracts 
from the Journal of Congress, 184 ; remarks on the 
claim for Dane of authorship, 134 ; " origin of the meas- 
ure, 184 ; an attempt to transfer the honor to the South, 
135; proposed a second time," 185; statements compar- 
ed with facts, 135, 186. 

Oregon 7'e/w'tory.— Proposition for the settlement of, first 
made at the session of 1820-21, 18 ; causes that led to It, 
13 ; committee moved, 13 ; carried, 13 ; the committee. 
13; report, 13; proceedings in the House, 18; conse- 
quences of neglect by the Government, 18 ; advantages 
from its settlement, 13; historical facts, 14. 

Joint occupation o/.— Astoria captured during tho 
war of 1812, 109 ; not restored under the treaty of Ghent, 
109 ; convention for joint occupation concluded at Lon- 
don, 109 ; words of the convention, 109 ; article written by 
Benton on the subject, 109; our traders driven out of the 
country, 110 ; other effects of the joint occupation, 110; 
resolutions against the ratification of the subsequent 
treaty relative to continuance of the joint occupation, 
111. 

Otis, nAEKisou Geat, Senator from MassachusetiA, 7. 



INDEX TO VOL. I. 



XIX 



Pauiee, Wiliam a., votes for the Missouri Compromise, 8. 

Panama Mission. — A master subject in its day, 65; gave 
rise to grave questions, 65 ; designed as a pojjular move- 
ment to turn the tide running against Adams, 65 ; the 
Congress at Panama, 65 ; debate in the Senate on the 
nomination of ministers, C5 ; invited by the South 
American States to send deputies, 65 ; motion to debate 
the question with open doors, 65; reference to the Presi- 
dent, 65; his answer, 65; indignation of the Senate, 66; 
nominations confirmed, 66; patronage distributed to ad- 
vocates of the measure, 66 ; the basis of the agreement 
for the Congress, the existing state of war between all 
the new States and the mother country, 66 ; its object, 66 ; 
relations of the United States, 66 ; message of the Presi- 
dent relative to objects of the Congress, 67 ; the Monroe 
doctrine, 67 ; extract from Adams' message respecting 
it, 67; entirely confined to our ovvn borders, 67; other 
objects— advancement of religious liberty, 67 ; proofs of 
our good will, 67 ; reference of the message, 67 ; adverse 
report, 67; expressive of the democratic doctrines of the 
day, 67 ; its general principle that of good-will and friend- 
ship, but no entangling alliances, 68 ; remarks of commit- 
tee on religious freedom, 68 ; their views on the Monroe 
doctrine, 68 ; our present unconnected and friendly posi- 
tion regarded as most beneficial to the republics, 68 ; the 
advantages of friendly relations without entangling alli- 
ances, 69 ; right of the President to institute the mission, 
69 ; relations with Hayti, on what principle established, 
69; excitement produced by the proposed mission, 69. 

Paper read to the cabinet by General Jackson relative to 
the removal of the public deposits, 376. 

Patronage., ExecuUve, reduction of. — Committee appointed 
to report on the expediency of reducing, 80 ; the com- 
mittee, SO ; report, SO ; the six bills reported, 80 ; extract 
from the report, 80 ; " grounds of the committee's 
opinion, 80; multiply the guards against the abuse of 
power, 81 ; the extent of patronage," 81 ; subsequent 
increase of patronage, 81; remarks on the bills reported, 
81, 82. 

Pakrott, John F., votes for the Missouri Compromise, 8. 

PiBRCE, Franklin, on abolition petitions, 615. 

PiNCKNET, Charles, Representative from South Carolina, 7. 

PiNKNET, William, Senator from Maryland, 7 ; negotiates 
the treaty of 1807, 1 ; votes for the Missouri Compromise, 
8 ; decease, 19 ; rank as an orator, 19 ; speeches, 19 ; on the 
Missouri controversy, 19; abilities, 20 ; manner in which 
Randolph announces his death, 20 ; character, 20. 

Pleasants, James, Senator from Virginia, 7 ; governor 7 ; 
votes for the Missouri Compromise, 8. 

PoiNDEXTER, George, against Van Buren as Minister to 
England, 215 ; on the protest of General Jackson, 427. 

Polk, James K., on the non-payment of the three per cents., 
289 ; on continuing the deposits in the bank, 289 ; chosen 
Speaker of the House, 569. 

Presidential election of 1824.— The candidates, 44 ; how 
brought forward, 44 ; number of electoral votes, 44 ; 
vote for each, 44 ; candidates for the Vice Presidency, 
45 ; vote, 45. 

In the I/ouse.—The theory and practical working of 
the constitution in the election of President And Vice- 
President, 46 ; first election in the House that of Jeffer- 
son and Burr, 46 ; ballotings, 47 ; efl"ect on the constitu- 
tion, 47; second election in the House that of 1824, 47; 
proceedings, 47 ; the democratic principle finally victo- 
rious, 47; conduct of certain individuals, 48 ; Clay ex- 
presses to Benton his intention to vote for Adams be- 
fore the election, 48 ; letter of Clay to Benton, 48 ; evi- 



dences of Clay's declaration, 4S ; this election put an end 
to caucus nominations by members of Congress, 49 ; a 
different mode of concentrating public opinion adopted 
49 ; its degeneration, 49 ; an anomalous body where thi 
election is now virtually made, 49; this destructive ti 
the rights and sovereignty of the people, 49 ; tlie reme- 
dy, 49. 
Pre&idential election of 1S2S.— The candidates. 111; result, 
111; vote of the free States for the slave-holiling candi- 
dates, 111 ; election of Jackson a triumph of democratic 
principle, 111; errors of Mons. de Tocqueville, 112; 
charge of violent temper against Jackson, 112; "medi- 
ocre talent and no capacity to govern," 112; "opposed 
by a majority of enlightened classes," 11.3 ; " raised to 
the Presidency solely by the recollection of the victorj- 
ofNew Orleans," 11.3. See page 282. 

Presidential election of 1SS6.— The candidates, 633 ; 
Vice-President elected by the Senate, 653 ; details, 
6S3, 684. 
Preston, William C, on French affairs, 594. 
Proiectioii to American Industry, origin of the question, .3. 
Protective Si/stem.—Tho periodical season for its discussion, 
265; the session most prolific of party topics and party 
contests of any ever known, 266; the reason, 266; the 
subjects, 266 ; the bank and tariff' two leading meas- 
ures, 266 ; proposal of the President's message, 266 ; the 
proposition of Mr. Clay, 266; the seven years before the 
Tariff and the seven years after, 266 ; the one, calamity ; 
the other, prosperity, 266; remarks, 266; the seven 
years of calamity immediately followed the establish- 
ment of the bank, 266 ; protection an incident before 
1816, afterwards an object, 267; origin and progress of 
the protective policy, 267. 

" It began on the 4th of July, 1789. The second act 
on the statute book, 267 ; prosperity consequent on the 
French revolution, 267 ; state of things after the peace 
in 1815,267; subject again brought up in 1820, 267; 
summary of the policy," 267. 

Other speakers in favor of the policy, 268 ; those 
against it, 26S; bearing of the question on the harmony 
and the stability of the Union. 263. 

A crisis arrived, 263 ; dissatisfaction of all the South, 
268; objects of the Revolution, 268; manufacturers 
should be supported incidentally, 268. 

"This system an overruling necessity, 269 ; the dan- 
ger to its existence lies in the abandonment, and not in 
the continuance of the American system, 269; great 
excitement in South Carolina, 2C9; the Union necessary 
to the whole and to all its parts, 269 ; the majority must 
govern, 269 ; can it be believed that two-thirds of the 
people would consent to the destruction of a policy be- 
lieved to be indispensably necessary to their prosperity ?" 
269. 

An appalling picture dissolution of the Union present- 
ed on either hand, 270 ; former designs of bringing Jack- 
son forward for the Presidency, 270 ; views entertained 
in South Carolina, 270; views of the Democratic party^ 
270; "cannot feel indifferent to the sutferinirs of any 
portion of the American people, 270; what is the cause 
of Southern distress? 271; other causes which exist," 
271; the levy and expenditure of the federal govern- 
ment the cause of Southern decadence, 271 ; expor- 
tation of American manufactures, 272; this fact urged 
to show the excellence of American fabrics, and that 
they are worthy of protection, 572; al.so ursxoil to show 
their independence of protection, 272 ; ",\merican cot- 
tons now traverse the one-half of the circumference of 
the globe, 272 ; effect of these duties to create monopo- 
lies at home, 272 ; the Custom House returns." 272 ; the 



XX 



INDEX TO VOL. I. 



prosperity attributed to the TarifTs of 1824 and 1828, 
272,' real cause of the revived prosperity, 273; remarks, 
273; Clay's remarks on his own failing powers and ad- 
vanced age, 273; conii)liuients on his remarks, 273; spar- 
ring between Gen. Smith and Mr. Clay on the age of 
the latter, 273, 274; the seriousness of Southern resist- 
ance to the Tariff, 274 ; au appeal to all to meet the 
South in a sjjirit of conciliation, 274. 

Proteft of Gen. Jackson on the vote of censure in the Sen- 
ate, 425. 

f^blic (H.siress.— From the moment of the removal of the 
deposits, the plan of the bank was to force their return, 
and with it a renewal of its charter, by operating on 
the business of the country and the alarms of the peo- 
ple, 415 ; course to be pursued, 415 ; first step to get up 
distress meetings, 415; memorial sent to Congress, 415; 
speeches on their presentatioc, 415 ; remarks of Mr. Ty- 
ler on presenting a memorial from Virginia, 410; do. of 
Mr. Eobbins on presenting a memorial, 410; do. of Mr. 
Webster on presenting a memorial, 417, 418, 419 ; do. of 
Mr. Southard on presenting a memorial, 417 ; do. of Mr- 
Clay on presenting a memorial, 418; do. of Mr. Kent on 
presenting a memorial, 418; Clay's apostrophe to the 
Vice President, charging him with a message of prayer 
and supplication to the President, 420; the Vice Pres- 
ident takes a pinch of Mr. Clay's snufF, 420 ; resolution 
of a public meeting relative to the message to be con- 
veyed by the Vice President, 420. 

All this is a repetition of what was heard in 1811, 421 ; 
extracts from Debates of Congress, 421 ; the two dis- 
tresses proved the same thing, 421 ; agitation and com- 
motion in the large cities, 421 ; gaining a municipal 
election in New York, 421 ; extracts relative to every- 
day occurrences, 421 ; amounts of money expended, 
422. 

Keport of the Secretary of the Treasury on the Fi- 
nances, 402 ; call made at the height of the panic, 402 ; 
showed an increase in every branch of the revenue, in- 
stead of a decline, 402; test of the prosperity of the 
United States, 402 ; the distress confined to the victims 
of the Bank, or fictitious and artificial, 402 ; attempt to 
quietly put the report aside, 402; preparation made to 
defeat this move, 462; the entire reading demanded, 
402; speech of Mr. Benton on its conclusion, 402; the 
speech, 462 ; " assertions and predictions under which 
the call had been made, 402 ; a report to make the pa- 
triot's heart rejoice, 403 ; it had been called for to be given 
to the people, and the people should have it, 403; the 
statements of the report examined, 403 ; evidence of 
commercial prosperity, 404 ; increased imports, increased 
shipping, increased sales of public lands, 404; it has been 
said that trade is paralyzed, 405 ; the odium of all the 
distress falls on the bank, 405; the prosperity of the 
country, 400 ; recapitulation of the evidences, 467; the 
alarm is over, the people are tired of it, 407; the spectre 
of distress could never be made to cross the Mississippi, 
467 ; the bank is now a nuis.ance," 46S ; report laid on 
the table and printed, 409. See Tariff. 

PaWic Land Debtors. — The credit system tuen prevailed, 
11 ; debt for lands sold to the Government, 12 ; situation 
of the public land debtors, 12; system on which the 
lands were sold, 12 ; subject referred to in the President's 
message, 12; the measure of relief devised, 12; the cash 
system and reduced price adopted, 12 ; the pre-emption 
right introduced, 12; opposed, 12; carried, 12; the 
graduation principle presse', 12. 
'iiblic Lands. — Burke"s bill for the sale of the Crown lands 
presented in the British House of Commons, 102; its 
application to this countr3-, 102 ; his remarks, 102 ; sales 



of land by a government to its citizens a false policy 
102; movements to obtain a graduation of price, 103 
recommendation of Jackson's message, 103; the revenue 
derived from the sale of lands a trifle compared with thi- 
revenue derivable from the same lands through settle- 
ment and cultivation, 103; s.ale of land brings no popu- 
lation, cultivation produces population, 103; remarks in 
favor of donation of lands, 103 ; example of the Atlantic 
States in favor of donations, 104; remarks against the 
reservation of saline and miner.al lands, 104; these lands 
sold in Missouri, 105; system of renting mines abolished, . 
105 ; case of " Granny White," 105 ; the example of all 
nations in favor of giving land, 100 ; proclamation of the 
King of Persia in 1823, 106 ; Western States suflTerers by 
this land policy, 100; change in public sentiment, 107. 

A proposition to inquire into the expediency of limit- 
ing the sales of land to those in market — to suspend the 
surveys, &c., 180 ; " a proposition that would check emi- 
gration to the new States of the West, 130 ; limit settle- 
ments, 130 ; deliver up large portions to the dominion of 
wild bc.ists, 131 ; remove the land records, 131 ; never 
right to inquire into the expediency of doing wrong, 131 ; 
inquiry is to do wrong," 131; charge upon the East of 
intending to check the growth of the West, 132; history 
of the first ordinance for the sale and survey, 132; to 
make clean work is like requiring your guest to eat all 
the bones before he should have more meat, 132 ; the 
propriety of selling at auction prices and at an arbitrary 
minimum for all qualities, 132 ; system adopted by all 
nations, 133 ; the British and Spanish colonies fostered 
under a very difl'erent system, 133; indefinite postpone- 
ment moved, 133. 

Distrihution to the States. — Bill to reduce the price 
ordered to a third reading, 275 ; pre-emption established, 
275 ; plan to distribute the proceeds reported, 275 ; re- 
port, 275; "inexpedient to reduce the price, or to cede 
the lands to the States, 275 ; sound policy enjoins the 
preservation of the existing system, 275 ; governments, 
no more than individuals, should be intoxicated by pros- 
perity, 275; should husband their resources, 276; the 
proposal to divide the proceeds among the States, 276 ; a 
bill for this purpose reported," 270. 

Impropriety of originating such a bill in a Committee 
of Manufactures, 276; referred to the Committee on 
Public Lands, 276; a connter report, 276; ''this view 
fundamentally erroneous, 276 ; the Committee on Manu- 
factures regard the Federal domain merely as an object 
of revenue, 270; quotation from the speech of Burke, 
270; those sentiments the inspiration of political wis- 
dom, 277 ; expectations from the public lands, 277 ; re- 
sult of an experiment of near fifty years, 277 ; the bill to 
divide the proceeds is wholly inadmissible in principle 
and erroneous in its details, 277 ; it proposes to change 
injuriously and fatally for the new States the character 
of their relation to the Federal Government on this sub- 
ject, 277 ; its effects, 277 ; the details of the bill are preg- 
nant with injustice and unsound policy, 273; it makes 
no distinction between those States which did or did not 
make cessions of their vacant land to the Federal Gov- 
ernment, 27S ; it proposes benefits to some States which 
they cannot receive without dishonor nor refuse with- 
out pecuniary prejudice, 278; these lands were granted 
to pay the debts of the Kevolutionary War, 278; other 
objections, 278; postponed in the House, 279. 

DMribution of proceeds. — Bill renewed, 862; ar- 
guments in its favor, 862; provisions of the bill, 302; 
advantages of settling the question and disposing of the 
public lands, 863 ; revenue from sales considered, 303. 

A measure* dangerous in itself and unconstitutional 



INDEX TO VOL. I. 



xxl 



864; bill passed the Senate, 864; passed in the House 
with amendments, 364; Senate concur on the last night 
of the session, 364; retained by the President, 864: rea- 
sons, 864; denunciations of the Press, 365; next session 
bill returned with objections, 365; "first principles of 
the whole subject, 365 ; the practice of the Government 
365; an entire subversion of one of the compacts by 
which the United States became possessed of the West- 
ern domain, 866 ; these ancient compacts are invaluable 
monuments of an age of patriotism and virtue, 866; 
other principles inserted in the bill, 866 ; the object to 
create a surplus for distribution, 367 ; a more direct road 
to consolidation cannot be devised, 867 ; difficult to per- 
ceive what advantages will accrue to the States, 36S ; 
the true policy is that the public lands shall cease as 
soon as practicable to be a source of revenue, 86S ; state- 
ment of revenues derived from the public lands," 368 ; 
remarks on this veto message, 869. 



R 



Randolph, John, Representative from Virginia, 7; opposes 
Clay on the Missouri question, 10 ; decease of, 473 ; place 
of his death, 473; his career, 473; how he should be 
judged, 478 ; never enjoyed a day of perfect health, 473 ; 
insanity at periods, 473; conversation on that point, 
474; his parliamentary life, 474; friendship with Macon, 
474; disposition, 474 ; feelings on slavery, 474; as a duel- 
list, 475; religious sentiment, 475. 

'ielief, Mr. Webster's- j7lan o/— Eenewal of the charter of 
the bank for six years, 438 ; to give up the exclusive or 
monopoly feature, 4.33; further particulars, 433; leave 
asked to bring in the bill, 433 ; opposition from Clay and 
Calhoun, 483; reasons for Calhoun's position, 484; his 
object to "unbank the banks," 434; remarks, 484; ulti- 
mate object to arrive at a metallic currency, 435 ; this an 
object of the administration, 435; conversations among 
Senators, 435 ; motion for leave to bring in a bill laid on 
the table, 485 ; excuse for this movement, 436. 

No previous opportunity to show the people the kind 
of currency they were entitled to possess, 436; the Gov- 
ernment intended to be a hard money Government, 
436; evidences on this point, 4-37,438; the quantity of 
specie derivable from foreign commerce, added to the 
quantity of gold derivable from our mines, were fully 
sufficient to furnish the people with an abundant cir- 
culation of gold and silver, 438, 439 ; the value now set 
upon gold is unjust and erroneous, 440; these laws have 
expelled it from circulation, 440 ; nature and effects of 
this false valuation, 441, 442, 443 ; intention and meaning 
of the constitution that foreign coins should pass cur- 
rently as money, and at their full value, within the 
United States, 444 ; the plan presented for the support 
of public credit in 1791, 445 ; four points presented, 446; 
facts, 445; injuries resulting from the exclusion of for- 
eign coins, 446 ; what reason can now be given for not 
preventing it? 447; a review of the present condition of 
the statute currency of the United States, 443; three 
distinct objections to the Bank of the United States as a 
regulator of the currency, 449 ; a power that belongs to 
the Government, 449; it cannot be delegated, 449; it 
ought not to be delegated to any bank, 450 ; differs from 
Mr. Calhoun in the capacity of the bank to supply a 
general currency, 451, 452 ; circulation of the bank in 
1833, 458 ; objections to prolonging the e.xistence of the 
present bank, 464 ; the conduct of the present bank, 
464 ; that of the first bank, 455 ; the spirit which seems 
to have broken out against the State banks deprecated. 



45C ; a small paper circulation one of the greatest griev- 
ances that can afflict a community, 457; restoration oi 
the gold currency has great influence in putting down 
a small note circulation, 458. See PuUio DisireM. 
Removals from Office.— Error of De Tocqueville, 159 ; his 
statement, 159; case of Ad.ims' administration, 159; 
no distinct party lines, 159; no case presented to him 
for political removal, 160 ; so in the main with Jackson, 
160; extent of removals by him, 160; his election a 
change of parties, 160; he followed the example of Jef 
ferson, 160; the circumstances of .Jefferson, 160; the four 
years' limitation law not then in force, 161 ; fundamental 
principle, 161 ; his letter to Monroe, 161 ; do. to Gov- 
ernor Giles on removals, 161 ; do. to Elbridge Gerry, 161 ; 
do. to Mr. Lincoln, 161 ; Jefferson's law ofremovals, 161 ; 
said he had never done justice to his own party in this 
respect, 162 ; clamor against Jackson, 162 ; the practice 
ofremovals for opinion' sake becoming too common, 162; 
description of Macaulay, 162; the evil become worse 
since the time of De Tocqueville, 162 ; an evil in our 
country, 162; Jefferson's rule affords the remedy, 162; 
remarks upon it, 163. 

Report of Government Bank Directors, 374. 

Resolutions of Webster relative to the Compromise, 817; 
relative to the report of the Secretary of the Treasury 
on the removal of the public deposits, &c., 394, 898. 

Ehea, John, Representative from Tennessee, 7. 

Rivers and JTarbors. — Internal improvement of, how based, 
4 ; how restricted, 4. 

Rives, William C, on the meaning of the Virginia resolu- 
tions, 337 ; on the independence of Texas, 668. 

Roberts, Jonathan, votes for the Missouri Compromise, 
8. 

Robertson, Geokge, Representative from Kentucky, 7. 

Rowan, John, on revision of the tariff, 95. 

Rush, Richard, Secretary of the Treasury, 55; negotiates 
for joint occupancy of Oregon, 109. 



Salt Tax, repeal of.— This tax an odious measure, 143; 
fluctuations in the tax, 14;?; efforts to repeal it, 143; 
" the English salt tax and manner of its repeal, 144 ; the 
enormous amount of the tax, 144; contrary to every 
principle of taxation, 144 ; the distribution of this tax 
on different sections of the Union, 144 ; the Northwest, 
144 ; the South, 145 ; the West, 145 ; provision curers 
and exporters were entitled to the same bounty and al- 
lowance with exporters of fish, 145 ; the provision tr.ido 
of the West, 146 ; the repeal of the salt duty the greatest 
favor to this trade, 145 ; the domestic manufacture has 
enjoyed all possible protection, 146 ; time enough been 
had for the trial, 146 ; the American system without a 
gross departure from its principles could not cover thia 
duty any longer, 146 ; every argument that could be 
used hero had been used in England in vain, 147; the 
petition of the British manufacturers, 147 ; effect of an 
era of free trade in salt," 147. 

This tax a curse, 154; a mystery in salt, 154; bill to 
abolish offered, 156; the fisheries, 155; "the tax on 
alum salt, the foundation of all th6so bounties, 155 ; dif- 
ferent acts of Congress recited, 155, 166 ; reasons for 
abolishing the duty on alum salt, 156 ; an article of in- 
dispeusable necessity to the provision trade of the 
United States, 156; no salt of the kind made in the 
United States, 156 ; the duty enormous and quadruples 
the price, 156; it is unequal in its operation, 156; moans 
of drawing an undue amount of money from the public 
treasury, 157 ; a practical violation of one of the most 



XXII 



INDEX TO VOL. I. 



equitable clauses in the Constitution of tho United 
States, 157 ; It now rests on a false basis, 157 ; its repeal 
will not materially diminish the revenue nor delay the 
extinguishment of the public debt, 157 ; it belongs to an 
unhappy period in the history of the government," 157. 
Amount paid by it into the treasury, 714; quantity 
imported, 714; its import from England, 715; etfcct of 
the tax, 71G; its direct injuries, 716; the burdens ap- 
pear in the most odious light, 716 ; testimony of Dr. 
Young, 717. 

Sanfoed, Nathan, Senator from New York, 7 ; candidate 
for Vice Presidency in 1S24, 45. 

Scott, John, Delegate from Missouri, 8 ; presents the appli- 
cation of Missouri for admission into the Union, 9. 

Seal of Colonel Benton, origin of it, 77. 

Secession of a State — origin of the doctrine, 4 ; Senate in 
favor, 34 ; do. against, 84. 

Sergeant, John, Eepresentative from Pennsylvania, 7 ; on 
the committee to whom was referred the application of 
Missouri, 9 ; nominated minister to Panama, 66 ; renom- 
inated for the Vice Presidency, 232 ; candidate for the 
Vice Presidency, 2S2. 

Seviee, Ambrose H., on tho cession of the public lands, 709. 

Shaw, H., Eepresentative from Massachusetts, 9 ; votes for 
tho admission of Missouri, 9 ; coadjutor with Clay on 
the Missouri question, 10. 

Sierra Leone, origin of the colony of, 88. 

SiLSBEE, Nathaniel, Representative from Massachusetts, 
7. 

Slaves deported, British Indemnity for. — Controversy re- 
specting slaves carried off in the war of 1812 concluded 
in 1827, 88 ; simihir controversy under the treaty of 
1783, 88 ; origin of the colony of Sierra Leone, 88 ; subject 
referred to the Emperor Alexander, 88; arbitrament 
disputed, 88 ; payment made, 88 ; statement of the case, 
88 ; the reference, 89 ; views, 89 ; the third treaty, 89 ; 
the payment, 90 ; the example, 90 ; question of restitu- 
tion arising under the Eevolutionary war, 90 ; number 
carried off, 90 ; the commissioners at Ghent, 91 ; French 
spoliation claim, 91 ; contrast with the claim for de- 
ported slaves, 91 ; proof that Northern men will do jus- 
tice to the South, 91. 

Slavery, effect of its existence or non-existence on difftrent 
States. — " The ghost of the Missouri question, 1.36 ; the 
line drawn between the free State of Ohio and the slave 
State of Kentucky, 136; views of leading men North 
and South indisputably tho same in the earlier periods 
of our government, 136; the sublime morality of those 
who cannot boar the abstract contemplation of slavery a 
thousand miles off, 136 ; the morality of the primitive 
Christians," 136 ; conduct of the Free States at the first 
introduction of tho slavery topic into Congress, 137 ; 
further remarks, 138. 

SUivery in the district of Columbia, Abolition of. — Memo- 
rial of Society of Friends in Pennsylvania, 576 ; source 
whence the memorial emanated, 576; previous proceed- 
ings on these memorials, 576; motion to reject when 
presented for reception, 576; this point the origin of a 
long and acrimonious war in the two Houses of Con- 
gross, 576 ; reception and condemnation would quiet the 
question, 576; moved to postpone, 577; remarks of 
Senator Benton, 577 ; " character of the petitioners, 577 ; 
the abolitionists, 577 ; publications and prints, 577 ; in- 
tended to inflame the passions of slaves, 577; cause of 
the massacre of San Domingo, 577 ; course of the French 
society, 57S ; tho conspiracy in Louisiana, 578 ; these 
societies had already perpetrated more mischief than 
the joint remainder of all their lives spent in prayers of 
contrition and works of retribution, could ever atone 



for, 578 ; the conduct of the great body of the people 1l 
tho free States, 579 ; object is to give that vote which 
will have tho greatest effect in putting down these so- 
ciet es, 579 ; past action of the Senate," 579. 

Slavery agitation. — Time of its rise, 5; unceasing efforts to 
alarm the South by imputations against the North, of 
unconstitutional designs on the subject of slavery, 609; 
letter of Mr. Madison to Mr. Clay, 609 ; letter to Ed- 
ward Coles, 609; nullification in a new disguise, 609 ; 
publications to alarm the South, 610 ; the " Crisis," 610 ; 
the subject of a Southern Convention, 610; the conduct 
of Mr. C.alhoun, 610; petitions for the abolition of 
slavery in the district of Columbia, 611 ; Calhoun's re 
marks, 611 ; extreme ground taken, 611 ; his doctrine, 
611 ; reply of Mr. Morris, 612; Bedford Brown in reply 
to Mr. Calhoun, 612 ; King charges upon the temarks of 
Calhoun the effect of incre.asing the slavery agitation, 
613 ; Calhoun, in reply, charges that any other course 
will divide and distract the South, 614 ; remarks of Mr. 
Hill relative to the views of Northern States, 614; peti- 
tions in the House, 615 ; remarks of Mr. Franklin 
Pierce, 615 ; course of the Telegraph newspaper, 615 ; 
the Herald of Freedom newspaper, 616 ; Calhoun sends 
a paper to the Clerk's desk to be read, containing an at- 
tack upon a member of the other House, 616; apology 
by the presiding officer for permitting it to be read, 
616; remarks of Mr. Benton at the request, and in de- 
fence of Mr. Pierce, 617 ; tho statement of Mr. Cal- 
houn involved him in the solecism of sending forth in- 
cendiary publications through the action of the Senate, 
617; remarks of Mr. Benton on this point, 617; remarks 
of Mr. King on the strange scene of Southern Senators 
attacking their Northern friends because they defended 
the South, 617 ; increase of abolitionism denied, 618 ; 
treatment of George Thompson, 618; further state- 
ments, 619; remarks of Mr. Webster, 619; refusal of 
Mr. Calhoun to vote on the motion to reject the prayer 
of petitioners, 619; his remarks, 619; an unjustifiable 
assumption, 620 ; memorial of the Society of Friends, 
620 ; further remarks, 620. 

Action of the House on abolition petitions, 621 ; reso- 
lution presented by Mr. Pinkney, 621 ; votes, 621 ; com- 
mittee ordered and report, 621 ; report adopted, 621 ; 
remarks of Mr. J. Q. Adams on the reception of these 
petitions, 622 ; action of early Congresses on this sub- 
ject, 623; Madison on abolition petitions, 623; his con- 
sistent course, 623 ; South, the point of danger from 
slavery agitation, 623. 

Sloan, John, Eepresentative from Ohio, 7. 

Smith, Bernard, Eepresentative from New Jersey, 9 ; votes 
for the admission of Missouri, 9. 

Smith, Samuel, Eepresentative from Maryland, 7 ; on the 
committee to whom was referred the application of Mis- 
souri, 9; for Van Buren as Minister to England, 216; on 
the British West India Trade, 125 ; on the expenses of 
government, 280 ; on the protective policy, 268 ; on the 
compromise tariff bill, 815, 827. 

Smith, "William, Senator from South Carolina, 7; Judge, 7; 
votes for tho Missouri Compromise, 8; moves to 
be excused from voting on the measure for tho re- 
lief of public land debtors, as he was one, 12 ; excuse 
refused, 12. 

S.MYTnE, Alexander, Eepresentative from Virginia, 7. 

Southard, Samuel L., Senator from Now Jersey, 7 ; Secre- 
tary of the Navy, 55 ; on the Expunging resolution, 528 ; 
on the independence of Texas, 669. 

Speakers in the House in favor of protection, 82 ; ditto 
against, 33. 

Specie Circular.— lis issue marked the firmness, foresight, 



INDEX TO VOL. I. 



XXIII 



and decision of General Jackson, 676 ; its purport, 676 ; 
extent of the land sales, 677 ; remarks on the evil which 
required the specie circular, 077 ; benefits of suppress- 
ing it, 677 ; a ^new of the actual condition of the paper 
currency, 67S ; bill which was the basis of the remarks 
rejected, 67S; President decides to issue the order, 673. 
Resolution to rescind the Treasury Circular offered, 
694 ; remarks of Senator Ewing, 694 ; origin of the order, 
695 ; its legality, 695 ; remarks of Senator Benton, G95 ; 
a little panic 695 ; letter of Mr. Biddle, 696 ; Clay's speech 
at Lexington, 696; illegality of the treasury order 
examined, 696; the new distress, 697; Mr. Biddle's 
description of it, 697 ; movement to produce a general 
buspension of specie payments, 697 ; remarks of Senator 
Benton, 697; reply of Senator Crittenden, 69S; ditto of 
Senator Webster, 699 ; other speakers, 700 ; subject re- 
ferred, 700; report, 700; action of the Senate, 700; 
cause of Mr. Benton's speech, 700 ; his speech on the 
proceedings, 701, 702 ; explosion of the banks foretold, 
703; reply of Senator Walker to Benton, 703, 704; Mr. 
Calhoun's reason for not voting on the recision bill, 
706 ; bill passed in the Senate, 706 ; amendment of the 
House, 706 ; lost, T06 ; veto, 706. 

Stevenson, Andbew, chosen Speaker, 121 ; elected Speaker, 
209; chosen Speaker of the House, 371. 

Stokbs, Henet E., Eepresentative from New York, 7. 

Stokbs, MoNTror.T, Senator from North Carolina, 7; Gov- 
ernor, 7; votes for the Missouri Compromise, 8. 

Stoky, Joseph, Justice of Supreme Court, 7. 

Supreme Court, its Judges and officers, 731. 

Swift, Benjamin, opposes the admission of Arkansas, 627. 



Taket, Rogeu B., Attorney General, 181 ; nomination as 
Secretary of the Treasury sent in near close of the 
session, 470; immediately rejected, 470; resigns, 470; 
appointed Chief Justice, 731; vote in the Senate, 731. 

Tariff and American System. — Beginning of the question, 
32 ; protection looked for among the incidental powers, 
32; the design was to make protection the object, and 
revenue the incident, 32 ; revision of the tarifT pro- 
posed, 32 ; public distress the leading argument for the 
new tariff, 32 ; remarks of Mr. Clay, 32. 

" Public distress of the whole country the most promi- 
nent object of attention, 32 ; its evidences, 32 ; its ex- 
tent, 32; a truthful picture*' 32. 

Other speakers, 32, the distress disputed, 83; its 
cause the paper system, 33 ; no necessity for protection, 
33 ; Webster's remarks, 33 ; other speakers in opposi- 
tion, 83 ; passage of the bill in the House, 34 ; closeness 
of the vote, 34 ; moved to refer to finance committees 
in the Senate, 34 ; lost, 84 ; referred to committee on 
manufactures, 34 ; passed the Senate, 34 ; increase of 
revenue a motive with some friends of the bill, 34; 
views of the candidates for the Presidency, 34 ; position 
of various States on the bill, 34. 

Revision of. — Date of a serious division between the 
North and South, 95; the work of politicians and manu- 
facturers, 95 ; productions of different States favored by 
additional duties on their rival imports, 95; remarks, 95 ; 
"in vain that it is called the American system, 95; as a 
tax for the support of Government, it is to be supported ; 
if for any other purpose, it is to be reprobated, 95; the 
surrender of individual opinion to the interest of the 
State," 95; the bill contained a vicious principle, 95; 
the tariff an issue in the Presidential contest, 96; man- 
ufacturers warned not to mingle their interests in poli- 
tics, 96 ; change of policy in the New England States, 96 ; I 



"she held back, 96; denounced, 96; the present meas 
ure called a New England one, 96 ; tone of those wht 
administered the Government,'' 96 ; the question now 
both political and sectional, 97; the duty on indigo, 97 ; 
remarks on the motion, 97 ; "history of its production, 
97; reasons for encouraging its home production, 93; 
reasons for a unanimous vote, 93 ; burdens imposed by 
every tariff on Virginia and the Carolinas," 99 ; "object 
to make the bill consistent, though opposed to the prin- 
ciple, 99 ; no boon asked for the South, 99 ; capacity of 
the country to produce it, 100;" motion lost, 100; a 
nominal duty imposed, 100 ; this regarded as an insult 
by the South, 100; Southern views of the bill, 100; 
scheme of this Tariff; where conceived, 101; the bill a 
regular append.age of presidential elections, 101 ; change 
between the prosperity of the North and the South, 
101; cause to which attributed, 101; its justice, 101; 
fe«lingof the mass of democratic members, 102. 

Beduction of Duties. — A certain amount reduced at 
the previous session, 803 ; a step in the right direction, 
80S; further reduction expected, 30S ; Verplanck's bill, 
308; the financial history of the country since the late 
war, 809 ; a satisfactory statement, 309 ; carrying back the 
protective system to the year of its commencement, 309 ; 
abundant protection to real manufacturers, 309 ; bound 
to be satisfactory to the South Carolina school, 309 ; bill 
lingered in the House under interminable debates on 
systems and theories, 809 ; suddenly knocked over by a 
new bill, 309 ; moved to strike out all after the enacting 
clause, and to insert a new bill, called the compromise, 
309; delay asked for by Northern members, 310; re- 
marks, 310; "one short hour ago collecting our papers 
to go home, 810; a new bill, proposed, and the cry of 
' question ' raised, 310 ; hasty legislation deprecated in 
matters of great importance, 310 ; this matter assumes an 
imposing attitude, 310; a bill to tranquillize feelings, 
310; it is said the next Congress \nll be hostile to the 
tariff, 311 ; the discontent has a deeper seat than the 
tariff"," 311 ; the seductive and treacherous nature of com- 
promise legislation, 311; bill passed at once, 311 ; a bill 
wdthout precedent in the annals of legislation, 312; the 
manner of proceeding, 312; the degree to which it w.os a 
compromise, 312 ; list of the voters, 312. 

Clay asks leave to introduce a bill called a " compro- 
mise measure," 313 ; remarks, 313; "two great objects 
in view, 314 ; the first object looks at the tariff, 313; it 
stands in imminent danger, 313; it must fall at the nest 
session, 313; be productive of calamitous consequences, 
313 ; can be placed on a better foundation now, than 
at the next session, 313 ; the majority of the dominant 
party is adverse to the tariff, 313; the father of the sys- 
tem charged with its unnatural abandonment, 313 ; a 
wish to separate it from politics," 314 ; the principle of 
the bill a series of annual reductions of one-tenth per 
cent., &c., 814 ; other features of the bill, 314 ; remarks on 
the number of years the protective policy has to run, 
and the guaranties for its abandonment, 814; a stipula- 
tion to continue nine years, and no guarantee for its 
abandonment, 314 ; moral guarantees, 814 ; " this project 
has not the elements of success, 315; a violation of the 
constitution, as the Senate have no power to originate a 
revenue bill, 315 ; after they are defeated, and can no 
longer maintain a conflict, they come to make the boat 
bargain they can, 815; the tariff is in its last gJisp, 815; 
what has the tariff led us to already f 815 ; what evi- 
dence that the manufacturers will not come at the end 
of the time, and ask more protection than ever," 315 ; "a 
measure for harmony, 315; the unhappy divisions of 
North and South attributable to this bill, 815 ; further 



SXIV 



INDEX TO VOL. I. 



remarks," 815; fallibility of political opinions, 316; 
Clay's views, 316; Calhoun's views, 316 ; Clay's deter- 
mination relative to a reaction, 316; manner in which 
the bill was received by the public, 816 ; Nilcs's Itegis- 
ter, 516 ; conclusions of the manufacturers, 816 ; position 
of Webster, 816; not consulted on the subject, 816; 
"the bill a well-understood surrender of the power of 
discrimination, or a stipulation not to use that power 
for a certain period, 817; if the tariff is in danger, it is 
because the people will not sanction it, 817; resolutions 
relative to the bill," 817. 

Probable reasons for Webster's exclusion from all 
knowledge of the compromise bill, 318; coincidence of 
his views with those of General Jackson, 318; a reduc- 
tion of the tariff to a stable condition frustrated by the 
compromise bill, 318; objections urged ag.ainst the bill, 
818; attitude of South Carolina surmounted the objec- 
tions, 818 ; would remove all cause of discontent from 
her, 818; House bill introduced during the discussion on 
the question of leave, 319 ; ditto passed, 819; share of 
the manufacturing states In this compromise, 319 ; an 
incident showing that measures may be passed on other 
reasons than their merits, 319 ; remarks, 319; "an ex- 
traordinary augmentation of duties in a bill which was 
to reduce duties, 319 ; two or three little factories iu 
Connecticut must bo protected, 319 ; contrary to the 
whole tenor and policy of the bill, 820 ; a view of the 
circumstances which had attended the duties on these 
woollens," 320. 

Another incident— the character of protection openly 
claimed for this bill, 820; remarks of various Senators 
on this point, 321; silence of Calhoun on this point, 821. 

The constitutionality of originating this bill in the 
Senate, 821 ; purely a question of privilege, and the de- 
cision of it belonged alone to the other House, 321 ; no 
Committee of "Ways and Means in the Senate, 321 ; it is 
not the less a money bill from its object being protec» 
tion, 821 ; amendment proposed relative tc the draw- 
hack on manufactured imports, 821 ; instance refined 
sugar, 322 ; lost, 822 ; carried, so far as relates to sugar, in 
after years, 822. 

Motion to substitute home valuations for foreign or 
imported goods, 822 ; strenuously opposed by Calhoun 
822 ; insisted upon by friends of the bill, 822 ; moved to 
lay the bill on the table, 822; adjournment moved and 
carried, 322 ; Calhoun recedes, 322 ; the conditions, 322 ; 
their fallacy, 323; debate on this point, 323; "a home 
valuation deemed necessary by the friends of the pro- 
tective system, 323 ; believed that after nine years most 
of the manufacturers will be sufficiently grown to pro- 
tect themselves under a twenty-five per cent, duty, 
823; it would be an increase of duties, 823 ; essentially 
necessary in order to prevent and detect frauds, 828; it 
will be an entering wedge for future measures, 323 ; for 
the sake of conciliation, the bill is brought forward, 824; 
the objections to the motion insurmountable, 324; the 
bill will save South Carolina from herself, 324 ; you can- 
not have the fair twenty per cent, without adopting the 
principle of home valuation, 325; the unequal operation 
of the homo valuiffion, 825 ; not possible to maintain our 
institutions and our liberties under the continuance of 
this controversy, 820; proposed to lay the bill on the 
table, 326 ; further debate, 827 ; motion withdrawn, 327 ; 
amendment moved, 827; adjournment moved, 827; car- 
ried, 827; amendment that no valuation be adopted 
which will operate unequally in different parts of the 
Union considered, 327; requirement of the constitution, 
827 ; merchant [tnt to groat incon\-cnicnce, 827 ; the bill is 
declared to be permanent, 827 ; home valuation imprac- 



ticable and unprecedented, and unknown in any legls 
lation, 828 ; without the assurance that the principle wil 
not be disturbed, bill should be opposed, 329 ; homa 
valuation tending to a violation of the constitution, 329 ; 
injurious and amiost fatal to the Southern ports, 829 ; 
create great additional expense, 829 ; an increase of 
duties in a new form, S29 ; the fate of the bill depends 
on the fate of the amendment, 329; two conditions of 
the vote of Mr. Calhoun, 329; amendment fixing a 
homo valuation adopted," 880; a new principle thus 
adopted at the expense of the constitution, 3.30. 

Compromise, secret history of. — Calhoun and Clay 
rival candidates for the Presidency, 342 ; leaders in op- 
posite political systems, 842 ; cause of their friendship, 
342 ; rupture, 342 ; a question between them, which had 
the upper hand of the other, 342 ; Letcher conceives tho 
idea of a compromise to release South Carolina from 
her position, 342; determination of J.ackson to arrest 
Calhoun for high treason, 343; conferences, 343 ; agree- 
ment with the manufacturers, 343; action of Mr. Clay- 
ton, 343 ; amendments which were agreed to, 843 ; man- 
ner of the passage of the home valuation amendment, 
844 ; Calhoun'-s remarks, 344 ; his vote, 344 ; John M. 
Clayton master of both, 844. 

Act 0/1S33.— Compromises, 344; act of 1833 a breach 
of all the rules and principles of legislation, 345 ; a con- 
ception of rival politicians who had failed in the game 
of agitation, and throw it up for the game of pacification, 
345 ; how could this measure be effected in a country so 
vast and intelligent, 345; Benton's view of the compro- 
mise, 846; vices of the act, 346; mischiefs done to the 
frame of the government, 847. See Protective System. 

Tatnall, Col., on the treaty with tho Creeks, 64; second 
to Eandolph in the duel with Clay, 72. 

Taylok, John W., Ilepresentative from New York, 7; 
Speaker, 7 ; votes for the Missouri compromise, 8. 

Taylor, John, decease of, a perfect and complete republi- 
can statesman, 45; demeanor, 45; dress, 45; his char- 
acter, 45: writings, 45; presented tho Virginia Resolu- 
tions of 1798, 46 ; on the Virginia resolutions, 851. 

Taylok, G. K., on the Virginia Resolutions, 350. 

Territories. — Their rights under the constitution, 4. 

Texas, Independence of. — Memorials on the subject, 665 
effects of the victory of San Jacinto, 665 ; remarks, 665 
reference to Committee on Foreign Affairs moved, 666 
if Texas has a government de facto, it is the duty of the 
government to acknowledge it, 666 ; moderation and 
deliberation counselled, 666; acknowledgment and ad- 
mission advocated, 667; new theatre for the slavery 
agitation revealed, 667; a design to make Texas an ele- 
ment in the Presidential election, 067; the former ces- 
sion of Texas, 667; the course of Calhoun, 607; remarks 
of Bedford Brown, 668; remarks of Mr. Rives, 668; 
national faith should be preserved inviolate, 668 ; report 
in favor, 669 ; " the balance of power and the perpetua- 
tion of our institutions," as a reason for admission, 669; 
resolutions of recognition p.issed both Houses, 670; re- 
marks of Senator Benton, 670 ; the separation of the two 
countries among tho fixed order of events, 672; the 
Alamo, 673; humanity of Mexican ladies, 674; calumny 
on the cause of the revolt, 674 ; the revolt has illustrated 
the Anglo Saxon character, 675. 

Thomas, Jesse B., votes for the Missouri Compromise, 8. 

Thomas, Francis, on Committee of Bank Investigation, 241 
on the admission of Arkansas, 631. 

Tho.mpson, S.M1TU, Secretary of the Navy, 7. 

Tompkins, D. D., Vice President, 7. 

TiiOKN, Lieut., his fate, 109. 

Thorn, Hermann, application for a commission in the 
army, 183. 



INDEX TO VOL. I. 



IXT 



Treasury notes, resorted to, 1 ; degree of depreciation in 

second year of the war of 1812, 1. 
Treaty o/1807. — Cause of its rejection without reference to 

the Senate, 1. 
Treaty-making power. — Its extent, 4. 
Treaty o/ Indian Springs, 58. 

Trimble, Daniel, Eepresentative from Kentucky, 7. 
Tucker, George, Eepresentative from Virginia, 7. 
Tyleb, John, Eepresentative from Virginia, 7 ; on the force 

bill, 831 ; defends the Senate investigating committee's 

report. 486, 



Van Bcben, Martin, remarks on the treaty with the Creeks 
60 ; Secretary of State, 119 ; appointed Minister to Eng- 
land, 181 ; resigns his seat in the cabinet, 181 ; his rejec- 
tion as Minister to England, 214; candidates for the 
succession to General Jackson, 214 ; effect of Van 
Buren's appointment as Secretary of State, 214 ; a step- 
ping-stone to the Presidency, 214 ; appointed minister, 
and left for London, 214 ; charged with breaking up the 
cabinet for the purpose of ousting the friends of Calhoun 
214 ; his nomination sent to the Senate, and rejection 
certain, soon as a case could be made out for justification, 
214 ; causes of objection, 215 ; rejection was not enough 
— a killing off in the public mind intended, 215 ; the 
speeches, 215; anecdote, 215; the speakers, 215; apos- 
trophe of Madame Eoland, 215 ; oh politics ! how much 
bamboozling is practised in thy name, 215; tie votes, 215 • 
speakers for the nomination, 216 ; grounds upon which 
the objections were based, 216; quotation from McLane, 
216; report of Mr. Gallatin containing a refutation of 
the objections relative to the British trade, 216 ; the 
original of Van Buren's letter of instructions, 216 ; un- 
published speech of Van Buren, 217 ; the Washington 
ground, 217; Jackson, author of the instructions, 217. 
letter of General Jackson to Van Buren after the latter 
became President, 217 ; completely disproving a dis- 
honorable imputation, 217 ; Calhoun's friendship for 
Jackson, 218 ; the New York system of proscription, 218 ; 
silence of Benton, reason for, 218; his letter to Van 
Buren, 218; the rejection in England, 219; its effects 
upon Mr. Van Buren, 219 ; remark of Calhoun, 219 ; the 
tie votes, 219 ; the injunction of secrecy removed, 219 ; 
relative to removals under Jackson, 218 ; elected Vice 
President, 282. 

Van Dyke, Nicholas, votes for the Missouri Compromise, 8_ 

Veto ofMaysville Eoad Bill. — Third veto on the subject of 
internal improvements, 167 ; history of these vetoes, 167 ; 
they embrace all the constitutional reasoning on the 
question, 167. 

Veto of the hank, effects of. — This a general caption for the 
opposition newspapers throughout the country, 280; the 
ruin of the country made to appear, 280; extracts from 
journals, 281 ; the programme of the bank and its 
branches, 281 ; wicked attempt on the part of a moneyed 
corporation to govern the election, 281. 

Vebplanck's, Gijlian C, bill for the reduction of duties, 308. 

Virginia resolutions, suggestive of nullification to Mr. Cal- 
houn, 835 ; debate of 1830, the dawn of the ideas of nulli- 
flcation, 347 ; the Virginia resolutions quoted, 347 ; nul- 
liflcation doctrineis avowed, 347 ; resolutions of '98 ap- 
pealed to, 347 : the resolutions, 348 ; their vindication, 
848 ; from their text, 348 ; the right and duty of State 
interposition claimed, 348; forcible or nullifying inter- 
position not meant, 348 ; the constitution suggests several 
modes of interposition, 348 ; to interpose, does not mean 
to nullify and set at nought, 849. • 



The cotemporaneous interpretation, 349 ; where found, 
849 ; speakers in the Virginia Legislature, .^9 ; opinions 
advanced by the speakers, 850, 851 ; the opposers of the 
resolutions did not charge upon them, nor their sup- 
porters in any manner contend for any principle like 
that of nullification, 852 ; responses of State Legislatures, 
report on the, 852; extracts, 852; enumeration of the 
powers which in the premises are claimed for the States, 
353; views of the republicans who adopted the resolu- 
tions, 3.53; remark of Madison, 853 ; of Monroe in ISOO, 
854; the passage of the sedition law, 354; conduct of the 
people of Virginia, 354. 

The resolutions disabused of nullification by their au- 
thor, 354; the letters of Madison, 355 ; extracts from hia 
letter to Mr. Everett, 355 ; reasons for rejecting in the 
constitution fanciful and impracticable theories, 355; 
what the constitution adopts as a security of the rights 
and powers of the States, 856; completeness of these 
provisions for the security of the States, 856 ; on the 
doctrine of nullification, 856; letter to Joseph C. Cabell, 
856, 857, 869; to Daniel Webster, 856; to James Eobert 
son, 856 ; to N. P. Trist, 857, 859 ; to C. E. Ilaynes, .357; 
to Andrew Stevenson, 857; from a memorandum on 
nullification, 358, 359 ; note, 358 ; to Mr. Townsond, 359 ; 
further extracts, 360 ; remarks, 360. 
Vote against the ratification of the treaty of ISIS, 17; on re- 
pairs of Cumberland road, 22 ; on the bill to make a road 
to New Mexico, 44 ; on the bill to occupy the Columbic 
river, 50; on the nomination of Clay as Secret.iry ot 
State, 55 ; on the nominations to the Panama mission, 
66 ; on treaty with the Cherokees, IDS ; on leave to offer 
a resolution of inquiry relative to recharter of the bank, 
205; on the recharter of the bank, 250; do. in the 
House, 250 ; on selling the stock of the United States in 
bank, 295 ; on the compromise tariff bill, 812 ; on the 
compromise bill, 330 ; on the bill to distribute the sales 
from public lands, 364 ; on the resolution of inquiry into 
the fitness of the persons nominated for bank directors, 
385; on the resolution relative to the report of the Sec- 
retary of the Treasury, 395 ; on the resolution condemn- 
ing President Jackson, 423; on Webster's plan of relief. 
4-35; on laying the expunging resolutions of Alabama on 
the table, 528; on the branch mints, 553; on the deposit 
bank bill, 553 ; on the fortification bill, 555; on the in- 
cendiary publication bill, 588; on the reception of aboli- 
tion petitions, 619 ; on abolition petition of Society of 
Friends, 621 ; on abolition petitions in the House, 621 ; 
on the Cherokee treaty, 625; on the admission of Arkan- 
sas, 681 ; on the distribution bill, 651 ; on recognizing the 
independence of Texas, 670; on the rccision of thespooio 
circular, 705; on the substitute to land distribution, 
70S; on striking out the deposit clause from the ap- 
propriation bill, 711. 

W 

Walker, John W., Senator from Alabama, 7; judgt', 7; 
votes for the Missouri Compromise, 8 ; on the independ- 
ence of Texas, C65 ; on the specie circular, 703. 

War of 1812.— By whoso exertions the declaration was ob- 
tained, 6 ; its great results, 6. 

Washington, Judge, of Supremo Court, S. 

WATMOtTGir, John 6., on the Committee of Bank Investiga- 
tion, 241. 

Wayne, James M., moves a reference of the bank memorial 
to a select committee, 2.34 ; on the bank Investigation 
288; appointed Judge of the Siipronio Court, 569. 

Webster, Daniel, denies the public distress, 38; on the 
protective system, 96; on revision of the tariff, 96 tin 



XXVI 



INDEX TO VOL. I. 



the ordinance of 1787, liii; on the conduct of the free 
States on slavery, 137; in reply to Ilayne, 138; debate 
with Ilayne, 188, 140; opposes Van Buren as Minister to 
England, 215 ; on the recharter of the bank, 243, 244 ; on 
the prospect of public distress, 254 ; on the force bill» 
832 ; on nullification, 338 ; on the French spoliation bill, 
488, 505; on the Expunging resolution 550; on the bill to 
suppress incendiary publications, 586 ; on French affairs. 
594, 59C; on abolition petitions, 619; on the specie circu- 
lar, 699. 

■White, Iluon L., on the entrance of the bank directors into 
the political field, 254. 

WiCKLiFFE, Chables H., on the Committee of Inquiry, 287. 

WiLKiNS, "William, on the force bill, 880. 

■WiLLiAiis, JoHS, Senator from Tennessee, 7. 



"Williams, Lewis, Representative from North Carolina, 7 ; 
Father of the House, 7. 

Williams, T. H., votes for the Missouri Compromise, 8. 

Wirt, William, Attorney General, 7, 55; counsel for the 
Cherokee Indians, 105; candidate for the Presidency, 
282; decease of, 475 ; rank as a lawyer, 475; lessons ol 
his life, 475; early condition, 475 ; authorship, 476; time 
of his death, 476; remarks of Mr. Webster at bar meet 
Ing, 476. 

WooDBUKY, Levi, Secretary of the Navy, 181. 

Weight, Silas, on the French Spoliation bill, 489. 



Yell, Akchibald, on the cession of the public lands, Til. 



W 78 



<< 



V 



-^^o* 






A 



O 






^^-^^ 













.-^^^ 






t1 






' o 









•^^0^ 






• • 
















. » • . ^ 



.-?y 



V 



-5 

■■V 












*^ A^ 






.(.•^ 



«7 ^ 



0« ♦ • „ ' A) ^^ 






< 



^-^ 

•<?* 



' T? 






^'=- 



^^•n^ 






^.^^ 



,*>''^^ 



^ 
^ 
'^^. 



^\ 



... .V- ^3 

■ ♦ av •^ 



.»J' 



.0^ 






t « o 



.^- 









t I ■* 



'\i 



"^^ 












-^ 






. « 



t ' * 



v5 ' O . t 



.iv*^ ' "'" 



^'-^.-0^ 



oV^ 



O 



.<■■ 






% 



.c. 



S^ 



^^ 



* .s'-' 



0^ • 



• « o^ *^^ 






'bv' 












"^^ 



'=>^. 



v-^-' 



I- 



A 



-^^ 









V^M^ 



i~ .r. 



* .«,'^''^^^. ''-Vj&:\}>^- 



^^ . • • . ' 






■ * t 



^--.A^ 



'o , t * A, 






.<c 



*^^, ' " »T 




»1 lo • 




< . 






^0^., 



ij » 






>".* 







BOOtvplN.BINC 












;^' . 



..<?: 









